Weeping Angels - Without time energy

Mark hurried up the concrete steps to the entrance, past the garden and the recycling bins, until at last he reached the door. He dug out his keys from his coat, found the one for the door, and slid it into the lock. And then he realised.

There was a camera looking directly at him. The camera of the door’s videophone.

Something as cold as marble touched the back of his neck.

For a split second, Mark could see his horrified reflection and that of the Angel behind him, its hand on his neck, its jaws wide open and its tongue extended, as though about to bite.

And then he was gone.

***

Rory and Amy struggled to keep up with the Doctor as he dashed through the gloomy, rain-soaked backstreets, his wibble-detector held in front of him. ‘This way! Hurry!’

Rory had no idea where they were. They’d been running through identical housing estates for fifteen minutes and he’d lost all sense of direction.

‘Here!’ The Doctor halted, circled on the spot, and indicated a block of flats set back from the road. They looked perfectly ordinary to Rory, except that by the entrance he could see the statue of an Angel, it’s body hunched, holding its face in its hands.

‘What happened?’ asked Rory. ‘Something bad, right?’

‘Quiet.’ The Doctor advanced on the statue like a naturalist creeping up on a sleeping lion. Calmly and steadily, he made his way up the steps towards it.

‘Careful!’ whispered Amy.

The Doctor gave her a thank-you-for-stating-the-obvious stare, then stooped to examine the Angel. It didn’t move. He buzzed it experimentally with his sonic screwdriver and tried covering his own eyes, as though playing peek-a-boo, but nothing happened. The Doctor tapped it on the wing. A chunk of it crumbled to dust under his fingers. ‘It’s safe, I think.’

‘How safe?’ said Amy.

‘As safe as a doornail.’

‘But I thought you said these things fed on, what was it, potential time energy?’ said Rory as he followed Amy to the Doctor’s side.

‘All the life left unlived,’ muttered the Doctor.

‘Normally, they zap people back in time, whoosh, that’s how they get their five-a-day.’

‘Normally?’

‘Whereas in this case, this Angel used up its last reserves of energy to send its victim into the past.

Sacrificing itself, like a bee dying after its sting. But not like a bee at all. No, now it’s more like a garden ornament.’ As the Doctor spoke, one of the Angel’s arms broke off, followed by both of it’s wings, before the Angel toppled forward, smashing itself to pieces with a heavy crash.

***

Touched by an Angel, Chapters 1-2