Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  One thing was for certain: We weren’t going to be able to take Angel head-on, not yet anyway. We needed to avoid him altogether, and try to get the hell out of New Haven before he got wind that Veronique was out.

  So we definitely needed a getaway car and a plan of escape. Actually, we needed more than one getaway car.

  When in doubt, make a list.

  I reached for the hotel letterhead and began scratching down some ideas.

  Chapter Twenty-One: Ready to Die?

  My list of ideas was decent, but there were some factors on it that were going to make them difficult to pull off. For one thing, we needed two vehicles. We also needed a briefcase, a bulletproof vest, some lab coats, money, extra food, and water. I still had no idea how we’d destroy the place, but I’d leave that up to chance a bit. Chance and Veronique …

  “Come to bed, Writer Gideon,” Grace said as she dropped an empty beer bottle on the ground.

  I should have been paying better attention to her, but I was busy formulating my plot.

  I could tell by the tone of her voice that she meant business, and besides, who was I to resist her? How could I even resist her? Beauty aside, she could control me. She could control my thoughts, control my actions.

  Case in point: I stood up, took my glasses off, and rubbed my eyes. My hands unbuckled my pants on their own accord. I let them fall to the ground as I stepped out of them.

  Suddenly, I was back in control.

  “I need to take a shower,” I told her.

  “Hurry,” she purred.

  I took a beer to the bathroom with me, flicked the shower on, and chugged the beer as I washed my man parts. Nothing worse than stinky man parts. I scrubbed a dub dub, took the last few chugs of my beer, touched the stitches on my face, and carefully washed around the wound.

  I’d never had stitches before, and one look in the mirror told me this scar was going to be something that changed people’s perceptions of me, like getting a face tattoo.

  Also, the bruises on my body were something I didn’t expect to see. They lined the inside of my thigh, two were on my arm, and a big one was forming on my shin. The ugly part of having superpowered friends …

  Once I finished, I came back into the room with a towel wrapped around my body. I had a feeling I may die the following day; I figured I might as well go out with a bang. And by bang, I mean go out by banging.

  Grace sat on the bed in her kimono and geisha form. She looked up at me, her lips pursing into a sexy smile as her robe spilled open.

  “Is that how we’re going to do it?”

  A very small voice at the back of my head screamed that I should be concerned for tomorrow and that I should be shocked about what happened earlier that day, but I silenced that voice.

  Or …

  I looked at Grace suspiciously.

  Yes, Writer Gideon, I’m easing your mind a bit.

  I laughed. “Sounds good to me.”

  She let her kimono spill open even further. I was hypnotized by her dark eyes, the light from the muted TV adding an electric sheen to them.

  “Who do you want me to be?” she asked, as her form began to morph.

  She was now the spitting image of Natalie Johansson, from the dimples to her thin torso at odds with her bust.

  There were a good many men in America whose dream it was to have sex with Natalie Johansson. I never really fantasized about her, but if she showed up at my doorstep and begged me, I wouldn’t tell her no.

  That got me thinking about who Grace could actually morph into, and I started to wonder if I could possibly have her change into one of my favorite superheroes if I found a good enough picture of them.

  Fanboy shit, I know, but I was drunk.

  “You mean like …” She morphed into Spider Gwen, blonde hair, skintight black and white outfit with a hood. She unzipped the front.

  “It’s like a cosplay dream,” I said as I approached the bed.

  From there she turned into Cat Woman, her skin pale, the stitches on her black leather costume barely able to contain her breasts.

  “Or would you prefer …?” The top portion of her costume melted and reformed into a tight black military bodysuit. Her facial features elongated, her eyes darkened, and her hair turned blonde and short.

  She beckoned me forward with her finger, a faint red energy glowing around her hand.

  I gulped. “No, not her.”

  I didn’t know if she turned into Veronique to mess with me, or because she thought it was what I genuinely wanted. Truth be told, I didn’t know what I genuinely wanted, but I did know that it pained me to leave Veronique behind.

  Grace sensed my hesitation and her skin moved faster than I’d ever seen it move before, quickly reforming her base features.

  “Let’s keep it simple.” She reached for my hand, pulling me in, and I could taste the beer on her breath as we kissed.

  She moaned as I moved down her chest to just beneath her belly button. I looked up at her and went to work, my beard tickling against her inner thighs.

  I was far from a cunnilingus expert; in fact, it had been a long time since I did something like that. But I gave it my college best – my Southern Connecticut University College best, to be exact – and I don’t know if she came or not, but it sure sounded like she did.

  After I finished, Grace kicked into high gear, pulling me up, getting on top of me, and gyrating her hips as I slid inside her.

  She looked down at me, a smile on her face as her form morphed back to Natalie Johansson, and from there into the newscaster that was on TV at the hotel the other day, then into the Japanese woman, before finally settling back on her base form.

  I didn’t last long, but it wasn’t an endurance game, and I’d already done my fair share by going down on her.

  If anything, I would die the following day.

  Grace didn’t stop me from thinking this as she morphed forms again, this time to one of the maids we’d seen in Stamford and from that to Elektra, her brunette hair long, red corset holding her breasts up.

  I threw in the hat at that point.

  I had broken bad over the last few days and had finally driven that car off the cliff today, after all the havoc I partially created on the highway.

  I was ready for the next day, ready for anything they threw at me, and above all … ready to die.

  Of course, when the sun came up the next day I was ready to live. Sore as hell, but ready to seize the day.

  I wasn’t too familiar with the semi-drunk guy who tried to think like a Bruce Willis archetype after a little sexual healing, but that wasn’t who I needed to be at that moment.

  You can do it, Gideon! A crowd cheered in my head.

  I glanced at Grace to see if she was up. She wasn’t, and that only made me feel dumber for cheering myself on.

  The first thing I wanted to do was check if Mutants in the Making had been published. I stayed in the bed for this, my laptop on my lap as Grace rested next to me.

  The book was live, available for the entire world to read.

  I then checked the sales ranking. It was somewhere in the mid-millions of the EBAYmazon store, which was utter shit. That meant five million more books were ranked higher than mine.

  The odds of my harrowing little tale getting noticed by someone were slim, and decreasing by the hour.

  My heart sank.

  “There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about,” Oscar Wilde wrote in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

  Damn, if he wasn’t right.

  I’d experienced this disappointment several times before and had lifted myself up by the bootstraps once I realized that the book wasn’t going to take. It was disheartening, to say the least – akin to gambling, except you were gambling your creativity and losing big. Which was more painful than it seemed.

  This book is different, I reminded myself as a sinking feeling in my chest caused my shoulders to droop.

  You�
��ve created a new genre by publishing it.

  After a deep breath in, I refreshed the page to see if there had been any sales or reads.

  All EBAYmazon books paid out through either a purchase or by being borrowed and read, even if the reader only read a few pages. Those page reads could add up. Some authors had a hundred thousand page reads a day. I’d be lucky if I had five hundred.

  Refreshing the data didn’t help any.

  I saw that I had sold one of my earlier fantasy works, a book called How Heavy This Axe, which was about a transgendered dwarf forced out of his village because of his sexuality.

  The Dwarf ends up forming a guild and saving her world but is still shunned when she comes back to her village. Sad story, and a bit experimental. People still seemed to enjoy it though, and by people, I meant that it sold like three to five copies a month. I was particularly proud of the cover.

  Damn, if that cover didn’t take me hours to create.

  I told myself that I needed to perk up, to give it time. I’d read about other authors who didn’t have success on their launch but came back swinging a few months later.

  But you don’t have a few months.

  For all I knew, I’d be dead by tomorrow.

  I hesitated to do some promotions because those were often a crapshoot. I’d wasted thousands of dollars promo-ing books that hardly sold.

  Every time I set a promo up, I had this foolish hope it would do something, that I’d get the book in front of the right people and I’d have instant success.

  That never turned out to be the case.

  As much as I hated to admit it, I probably needed to do some promotion. But I also needed to make preparations for the day.

  I got out of bed, slipped my pants on, realized I’d forgotten to put my boxers on, pulled off my pants, put my boxers on, then slipped my pants on again, and looked at my checklist.

  “It’s a good idea,” Grace said from behind me. She had the blanket pulled up to her chest, and her hair was a bit messy, but she looked as striking as ever.

  “I didn’t think anything … yet.”

  Then the idea came to me.

  Weird.

  “We should definitely find someone to help us, a kind of gopher. Go for this, go for that.”

  “Like I said, it’s a good idea.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Coming Clean to Luke

  My phone buzzed, and I looked at it to see a message from Luke.

  Luke: Drama in the author community.

  Me: Oh?

  Luke: One author posted a comment on social media about how this other author’s character reminded him of some other author’s character, and the author whose character was being referenced got pissed that someone was copying his schtick. So, he said some things in a private message to a friend of the first author, something like that, typical stuff.

  Me: Damn, I guess when you get closer to the top there are more people trying to nip at you.

  Luke: Speaking of the top, how’s your release going?

  Me: Not so good.

  Luke: Have you hit up your mailing list, or done any promotions yet?

  Me: I wish. Actually, my life is taking some pretty strange turns over the last couple of days.

  Luke: Does this have anything to do with why you wanted to video chat the other day?

  Me: It has everything to do with that.

  Luke: Well, do you want to chat now?

  Me: I don’t know …

  What’s there to lose? I had to ask myself. I’d already broken bad and was now being hunted by MercSecure, a quasi-federal agency. There’s nothing left to lose.

  Me: What I’m about to show you is going to freak you out. So be sure you’re seated, and that there’s no one else around.

  Luke: I’m excited!

  I turned to Grace. “Hey, I’m going to introduce you to my friend, and I want you to show him your abilities.”

  She sat up, her breasts now resting over the edge of the blanket.

  “And, um, you’ll probably want to put some clothes on too.”

  My sweater appeared on her body. I still did not understand how that worked, and I didn’t think I ever would. That’s the thing about shifters – at some point you just learn to accept them and not question how it is they are able to do what they do.

  I pressed the video chat button and it quickly connected.

  “You’ve got a beard too,” Luke said just as his image appeared on my screen. He also had a beard, but his was much lighter than mine. His eyes were dark, his cheeks were a little red, and his lips looked chapped.

  “I’m about to tell you a lot of things,” I said. “Things you may not believe until I show you evidence of what’s happened to me.”

  Concern grew on his face. “Is everything all right, buddy? And what happened to your face? Where did you get that cut? Didn’t know you shaved your head.”

  I settled my thoughts and started from the top. I told him about Grace’s sudden appearance and her abilities; I told him about the men in black; I told him about plugging into Grace’s neck and when we were first attacked by Veronique; I told him about Veronique’s abilities, and how she kidnapped me and threatened to kill me; then I told him about the attack at the hotel back in Stamford and about Angel; I explained what I planned to do next and how my book relayed all this information, aside from the very last bit about Angel, because that would be in the second installment.

  Luke laughed nervously, a hint of skepticism in his eyes. “That’s a pretty crazy story.”

  “And it’s a true story. Now I present my evidence. Grace,” I turned my phone’s camera to her, “say hi to Luke.”

  Grace crawled on the bed over to me and sat on its corner. She looked at the phone for a moment and then smiled at Luke.

  “So, this is Grace?” Luke asked. I could no longer see his face, so I didn’t know how he was reacting to meeting her.

  “Hi, Luke,” Grace said.

  “Hi!”

  I nodded at Grace, and her face began to morph into Luke’s, from his auburn hair down to his chapped lips.

  “Holy shit!” came his voice from the phone’s little speaker. “Shit! Shit! Shit!”

  “Change into something else,” I instructed her.

  Her form began to change into the cute redhead with freckles, the same form she’d taken when we first checked into the hotel in East Haven.

  “No way.”

  Still keeping the front of the phone faced at Grace, I backed away a bit so he could see the full effect.

  “Stand up,” I told her, “and change into the first thing that comes to your mind.”

  She changed into a stunningly beautiful black woman, with an afro parted down the middle, waist-high shorts, and long, sleek legs.

  “This cannot be real, this cannot be real.”

  Her next form was that of a man, the trucker who died getting us to New Haven. She was now short, stout, her belly hanging over her waist, warts on her face, and stringy hair sticking out of a hat with a fishing hook on its brim.

  Finally, she took her base form, my sweater and loose pants forming on her body.

  “Gideon, let me see you now,” Luke said.

  I turned the phone back to my face. I wasn’t smiling; this wasn’t me trying to show off. I was relieved to finally share my secret, but sharing it didn’t make me happy, it only made me realize yet again the crazy shit I’d gotten my ass into.

  “Damn, man, so your book is true,” Luke finally said after a few seconds of silence. “You weren’t lying to me.”

  “I hate to say it, man, but I don’t think I could make this shit up.”

  “I cannot believe … No, I saw it with my own two eyes. It’s true. It’s just … You can’t go viral with this.”

  “I wasn’t planning to. I wanted to put the writing out there, with the hopes of finding more information about people who have been experimented on and where they are. It’s not my intention to create some type of media circus about this.” />
  Luke looked at me incredulously. “But if the book reaches enough people, it will create a media circus.”

  “Well, fuck, you’re right about that. I already have sort of a disguise going on with my shaved head, beard, and scar – or future scar, since it’s still healing. For Grace, it’ll be easy, but for Veronique …”

  “And now you’re going after her, correct? You’re going after her tonight, you said.”

  “I am. And I don’t care if I die in the process. I know that sounds crazy, but I think this is worth it and that I share the story with you, and the book is out there. What will be, will be.”

  If I sounded confident saying that, I sure didn’t feel confident saying it. I swallowed hard, steadying my gaze on Luke.

  He nodded. “I’ve got a few friends who have a pretty big reach on the web, and they owe me some favors. I’m going to do what I can to help you get your book in their spheres. I don’t know if I’ll ever see you again after tonight, and just for the record, I don’t think you should do what you’re planning to do. As cool as it sounds, this is real life. You are not a superhero, and just because you have somehow surrounded yourself with them, doesn’t mean you should go out kicking down the doors of government agencies. It’s lunacy.”

  I took a deep and steady breath. He was right, completely right, and what I was planning to do was crazy. “I know, and I appreciate the sentiment. But it’s where my life is at, and it’s what needs to be done.”

  “Understood, and please, contact me as soon as you are safe. If you don’t contact me, I’m going to assume the worst. I’ll do what I can to spread the information about what has happened to you. The book too. I’ll read it today. I want to catch up with what’s going on. I don’t know how much I can help you, but I’ll try.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Truly, thank you. And about tonight … let’s just see if our plan works.”

  He gave me a toothy grin. “Gideon Caldwell, if this is the last time I meet you, it was nice knowing you, and you are one crazy motherfucker. I’m glad to call you my friend. And I wish there was more I could do, aside from trying to help you get your book out.”