"Iggy!" a harsh bark, a scalpel scraping along metal crackling with a thousand volts of static electricity. A callused hand closing upon his arm.
He flinched.
Clarity. Extraordinary clarity. A shattering sense of clearness, descending over his vision like a bucket of cold water over a grimed windscreen…
Iggy tried to shake it off. "No…!"
The pressure of the cold, hard fingers gentled. "Iggy, listen to me."
He turned. Max's serious brown eyes stared back at him. Strong. Steady. Determined. Defiant.
But behind them, transient, a trace of fear.
What did that mean?
Her voice came out, a sarcastic drawl. "Start from the beginning, and we'll talk about this."
Fang echoed like her shadow. "There's no need to be afraid." He wouldn't stop staring at Iggy's wings.
What did it mean?
A remnant of the happy-go-lucky fool, whispering at the back of his mind: "Sounds kinda dirty the way you're putting it…"
He wanted to laugh, but couldn't.
Iggy looked for Jeb and found him, sitting on the table, shaking but still steady at the bank of mahogany wood, surrounded by three tearstained, pale little faces – the Gasman, Nudge, Angel, trembling, afraid. Iggy tasted bitterness at the back of his tongue.
He shook his head so quickly the higgedly piggedly shamble of shadows fluttered, blurred, hair twirling aimlessly around his head. His nails cut into his palms, drawing blood. "But…!"
A quick glance from Jeb, a brief flash of steely eyes was all he needed. Iggy slumped into a chair, feeling hollow, wooden, a marionette with its strings cut, crumpled and limp on an empty stage…
"There's nothing much to say." His voice was a low whisper of the sea breeze through a throat that felt as dry as sandpaper. "Marian Jensen… I think she must have been the one to create me, or something… But instead of being two percent bird, I'm two percent bat…"
Max flinched. Fang put his arm around her.
"But we'll work it out!" Iggy's voice was high, terrified. "You can get therapy or something, you can get over it, you can stop being a chiroptophobiac…" He was babbling, loud and long, wishing, hoping beyond belief that there was a way, somehow, even as his feelings and his mask crumbled.
Max frowned. Her gaze flicked to Jeb. "A chiroptophobawha..?"
Iggy felt his heart rise. No! No way….! She didn't know? But if she didn't know, then she couldn't be! His heartbeat quickened, doubt transfusing his hope. Could she?
He dared a glance towards Jeb. Questioning.
Jeb's eyes narrowed. "I'll tell you about it later. Go on, Iggy."
"Umm…" Still scared, but feeling marginally better now, Iggy gulped and continued, nails doggedly pressing further into his palms, trembling like he was wired to a power grid. His voice slid up and down the scales, bending and rippling up the octaves as he continued. "But then… Max said she hated bats… It must have been when I was about… I can't even remember when…" he was addressing the whole room now, and had a bizarre sense of power, the whole room suspended and held by the gravity of his words, five pairs of eyes staring back at him, ten drills whirring, ready to bore him down with contradictions and shrieking criticisms…
"I was alright until Max said she hated bats… it was just after a test we had to do at the School, where we had to navigate our way around a maze… no, sorry, that was afterwards, sorry, what happened was we had to let vampire bats suck our blood…"
God, it sounded insane. It sounded completely unbelievable.
It sounded like the ravings of a madman.
He trembled, wings flapping, swirling the feathers around the vast white room that suddenly seemed too stark, too sterile. His voice was a keen.
He didn't want to go insane! He didn't want to be mad!
His confessions ran on and on and on, until the tears coursing down his cheeks became a rhythm to his words. Fang wordlessly handed him a tissue box. Iggy grabbed a handful of tissues and used them to drag at his eyes.
He scrubbed the blood off his palms with them too. Seeing this, Nudge whimpered.
"Iggy, I'm so sorry…"
At least one person believed in him. This was enough for him to shed a watery smile in her direction. He was rewarded by a returning one, albeit a little shaky, and felt his heart grow lighter.
He would never, ever complain about Nudge and her motormouth again.
Iggy managed to control the keen of his voice as his story ended, words steadying and becoming lower until they died, a faint rattle, the whispering sigh of a match blown into non-existence. He finished the tale – but 'tale' sounded so prosaic though! So different to what it really was, an angsty, gulping, crying haze of tears and growing sympathy from the flock, even though Max's eyes were still narrow slits and her hands tight little balls – of Marian Jensen and their "family reunion" in the middle of the School's siege, and the information he had given him – the 31 days, and the issue he had never raised, for fear Jeb would crush his hopes and dreams.
When he was finished, Max sighed and got up from under her chair. "Iggy, stay here. The rest of you, I want a flock meeting in the next room. And Jeb, what the hell is a chiroptophobiac? And was the 31 days thing what the Voice was telling me, about the new…"
"Sssshhh!"
Flock meeting. Iggy's mouth and his wings, the ever-present reminder, drooped. His eyes burned. He wasn't a part of the flock anymore?
He blinked. A single, perfect tear marred the expanse of black tile beneath his feet.
"Fang! Oh, for God's sake…" Max's voice, then the door slamming.
Fang's distinctive footsteps sounded. Surprised, Iggy looked up, a handful of tissues he had grabbed, now soggy and snotty, crunched in a fist.
Fang sat down in a chair in front of him. "Hey."
Iggy felt tired. "Hey." Whatever weird, passive-aggressive game Fang wanted to play, he just wasn't in the mood.
He heard Fang swallow. Shift awkwardly in his seat. Scrape the chair back along the floor as he stood up. Iggy let his head drop as Fang moved back towards the door and the flock meeting on the other side. More spots speckled the black floor, the wetness running down his nose.
Then, Fang spoke, so quietly at first Iggy couldn't believe he had actually heard it. "Just so you know… I think your wings are really cool."
Shocked, Iggy's head snapped up so fast it made an audible whooshing noise. He stared at Fang in disbelief, heart beating hard.
Seeing his surprise, Fang grinned. The first time Iggy had ever seen him smile. "And don't worry. You'll always be a part of the flock. I'll get Max to change our name to 'flock-colony' or something."
As Iggy stared at him, Fang expression changed. His voice grew gentle, supportive. "You're family, Ig. Don't forget that."
If Iggy had been faint-hearted, he would have fainted then and there, just as Fang closed the door and his voice joined the steady whispers on the other side.
"You're family, Ig. Don't forget that."
The tears were falling steadily now, but on his face was a smile.