The Haunted Hero: an adult urban fantasy (The Aria Fae Series Book 4)

by H. D. Gordon

  As the scene melted in the same fashion as had the one before it, I wrapped an arm around my midsection, but was only partially aware of doing so. An ache was forming, the kind that has nothing to do with the physical form.

  Now, a couch appeared before me, the details stretching into place to reveal a thick carpet, a fireplace, and bay windows beyond which fluffy white snow was drifting lazily to the ground. A large Christmas tree twinkled in the corner, and a child of no more than three was busy at work hanging all the ornaments in a single spot on the tree that was within her small reach.

  She turned, and I saw her face fully for the first time. Her cheeks were pink and chubby, the kind that is irresistible to pinching grandparents and mother’s kisses. Two auburn pigtails stuck out from her head, her hair just long enough to support them. She wore a white and red dress that puffed out at the bottom like a princess gown, and red bows hung from the bottom.

  Along the fireplace, three stockings were hung in a line. In embroidered letters, they read: Leo, Ellie, and Eleanor.

  The smell of cocoa drew my attention back to the couch, where Mr. and Mrs. Boyce were curled up under a blanket, watching their daughter disproportionately hang ornaments on the tree as if there was no finer sight in the world. Leonard’s arm was around his wife, his aura as of yet untouched by the darkness that it currently housed.

  Christmas music played softly in the background as the snow outside the window continued to fall.

  I’d seen enough. I was ready to go home. I turned on my heel as if to run, but only made it three steps before stumbling and falling as the world around me melted once more.

  This time, the floor turned into linoleum, the lights overhead morphing into long fluorescents. I found my feet shakily and watched as the rest materialized. Drawings and other artistic creations hung on the walls, and a banner with a large mustang and the words Grant City Elementary hung above a small stage. Around me, chairs made up an auditorium, and an audience sat in these chairs with smiles on their faces and bright emotions in their auras.

  I turned back to the stage to see a line of children around the age of five, dressed in little blue graduation gowns complete with square grad hats on their heads. There was table where pieces of white paper were rolled up and secured with a blue bow, and a podium behind which stood a kind-faced woman with the demeanor of an educator.

  The woman behind the podium was calling names one at a time. As she did so, the children walked across the stage to receive their diplomas. I looked to my left and spotted Leonard and Eleanor in the front row of the audience, smartphones poised in their hands, fingers ready to capture the moment digitally.

  My eyes found the stage again when the woman calling the names said Ellie Boyce. Little Ellie stepped out from her place in line, a grin pulling up her rosy cheeks, and her auburn hair flowing out from her cap and down over her gown. She accepted the rolled up piece of paper offered to her with all the pride of a president swearing into office. She waved the diploma in the air to show her parents, who were snapping photos just as fast as their devices could take them.

  This went on and on. I witnessed what seemed an endless procession of memories. Birthdays, bedtimes, dinners, vacations. All the mundane moments which compose a lifetime of meaningful existence. With each one, I found myself sinking deeper into the Boyce family, my sympathy turning into empathy that hurt so much I scarcely breathed.

  And then I came to the place I’d suspected I’d been heading toward all along. The night of Eleanor and Ellie’s death. I got a front row seat to that showing as well.

  ***

  I tried to stop it, but was as powerless as the city I’d left behind. I could not move to save them, could not move at all, in fact. I was rooted to the spot like an old tree.

  As soon as the scene began to form, I knew where I was. I’d seen it many times in my natural dreams since the night it had happened. I was standing on the Grant City Bridge, the one that cut across the bay to connect the cities on either side. Overhead, the stars were not visible in the night sky due to the light pollution of the city, with its tall buildings and scenic skyline.

  People were screaming. Sirens wailed, splashing blue and red lights against the shadows. Barricades had been set up on each end of the bridge, blocking traffic intended for either direction. Around these barricades, people were running for their lives, having abandoned their vehicles for the mobility of their feet. Their eyes were wide, their mouths hanging agape both with horror and exertion. Beneath their feet, the bridge itself was swaying and jittering, the structure being rocked by an enormous blue creature roughly the size of a leviathan.

  The Blue Beast roared, an unmistakable sound that had since brought me out of many a fitful night’s sleep. It seemed to rumble in my own chest, to shake loose something deeper down than I was usually apt to unearth. This time, I didn’t bother trying to intervene. I didn’t scream until my throat was dry at figments that had no obvious knowledge of my presence. I simply stood, cursed to relive one of the worst moments of my life from the perspective of someone who placed it in the very top worst spot of theirs.

  Something drew my gaze toward the west end of the bridge, and without waiting for command from me, my feet carried me forward. When I stopped again, I was standing beside a silver sedan, where a perplexed Leonard Boyce was looking over the steering wheel, his mind not able to really process what he was seeing.

  Beside him sat Eleanor. Her auburn hair flowed over her delicate shoulders, which were tensed as she leaned forward in the passenger seat with her hand clutched over the center of her chest. Her eyes—the same eyes that I’d watched experience true love, devotion, and joy—were now filled with an uncomprehending terror.

  Slowly, I looked to the back seat, where Ellie sat buckled in mock safety atop her booster seat. Hippy—the stuffed, purple hippopotamus she’d received for her third birthday—was clutched atop her lap. Her eyes, green like her mother’s, stared out her window, unaware that this would be the last sight they ever saw.

  I didn’t want to finish out this movie, had no interest in seeing the ending, but I had no choice but to accept the fact that the ending was the point. The ending was everything.

  So I watched. I watched as the pre-psychotic Leonard Boyce unbuckled his seatbelt and stepped out of the sedan, where his wife and daughter remained unwittingly waiting for their deaths. I didn’t need to look to know that behind me, the Blue Beast must’ve moved much closer, because raw panic flooded Boyce’s features, crashing over him like a wave.

  He screamed at Eleanor to get out of the car, and had just opened the back door to retrieve his daughter when he was batted out of the way like a pesky insect. I hardly noticed that the Beast’s form passed right through my intangible dream body in order to send Boyce’s body flying. I was too absorbed with the heart-wrenching look on Ellie’s face as she watched her father fly through the air.

  The rest followed just as fast, the effect jarringly dizzying. Leonard Boyce had been tossed fifty feet, but he sat up just in time to see the Blue Beast leap into the air directly above his silver sedan. Leonard screamed, but for all the moving it did to my soul, it did nothing to deter the Beast as gravity pulled its enormous form back down to earth. The silver sedan was crushed as efficiently as if by a junkyard’s auto flatten machine. The screams coming from Eleanor and Ellie cut off as though with sharp shears. From the wreckage, pools of blood began to seep.

  Just before I was dropped back down in the real world, I turned to see the Masked Maiden—myself, as I had been that night—scaling the side of the bridge, preparing to take on the Blue Beast.

  She took no notice of the man sitting with his hands clutched into hard fists at the sides of his head, staring at the flattened silver sedan where everything he’d held dear had literally been smashed to pieces right before him.

  CHAPTER 26

  The sound of a gentle beeping dragged me toward consciousness, and physical pain followed immediately on its heels. I made a
move to rise, but felt two hands grip my shoulders and hold me in place. Along with those hands, panic seized me and my eyes flew open. My fists flew up in preparation of defeating my captor.

  The lovely face of Dr. Rosemary Reid looked back at me. Though her expression was professionally neutral, her aura revealed that she was frustrated, tired, and a bit angry. This helped to slam me back into reality, and I managed to pull myself to a sitting position.

  “Uh, hey, doc,” I said.

  “Good,” she said, her lips pursed just so. “You’re not dead.” She sighed. “Even though something tells me you probably should be. I’ll tell them you’re up.”

  She turned to leave, her movements quick and abrupt. I opened my mouth to say something but thought better of it, and instead just let her leave in her flurry of white coat. Looking down at my arm, I saw there was a needle in the crook secured with tape, and a bag of fluid was being dispensed into me via the needle.

  I was yanking it out of my arm when the door to the hospital room opened and in came what seemed to me way too many people. As Sam, Matt, Raven, Thomas, and Caleb all entered the small space, I thought it was no wonder Rosemary had seemed on edge. This group of people would make anyone stare. On top of that, when the door had opened, I’d heard a cacophony of noises coming from beyond. I hadn’t considered the fact that in states of emergency and power loss the medical emergency rooms were likely the first places to fill up.

  “Oh, thank God!” Sam said, catching herself before grabbing me up in a hug that surely would’ve caused me considerable pain. “I’m so over you almost dying.”

  I waved a hand and gritted my teeth against the ache it caused me just to do so. “Me?” I asked. “I was just taking a nap.”

  “I saw that friggin’ Muggle shock you with that lightning crap from his fingers,” Sam said. “Nap, my ass.”

  A small smile lifted my lips at this. Sam used the word Muggle only as the highest of insults. It was what she liked to call a ‘true testament to her inner nerd.”

  I glanced around at my friends. “What happened?”

  It was Thomas who answered. “That coward Boyce electrocuted you and then left you in the street. I came and got you.” His facial expression was contained like the soldier that he was, but Thomas’s aura told me how very worried he’d been, and how very angry he was now with Boyce. “I couldn’t wake you up,” Thomas added. “So I brought you here.”

  I met his hazel gaze and gave a small nod of thanks, but otherwise found myself unable to respond. After all, how could I explain to him—to any of them—that Leonard Boyce was not just some horrible, soulless person, but rather just a man pushed over the edge?

  I could not. It was simple as that.

  “What I don’t get is why he didn’t just kill you,” Raven said, speaking up for the first time. Sam shot her a look of warning but Raven waved her off. “What?” she said. “I’m glad she’s not dead, of course. I’m just saying that he left her on that street completely out of it. Why not just end this whole mess right then? You’re the one he hates, right? He blames you for everything?”

  I closed my eyes, pinched the bridge of my nose. I wanted to choose my words carefully here, because I couldn’t trust the emotions threatening to break through.

  “Because I’m not done suffering,” I mumbled in answer to Raven’s question. Then, I said, “Guys, I love you all for being here, but can I just get a moment alone? Just… I just need to catch my breath.”

  My friends all nodded sympathetically and began to file out. Sam was the last to leave. She placed a hand gently on my cheek before going, her blue eyes staring as if through me. “You know that I love you, right?” she said. “Like my own sister. I love you, Aria Fae.”

  For whatever reason—or more likely a multitude of reasons—these words formed a knot in my throat, made my eyes prick and burn. I had to swallow twice before I could respond to them, like something that has to sink in first.

  “I know,” I told her. “And, I love you, too, Sammy. Always.”

  She nodded, as if in assurance that she would be taking these words with her when she went.

  As soon as the door shut behind her, I was hopping out of the bed—hopping being a relative term, in my condition—and pulling on my jacket and boots, which I found folded up on a chair in the corner. I left the cape and mask where they were. Then, I drew the blinds on the single window in the room, letting in a splash of sunlight that blinded.

  Pushing open the window, I glanced behind me before jumping up onto the sill and climbing out.

  I didn’t know where I was going, but I knew I needed to get away from the people who would never understand why I couldn’t take Leonard Boyce’s life, not now, and certainly not to save my own.

  Their love for me would never allow them to agree that I’d taken enough from the man already.

  So, basically, I was totally screwed.

  ***

  I probably should’ve just kept my butt in bed. Actually, I definitely should have. I felt physically worse than I could remember feeling in a very long time, and in my line of work—as Remy had called it—that was really saying something.

  The hot summer sun glaring down at me from overhead wasn’t helping any either, and the way the tall, close buildings of the city trapped heat lent to a suffocating humidity that seemed to suck the air right from my lungs.

  Also, I’d had my ass kicked one too many times as of late. Oh, and I was still under a friggin’ Demon’s Curse. So, yeah, I’d felt better.

  I was actually panting as I crossed over the city line and headed west with no particular destination. One of my favorite things about living in southern New Jersey was that one couldn’t go any direction for too long without running into forest—with the exclusion of the Atlantic Ocean to the east, of course. Despite what people thought from what they’d seen on television, forest took up over twenty percent of the state’s land mass. Luckily for me, all Fae feel most at home in a forest.

  Once I was free of the confines of Grant City, I took a moment to catch my breath at a gas station. I stumbled into the air conditioned store and coughed into my hand. When I glanced down at it, I saw there was blood between my fingers, and quickly made my way into the restroom.

  There, I splashed water on my face, washed my hands, and coughed up more blood. I needed to convince one of the customers in the gas station to give me a ride, and even with my persuasion abilities, they’d have to be an idiot to agree when I looked like I was a walking plague.

  I pulled my hair up into a neater ponytail, rinsed out my mouth, and watched as scarlet circled the drain in the sink. An older lady entered, offered a sweet smile, then paused before going into one of the empty stalls, looking back at me. She wore clothing typical of an elder; soft soled, Velcro shoes and teal ironed slacks paired with a matching floral top. Thin-rimmed glasses sat on her nose with a flowered chain connected to each end that turned the spectacles into a necklace should she want to remove them.

  Her voice was surprisingly clear, not as old-lady-like as I would have expected. “Are you alright, dear?” she asked. “You look like you’re on hell’s doorstep.”

  She had no way of knowing how ironic this blunt observation was. I mustered a smile and turned to face her, leaning into the sink behind me for balance. My vision was alarmingly blurry, but I thought if I could just get to where I was going, I might be all right. For a while, at least.

  “Thank you for asking,” I said, and consciously kicked on my persuasion ability. It always worked best on unsuspecting, sober humans. “Actually, I could use a ride.” I cleared my throat, blinked some of the blur away. “You didn’t happen to drive here, did you, ma’am?”

  The slight glaze that indicated that my persuasion was working appeared behind her watery blue eyes, and she nodded almost robotically.

  “Yes, of course,” she said. “I’ll be happy to give you a ride. Where did you want to go?”

  Ten minutes later, I was seated on the passen
ger side of her black Lincoln Towncar, sweating like a diseased livestock on the smooth leather seat, trees rushing by on either side of me. I dozed in and out of consciousness, realizing with an idiotic lateness how stupid I was being, but determined to follow through, nonetheless.

  Yes, I was running away. Maybe not for good or forever, but certainly for now. And, honestly, I thought maybe I’d earned it. After all, my time on this earth was of questionable sustainability at the very least.

  “I know the perfect place, dear,” Muriel told me, her watery blue gaze leaving the road momentarily to look over at me. “I used to catch snakes and skinks with my father there as a child, and fish in the lake, too.”

  I was too out of it to smile, but I managed to mumble, “Sounds perfect. Thank you.”

  An indiscernible amount of time later, I felt the car come to a stop, and heard the engine shut off. I peeled my eyes open and used the car door to pull myself up so that I could see out the windshield.

  “We’re here,” Muriel said, her wide grin causing a bit of unease to slither through my midsection. Foolishly, I realized belatedly that I was in the hands of a complete stranger, no matter how non-threatening she seemed, and I was too weak to be in control of things.

  I was seeing three of everything. I sucked in air and coughed up more blood as Muriel got out of the car and walked around to my side. She opened the door and spilled me out onto the dirt road we’d stopped on.

  I hit the earth hard, jarring my teeth in my head and sending pain through my shoulder. As I tried to clear my vision through the cloud of dust that my falling body had kicked up, I saw only the white Velcro, soft-soled shoes. I shifted onto my back, my gaze traveling up the old lady, from teal slacks to flowered blouse, and finally, to that kindly old face I’d mistakenly thought I’d been manipulating.

  The watery blue eyes were gone, and in their place were two blood-red orbs, looking down at me the way a hawk might a mouse. Demon’s eyes, those were.