Thomas stopped walking now, transfixed by the spectacle taking place in the sky. And then he saw it. A great blackness against the sky. It circled twice, then stopped. How unlike a bird it was, though it had wings, or at least explained itself with them; no bird could just hang in the sky like a still image of itself. It peered down into the fields, its face almost feline, but wrong, its teeth black in a sickly glowing mouth. It roared, and its roar was familiar, that lion’s roar in grotesque. An angel of wrath
