by H. D. Gordon
Of all the things I’d faced in my insane lifetime, it was safe to say that I’d never been more afraid in my life as I was in that moment. I’d been trained to be a good swimmer, of course, as it was a life skill that any wise creature seeks to have, but I’ve always had a healthy fear of natural bodies of water. It wasn’t just all the sea life that lurked beneath, the element theirs and the advantage ditto, it was the idea of drowning, the sense of zero control, the feeling of utter displacement.
What if the creature had gills, and this was the cruel way it intended to kill me, as if just grinding my bones to dust with its massive strength were not punishment enough? Panic of the purest proportion slammed into me, and I wriggled and thrashed with every thing I had, trying unsuccessfully to free myself.
It was no use. The beast swam deeper into the darkness, and I gasped and let out bubbles of precious air as some sort of seaweed or sea creature brushed alongside me, slithering beside my bare legs, my flailing arms.
I was going to die! And in the worst way possible! I didn’t want to die!
The bay water was too dark to make out anything, and the only thing that gave me any bearings, that told me we were descending even deeper, was the change in temperature and pressure. It got colder and somehow tighter, and my head began to swim in a way that had nothing to do with water.
I needed air, and its access was growing further and further away.
Just when I had lost all hope, there was a sound like bending metal, and searching around me like a blind woman, I felt my hands graze against metal bars just before being pulled upwards. Heartbeats that felt light-years long later, I was gasping for air in a dark tunnel that smelled of fish and waste, the air sweeter than any I’d ever drawn despite the rankness.
I could do little but gasp as the beast shook its body like a dog, the sticky metal netting having washed off in the water, drips of saliva flicking from its jowls in ropes.
It took a few terrible moments to gain my bearings, to realize that we’d surfaced in a tunnel that served the sewers of the small island where Grant City sat. Much to my disappointment, I saw that the city’s waste led right into the Atlantic Ocean.
This, however, was not something I had the luxury of dwelling on, because the beast was taking me deeper into the tunnel, the trickling of the polluted water and the frantic pounding of my heart the only sounds there was to hear.
***
We came to a place that was somewhere beneath the city, the ceiling in this particular chamber higher than the ones in the tunnels, allowing the beast to stretch its back, standing up to its full height with a groan that made my knees feel rubbery.
It tossed me against the wall like I was a pair of keys and it a tired laborer returning home from a long day’s work. My body, dripping and covered in goosebumps, slammed against the concrete with teeth-shattering force, and I fell into the puddle of a substance I didn’t want to identify.
Looking down at my ruined dressed, I surveyed my body, finding that other than being soaking wet and thoroughly disgusting, I was pretty much okay. I kept my movements minimal, acutely aware that the beast could reach over and pluck my head from my shoulders as easily as popping the top off a dandelion, should the mood strike it.
And when I found the courage to look up at the thing, I saw in its face that this was a possibility that favored on probable.
So, why, then, was I still alive? What did it want from me?
The beast stared down at me, and I watched its aura with terrified fascination as it decided if it wanted to kill me. I held my hands up and forced as much Fae Halfling persuasion on him as I had in me, knowing good and well that my life literally depended on it.
“Easy,” I said, my voice gentle and low.
It growled in return, its blue lips pulling back to reveal teeth that were long and sharp and jagged. It shifted on its hairy feet, and shook as a shuddering ripple went down its back, making the line of dark hair there rise and fall in a wave.
“Easy, big guy,” I repeated, my wet hands still held up in front of me. I made no move to rise from the floor or escape the wall it had me pinned against. “I’m not gonna hurt you,” I said, and realized as the words left my mouth just how stupid that must’ve sounded.
I don’t know how long we sat like this, me on the cautious defensive, forcing my will on the beast while I watched its strange aura battle against the urge to kill me. It was simultaneously exhausting and exhilarating, the whole of my focus on the task at hand, the blood rushing hot and fast in my veins.
With a sinking in my heart, the hope of survival having been given back to me only to be ripped away, I saw that this was a losing battle. Whatever force was inside of the beast, whatever instinct it had been given to kill, it was a strong one, and I could not keep up the persuasion indefinitely. It took too much out of me, and I’d already been physically and mentally exhausted by this day.
But, underneath that murderous impulse, behind its red-streaked eyes and in its ever-changing aura, I glimpsed that things were not so simple as that. It wanted to kill me, but at the same time, it didn’t want to kill me. There’s no way to explain it other than that.
In a stroke of boldness that surprised even me, I slowly began to reach out to it with my hand. My power was always stronger if I could make physical contact. The beast snorted, shimmying and shying away, battling the battle in its mind.
“What happened to you?” I asked, and the sympathy was clear in my tone. “What did they do to you?”
With this, the beast slammed its fist into the wall right behind me, missing my head only because I ducked, making the ceiling seem to tremble, along with my knees. I squeezed my eyes shut, sure that I would not be getting lucky this time, sure that its instincts had won out, and that I was split seconds away from being smashed to goo like a bug on a windshield.
But when I peeled open my eyes a moment late, opening one slowly, and then the other, like a kid peeking out from beneath the covers, I was alone in the smelly, forgotten chamber, the only indication that the beast had ever been there the boulder-sized dent in the wall behind me.
CHAPTER 22
I stood behind the dirt-fogged glass of the office window, watching with mild amusement as Sam and Matt argued, pacing around the lair and clicking at keys and tossing stuff around as if they just didn’t know what to do with themselves.
Caleb was also here. He sat in the corner, still wearing his tux and wringing his hands, looking like a man forlorn.
“Where could it have taken her?” Sam was saying, for what sounded like was probably the hundredth time. “Where the hell could it be hiding?”
“It’s in the tunnels,” I said, emerging from the office that overlooked the floor of the abandoned warehouse where we based our little operation.
Sam, Matt and Caleb looked up, and relief washed over them like a tide.
“Oh, thank God!” Sam said.
“You’re alive!” declared Caleb.
“I told you she’d be okay,” Matt mumbled, grinning up at me as though he had never doubted my return. I decided then not to stress the number of times I’d nearly died tonight, how very close it had been.
I jumped down from the landing (the stairs that led up to the office had been destroyed, and hung out into open air, but the little office and the window it housed was the lair’s only access to the roof) and landed on the hard floor with a little grunt, crouching before standing and laughing as Matt averted his eyes. Caleb only gave me a crooked grin, his blue eyes running the length of me appreciatively.
“Relax, Matthew,” I said. “I’m not gonna seduce you.”
This made his cheeks turn red, which was a feat considering Matt is African American. The dress I was wearing was just barely covering my essential parts. I went over to the old metal cabinet where we kept spare clothing and pulled on a t-shirt and some sweatpants.
Returning to my friends, I was immediately swept into an embrace by Sam. She pulled back from me with her nose wrinkl
ed up cutely. “Aria, you smell like fish and crap. What happened to you?”
I told them about jumping into the bay, about the sewers, and about the beast.
“I don’t understand. Why didn’t it just kill you?” Sam asked once I’d finished.
Matt nodded, his face equally perplexed. “Why go to all the trouble of taking you just to let you go?”
Before I could offer up any theories, Thomas burst through the door of the warehouse, making the four of us jump nearly a foot into the air.
Thomas said nothing as he strode in as if he owned the place. He just cut into our little circle and took my cheeks between his hands, tilting my head this way and that, examining me for injuries, his hazel eyes reminding me of a hunting hawk.
I pulled myself away from him with some annoyance, though I wasn’t sure where to attribute it. I didn’t fail to notice that he’d changed out of his black and gray uniform and mask.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I’m alive.”
Thomas had explicitly asked me to keep the truth of his occupation a secret, had made me promise not to tell even my closest of loved ones, and I would uphold that promise, but once we got home, the man had some dang explaining to do, and I gave him a look that let him know it.
“Where did it take you?” he asked. “How did you escape?”
I narrowed my eyes and recounted my story. Again.
“It let you go?” Thomas asked once I’d finished.
“That seems to be the consensus,” I answered.
“Why?”
I threw up my hands. It was nearing midnight now, and I saw with a sigh that Caleb was eyeing Thomas and me in a way that made me slightly uncomfortable. It occurred to me then that if I ever wanted to really torture someone, I’d just put him or her in a closed room with all their love interests.
Feeling the need to escape, I said. “How about you guys discuss it, and see what you can come up with? I need a shower and my bed, like, immediately.”
“I’ll give you a ride home,” said Caleb and Thomas simultaneously.
The two of them exchanged a look that was less than cordial, to say the least.
With effort, I managed to keep my eyes from rolling. I grabbed a hoody from the metal cabinet and pulled it over my head. Then I ran up the wall below the office and flipped up onto the landing, my bare feet leaving little footprints on the dust-coated surface.
Before disappearing through the office and out the window, where the rooftops of Grant City would welcome me like an old friend, I said, “Thanks, guys, but I can find my own way home.”
Feeling like Independent Woman of the Year, I pulled the hood over my head and went out to meet the night.
***
On Sunday morning I awoke even earlier than usual, rising before the sun. This was my favorite time of day, when the world still slept and the night hung on with a grip that slipped away slowly, like the opening of weary eyes.
I found it was softer somehow during this interval between yesterday and today, the way life always seems to be when resting one’s head atop a fluffy pillow, as I did now.
The silence surrounded me, my tiny apartment so familiar and routine. I didn’t dare guess at what events awaited me today, because I could feel myself sliding further down the rabbit hole I’d allowed myself to fall into, and it would be a lie to say that part of me didn’t urge to turn back now, before it was too late.
Throwing off the covers, which clung to me with sweat, I decided I was going to need to save up and buy an air conditioning unit to put in my window. The apartment building didn’t have central air, and it was only the beginning of spring, but the buildings of Grant City seemed to hold in the heat. I could only image how the heat would be once summer kicked off in full swing.
It was almost comical how much the necessity for money had become such a frequent in my thoughts in the past half-year since I’d been kicked out of the Peace Brokers. With the Brokers, I’d never had to think about where my next meal was going to come from, or how I was going to pay the rent or get new shoes once my current ones wore down to unusable. I’d never had to worry about paying the light bill on time so that I wasn’t sitting in darkness, or how much toothpaste and toilet paper I could get for five dollars, or when certain groceries went on sale so that I could get them at the best prices.
Almost comical, because there was nothing funny about these worries. And that’s what they were—worries. Thinking about how I only had X amount to last me until my next payday, how and where to spend it, and what I just could not afford to do was the ultimate anxiety bringer, and I spent a good portion of my morning meditation just trying to rid myself of these thoughts.
What was worse was that my friend Surah Stormsong—Sorceress Queen and all around badass chick—had taken care of my apartment rent for a year, and I was still struggling to stay afloat with my meager earnings. I honestly didn’t know how people did it, and I wondered if it had always been so hard just to survive in the world, though something told me that the answer was probably yes.
I went for a morning jog, ate some breakfast, and decided there was no point in worrying about things I couldn’t control, though this would admittedly be easier said than done. It was never more difficult not to worry about money than when you had none.
But I also knew there was no better way to stop thinking about one worry than to replace it with others, so I took a deep breath and checked my watch, seeing I still had an hour before I had to be at Roses, which seemed to me like more than enough time for Thomas to do some explaining.
A moment later, I was climbing over the roof’s edge of our apartment building, accepting a coffee and breakfast burrito from Thomas (my second breakfast, but he didn’t need to know that) and taking a seat beside him on my designated crate.
We ate in silence for several minutes, staring out at the city, where the sun was just beginning to make a show over the horizon. Once the food was gone, I sighed and shifted in my seat, waiting.
“You want to know more about my occupation,” he said, without looking at me. It was not a question, but he knew the answer, so I just kept waiting. He sighed and set down his thermos, turning so that he faced me. “What do you want to know?”
I considered this, biting my lip and trying not to shift under his gaze. On the occasions that Thomas Reid looked directly at me, it was always a task not to squirm. “Everything,” I said.
“It’s a long story,” he said.
I checked my watch. “Well, I have forty minutes, so skip the boring stuff.”
“I work for an undocumented government agency that specializes in the paranormal, supernatural and extraterrestrial.”
My jaw practically hit the concrete. Thomas had told me the other day that he worked for the government as a sort of special ops operative, but I’d assumed he meant the FBI or something like that. As a Peace Broker, I was ashamed that I didn’t even know something like what he’d just said in that bomb-packed sentence existed. I wondered if the Peace Broker superiors knew.
One side of his mouth pulled up when he took in my expression. “You said skip the boring stuff.”
“So, wait, aliens are real?”
Now he outright laughed. “That would be your initial reaction.”
I sat back on my crate, shaking my head at this twist. “Have you seen any aliens? Like, what do they look like?”
Thomas lifted an eyebrow, his handsome face amused, his aura swimming gold. “That’s really your first question?” He considered. “Some of them look just like us. In fact, you may even have crossed paths with some, but never knew it. Others would give you nightmares.”
I thought about all the strange varieties of auras I’d witnessed over the years, and allowed that this was very possible.
“Did you know about the Peace Brokers? Before I told you about us—I mean, them?”
He turned back toward the city, picked up his thermos and took a sip. “We have some files.”
An awful possibility occu
rred to me. “Were you sent here to spy on me? To get close to me and learn all the secrets I know?”
I held my breath after these words escaped me, watching his aura for any shift, praying that it would remain steady.
Thomas met my eyes as he said, “Meeting you was a fortunate coincidence.”
Suddenly, I could breathe again, but now my heart was fluttering. I relaxed once more, considering my next question. “What’s your current objective?”
“One guess.”
“The Blue Beast, of course, but I mean, why are you here in Grant City? Is this a post or is there a different objective?” I paused, staring at him. “You know what I mean. Who’s the big fish in this little pond that you’re after?”
His perfect lips twitched in an almost smile. “Clever little thing, aren’t you?”
“You’re just learning this? Besides, you know I was raised a soldier, trained as an active operative. You gonna answer the question?”
There was no need to read Thomas’s aura to understand how big of a secret I was asking him to tell me. I understood perfectly. I was requesting top-secret information, and the number one rule of doing this kind of work—whether you were human or non—was always to guard the objective. Under no circumstances should that kind of intelligence be given up. It was so imperative that even torture shouldn’t bring it past the lips.
This was the reason I waited with bated breath. If he answered my question, and did so truthfully, it could only mean that he trusted me undoubtedly, that he trusted me with his life. A moment passed that felt like an eternity.
Then, Thomas said, “Those that work under him just refer to him as ‘My Lord,’ but we call him The Man in the Shadows.”
CHAPTER 23
The bell above the door announced my arrival, but I barely heard it for all the noise going on in my head. Every time I was sure that the world couldn’t get any stranger, that I’d seen and heard most all the oddities there was to see and hear, I learned something new that set my whole world off balance.