By PhantomChajo
Chapter 4 - A Price too high.
"Oh how sweet and sorrowful." Came a mocking voice from behind me.
Cindy's eyes became wide as saucers as she suddenly remembered the people that she had agreed to help. "I'm sorry... I'm sooo sorry Johnnathan."
It was the first and only time she said my first name.
The rest of that event was a blur of pain and blood.
I heard the twin clicks of a double barrel shotgun being cocked. Instinctively I flared my wings so that I could take to the sky. Then I herd the sound of that gun being fired.
Ka-BLAM BLAM!
Both barrels fired at the same time. I thought I was dead. I wished that I was dead when I realized the true extent of what had happened.
Cindy had been helping the hunters, giving them information on my mutation. With that info they had planed accordingly. They did not use slugs, they used bird-shot for ammo. Each shell casing full of tiny pellets designed to shred the flesh of birds in hunting season.
The damage was devastating. It caught me from my lower thighs to the back of my head and almost to the tips of both wings. The leather of my pants and jacket prevented any real damage to my back or legs. Severe bruising is what I am told had happened. Though a few pellets did make it though to my legs. I felt the hot sting of pain then the blood as it flowed down the back of my head and under the collar of my jacket.
My wings though, oh gods, what happened to them was a pure nightmare. The delicate flight membranes between the bones was shredded. Blood oozed down what was left, freezing in the cold. Searing almost as much as the heat of the passing pellets. I had lost nearly one third of my wings in that shot.
I screamed, my body jerking forward from the impact, wings crumpling, leaving bright scarlet trails in the pure white snow.
Cindy jerks in startlement.
I had inadvertently shielded her from the shotgun blast.
She screams in fear, pulling the trigger on the gun she held.
The shot ricocheted off the rooftop, barely missing me. She stumbled back, having forgotten how close to the edge of the building she was. She hit the calf-high wall at the edge and went tumbling over, shrieking.
The screams were cut off by the wet sounding Thud of a body hitting pavement eight stories below.
I cried out as I fell forward, having tried to catch her. I failed.
I was yet again, betrayed. This time by my own failure to save a friend.
The last thing I saw before I passed out was the gentle, delicate fall of snow.