Wraith ; Semblance

by Riley Mason

  He comes at me again, he wants to console me, my fist balls and clears his jaw and I back up, I can already see the blood spilling from his lip. “Stay away from me,” I scream.

  “How did you get me back. Gabriel’s still alive, how did you get me away from him. He put three fucking bullets into my chest, why would he do that to someone that did any fucking thing he wanted!”

  It wasn’t horror spread on his face but it wasn’t the easiest face that I had to stomach either. There was something buried inside of him, that thing in there held a secret about me. Maybe more, maybe now the paranoid had taken a life of its own.

  I see a bottle of whiskey and I shoot myself to it, lift the top and drink for a few seconds before my stomach and throat burn and the bottle is back down. I can’t handle all these emotions running through me at one time. I need to dull them out, my body needs to repress some of what’s coming up.

  “I can’t tell you,” he said.

  I look at him, my eyes bend down and that fire in my stomach stretches out all over my body. “What?” I ask him.

  “Suffice it to say you made me swear that I would never tell you how it happened. Your holding information in your head that you hid from yourself, you told me that if you find out how we got you away from Gabriel, it puts that information in jeopardy. Suffice it to say, fourteen people died in getting you out of there. Don’t make me piss on that sacrifice.”

  My mouth hangs open, my eyes are burning but it won’t let the tears out of me. That’s not how I’m built, they’re not meant to fall. Whatever was loving and sensitive inside of me cut itself free from my body a long time ago, it’s just not there to be used. It’s because that part of me isn’t there.

  “So that’s what justifies it, a sacrifice?” I ask him.

  “Arinna, leave it alone,” he tells me but I can see the nerves inside of his face begin to breakdown. How could he ask me to leave this alone?

  “Almost a hundred people lost their lives because one person told me to do something,” I say the sting of it takes a few seconds to hit me afterwards. “All the strength in my soul, all that I’ve done and one man can change all the good that I tried to accomplish.”

  “You weren’t yourself,” he reminds me.

  “I was because that blood is on my hands no matter who was in control at the time,” I remind him. “It was me asked to do what Gabriel needed done, it wasn’t you, it wasn’t another Chaser, it was me.”

  The words hit me and knock the wind out of me. I’m glad that I have no memory now. Memories have a tendency to provide visions, visions in this case would be the last thing that my body or my mind can handle. It would break me plain and simple.

  I turn and maneuver through my bag and unclip the cap of prescriptions that have been waiting patiently for me to sink my fingers into them. This is one of those times that I don’t count, I don't count because I don’t care what’s on the other side of taking them. I could make it out, I might not, to be honest I’m not entirely sure that I want too. Now I know how those other Chaser’s felt when a decision this strong fell into their lap. Sometimes a bullet to the head is the quickest and least messy response that there is.

  Chapter 56

  Bash looks at me heavily, his eyes are pleading with me and he’s trying to use them for what his words aren’t fixing. I want nothing to do with him trying to remedy what I’m feeling, I don’t think either of us are built for that.

  The drugs are kicking in just not fast enough. Bash wants to speak, there are words so close to his lips that I can almost see them. It’s a blow that I’ve never imagined being told in the form of my own history. I’ve been beaten before, near death, on the verge of my own suicide despite how much I discredit and judge the Chaser’s that felt like they had no other choice. This is the worst of them all. Killing the supernatural and killing Identicals it's enough to poison the parts of me that the drugs and the alcohol haven’t gotten to yet.

  “You need to listen to me,” Bash finally says, he snaps me back from what lent me for a second. There are three strings of tears that ran down my face.

  “There’s nothing to hear,” I tell him.

  “There is because you're holding yourself responsible for things that you couldn’t control.”

  I look at him, that anger is in me, it’s like I can hold it in my hand. I want to take it out on him, I want to make someone suffer because I feel like there isn’t enough of me to suffer what I’m worth. “Why can’t you tell me?” I finally say but it doesn’t have any of the sting that my words have carried since he told me about me assassinating Identicals or people.

  “Because knowing what you knew, you made the decision to hide all of it. You wanted it in a part of your mind that you couldn't get to it, that was a decision that you made under your own control.” His voice carried, it resonated inside of me but it did nothing to quiet the agony inside of me.

  He comes closer to me, this time I let him. There’s no reason to keep him at bay anymore. I want him close, I don’t want this lonely feeling that’s filling me up. Now the tears turn themselves on as if my eyes have practiced. I fall into his arms.

  As his arms move to cover me, I wrap myself in his chest. His scent in there has something familiar to it, it feels comfortable, my body feels at place in there with him like it was one of the memories taken from me. That I should understand this better.

  “Don’t ever think that your responsible for that,” he says to me again. This time it's almost impossible not to hear.

  I back off, repulsed but I regret it the second I do it. I push him away again and remind myself that my sorrows are better drowned than faced and I take the top off the bottle and take another drink from it. “What else is there?” I ask him. “What other tragedy do you have for me.” I pause. “How did you not kill me when you took me back?” I ask when no answer comes.

  “Arinna stop,” he yells at me, it's not how I’m used to be spoken to but I respond to it. Not because I want to, it’s because something in me is compelled to listen to him. That he’s not as wrong as I want to think he is. Some part of me is willing to surrender this anger without a fight.

  “The wraith is still out there and you and I have work to do,” he reminds me.

  “The wraith that I raised,” I say back to him hotly.

  “The wraith that you were forced to raise,” he tells me. “Look at this.”

  I wait while he turns and grabs his laptop and brings it to me, it's open to a video monitor. “Street surveillance in the city is routed to a network so this is all syphoned off NYC camera hubs.”

  I can see clips of me, all of them are me. Five different screens running in sync with one another. Different points of the day, different areas of the city, all of them have one single thing in common. Every scene that I’m played in in this feedback has me listening to someone whisper something to me.

  “Best guess is that Gabriel had agents or Identicals routing you to the wraith, this was days in the works,” he said to me.

  I look down at the screens, watching them all with individual attention it's all that I can do to focus on them, giving them each an equal amount of time. It wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough to have me kill for him, he wanted more out of me. He wasn’t done with me, he wanted to keep using me, I was still his slave no matter how much I thought that I wasn’t attached to him anymore.

  I have to know, I can’t stay here, I need to know what Bash is not telling me. There is one option that I have and I turn, find the staff that he held for me and tuck it between my fingers again. I watch the blades spit out as I twist the length of it and close one end leaving one curved blade undone.

  Chapter 57

  I break the salt barrier and step back outside. For a moment, I don’t think about the fact that there could still be demons surrounding me. I move about two hundred feet from the property, I get down on my knees, driving my knees into the dirt and slam the blade down into the ground.

  By the time Bash cat
ches up to me the design is already dug into the ground. It’s a large circular pattern filled to its edges with different variants of sliding symbols inside of it.

  I see him coming towards me, I hear him screaming at me. He knows what I’m doing it, it's something that Chaser’s swore that they would never do even though I’m sure once the war came to an end, this symbol was drawn more than most would think.

  I touch my hand to the center and it glows in a hideous blue that seems to elevate the scars I cut into the ground above the ground itself. The sound of skidding comes next, the sound of Bash stopping where he is in place not because he lost the motivation to move. As I get up and look back it's because he’s frozen where he is. I know that only the one that summons a Djinn can see them.

  It stands there, tall and thin nearly anorexic with rags on its body, most of the clothing is hanging off, most of the skin that’s showing is covered in tattoos, black plastered on pale skin.

  The Djinn stands there and waits for me to speak. I only summoned it, I need to command it too. It’ll wait there for me until I decide.

  I open my mouth to speak but nothing comes out. Bash’s words resonate in my head clear in my head. I’m not entirely sure I want to know what I hid from myself anymore. I can’t fully trust him yet but something inside of me tells me to believe him. I’m stupid if I think that the Djinn is actually going to help me, they don't serve for free, it would cost my life to find out what I want to know.

  I bend down slow. Tears burn my eyes but they won’t dare fall at this point. I touch the symbol again and this time it recedes back into the ground, the thin pale body vanishes, and Bash resumes his chase.

  I stand and wait there for him but when he sees me he stops himself. “How could you do that?” he asks me. I know, every Chaser knows about the Djinn deals and what they want to in exchange for them serving.

  “Relax,” I tell him, anger stings my tone again. “I didn't’ ask it anything.”

  “Why would you summon it?” he says back, anger just as available in his voice.

  I start to walk and I brush passed him. “Come on,” I say, I’m lost, I’m angry, and the liquor is nowhere near where I want it to be.

  I feel his hand on me, it falls on my shoulder and it stops me from moving. “Why are you touching me?” I ask him.

  He let’s go of me.

  “What do you want?”

  “Did you make the deal?” He asks me.

  “Let’s go inside,” I half reply half walk.

  “Did you make that fucking deal?”

  I look at him, but I decide that it's not worth the fight. “No,” I say back to him and I walk back to the safe house trying to shove the numb that’s touching my face into the rest of my body.

  Chapter 58

  He wants to talk, I can’t really say that I blame him all that much. All I know is that the USB that I collected from the bank is burning a hole in my pocket. I’m more inclined now to see what’s on it without prejudice or worry, I just want to know things.

  The Djinn was a bad idea, that was a part of me that I have to train better then it’s been, it never should’ve come out of me that easily. Djinn’s trade souls for information or gifts, neither of those is worth the armored soul in my body.

  I go back to where I left the bottle of whiskey sitting on the end table. I take it and I don’t’ wait to hear an objection from Bash even though one doesn’t come. He’s understanding, more than I would be if I were in the exact same situation. My trust is so precious to me, I can’t fight the sensation that I would never let it out to someone like me.

  The drink slides down my throat, there’s no burn anymore, I’ve become immune to it for the night, compliments of more than one drink and the drunkenness that I’m trying to smother myself in. I look at the body on the table, sitting inside the prison of symbols that are written around her and underneath her.

  The room is still different, the variants in the air are going to stay that way for a few hours after the ritual is performed. “Can we win another war?” I ask but I know what his answer is going to be. The fact that he’s still talking to me in confidence and with purpose means that he has some stake in my attendance.

  “What choice do we really have?”

  He’s right. “How many Chasers are left?”

  “Less than a hundred now, I’m in touch with a bunch of them. Through them I got the count.”

  “And what were we at our height?” I press, terrified for the answer.

  “Nearly a thousand spread across the whole country,” his voice is dryer than I’d expect it to be. I imagine that from his perspective those numbers are old business, not the breaking news they are to me.

  I turn to him and my eyes are curious enough that he wants to know the reason for the change in them. “What?” he asks.

  “How do I know you’re not under Gabriel’s control?” I ask him. “I didn’t even know I was being driven to start-up the wraith.”

  “Not all of us have those abilities,” he said to me.

  “But you can remember me when no other Chaser can or will,” I say back to him, my tone sharp.

  “I’m the only one that wanted to,” he tells me. “A lot of the ones left wanted you dead.”

  “But you don’t,” I surmise.

  “I don’t need too,” he says, it's not desperation in his voice its commitment, it's a determination, I see it written into him.

  “Gabriel already killed me once,” I remind him. “He shot me three times point blank. What makes me believe that he’s not having one of his agents try again? Jesse got to me too, was that another mistake? What he made Jesse do to himself, to his family?”

  “I want the wraith dead, that’s all. You can’t proxy an exorcism. How would I do that if I was under his control? Don’t you dare fucking blame yourself for Jesse the same as you don’t need to be blaming yourself for those years. Gabriel is fixed up with something heavy and we walked right into the shit.”

  “Let’s not pretend he doesn't have demons and Identicals serving him,” I hiss.

  I see his tone change, his eyes and his face, his entire demeanor shifts from what I’ve been seeing. “There is something that you don’t know about me,” he says.

  There's a blade in his back, tucked into a sleeve at his waist and he pulls it out. The second he shows it; the staff spits out both blades. I still have some trust reserved for him but I’m being more cautious now. This is the closest that I’ve ever gotten to pieces of my past and who I was. Being sure who to trust was a rare commodity in typical hunting, in the case where I’ve already been killed and resurrected, it’s a nuclear line I’m walking on.

  Bash holds out his left arm, swells it with muscles as he closes his fist. In a blur of a strike, fast enough that my eyes have to adjust to see it in motion, he cuts his arm from wrist to bicep. The slice is so quick that it has a full three seconds of reddening before the blood starts to rise to the surface but it doesn’t. Instead I’m watching the skin on his arm stitch itself.

  “You’re not the only one with abilities,” he says to me. “A lot of the Chaser’s that stayed alive have something.”

  “Why would that make me trust you anymore knowing that you’re that much more of a threat if you go rogue or if you Gabriel gets to you.”

  Chapter 59

  I want to run at him, I don’t want him dead but I do want him neutralized. It's been so long that someone has been at my side, that I’ve even had an ally that when one is in front of me I don’t trust it.

  I’ve witnessed his skin close on itself, that puts his healing factor well beyond what humans are capable of. “How long?” I ask.

  “Since I was a kid,” he tells me. “Gabriel tried to put me under his control once before. It only works for so long on me before my mind adapts to it.”

  I can’t deny this connection that’s between us. This taste of trust between us is familiar to me rather than something that I want to run away from.

  I c
an see it in his eyes, it's like a trap but it’s not one that can hurt me if I’m caught in it, it’s something different.

  “Did he hurt you?” I ask, I need someone to know what it feels like, I need someone to understand this devastating feeling that's at the core of me infecting what good is left in there.

  “He hurt all of us,” Bash tells me. I look at him now, I see the strength inside of him, the machine that must be alive under his skin for keeping him going, for making sure that he survived a war that nearly exterminated all of us.

  “I want to know what this thing is, I want to know what he’s planning...I need to know” I say, my words soften and the blades aren’t out of the staff anymore, the weapon is on the ground, out of my grip, there’s no threat anymore, even if there is, I’m trusting that it's gone.

  I can’t fight this thing that is holding the two of us together, something that was so alive at one point can’t be ignored regardless of the minds commitment to erase it. Something that strong spreads itself and hides to protect itself from that type of annihilation. There is a safety in him that I’m not sure I understand but I can feel it, alive walking against my skin, buried in my body, it’s something that I want.

  I’m in his arms and I lift my head and he grabs the back of my neck and my tongue slides into him, it's enough to return me to a reality that sick and poisoned and I push him back, I didn't push hard but he moves like I did.

  That connection is gone, it may have never really existed. The whiskey and the pills are still massaging the inside of my body, the heart may change but the toxins never do.

  “I’m sorry,” I say to him.

  “You have nothing to apologize for,” he says and it settles me.

  I turn and look at the body. “What happens with her?” I ask changing the subject away from anything that has to do with emotions or memories for a time.

  Bash consumes a deep breath and lets it out, I can almost hear the tangle of thoughts that it passes through on its way out. “She’ll recover at least partially from what happened. She’s going to have to know though, most of them keep some aspect of the possession with them.”