Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set

by Harmon Cooper

  The windows at the back of the house let in a nice view of rocky hills peppered with cacti. I decided to take Grace out there, even though she couldn’t see it.

  Another thought came to me. Grace hasn’t spoken in a while …

  This was followed by the realization that I still had some of her abilities, evident by the aura I could see around Dorian and Veronique’s bodies.

  I took a second glance at both of them and noticed that the belts around their robes had come loose. “If you’re reading my thoughts, sorry,” I told Grace as I opened the glass door that led to a backyard patio.

  I laid her down on one of the long wooden lawn chairs. Rather than pull another chair over, I simply sat next to her, my knees to my chest, and basked in the morning sun.

  Why aren’t you talking to me? I thought to her.

  No response.

  So, I just enjoyed her company for a while, even though there was no real company to enjoy.

  The sun was on her face now, and she was still in the clothing we’d bought back in Texas.

  As I stared at her, I was struck by an idea.

  I don’t know if the idea had somehow been planted by Grace, or if it was my own, but I had the sudden notion to try to put her power back into her.

  I even had a vision of a Pentecostal possession, a curing of someone’s illness.

  Maybe I just need some coffee, I thought, but the image remained, and part of me felt like it could actually work.

  As crazy as I knew it would look – and I was glad Dorian and Veronique were still asleep – I straddled the long chair, pressed both thumbs on her temples, and gazed intently at her deformed face.

  Leave me, I thought.

  And it was just about as effective as saying ‘leave me’ to a rock would be.

  I began to think about the moment Grace appeared in my life and all that had followed. I remembered how much she liked the cherry blossom trees and how her appearance that day had signaled their blooming.

  Thinking about them created more cherry blossoms in my mind, swirling red and white petals falling from the trees like I’d seen in Wooster Square.

  “Cherry blossoms,” I whispered, and more came to me, whirling in my head, taking over my body as if they were a pillar of luminous life force.

  I opened my eyes and I saw the cherry blossoms between us. I saw them piling up on Grace’s chest, melting into her skin, floating away with every exhale I made and drifting back when I breathed in.

  They were everywhere, they were tangible, they were real, and as I realized this, I felt a sharp pain at the base of my spine. The pain spread upward, carrying with it blooming deep red cherry blossoms through my body. They began to leave my body, surging into Grace’s misshapen, mangled form and transforming it, reshaping it … repairing it.

  Her features returned, her skin softened, her nose reformed, and color returned to her lips.

  She gasped and opened her eyes – beaming white eyes that quickly regained their iceberg blue color.

  “Grace!” I practically knocked the chair over as I gathered her into my arms.

  “Gid … eon?”

  “How are you feeling?” I asked as I pulled away from her and swept the hair from her face. By now we were both standing, straddling the chair, and I had no idea how it happened.

  “I’m … weak,” she said as I helped her over to the banister that overlooked the yard.

  “You’ll get stronger again,” I promised, a wave of emotion moving through me. “We’ll lay low for a few days and … damn, there’s just so much I have to tell you. Yes. Lay low. Let’s start by just laying low for a few days. I can finish my book, you and the others can rest, and we can put together a solid plan. They won’t find us. They can’t track us any longer.”

  “A solid plan?” she started coughing, and I waited for her to finish.

  “We’re not far from Albuquerque,” I told her, “and there’s another facility outside the city. That’s our next target.”

  “We can’t stop now,” she finally said, her voice scratchy. “They tried to kill me. Veronique too.”

  “Dorian and me too.” I looked down at my feet, at our feet as they touched, felt the anger coursing through me. “And they’re not going to stop trying to kill us. But we have a present for Mother next time we see her.”

  Grace’s eyes flashed white as she read my mind, likely stopping on an image of Angel’s decapitated head in Dorian’s backpack. “She’s not going to like that.”

  The end.

  Cherry Blossom Girls Book Three

  Chapter One: Wolf Shirts

  It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

  Or three?

  Actually, there had been no talk of marriage between Dorian, Grace, Veronique, and Yours Truly, nor had I finished Pride and Prejudice, but I thought this would be a good quote to start my story, rather than go with my other opening idea:

  “Call me Gideon,” I mumbled, gazing at the first chapter of the third installment of Mutants in the Making.

  Call. Me. Gideon.

  Goddamn writer’s block was making it hard to really get this one going. Shit, I almost wished Veronique would give me the ‘write a book in two days or I’ll kill you’ ultimatum, just to light a fire under my ass.

  But the words wouldn’t come, and the pressure to perform only made my muse more constipated.

  Swoosh!

  My inner word salad was cut short as I watched Veronique toss several frag pouches at one of Dorian’s towering energy creations. Dorian’s creation, a wolf-like creature with a huge gun on its back, took the brunt of the hit, the metal fizzling as it passed through its body.

  Fury spreading across her face, Veronique hurtled a metal bar at Dorian, who teleported away, only to be swept back by a powerful wave of telekinetic energy from Grace.

  As her hair fluttered behind her and her eyes flared white, Grace used her power to press Veronique to the ground.

  Not one to be taken down so easily, Veronique curled her fingers and Grace fell to one knee, her energy stripped from her body. With her other hand, Veronique tossed as much metal as she could at the approaching energy wolf, finally disintegrating its form.

  “Easy …” I said as Veronique let go of Grace.

  Dorian reappeared, her paintbrush in her mouth. She took it out and cautiously kept it at her side as Grace got back to her feet.

  We’d been in Santa Fe for two days now and had found another borrowed place to stay at, this time in the hills overlooking the city. It was a two-story pueblo-style home filled with Southwestern art.

  It was peaceful, and the sunsets were to die for. There was also ample backyard space for them to train, and I wished we could actually just hang in a place like this for a while.

  I sat at a table covered by a red awning, my laptop open and my manuscript in front of me. A lot had happened since we’d driven to the south from the East Coast – from David Butler to Dorian, my imprisonment to rescuing Grace. I’d tried to encapsulate as much of this as I could but was barely over the ten-thousand-word mark.

  “Again?” Grace asked, dusting off her legs. She wore a black bodysuit, similar to the body armor Veronique and Dorian wore. It was something we’d picked up at a gun shop in town, and like the other two, it was very form-fitting.

  She looked at me, her eyes glowing white again as she got into place.

  Should I try it?

  By all means, I thought back to her.

  Dorian took her place near a cactus patch that was blackened from her last energy attack. Veronique found a spot across from her, palming a pair of frag pouches.

  We’d made a ton of improvised weapons over the last two days – more frag pouches and circular saws, the latter of which I’d forbidden from training just in case one of them got a little too aggressive.

  And yes, I should have been writing. Hell, my laptop was open, but watching superpowered hotties battl
e was way cooler.

  Besides, I was still struggling with the fact that experiments had been performed on me and that I apparently had a propensity for superpowers.

  I mean, how crazy was that?

  And the writer’s block. Had that too.

  Also, I really needed to talk to my parents about this. How could they turn me into a human guinea pig for cash?

  So watching the girls train was definitely better than pacing back and forth, worrying over my past, rambling too much, biting my nails, drinking myself into a stupor, worrying about my sales rank, or anything else I was prone to do in times of writing distress.

  “Ready?” Dorian asked.

  Veronique nodded, and they started up, Dorian quickly creating a purple energy human and teleporting away, while Veronique swiftly saw to the energy creation’s demise.

  Grace was the least of everyone’s concerns; it was clear in the way the other two fought. She was turning out to be more of a supportive Super, even if her powers could have technically made her stronger than the others.

  This meant they paid less attention to her.

  We’d set the rule up that Grace couldn’t take over their minds or knock them out; that would be too easy.

  But she still hadn’t tried the power that Ken’s code had given her, and sure, it was a dirty move to try it now, but what better time than a training session?

  Dorian zipped in and out of reality as she made her way over to Veronique. She stayed in place long enough for me to see that she was charging up something fierce (some kind of small vortex of purple energy), and once she reached Veronique, she let it loose and bailed to the left as a small explosion sent Veronique off her feet.

  The metal-wielding Super was back up seconds later, her brow furrowed, dark eyes trained on Dorian as she drained her lifeforce.

  Talk about OP. As soon as Veronique latched on, it was game over.

  That was, until she started shrieking and released her hold on Dorian.

  I glanced over to see Grace’s fists at her sides, head dipped slightly as she concentrated on her new attack.

  Suddenly, Veronique was on the ground, balled up in a fetal position and Dorian was next to her, trying to fight Grace off by flinging a ball of purple energy at the psychic shifter.

  The ball of energy hit Grace and sent her sailing backward.

  I was just about to scream her name when I saw she’d already righted herself and was blasting Dorian with the same new skill.

  Both Dorian and Veronique were flipping out in their own ways; Dorian teleporting back and forth trying to shake Grace’s new power, and Veronique still curled in a ball, twitching.

  “Enough!” I told Grace, who immediately released her hold.

  A screwdriver that had been left near a potted plant flew toward Grace and stopped at her jugular. “What did you do to me?” Veronique gasped. She caught her breath and relaxed her shoulders some, remembering she was there when I put in the code. “That’s it?”

  Grace nodded. “That’s it.”

  Dorian leaned against the deck, her back arched as she gulped air and shook her head to clear it. A crooked grin appeared on her face. “That was awesome,” she finally said, a funny look in her eyes.

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it,” Grace replied, with no sarcasm in her voice.

  I looked from the three to the data on my laptop screen. I had the manuscript and their stats up, which I had typed into my computer for quick reference. I scrolled to Grace’s as they dusted themselves off.

  Main: Psychic

  Omnikinesis: 10

  Second Sight: 5

  Psychometry: 5

  Telepathy: 6

  Clairsentience: 5

  Psychokinesis: 7

  Hypnosis: 5

  Nightmare Sight: 6

  Nightmare Sight, I thought as Grace turned to me.

  “I think we’re done for the day,” she said. We want to go shopping and have lunch, she thought to me.

  Shopping and lunch? Sounds expensive, I thought back.

  Bank first?

  Grace looked as beautiful as ever with her long blonde hair, hourglass curves, and bright blue eyes, an appearance that morphed into dark straight hair, Asian features, and a hoodie.

  “Is that how we’re doing this?” I asked.

  She took off her bulletproof vest as the other two went inside to get changed. “Definitely,” she said.

  “You sure you don’t want to go as the guy from that property show you always watch?”

  “You’d prefer I become a man?”

  “Good call; hot Asian lady it is.”

  “What were you working on?” she asked, sitting across from me.

  “When I wasn’t watching you three, I was working on the intro to Mutants 3. I hate novel intros. They say you’re supposed to have some action or suspense – you know, explode off the pages. But sometimes I just want to ease into it. I want a moment to get into the characters; I don’t want to just jump into some crazy action scene.”

  She shrugged. “Then don’t write it. Write whatever you want. It’s the third book. People are reading it now because they like the characters. If they didn’t like your storytelling style by now, they would have abandoned it.”

  “How did you …? Are you reading my mind or something?”

  “Yes?” she laughed.

  “What were our rules again?”

  “No mind reading, no shifting in public, no changing into your mother, no sloppy –”

  “Ha! You remember all of them.”

  “Of course I do.” Grace shut my laptop and kept her hands on the lid as she stared at me. “Let’s put your laptop away now, Writer Gideon. Dorian is washing her face. Veronique isn’t coming.”

  “How do you know? Oh yeah, that’s right.” I tapped my temple.

  We entered our borrowed home and headed to the study. There was a nice work desk here, and I already had my laptop cable and a notepad set up. I plugged in and glanced at the closet.

  Ick.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Grace said as she sat on my lap.

  “It’s hard not to.”

  Dorian entered the study a few minutes later wearing her ribbed sweater with the first few buttons open and her black hair in a side ponytail. Her face was shiny, her cheeks all but reflective. “Is that how we’re doing this?”

  I was about to say, ‘I believe there’s room for you too,’ but I thought otherwise.

  “It will work, won’t it?” Grace asked innocently.

  Dorian grinned. “Sure,” she said and placed one hand on my shoulder, the other on Grace’s.

  I was starting to like teleporting. At first I found it unsettling, nauseating even, but I’d gotten used to it, and it was a pretty effective way to travel, especially for short distances.

  Our bodies reformed and I instantly felt the hot New Mexico sun on my neck.

  There were plenty of banks in Santa Fe, but this one had a large parking lot, which I’d verified on GoogleFace. And that was what we needed, a large parking lot.

  Our grift was the same as it had been in New Haven: Grace, in her Asian form, would walk up to someone and remind them of the money they owed her – only after vetting them telepathically to see if they actually had enough money to spare.

  For our part, Dorian and I would just stand back, keeping an eye on her and making sure no one else was watching us.

  It’s not like it would have made a difference if they were watching us; Grace would just scramble their brains.

  What can I say? I learned from the last time we were Grace-less that having money as a backup supply was a good idea. Besides, I promised the two that we would go shopping downtown today and possibly eat an early dinner after a few margaritas.

  So we needed fundage.

  And luckily, it didn’t take us long to net some straight cashola. We cashed out at ten thousand and put it in a duffel bag we’d purchased the day before. There was another twenty thousand at our place, for a combined
total of thirty grand.

  Not too shabby.

  We found a car pulling into the parking lot (a Volvo), and the driver let us borrow it.

  Thanks, buddy!

  I was trying to borrow fewer cars for the long term, so we asked him his address, but when I realized it might be a little difficult to figure out logistically speaking, we told him he could pick it up downtown near the McStarbucks after seven.

  See? We weren’t the bad guys.

  Besides, bad guys couldn’t be tourists, right?

  And that was what we became that sunny afternoon in gorgeous Santa Fe, our cash converted into all sorts of knick-knacks, hand-woven scarves, Indian tapestries, and Georgia O’Keeffe keychains.

  I picked out a few new wolf shirts, one of them with a wolf’s face over the moon, another one with an anthropomorphized mother wolf, her tits hanging out as she nursed two baby wolves. That one was cool.

  “That shirt is terrible,” Dorian said as she browsed through some dreamcatchers.

  “Dreamcatchers don’t work,” I reminded her.

  She approached me. “Have you ever tried?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “Have I ever tried to use a dreamcatcher? I can’t say that I have, but I don’t know how a circle with some string would catch a dream.”

  “You should get cooler shirts.”

  There were a lot of shirts in the shop, some cool and some atrocious. “Maybe you’re right,” I finally said. “But I’m keeping wolf over the moon, even if I can only wear it as a sleep shirt.”

  “You won’t be sleeping with me in that shirt,” she said, turning so I could get a good look at her backside.

  “Duly noted,” I said and turned back to the shirts. Dorian and Grace went next door while I continued to peruse the selection. I eventually settled on some Santa Fe shirts, and a few Roswell ones as well.

  Hell, I had uncovered a government conspiracy, so I might as well support another one.

  Another thirty minutes of shopping, and it was grub time. Dorian disappeared just as Grace moved in next to me, slipping her arm into mine.

  “What do you think of the downtown?” I asked her.