she pushed those wings back like a fighter jet and streaked skyward at the very last instant left to her , as though shed always known how to fly ; she burst through the falling , reaching white fingers of tsunami death with a triumphant cry and into the spacious sky just as the shadow-thing , now a tiny black ant beneath her , reached up in the last millisecond before the wave swallowed it and fired twin bolts of angry red lightning at her from its outstretched skeletal-green hands .