by Hanna Peach
Wait, why would she think that? He’s a Rogue. It’s her duty to capture him.
“Who’s hurt, Alyx?”
“I―I can’t explain now. I have to go.”
Xavier grabs her arm before she can take off. “Alyx, you can’t go alone. We must tell the Elders, prepare a patrole unit...”
Alyx furrows her forehead. If she waits any longer she may not get to him in time. Her arm throbs with the memory of his pain and her resolve hardens.
“No time. I have to go.” Alyx twists out of Xavier’s grasp and flies off, despite his protests behind her. “Tarragon’s Alley, Saint Joseph. Tell the patrole unit to meet me there,” Alyx yells back to him.
Alyx bursts through the Michaelea ward, praying that she won’t be too late.
Alyx floats over the dark labyrinth of Tarragon Alley, cluttered with the criss-cross of fire escapes. Where is he?
She can’t see him. Her heart tightens with panic. She can’t see him.
But she may be able to feel him.
Alyx closes her eyes and seeks him out with her mind. She feels her body fade into the familiar black fog, sees the souls of the earth alight into flames. She feels his soul tug at her but instead of letting herself get pulled into his body she opens her eyes breaking the connection. Tarragon Alley appears before her again, buildings falling into alleys below like the ravines of the Valle de la Luna.
Alyx flies in his direction, her heart thrumming in her chest. She recognizes the flashing neon-red sign below screaming ‘Murphy’s Place’ remembering that he had passed by this sign to enter the alley. He is close.
She spots the entrance to the alley and flies towards the crack in the buildings above it.
Please don’t let me be too late.
The alley is bathed in shadows. Down the far end a fallen figure is trying to scuttle away from the creature that stands over him. His back hits the chain link fence that turns this alley into a dead end. He has nowhere else to go.
The Darkened raises a sword high above her head. A sword now falling towards him.
Alyx drops like a stone towards the ground as she hurtles her kris towards the creature. The dagger flies from her fingers and sighs as it cuts its deadly path through the air. It embeds in the creature’s back. Thick blood spills from the wound. The Darkened freezes, sword in the air and looks down. She gives out a cry. Chokes, once. In a last act she brings her sword down upon the figure.
“No,” Alyx cries.
He is moving, rolling to the side, as the demonsword cuts for him. It misses him, just. The blade cracks against gravel. The Darkened falls, and her body hits the ground, the blade handle rising out from her back.
He springs out of his roll, takes to his feet and faces her. Their eyes meet for the first time.
It is him. From the stillness a valley of angelflies all take flight at once, creating a fluttering, exquisite mess inside her stomach. She is looking at his face, instead of from behind his eyes.
She takes in his sure figure, plain black shirt clinging to wide shoulders. His warm brown skin seems to glow golden against his dark messy hair. It is him. The Rogue, who has plagued her mind for days. Him.
Alyx wants to run to him and grasp him in a warm embrace, as if she has rediscovered a long-lost friend. She takes one step towards him then stops herself when she realizes,
I know him, but he doesn’t know me.
She glances down at his arm. “You’re hurt.”
“I’ll live,” he says without taking his eyes off her. “Who are you?”
Strangely, there is no fear, no shock in his voice. Just a curiosity. What could she tell him that would be believable?
Then her eyes rest on the single imperfection on his face. A scar that marks his top lip. A scar. Alyx feels like she has been struck.
Through his eyes she has seen the demon’s true face glimmering behind the human facade. But this man was...
“Mortal,” it tumbles from her mouth before she can censure it. “I mean, Alyx. My name is Alyxandria but call me Alyx.”
She tries to keep her face calm but inside her mind is a whirl. Mortals can’t see the demon faces. They can’t see the faces. But this mortal... can.
His gives her a lopsided smile. “Well Alyx, I feel like I should let you know that I would have gotten myself out of this mess even if you hadn’t come along. Eventually.”
“I’m sure you had it all under control.”
“But I’m glad you did. Come along, I mean.” He kneels by the creature and pulls at the handle sticking out of her back. He wipes the blood off the blade along the Darkened’s skirt. He stands back up, peering at the carvings along the handle, fingers tracing it.
Normally Alyx would be quick to anger at watching someone else touch her blade, but now, in his hands, she feels nervous. She wants him to like it.
“This is unlike any dagger I’ve seen before,” he says, as he turns the kris over in his hands. “Where did you get it?”
“I had it designed specifically for me.”
“Well, it’s beautiful,” he says presenting the blade, handle out, to her.
She steps closer to him, like a wild bird approaching an open palm of seeds. She notices him gazing at her, his head tilting like a curious child.
“You seem... familiar,” his says. “Have we met before?”
“No, we haven’t met.” Not exactly a lie.
Alyx takes the kris from him.
“Are you sure? I feel like I know you from somewhere. I just... can’t place where.”
“No. We’ve never met before.”
A strange heat rolls up her stomach as he continues to watch her with his light brown eyes, almost hazel, so careful, so full of intent. His stare feels like the tips of fingers trailing across her cheeks. He runs his gaze down her until he reaches her feet, then traces up her body again to finish upon her face. All the while a smile is pulling at one of the corners of his lips.
She feels completely stripped. Naked. It is all she can do not to shiver.
“I would ask what a beautiful young woman like you is doing in the wickedest part of town handling a knife like a trained assassin...”
beautiful
“...but I don’t suppose I’d get a proper answer, would I?” He raises an eyebrow as if to punctuate his question with a challenge.
“No more than I would get an answer if I asked you what you’re doing in the wickedest part of town trying to take on a demon by yourself.”
“Demon. Is that what she was?”
Alyx steps back, throat tightening in horror. Already she has said too much. This is why friendships with mortals are forbidden.
“You’re being here is no coincidence, is it?” His eyes narrow. “What are you?”
“What a silly question,” Alyx says, trying not to let her panic show. “I’m a mortal just like you.”
He grins. Alyx feels like an animal that has just been caught in a trap.
“Firstly,” he says, “a real mortal would never call herself a ‘mortal’. And secondly, real mortals don’t come falling out of the sky to land delicately on the ground. No, real mortals break bones doing things like that,” he says this last sentence in a mock hush as if he was revealing some great secret. “Just keep that in mind when you try to pass yourself off as one of us next time.”
Alyx’s breath sticks in her throat, a strangled sort of cry.
But it only seems to amuse him further. “Yes, I saw you drop down to the ground before you knifed that thing. Scaring the living hell out of me I might add.” He glances up at the buildings that loom over them. “What is that, five storys that you just jumped from? Neat little trick. No you obviously aren’t human and you don’t look like one of them. So the question is... what are you?”
“It’s dark. You shouldn’t have seen that.”
“My night vision is fantastic.” He shrugs as if in apology. “Okay. Maybe ‘what are you?’ is too personal a question to ask so soon after we just started our friendship?”
“Can I tell you my theory? You don’t have to confirm anything. But feel free to look horrified when I get it right.” He doesn’t wait for her to respond. “Have you heard of The Balance of Nature? No? Well, it’s a theory that says that nature will correct an upset to a stable environment by producing an opposite force that will bring it back to balance. If we assume the demons are the upset then you are the opposite force. Some sort of demon-fighting supernatural solider.”
Her mouth goes slack. He nods as if she had spoken to confirm his theory.
“If your theory is true, what is your part in this balance then?” she says, trying to regain some resemblance of control over this conversation.
“I am an anomaly.” A note of sourness to his voice. “A mutation.”
“But you can see them, see their demon faces? You shouldn’t be able to.”
“You can see them too.”
“I’m supposed to see them. I was born to fight them, trained to kill them,” Alyx says. “You’re mortal. You shouldn’t be involved in this war.”
“They involved me. I’m involved.”
“You don’t have to be. You can just pretend you never saw them.”
“You don’t understand. They involved me. They’ve been after me since they realized I can see them. I have run for so many years.” His lips press into a stubborn line. “I won’t run anymore.”
“Then it’s only a matter of time before one of them kills you.”
“I’m going to hell anyway, I might as well take as many of them down with me.”
For a moment, his facade slips and Alyx sees it, under his hardened shell, his shield, she sees it... his pain. Delicate and vulnerable and beautiful. It’s then that Alyx realizes this mortal has barely seen a handful of winters more than she.
He looks up, a new light in his eyes. “You can teach me. Teach me to kill them like you can.”
“What? No?”
“I’ll be a good student. I’ll do everything you tell me too.”
A distance cry of an eagle pulls her attention away from him. It is Symon’s call but it sounds rushed, desperate. The lightwarriors sent out after her are coming. They will soon find her. They will find him. The call sounds again.
A chill settles on Alyx’s spine. They cannot find her with this strange mortal standing here near the body of the Darkened that she just killed in front of him. This mortal knows too much. Too much to just wipe his memory. What would the Elders do with him?
Protect him,
something unexplainable in her body cries out.
“You have to go,” Alyx says, the urgency rising in her voice.
“Take me with you.”
“Didn’t you hear me, you have to leave. Now. They can’t find you here.”
“I can fight with you, alongside you.”
“They won’t accept you. Mortals aren’t supposed to be involved in this war.”
“Please, I need to see you again. I have so many questions.”
“I can’t answer them. Go. Leave now. If you want to live.”
“No. I have spent too long running from them, without answers, and now that I’ve found you…” His lip curls in defiance. “I’m not leaving.”
“They’ll punish me if they find you here,” Alyx cries in desperation.
At this he relents. “Okay I’ll go. But only if you promise that you’ll meet me again.”
She shouldn’t. “I can’t.”
“Then I’m staying. And we can both be damned.”
Symon’s call is close now. Soon, Alyx and this mortal will be seen from above and it will be too late.
“Fine, I’ll meet you.”
He nods, his face showing relief. “Give me your blade.”
“What?”
“I need assurance that you’ll come back.”
Symon’s call comes again, closer. It sounds like he is almost above them. Alyx growls like a cornered tiger and thrusts the handle of her blade to him. “You don’t know what you’re asking me to do,” she says quietly.
“Where shall I meet you?” he says, taking the kris from her and tucking it into his belt.
“Saint Paul’s Cathedral. Do you know it?”
“Yes.”
“Tomorrow night. Midnight. Now go, damn you.”
“Till tomorrow night then,” he says as he turns. Only then does Alyx realize she doesn’t know his name.
Instead of going out the mouth of the alley, he runs down the other way towards the chain link fence, the dead end. His footsteps are surprisingly light for a mortal of his size.
Alyx frowns. Where is he going? There is no way out from that end. To her shock the mortal leaps up on top of the lid of a large industrial bin, kicks off the chain-link fence towards the outside of a brick building. Instead of falling he clings to the wall. He is grasping at handholds so small that Alyx can’t see them from where she is standing. He starts to crawl up the wall like a four legged spider. Then he disappears into the dark second-storey window of the building.
Is he really mortal?
Chapter 21
Alyx makes an eagle call. Almost immediately, there is a return call from Symon. They are close.
Alyx moves to the Darkened corpse. Blood pools around the body and trickles along the gravel like dark rivers. Alyx looks around for any signs that the mortal has been here; a bloody footprint, a torn piece of shirt...
The swish of air behind her tells her that the other lightwarriors have started arriving. A set of footsteps approach her.
A chill goes through her when she sees who it is. “What are you doing here?”
Yael ignores her and kicks the dead Darkened over with his boot.
“Have some respect,” Alyx says. “She may have been Darkened but she was mortal once too.”
Yael turns to Alyx, malice in his eyes. “You are not one to talk to me about respect. What are you thinking flying off like that, breaking protocol?”
“Leave the lectures to me Yael. You are not her keeper.” Symon steps down to the gravel and strides towards them. Alyx is about to step to Symon’s side but the look in his eye makes her draw back.
Yael growls at Symon and clenches his fists. “If you were able to keep her in line I wouldn’t have reason to talk to her like that.”
“Can we stop arguing and focus on the task at hand here,” Lutando says, as he lands softly near them and steps closer to the body. “Alyx what happened?”
“She was dead when I got here. I couldn’t see anyone else.”
“She was killed here.” Lutando kneels down and touches a patch of blood with the edge of a finger. “There’s a lot of blood, still wet. She can’t have been dead for long. There’s her demonsword.”
Symon kneels on the other side of the body. With the tips of his fingers he pinches the hem of her top. He peels it back. No Adere. No message.
He turns to Alyx. “Do you know if it is the same killer as your first vision?”
“I’m not sure. It could be,” she lies. She cringes internally when her voice rises up at the end of her sentence.
“Two killers?” says Lutando.
“What I want to know is why you took so long to answer back your location,” says Yael.
“What are you insinuating?”
Yael steps forward to close the distance between them. “What aren’t you telling us?”
Alyx stands her ground. “I’m not hiding anything. You know just as much as I do.”
“I have something,” a voice calls from nearer the mouth of the alley.
Yael glares at Alyx again then heads down the alley to where Do’hann is crouched.
Alyx grabs Symon before he too moves down the alleyway. “Why did Yael and Do’hann come?”
Symon shrugs her hand off his arm. He stares at her, jaw twitching, before finally speaking, “You flying off like that raised some questions. Varian convinced Michael that it would be prudent to send
two of his flock members along with us as he suggested that I may lie to protect you.”
Alyx’s face flushes. “I’m sorry Symon, I didn’t think―.”
“That’s right Alyx, you didn’t think.” Symon sighs, an exasperated sigh, and pushes back the hair from his forehead. “I don’t want to talk about this now. Just be on your best behavior.”
Alyx toys with a loose piece of gravel with her boot. She feels like she is eight winters again. Symon strides off to join Yael and Do’hann.
Her gaze rolls across the dark buildings around her. She thinks she sees a figure moving in one of the windows. She blinks but it is gone.
It is the mortal. She can feel him, her heart beating faster in her chest.
Alyx takes a deep breath. It’s not too late to tell them about the mortal. They could capture him tomorrow at Saint Paul’s Cathedral at midnight. She could wash her hands of this tainted responsibility, let the Elders deal with him.
I can’t hand him over...
but if she doesn’t and is found out, the consequences...
An image of the mortal’s face comes into her mind, of those few seconds where his cool facade dropped and she saw him. Really saw him. He carries more pain with him than he should. More pain than she carries with her. He is alone with no one, as Alyx was before Symon took her in. He is alone and he asked for her help.
In that moment Alyx knows she won’t betray him. She nods once to the dark empty window, as if it could confirm to him that she will keep her word, then turns and walks towards the lightwarriors at the end of the alley.
They are peering at something in Yael’s hand. Her heart drops. It is the mortal’s forgotten knife, an antique hunting knife.
“...another demon maybe?” Lutando is saying. “The killer? But why would the Rogue have this old thing? And why would they leave it behind?”
“Why indeed,” says Yael sneering. “Explain this Alyx.”
Her mind freezes. What should she say?
“Yael, stop interrogating her,” says Symon. “She’s not the suspect here.”
Yael turns to him. “Your affection blinds you. She knows something that she isn’t telling.”
“Yael Oistin, you will remember your rank and who you are speaking to.”