The Blue Beast (Aria Fae #3)

by H. D. Gordon

  “I’m fine to work.”

  “You sure?”

  I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  With a bit of hesitance, Rose pulled her light jacket out from under the counter along with her purse. “Okay, well, it should be a slow day. There are a couple orders that need to be filled in back, and the delivery driver will be coming to pick up the Bowman’s order around noon, but I already arranged it all so no need to worry about it, just sign the form when he comes.”

  “You going to see Rachel?”

  “Yes,” she answered. “She starts treatment today.”

  I sent Rose some silent good vibes and assured her that I had everything under control, glad that I had showed up rather than calling out. She left, her aura a swirl of negative emotions, and I went to the back room to fill the waiting orders. This didn’t take me long, and soon I was sitting at the counter in the front of the shop, reading one of the books Caleb Cross had given me for Christmas.

  As if this were a summons, around midday, Caleb walked through the front door, the little bell above it calling out a chime.

  “Caleb!” I said, jumping up and then wincing at the pain that shot through my midsection with the movement. I hadn’t seen him for a little while, and I realized now that I’d missed him.

  “Aria!” he returned, jumping up in a mimic, dimples appearing in his cheeks as he smiled. He was as handsome as ever with his coifed up hair and neat attire.

  I laughed at his mutual enthusiasm but it dried up in my throat as I observed the conflict in his aura. After an embrace where he was cautiously gentle, I pulled back and asked, “What’s wrong, Caleb?”

  He gave a characteristic smirk, so handsome yet underlined with an unspoken sadness. It was one of the tiny things that had made me adore him so. “Can’t a guy just visit his favorite gal without something being wrong?” he asked.

  I nodded, eyeing him. “Yes, except for I have the distinct feeling you’ve been avoiding me since you warned me to leave Grant City a few months ago and I didn’t.”

  Caleb looked down at his hands, and I didn’t need him to respond to know this was true. “Life has been a little crazy in the last couple months,” he said.

  My eyes flashed down to the newspaper still atop the counter. “You’re telling me,” I said. “How’s your father? Your brother?”

  “They’re still breathing,” he said, and I supposed this answer said more than three words.

  “I missed you,” I blurted out, because it was true.

  Caleb pulled me into another hug, resting his chin on my shoulder. I held him in return. “I missed you, too,” he admitted.

  “You came here to say something, Caleb,” I said, still holding him close, the slight scent of his expensive cologne filling my nose. “So just say it.”

  Finally, he pulled back, looked at me as if he wasn’t at all sure of himself, and picked up the newspaper. Pointing to the grainy image of the beast beneath that ridiculous headline, he said, “I think my father has something to do with this.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Caleb ran a hand through his shiny hair, his voice strained and his eyes full of worry. “I think he created it, and I think he’s creating more.”

  CHAPTER 15

  “You can trust them, Caleb. I promise. They’re my best friends.”

  Caleb looked doubtfully between Matt and Sam, who waited patiently to hear whatever it was they were going to be told. “I don’t want any of this to get around,” Caleb said. “I don’t have proof or anything and there’s a lot at stake here, like my family’s reputation.”

  I nodded, placing a hand on his shoulder. “They can keep a secret. They keep my secrets.”

  With obvious reservations, Caleb told us about the mini espionage he’d been conducting on his father and his father’s company, The Cross Corporation. His aura told me that he felt as though he were betraying his family with every word he spoke, but the ethical part of him overrode it. Still, I respected the fact that this wasn’t easy for him.

  “Remember those files I had you break into, Sam?” he asked. “The ones on the MacBook that I couldn’t get into myself?”

  Sam nodded, tucking some of her strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear. “Yeah, the ones that ended up being just a bunch of random numbers, except they were encrypted like a digital Fort Knox. I remember.”

  Caleb gave a short, humorless laugh. “That’s right. Except they weren’t just a bunch of random numbers. It took me three months to figure it out, but I did. Turns out they’re code for genetic sequences.”

  “Like a genome?” I asked.

  Caleb nodded. “Yes, only these weren’t for humans, they were for all kinds of different… I don’t know, creatures, I guess you could call them.” He reached into his bag and removed a yellow folder. From this folder he produced a bundle of papers. “See these numbers here, those are the start of the sequence.” He flipped a couple pages. “And then here the sequences are mostly the same, but altered in an essential way.”

  I watched as Matt, Sam and Caleb huddled their genius heads together and tossed around science-y words I had no references for. I didn’t need to be an Einstein to catch the drift, however. Someone was altering the genes of what were likely supernaturals, and turning them into unnaturals.

  “So that’s what this Blue Beast is?” Sam asked. “Some kind of sick science experiment?”

  The near ton of weight on Caleb’s shoulders was practically visible. “That’s what I’m afraid of. When I saw the news this morning, I just knew that there had to be some connection.”

  “Why, though?” asked Matt. “What does a company like Cross Corp, with all its prestige and power, need to create genetic mutations for?” He met Caleb’s eyes. “I know this all looks suspicious, but your father has done a lot of good with his advancements in technology and medicine. He’s actually one of my heroes.”

  Caleb’s chin dropped a bit. “Yeah, well, you’re not the only one, but the side of Dr. Christian Cross that the public sees doesn’t tell the whole story. He’s not what everyone thinks he is… He’s not who I thought he was.”

  Sympathy flashed through my friends’ auras as Caleb made this admission, and for a moment, silence fell, because none of us really knew what to say.

  Sam, ever the knowledge source, broke the quiet first. “It makes some sense, actually. Scientists and powerful men—including our own government and military—have been conducting these kinds of experiments for years. In fact, that’s how the drug LSD was created. The US army created it in an effort to gain mind-control over soldiers. They doled it out to the troops and waited to see what would happen.”

  I tried to be optimistic, despite the fact that this whole thing was starting to overwhelm me. “There has to be a way to stop the Blue Beast. That’s what we have to concentrate on first,” I said. “We’ll figure the rest out once Grant City is safe again.”

  Sam gave a single, slow nod. “Yeah… the thing is, once a box like this is opened, you can’t control what comes out, or who uses it. Same like with the LSD.” Her pretty face was as grave as the dead. “This is a big problem, you guys. A big, big problem.”

  I swallowed. There was the understatement of the century.

  ***

  There’s nothing like a big, big problem to make you feel incredibly small. My merry band and I agreed that it was best to be ready for anything, rather than being taken by surprise again, but as I pulled on the Masked Maiden suit—it’s funny how we’d all taken to referring to me as that—I felt more like a child playing dress-up rather than a badass vigilante who was supposed to be a hero.

  Even beneath the mask, these emotions must have been evident in my demeanor, because Sam came over to me just before I headed out for patrol and pulled me into a hug. I accepted the embrace willingly, resting my head on her shoulder and squeezing her back.

  “What was that for?” I asked when we pulled away from each other.

  Sam shrugged. “I don’t
know, I guess it just felt like we both needed it.” She studied my face for a moment. “Everything is going to be okay. We’re gonna take down this beast and save the day. We got this.”

  I pulled the cape Matt had made me over my upgraded jacket—also courtesy of Matt Brown—and let out a deep breath. “You sound pretty sure of that, Sammy. At least one of us is, I guess.”

  Sam’s blue eyes sparkled beneath the lenses of her thick-rimmed glasses. “Yeah, well, I have hope. I know in reality we haven’t known each other that long, but I’ve seen you do some amazing things, and I’ve got so much faith in you.” She shook her head, a small smile pulling up one side of her mouth. “You gave that back to me, and I was sure it was lost for good after my mom died.”

  I couldn’t voice how much these words meant to me, because if I did, I was afraid I would break down into tears, and nothing is more ridiculous than a girl in a mask and cape blubbering like it was the first time she was seeing The Lion King.

  So instead, I only pulled my best friend into a hug that must have been too tight, because she said, “Easy there, John Cena. Not all of us are as durable as you.”

  Smiling, I released my hold. “I guess I better hit the streets, huh?”

  Sam slapped a hand on my shoulder. “I’ll be with you every step of the way. Go get ‘em, tiger.”

  With this encouragement, I ran up the wall of the warehouse and leapt onto the landing outside the small office that contained the window I crawled out of to gain access to the roof.

  Then I was sailing over the building tops of Grant City, the cool night wind in my hair.

  ***

  As it would turn out, there was no “em” for this tiger to go get. I spent most of Saturday and Sunday evening patrolling the city like a wannabe Zorro, and there was not a single sighting of the Blue Beast. The most I came up against was a mugger and a carjacker, a minor drug deal and attempted robbery (attempted because I totally handled that fool) but otherwise nothing out of the ordinary.

  One thing had changed, however. Since the sighting of the Blue Beast, extra patrol had been dispatched, the streets practically flooded with men in blue who were local officers and men in black whom I had to assume had been called in as backup.

  This made things a little more difficult as far as being the Masked Maiden was concerned. As far as I knew, I was still on the GCPD’s wanted list, and avoiding capture was a fulltime job. By Sunday evening, as the weekend was drawing to a close, I was feeling defeated even though nothing had happened—maybe because nothing had happened.

  Hanging my cape up over the plastic mannequin that Matt had set up to hold my suit, I sighed and turned to face my friends. “Well, that was super useless,” I said. “Where the heck could a creature that has to weigh over two tons be hiding in a crowded city? It can’t have just disappeared. What’s it waiting for?”

  “The real question is, what is its master waiting for?” Matt said.

  Sam nodded at this. “He’s right. Why go to all the trouble of creating such a powerful creature if you can’t control it? You build something like that, and you want to be able to use it.”

  I supposed this was true. “I guess I should get with Caleb again and see if he’s learned anything new, or if we can somehow dig deeper into Cross Corp’s engagements.”

  “That’s actually a good idea,” agreed Matt. “Maybe Caleb can get you guys inside Cross Corp’s headquarters under the pretense of being the boss’s son.”

  I had considered this already. Slipping the mask off my face, I replaced it in the case holding the mannequin. “The only thing is, Caleb hasn’t offered to do this, and I don’t want to push it. It was hard enough for him to let us in. He felt like he was betraying his family.”

  “Well, then I guess we just wait for this beast to show up again,” Sam said. “Be reactive. Wait for something to happen.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that, and I knew Samantha Shy well enough to know that this was the intention. I let out a little huff, snatching a bag of chips and a cold slice of pizza from the snack area of the lair—an upgrade I’d insisted upon, since vigilante-ing could really build an appetite—and shoving them both in my face. “Okay,” I said, around a bite. “I’ll ask him. Geez. So passive aggressive.”

  Sam grinned. “Good, because we need to get to the root of things, and Cross Corp is the obvious place to start. No more plucking off the tops of the weeds.”

  These were my words thrown back at me, so of course, I agreed with her. I just hoped I didn’t get myself mowed down in the process.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Hey there, neighbor,” I said, pulling myself up onto the roof of my apartment building.

  “Good morning, Aria,” Thomas said, the almost-smile I liked to believe he reserved for me coming to his handsome face. Like always, I took a moment to admire how beautiful he was in the first of the morning sunlight, the way the golden rays reflected from his hazel eyes.

  I took a seat on the crate beside the one on which he was sitting and accepted the brown bag of food he passed over.

  “Oooh!” I said. “There’s a sandwich and a donut! What have I done to deserve such generosity?”

  Golden yellow played through his aura, an indication of his amusement. “I thought you might want some extra calories, with all the getting beat up and running around you’ve been doing lately.”

  I snorted a bit at this, my mouth already as full of the deliciousness as a mouth could be. “I got a couple hits in,” I defended. “That’s more than the police force.”

  “Did you?”

  I rolled my eyes. “No, but it sounded good, and I’ve done a great job at healing after being slammed around like a crash-test dummy. So there.”

  There was comfortable silence between us for a bit. Then, Thomas said, “My sister has been asking about you.”

  I swallowed my bite and bit at my lip instead. “Oh yeah?”

  “Yes.”

  “I should go thank her, shouldn’t I?”

  More gold flashed through his aura. “That would be nice, especially since I’ve got the feeling that wasn’t the last time she’ll be patching you up.”

  I nodded, making a mental note to visit Rosemary later today and thank her for what she’d done. I wasn’t arrogant enough to believe it was the last emergency visit I’d be paying her, either, but a girl could hope.

  “So, your sister’s a doctor… And what do you do?” I asked. It was a question I’d never posed because Thomas had never brought it up, but if his sister was going to be my personal vigilante-healer, then I thought maybe I could inquire.

  Thomas’s hazel eyes flicked over to me, pulling away from the scene of the sun rising over Grant City. A smirk pulled up one side of his handsome face. “Well, I’m not a doctor, much to my parent’s disappointment.”

  We both knew that wasn’t an answer, so I waited. When he didn’t continue, I felt a little anger—no, I’ll be honest, it was hurt—and I tried my best to keep it from my face.

  “You know all of my secrets,” I said, and that was all. Despite how vulnerable this sounded to my own ears, what else was there to say?

  Thomas let out a slow breath, and I watched his aura with the closeness of a biologist studying a cell. There was obvious confliction there, but it in no way let him off the hook.

  “I’m not supposed to say,” he said at last. “I would get in a lot of trouble if anyone found out I told you.”

  My brow furrowed, my heart suddenly jumping up into my throat as if to gag me. I was so on edge all of a sudden that I lowered the donut I’d been devouring and ran my free hand over the back of my mouth.

  “But you are going to tell me?” I said.

  He held his peace, his eyes running over me, and I swear my heart halted in my chest.

  “Alright,” he said, “but, Aria, you have to promise you’ll tell no one. Not Sam or Matt—no one. Do you promise?”

  I made a cross over my heart, which still hadn’t resumed its normal pace.
“I promise. You can trust me, Thomas.”

  Then he dropped a proverbial bomb on me.

  ***

  I was still reeling by the time I made it to school that morning, but growing up with the Brokers had taught me how to compartmentalize things, and I pushed this new information about my mysterious neighbor from my head so that I could concentrate on my classes and another plan I’d been formulating as of late.

  It was simple, and also my third reason for joining the lacrosse team. I wanted to do something good that didn’t involve running around in a hood and mask and getting beat up by bad guys, and this was the perfect way to do it.

  Rose, my employer and friend at the flower shop, was going through a really tough time right now with the state of her only daughter, Rachel. She needed money to pay for Rachel’s treatments, and her insurance and income from the shop were barely covering it. When I’d first come to Grant City, Rose had opened her door to me along with her heart, giving me a job without asking too many questions and a sense of purpose when I’d been lost at sea.

  So when I’d been considering joining the lacrosse team, one of the incentives was that I might be able to convince my coach and teammates to hold a fundraiser for Rachel. I’d never done anything of the sort, but I figured throwing together a carwash and bake sale couldn’t be that hard, and whatever we managed to raise would be better than nothing.

  I waited until lunch period and headed to Coach Sanders’s office, which was right outside and across from the girl’s locker room. When I walked up, I saw that the blinds were drawn and the door locked, and I sighed at having wasted a part of the thirty-minute lunch hour to come here.

  Just before I could walk away the door to the office opened, and Andrea Ramos stepped out. She looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her. My brow furrowed as I took her in—the way she was adjusting her clothing, the somewhat mussed state of her hair, and of course, the roiling of her aura.

  The implications I drew from the combination of these things were no good, and for what seemed like five very long seconds, I was too dumbstruck to say anything.