Sky Ghosts: The Night Before (Urban Fantasy series for adults)

by Alexandra Engellmann

minutes of lazy soaring to reach the Headquarters. They passed the perimeter through the West corridor, landing on the roof that slightly resembled a horseshoe. The guards ignored them, used to their nightly parties, and they slipped through the attic door without any unwanted attention. Most fighters were on patrols, so nobody saw them walk silently through the hallways, until they reached the familiar beige walls of the third floor.

  Pain turned to Marco as they neared her room, its door gaping open. "Go change and wait for my call. I'm gonna?" she broke off as her eyes fell on Peter, sitting casually in her recliner. His tall, gear-clad figure made the room seem dwarfish.

  "How was your night?" her boss asked, alarmingly nonchalant. His hazel eyes looked her up and down, darkening, and switched to Marco's trashed form behind her.

  She glanced at her friend, only to find him gone, the door of his room swinging closed. With a sigh, she turned back to see Peter's graying eyebrows arch as he waited for her response. "It's fine. How's yours?"

  Her eyes darted to her sister as she regained her composure and came in. Jane was sitting on her bunk with a book, her laughing gaze on the two of them.

  "Wonderful!" Peter beamed at Pain from across the room, although his eyes still held the same dangerous gleam. "Finally found the time to rearrange the perimeter and improved tomorrow's mission. You do remember that you have a job tomorrow, right?"

  Pain shrugged her shoulders, doing her best not to show her discomfort, and leaned up against the wall by her bunk. Sitting down was not an option if she wanted to keep her room blood-free.

  "Sure, I'm ready."

  She blinked, and suddenly found Peter right in front of her. His big hand closed on her neck, not too tight, but uncomfortable enough to make the hair on her back rise. She swallowed hard as her feet left the ground, but decided to keep her mouth shut, seeing how he wasn't in the mood for her excuses.

  "Then what the hell are you doing chasing some random thugs out in the city?" he ground out through clenched teeth. "I spend hours planning the operation the best possible way, for you personally, to make sure there's minimum risk, and you run off and endanger it by putting yourself at even more risk. For no goddamn reason at all."

  "H-had a reason," she rasped, making him loosen the grip a little. The angry expression was still there though, as was the resolve to make her suffer. And she knew he was right, with her pushing him so much in the past month.

  He would never really hurt her, but he did master all possible and impossible ways to punish her in the past decade. If there was one person at the Headquarters who knew how to push buttons better than her, it was Peter. So in moments like this, she preferred to play nice, to lessen the chances of him going out of his way to remind her who the boss was.

  He fell silent, giving her a chance to explain herself, his big chest rising and falling heavily as he breathed. Looking at this mountain of a man, she couldn't help but wonder why it was only once or twice a year that she made him this angry.

  She drew a thin breath and cut her eyes at the blurred silhouette of her sister. "Can we talk alone?" she whispered, knowing just how pointless it was, with Jane's ears probably taking up the whole room by now.

  Peter shook his head at something, his lips twisting in a half-grimace, and let her stand on the ground. "You're just like your father used to be," he said, pressing her into the wall so she wouldn't dare to relax. "Except with your father, I couldn't do this."

  He yanked her arm downward suddenly, and only when she heard the click of the handcuffs, she realized that one of them had been on her wrist all this time. She pulled at it, only to find herself cuffed to her bunk.

  "Hey!"

  "Quiet," he ordered, pointing a finger at her face. "You think you can be reckless because you're a good fighter, but your father invented reckless, and he was a big, scary f- "

  "Peter!" She cut him off before he could say the word he never said around them.

  "Fighter," he finished, unfazed, and she could see it in his eyes, how he laughed at her reaction to him breaking his own rules. "Bigger than me. Scarier, too. They called him Big Bad for a reason. But you're just a foolish little girl who won't live to see her thirties, and I can't allow that. I made a promise to him, and I'm gonna keep it even if I have to keep you chained up for the rest of your life."

  She shoved him in the chest, unable to keep her annoyance at bay anymore. "So what, I'm grounded?? I'm twenty-one, for God's sake!"

  His hand closed on her other arm, holding her still. "So act like it. You wanted to be a bodyguard, and I gave you that. Now, you want to be a butcher. Make up your mind and be a grownup, because if you don't want the job, there's plenty of people I can give it to. And you'll be patrolling the streets. Got it?"

  She glared at him as if she could set him on fire with her eyes, but Peter's set expression didn't waver. "Fine! I got it!" she snapped at last, pulling at the cuff. "Can I go shower now?"

  "Oh, no." He pointed at the handcuffs, stepping back. "These will give you time to think. I'll come back in the morning."

  "Are you kidding me??" She lunged at him, even knowing it was pointless. The handcuffs bit into her skin, but she ignored the pain, continuing her thrashing. "I'm not fourteen anymore!"

  "Might as well be."

  "I need a shower! I'm all covered in- "

  "Well, you enjoy it, don't you?" Peter interrupted her. "Instead of spending your free time as a normal human being, you prefer to be covered in blood, guts, and tears. So enjoy it one last time to the fullest."

  She growled, watching him step through the door. "To spend my free time as a human being, first I gotta be one!" she yelled at his back, making him turn around, a finger pointed at her.

  "That's your problem, right there. You are human, even if technically, you're not."

  And with that, he closed the door.

  She instantly stared at her sister, who sat smiling across the room. "What kind of a scary-ass demon possessed him today?"

  Jane shrugged one shoulder. "Eugene. He attacked and threatened two of our loyal clients to make them break their contracts with us. He's trying to cut us off."

  Pain swore, leaning up against the wall wearily. "Okay, give me the key," she asked when Jane didn't move from her spot to help her out. Her sister only arched an eyebrow, staying where she was. "Give me the key," Pain repeated in a hardened voice.

  "No can do. Boss's orders, sorry."

  Pain gaped at her, which felt like looking at a cleaner, younger copy of herself. "Look at me! I'm gonna get syphilis if I stay like this another hour!" She watched Jane for a moment, until a realization hit her. "You want something?" she accused her, earning a sly look. "So you are my sister, after all?"

  Jane kept silent, pretending to read the book with a half-smile playing on her lips.

  "I ain't got all night. Just tell me what it is and be done with it."

  "I don't know. What do you have?"

  "Money."

  Jane made a face. "Boring. I've got more than enough."

  Pain speculated for a moment, thinking what else she could offer. "I can tell you where to find a certain gang?"

  "The Rebels?" Jane sat up straight.

  "Yes," Pain said with a smile. She knew Jane had been hoping to balance the scale with them for a while.

  "You'll just give me the info? No strings attached?"

  "No, I'll take you there myself. We can take Marco and Ryan, too, and maybe Ty and Patrick. Throw a big, bloody party."

  Jane's face turned from excited to dubious. "So basically, a bunch of guys to look after me while you're having fun??"

  "Um?" Pain stared at her, knowing that whatever she said now, her sister would see right through it.

  Jane nodded, confirming her thoughts. "Enjoy your syphilis."

  "Oh, come on!" Pain growled, seeing her turn back to the book again. "Like you never ask anything of me!"

  "Asking you to shut up doesn't count," Jane muttered without looking at her.

  "F
ine!" Pain yanked at the cuff, looking for a weak spot, while her other hand checked her pockets for anything useful. "I'll get rid of these myself!"

  She remembered about the hairpins she kept on the vanity. Reaching out as far as possible, she was still a couple of feet away.

  "This is what I get for raising you?" she grumbled, examining the bolt that held the bunk in place. If she tore it off the wall on one side, she would be able to reach the vanity and get rid of the handcuffs. With the biggest knife she had on her, she began to scrape on the concrete wall. "Kids these days have no respect for everything you do for them. Who puts clothes on your back and food in your mouth?"

  "The Headquarters does," Jane put in.

  "Who buys you all the best gadgets, you little geek? You give and you give and you give, and this is how they repay you?" She grunted, trying to pry the stubborn piece of metal off the wall, then let more concrete rain on the floor. "Next time you ask for something?" she trailed off, pulling at the metal rail with her foot against the wall, feeling the veins bulge in her neck.

  "Nice!" Marco's booming voice made her jump, and she turned to find his head sticking inside.

  "Thank God! Help me out here," she pleaded with a miserable face as Marco's gaze flicked to the handcuffs.

  "Oh, no? This is just priceless. I bet it'll be a sight to behold?" he quoted her with a wink before closing himself out.

  "Traitor!"

  She jammed the blade into the wall one last time and pulled at the bunk with all her might, until it crashed to the floor, making the room shudder. Jane huffed at the