by S. M. Welles
He swallowed and stared ahead. “She’s gone.”
“Who? What happened?”
They passed under the trees and were touched by a lazy breeze that carried the scent of rain. Roxie turned around and walked backwards as she looked at the sky. Sure enough, swollen cumulous clouds were gathering beyond the rooftops.
“What is it?” Aerigo asked.
“Rain,” she said, turning around. Just perfect, she mused sarcastically. Crummy weather for a crummy day. “So what happened to your lady friend?”
“It doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Your eyes are glowing,” she said. It was strange to be able to say that to someone else. “Clearly it still does.”
“Well it shouldn’t,” Aerigo said sharply, then kinder, “It shouldn’t.”
Roxie took the not-so-subtle hint and lapsed into silence. They traversed the forest and took a right, headed for Buffalo’s outskirts. Walking loosened Roxie’s limbs, although she felt like she was losing energy, instead of gaining any back. The city engulfed them with cars, people and daylight everywhere, though incoming clouds intermittently blocked the daylight. They plodded deeper into the city.
“Do you feel well enough to move faster?”
“You mean, like, a brisk walk?”
“I mean a jog or a run. All the way to the station.”
“I was never much of a distance runner.” Roxie hated long runs.
“Daio’s still following us. I don’t know where he is, but he has no intention of losing track of us. The sooner we get to the bus, the sooner we’ll be able to keep a safe distance between him and us.”
“How long do you think he’ll follow us for?” They reached the end of a crowded sidewalk and waited for the crosswalk sign to turn green.
“Most likely until I do something about it, or he does. But I’d rather just shake him off our trail. Other people will be sent to pick up where he leaves off, so there’s no point in killing him.”
“But you said you wish you had,” Roxie said over honking horns and the hum of traffic.
“For other reasons. Don’t worry about it.”
A couple of cars swept under the red lights as Roxie’s and Aerigo’s crosswalk sign turned green. The two started onto the road and took only a couple steps before Aerigo snapped his attention to their left. He took a sharp intake of breath. “Run!” He seized her wrist and yanked her into motion.
Roxie clung to a strap of her pack as they sped down the sidewalk. They bumped more people out of the way than maneuvered around them. “What is it?” They angled into the street, rushing between parallel-parked cars and moving traffic, and the idle cars made a flicky whooshing noise as she sped by. Everyone’s side view mirrors were within inches of clipping their sides. Roxie noticed a peculiar detail: they were keeping up with the flow of traffic—no, surpassing all the cars to their immediate left! How fast were they running?
“He’s very close! Don’t slow down; just tell me which way to turn.”
“Just stay on this road. It’s up ahead. You can’t miss it.”
Aerigo let go of Roxie’s arm and hoisted his pack over his head, then unzipped it and dug a hand inside. He produced his sheathed dagger and threw his pack back over a shoulder. Ahead of them a Camry had partially pulled out of its parking spot but was blocked by bumper-to-bumper cars waiting for the light to turn green. Aerigo veered back onto the sidewalk just behind the Camry. Roxie followed and lost sight of him in the sea of pedestrians, but she didn’t panic. At the very least they’d meet back up outside the parking lot. She slowed her pace and stuck to the sidewalk, not wanting to chance the street or test her reflexes. Roxie couldn’t decide whether to be amazed by or grateful for how fast she could run.
“Hey there,” said a voice to her left.
Still running, Roxie stole a glance. A man ran alongside her. Bile burned her throat. It was Daio, back down to normal size, but no less intimidating. She searched for the back of Aerigo’s clean-shaven scalp. She didn’t see it anywhere. Another stranger fooled her, but that man was bald as a cue ball and nowhere near as fit. She kept searching.
“What’s the hurry?” Daio asked, this time from Roxie’s right.
“Why won’t you just leave me alone?” She turned to glare at him.
He wasn’t there.
Roxie lost her scowl and began to feel vulnerable, along with a sore need to return to Aerigo’s side.
“Oh please!” The voice came from her left again, and he was there this time, effortlessly matching her pace and dodging people. “You know why.”
“Stay away from me!” She swung at his face. He shied away, chuckling, and put a shoulder-width’s gap between them. Roxie had a feeling he’d backed off out of sport. “What do you want with me?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he replied. “My master isn’t sure what to make of you either. I could kill you right now and save us a lot of trouble, but my curiosity has gotten the best of me.”
“Why would you need to kill me? I haven’t done anything!”
“It’s what you can do,” he said.
“Yeah, save lives! What’s wrong with that?”
“A conflict of interests, kid. One that won’t be resolved with civil talk. But don’t worry just yet. I want to stick around for a little while and see if I can learn something from Aerigo.”
“I thought you two don’t like each other.”
Daio laughed and looked ahead. Roxie wasn’t sure, but it looked like his smile had turned into a frown right before he’d looked away.
She then realized something: she needed to stop heading for the bus station. She needed to shake this guy so he couldn’t get on the same bus or another and follow them all the way to New York City. Roxie reached a crosswalk and stopped, even though the sign shone green. She tried to decide which would be the best direction to run in.
“Why are we stopping?” Daio asked, unconcerned.
Roxie broke from her strategizing and turned her attention to him, then mouthed a choice curse and backed away a couple of steps. He’d been standing right next to her with his face mere inches from hers. Stopping was turning out to be a stupid idea—even worse than leading Daio right to the bus station. At least the latter would have helped her catch up with Aerigo and let him take care of things. She didn’t want to get squashed again.
“You think you can outrun me?” he said, then lunged so they were face-to-face again.
He’d covered the gap faster than Roxie’s eyes could follow. It took her a second to register their uncomfortable closeness but once she did, she backed away. “I can try,” she said, trying to sound brave. With all the people and cars to pose as obstacles, all she had to do was time ducking out of sight just right, and then stay out of sight until she was certain she’d lost him. Of course everything that could pose as an obstacle to Daio could hinder her as well, but that was a moot point.
Running to the bus station was out of the question. So was her grandmother’s house. She didn’t want Daio using Grandma as leverage to get her to cooperate. That narrowed it to bolting either left, into the intersection, or right along the adjacent sidewalk. Before she could decide, Daio had her by the wrist. Her whole body flinched.
“Let go!” She tried pulling her arm out of his vice-like grip. To her dismay, he proved to be stronger than her new superhuman strength. She struggled more frantically.
His evil grin stretched a little wider.
“You need to act before you think, girlie.”
Roxie narrowed her eyes at being called “girlie.” She put her whole body into a lunge away from Daio. She managed to force him to shuffle a couple of steps with her. “My name is Roxie, you jerk! Don’t ever call me ‘girlie’ again.” She tried twisting her arm to the side.
“If you wish,” he said, maintaining his grip. “And I see no harm in letting you know my name is Daio. Feel free to call me that instead of ‘jerk.’”
“Whatever.” Roxie made a fist with her free hand. “Now l
et me go!”
Faster than a cobra, Daio seized her other wrist. Roxie struggled to pull free as her forearms were forcibly raised level with her face.
“Ha ha ha—ow!”
The moment Roxie felt Daio’s grip slacken she yanked her wrists free. Daio dropped his hands over his groin and sank to his knees, his face contorted with agony.
“Dat was low,” he said through clenched teeth, then flopped to one side and scowled at her from the pavement.
Roxie started running along the sidewalk, intent on finding Aerigo and the bus station. She ran three blocks to the right before turning left onto another busy street. This time she ran as fast as she could and discovered that dodging and darting around people still wasn’t all too difficult. She ran along this road until she reached the bus station road. She took one final left and sped down it. By now she was getting sweaty and starting to suck wind, but she pressed on.
As soon as the chain link fence surrounding a multitude of buses came into view, Roxie banged into someone. “Sorry!” She grabbed a man by the shoulders. He did the same to hers.
“Rox! What happened?”
She stopped and looked at the stranger’s face. He was no stranger. “Aerigo!” She shook her head of shock and answered, “It was Daio! I found him. We gotta go!” Aerigo put up no argument, and together they hurried toward a white wooden booth marking the station’s entrance.
“Where is he now?” Aerigo asked, anger in his voice.
“Beats me. I left him lying in pain on a sidewalk.”
He raised an eyebrow.
“I kind of kicked him below the belt.”
“What?”
Roxie shrugged. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
“I need to teach you some better self-defense moves.”
“What? Kicking him in the groin proved very effective...”
“Never mind,” Aerigo said. “Let’s just get on a bus before Daio recovers.”
They crossed the final street and Aerigo hid away his dagger before they stopped at the teller. They had several coach buses to choose from, one of which was scheduled to leave in two minutes for New York City. Roxie used Grandma’s credit card to purchase the tickets since Aerigo lacked any American money, much less any currency from Earth. They jogged to a tall navy blue bus with a Blue Eagle Express banner along its side and Roxie climbed the steep stairs. She was hit by a welcome wave of conditioned air. All that running and dodging had built up a modest sweat. She handed their tickets to a uniformed man stationed in his driver’s seat then walked down the narrow aisle, finding a pair of empty seats toward the middle. Roxie shoved her backpack and breakfast in the overhead shelf and took dibs on the window seat. She angled the air vent on her overheated face.
Aerigo squeezed his way to Roxie and stowed his backpack next to hers. “Move over.”
She looked up at him. “Why? Just sit there.” She pointed to the aisle seat.
“Because you’re more vulnerable by the window. Please move.” The bus lurched into motion and Aerigo grabbed the overhead shelf.
“Aren’t we safe enough?”
“No. Now please move in. I promised your grandmother I’d protect you. So far I’m off to a bad start.”
“I don’t need a bodyguard!” she snapped. Several people seated in front of her turn their heads.
“You do now,” Aerigo said.
Considering how she’d handled Daio the second time, she didn’t agree. Nevertheless she didn’t want to attract unwanted attention from other passengers.
Scowling, she lifted herself over the armrests and plopped into the adjacent seat. Aerigo stepped over her knees and yawned as he sat down. He leaned into the crux of the window and chair and stared out the glass, his eyes only half open. Roxie pulled out her hair tie from a capris pocket, pulled her hair back into a ponytail, and snapped the hair tie. It took a heartbeat to register the sudden looseness around her fingers, and then she fished the worm of a tie out from between her seat and shoulder blades and stood. To her relief she found a fresh package of hair ties in a side pocket. After a second attempt, her hair was out of her face, off her ears and pulled back in a snug ponytail. Roxie sat down and re-angled her new air vent and let it cool her face.
The bus pulled out of the parking lot and headed for I-90 eastbound, and the sun ducked behind the incoming rain clouds. Using the overhead speaker, the bus driver announced some details about the bus ride (when they’d stop for food and a stretch). “Our final destination is in the Bronx, folks, right in front of Yankee Stadium. Anticipated arrival is four o’ clock.”
“Hey, Aerigo?” Roxie said softly, not wanting eavesdroppers.
“Mm?” He snapped his head up as if he’d been foiled from dozing off, yet he didn’t seem bothered by the interruption.
Roxie was about to ask a different question but Aerigo’s sudden tiredness confused her. “Why are you tired all of the sudden? It’s morning.”
“I’ve had about ten hours of sleep in the past five days.”
“Oh. I’ll ask you later then.”
“No. Go ahead. What is it?” Aerigo yawned.
“I was wondering if you could tell me anything about Daio. Maybe I could better help you anticipate his next move if I understand how he thinks.”
He turned his head and gazed at her with half-open eyes. “Don’t trust him.”
“Well duh!” she said. “He doesn’t think saving lives is a good idea.”
“Always keep that in mind,” Aerigo said, resting his head against the window. “He’ll cause collateral damage to achieve what he wants.” He yawned again, then began speaking so softly Roxie had to strain to hear over the drone of the engine. “But I need to train you up a bit before you start worrying about that.”
“What kind of training?”
Aerigo’s eyes closed. “Physical conditioning... and some magic.”
“Like turning into a giant and back?”
“It’s dangerous...”
“How so?” “Don’t trust Daio...”
“I know. You already said that.”
“Stay away from the window.”
“Of course I’m staying away from the window,” she said, folding her arms and glaring at the chair in front of her. “I’m not going to lean—” Roxie looked down at her lap. Aerigo’s hand had fallen palm-up onto it. She cleared her throat and turned her glare on him. “Hey! Aerigo.”
He remained motionless, minus the rise and fall of his chest and abdomen.
She poked his upper arm. “Aerigo, move your own hand!”
Roxie then heard his deep, relaxed breathing, along with the glass fogging up a little every time he exhaled. Her sourness turned to confusion. “Aerigo? Hello?” She didn’t know it was possible for anyone to nod off so fast.
She took his fallen wrist between two fingers and tossed his hand back on his own lap. She watched his arm for several seconds to make sure it wouldn’t magically defy physics and find its way back to her lap.
It didn’t. In fact, Aerigo didn’t give the slightest inkling that he knew his arm had been moved at all. Roxie turned her attention to the little overhead televisions and joined the rest of the passengers in watching Happy Feet. She broke her fast on an orange and a couple of little muffins.
The first raindrops speckled the bus windows.
Three hours into the commute, the bus stopped in Syracuse, New York for a rest stop lunch. The rain had developed into a steady fall sometime during the movie. Her fellow passengers shielded their heads and made mad dashes for the food court. Roxie just walked alone to the entrance, not bothered by getting a little wet. She’d tried to wake Aerigo by calling his name, but he was dead to the world. She decided to let him rest.
Roxie bought herself some Sbarro’s pizza, along with an extra slice and a giant chocolate chip cookie for Aerigo in case he woke up in the mood for lunch. She snuck hers and Aerigo’s lunches onto the bus, stowed his food with their packs, and ate in peace. She wanted the luxury of Aer
igo’s protection—provided that she could wake him—in case Daio found a way to catch up.
The bus finished traversing Binghamton, New York and the driver announced that they’d be crossing into Pennsylvania soon. They were right around halfway to their destination.
The rain had let up in this part of New York but it was still cloudy. Puddles blotted the sides of the highway and cars that passed the bus kicked up swirling tails of mist.
After the announcement, Roxie heard cars honk their horns and wondered who was driving like an idiot. She stole a glance out Aerigo’s rain-splattered window and saw a Mustang fighting to stay on the slippery road as it swerved to the left. She jumped to her feet and pressed her palms to the glass. The car slid into the breakdown lane, slammed into the cement barrier with a metallic crunch, then rebounded off it and arced toward the Blue Eagle Express’ belly. The car’s nose broadsided the bus, jolting it, then got wedged under the giant wheels. Roxie dropped a foot back to keep her balance and continued watching.
Passengers snapped out of their movie-watching trance and voiced their wonder at the strange jolt.
The sports car stayed wedged under the first set of double wheels, its nose getting eaten away, and the rest of the car jostled up and down as if it were going over a series of speed bumps. Roxie couldn’t believe what she was witnessing. This kind of crash only happened in movies; not right below her.
The bus driver stopped his vehicle in the middle of the highway once he heard several people exclaim “Oh my god!” People on the right side of the bus crowded behind those on the left.
“Aerigo!” Roxie reached to shake Aerigo’s shoulder and got zapped the moment her hand was within an inch of his skin. “Ow!” She recoiled her hand and shook it, then examined it for injuries.
Nothing.
“What the heck was that?” she wondered aloud. The shock more surprised her than hurt. Roxie shrugged it off as static and reached for his shoulder again, only to get shocked a second time right before making contact with his skin. Aerigo sat upright in his chair and his eyes snapped open. Roxie stared back into his wide eyes, which glowed like they had in the bathroom: a swirl of yellow and red, the two colors pushing for dominance over his hidden pupil. The glow faded into Aerigo’s blue eyes. He blinked.