Furious Angels
            by Nymph Du Pave
 

            CHAPTER THREE:  Prey.  Stage left, even.

            He shivered, damning himself for- among many other things- leaving his thick leather jacket in the closet of his study.  He pulled the sleeves over his fingers and wrapped them around the handle of the flashlight.

            I should have gotten that cell phone for Clark, he thought, recalling how many times he’d called the Kent farm and his friend had not been there.  He’d offered to buy the phone and pay for the activation and minutes, even if Clark didn’t want his parents to know.  He had, of course, very politely refused Lex’s offer and, though it frustrated Lex to no end that he couldn’t give Clark anything, he still admired Clark’s honesty.

            Right now though, all he really wanted to do was make sure Clark was okay.  Leaving the warm and cozy santuary of his study for the below freezing temperatures of Smallville winter after dark made him less susesptible to thinking Clark was fine and left him to the mercy of his overactive imagination- having no friends as a child inhanced one's abilities to pretend and therefore imagine- and his paranoid thoughts.

            What exactly had Clark been thinking when he dropped Lana and the limo off in front of the Beanery?  Where had he gone and had he even found Shawn? Lex wanted to rationalize it:  Kent went one way, Lana went another.  Since Lana and Whitney had their little run in with Shawn, Clark probably hadn't even gotten close.

            Of course there was one little problem when it came to his theory: nothing with Clark was ever rational.

            After nine minutes of stewing in his thoughts over his various feelings directed towards the two Kent men, he started to recognize his surroundings a little more and sighed in relief.  All he really had to do to find the generator was follow the edge of the house.  He’d been worried however that he’d been going in the wrong direction.

            Turning the corner he smiled, seeing the generator down a steeply angled but luckily short hill.

            ‘Bout damn time.

            He started forward and slipped on a puddle that had iced over completely in the below freezing temperature.  He managed to stay upright but his slackened, cloth-covered grip on the handle of his flashlight ceased to exist, and it fell from his hand, tumbling down the embankment.

            "Shit."  He sighed as he watched the light descend to the bottom and snag on a limb near level ground.  He started forward himself, deliberate, attentive to even hole and dip that he could make out in the moonlight piercing through the thick layer of leaves above.

            Lex had never been any good outside and this was no exception.  The tiny mound was elevated just enough to make it an awkward tramp for the city-boy Luthor.  He almost tripped three times and was glad when he reached the light.  He picked it up, jumped the rest of the way down- a foot at most- and brushed his spotless sweater off more for reassurance then a need to clean.

            He turned towards the generator, fixing the beam directly in the middle and started forward.  Nearing it he noticed a lack of noise; no hum, no buzz, no clank-clank of the engine turning over in a desperate mechanical endeavor to get itself working again.  It was just dead.

            He reached the machine and looked down on the top of the engine.

            “What the hell?”  It’s cylindrical body was glittering in the close up beam of his flashlight.  In the middle of the icy gleam a hand print, a little larger than his, was embedded in ice.

            This can’t be goo-

            "Wow.  Now, that's something you don't see everyday."

            Lex froze.  The voice was not familiar and it's tone was conspicuously mischievous and cruel.

            Shawn.
 
 
 
 

            TBC Tomorrow