by T. Mikita
“You’ll get the next one.” Asher said, even though they both knew she wouldn’t.
“Just don’t think of this is a date, or anything,” she teased.
“Fine,” he said. “Where do you want to eat?”
The guy behind them in the line looked up from his phone, eyeing Jules for a moment.
She glared at him. He went back to scrolling, a blush running along his ears, although it could have been the cold reddening his skin.
Asher laughed. He had never been romantically involved with Jules. Asher remembered in middle school when he had rescued her boyfriend from a swirly. He brought the slightly dripping boy out to her, amid grudging thanks. At the tender age of eleven she had not wanted to enter the boy’s bathroom to confront the bullies. Nowadays, she would not have hesitated. She rescued her own boyfriends.
The thought made Asher smile as he looked at her. She was wearing dark make-up, expertly applied, as was her forte, and a pair of black jeans and black high-heeled boots to compensate for the fact that she was still rather short. She was only a tad over five feet. Five one and a half, she would tell you, but she didn’t let that stop her. Her dark hair was pulled up in a high pony-tail like some eighties retro chick does goth. Jules took no one’s shit. Not even his. Asher had always admired that about her.
“What?” she said looking down at her clothes and then touching her cheeks. Her black nail polish showed dark against her pale skin. “Do I have something on my face?”
Asher shook his head. “Just wondering why Gavin didn’t come today,” he asked referencing her current boyfriend.
“He had to work.”
“That never stopped him before.” It was a dig and Asher knew it.
Jules shrugged, which meant she didn’t want to talk about it, but Asher couldn’t let it go. “I just can’t picture you staying with him long term. Being all wife-y.”
“At least, he’s not gay,” Jules said defensively, crossing her arms. Asher knew Jules seemed to have a penchant for getting involved with the wrong type of men, or at least men that left her for other men. She may look hard as nails, but Jules had a soft spot for a sob story. He thought she had overcompensated this time with Gavin. The man was just this side of a Neanderthal.
“Yeah, but in a few years, he will be all ‘shut up woman, and take care of the kids.’ That’s not you, Jules–” Asher cut off the words abruptly as Jules prepared to step out.
“Wait.” He put a hand on her arm, stopping her. His senses peaked again, almost smothering him with their intensity. He could not ignore the strange feeling no matter how hard he tried. It crawled up his neck causing him to look behind them and then out and down the street. Nothing was there. Nonetheless, something didn’t feel right. They were trapped by the collection of people standing in line for the book signing and blocking the door.
Wasn’t that against some code, he thought, looking at the group? Rounded up like cattle, he thought, waiting for slaughter. A shiver ran up his spine. Asher tried to say something, but his mouth went dry and he couldn’t seem to get his tongue around the words.
Jules reached out a hand and put it on his elbow. She was not normally a touchy person. Her face was serious. She felt it too.
Asher stood utterly still, shifting his eyes left and right. Then he saw them. Three men with dark five o’clock shadow were walking across the street from the bus terminal. They were so much alike they looked like triplets. All dressed in the same in dark green leather. A gang, Asher wondered? Here? That seemed unlikely. Although they were downtown.
Asher shifted his feet apart.
The men’s hands were in their pockets. Normally, Asher would have thought of knives, but something told him they were hiding claws. What? Claws? Were had that thought come from? He shook the ridiculous notion away.
The three men came towards Asher and Jules. Asher blew out his breath trying to relax. He was overreacting. Maybe they would just walk by.
Jules pulled her hands out of her own pockets and balled them into fists. Jules had gotten a gun and carry permit right after her eighteenth birthday, but guns weren’t allowed in the convention center, so she left her Browning locked in the car. Normally, Asher wasn’t a gun sort of man, but right now it would have been welcome. The thought was equally ridiculous. The three men had done nothing wrong.
The guy in front smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. His eyes were strange, an acid green with dark slitted pupils. “What the hell?” Asher breathed. He knew unequivocally that an altercation was eminent, though he couldn’t say why. From the tension in Jules hands, she knew it too.
The three men came right for Asher and Jules as if some radar drew them.
“Fuck,” Asher muttered under his breath.
The guy behind Asher protested as the strange group pushed forward through the line. “Back of the line’s that way, asshole.” He thumbed towards the rear of the line. Sassy little guy, Asher thought. In that moment he liked the kid even if he had been eyeing up Jules.
The guy in green leather backhanded the kid and he staggered, mouth bleeding. That was Asher’s first confirmation that these guys were bad news. The second was when he saw their hands. Claws. Looking wicked and dangerous and not like a costume at all. What the hell?
“Knife!” Someone in the line shouted. Suddenly the man was holding a switchblade. Asher blinked, thinking he had imagined the claws. A knife was bad enough.
Asher held out open palms. “Now, just a minute…” he began trying to diffuse the situation.
The guy ignored him and reached for the kid again.
Jules had a thing for defenseless men, and she never was one to mind her own business. She stepped in front of the man with the knife. “Hey, man. Just chill,” she said calmly, but the other two guys in the group moved up behind the first, like back up.
Damn. This was really not how he wanted his day to go. Asher glanced towards the convention center door. Where the fuck was security? The moment he turned back to Jules and the threat, the first guy lunged forward sinking the knife into the kid’s side, hilt deep. The boy’s cell phone clattered on the pavement. He didn’t even make a sound as he fell.
Blood welled up as the knife was withdrawn. The man in green stood calmly, with the blade dripping bright blood on the wet sidewalk.
The next guy in line beside them screamed long and loud.
The rest of the crowd parted like the Red Sea, some rushing from the entrance, heading into the convention center and others running back towards the street and Greyhound Bus station.
Only Jules stood as if frozen, but Asher knew she wasn’t. She parted her feet and stood her ground. Asher stood with her.
The first man moved toward her, and she kicked him in the face with her booted foot. Blood flew from his broken nose. Hard to fight when you can’t breathe.
The second man leapt at Asher, a blur of dark green and flashing light and heat. Asher hit him, but he didn’t stop. He didn’t even slow down. There were more than three, surely. They seemed to be everywhere. Asher jumped back hoping to avoid a blow, but a talon drew a line of blood across his chest, cutting straight through his leather coat like it was butter. The pain seemed to energize him. He fought back with all of his speed and strength, grabbing the man’s wrist and twisting it. The man let out a howl as Asher turned the knife on the man. Blood covered Asher’s hands. He could feel the warmth of it in the cold evening air, he must have cut the man somehow, but he kept coming. Asher went a little crazy then, hitting the men and trying to avoid getting stabbed.
The pain came out of nowhere, a searing burning pain in his side that stole Asher’s breath. One of them had jumped up from the pavement where Jules had knocked him and hit Asher from behind. He felt the soft stinging burn plunge through skin and deeper stuff, and then sluggishly, almost as if he could slow time, he felt his entire left side start to go numb. He reached automatically back towards the wound. Asher stumbled on his rapidly deteriorating left leg. Then the security wa
s there. Two burly guys in blue rent-a-cop uniforms pulled the man off of him.
Asher felt woozy and nauseous. He fell to the pavement rapping his knees sharply on the wet cement.
“Call an ambulance,” someone said, as sparkles of light filled Asher’s vision, and his glasses fell from his face.
“Jules,” he croaked out.
“Your girlfriend’s okay,” the woman said. “She’s going in the ambulance too.”
“Not my girlfriend,” Asher mumbled before the world went dark.
2
Stitches
Asher came awake to the controlled chaos of the hospital emergency room. He winced as a needle pierced his abdomen. It was only then that he noticed the doctor working on his sliced side, stitching him up. He was hooked up to an IV. This was so not how he planned to spend his day.
He hissed with the dulled pain and the doctor looked at him over her surgical mask with startling blue eyes set in a dark face.
“Last stitch,” the woman said. She poked his side again with a needle, her long bronzed fingers working with swift efficiency. He gritted his teeth as she finished.
“I didn’t expect you to be awake so soon. Any dizziness?” the doctor asked.
“A little,” Asher croaked,” and my mouth is a bit dry. Where are my glasses?”
The doctor nodded and gestured to the rolling side table as she finished the stitches. It held Asher’s glasses and a small pitcher of water. “Drink lots of fluids when you get home. If the dizziness increases, come back to the hospital. Otherwise, see your primary care physician to get these stitches out in about two weeks. Sooner if this gets red and puffy. We don’t want you getting infected.” She poked his side again and Asher winced. “You are very lucky, my friend.”
“How so?” Asher asked. He was knifed. How was that lucky?
He grimaced as she tied off the last stitch and pulled out a pen light to shine in his eyes. He followed it as she asked and she checked his vitals. She recorded his info before she answered.
“The blade was poisoned,” she said at last. “Some kind of neurotoxin, similar to a snake venom.” She gave him serious eyes. “I do not know what kind of snake. I’ve never seen the exact match.”
“Fuck,” he intoned looking at the long slash on his abdomen.
“What’s the month?”
He looked at her a moment too long.
“Are you feeling dizzy or confused?”
He shook his head, although the room swam a bit. It really didn’t help him focus. “December,” he said at last.
“What day is it?” she asked.
“Saturday. Unless it’s after midnight. Then Sunday.”
She nodded.
“And your name?”
“Asher,” he said. “Asher Pendrick. Did you call my parents?” he asked.
“We tried the emergency contacts once we had you stabilized. They went straight to voicemail,” the doctor said. “Your girlfriend thought perhaps they were asleep and did not hear the phone.”
Asher nodded. It was late.
The doctor asked several other questions to be sure he was not confused by the poison, and then nodded her satisfaction. “It appears the antidote we gave you was close enough to work, since you are awake and oriented.”
Asher looked at his side. Twisting hurt. The doctor had done a good job, making neat little black stitches, but there were an awful lot of them.
“It should not leave much of a scar,” she said as the nurse cleaned up the tray of instruments, all rife with his blood.
“Thanks, doc.”
“You’re welcome.”
“How is my friend?” He asked, looking around the curtained area. “I think they brought her in too. Jules Martin?”
“Yes. She’s already been released,” the doctor said as she stripped off her gloves and placed them in the receptacle. “She has some bruises, but nothing broken, and no knife wounds, unlike you. The police have been waiting to talk to you too if you feel up to it.”
He nodded.
“I’ll get your paperwork. If you feel any dizziness or numbness in your side, come back to the ER,” she said. “I gave you the antidote for the closest snake venom match and you are awake; so far so good. Actually, the anti-venom worked more quickly than I expected, but I am concerned with what exactly was on that blade. You have some very determined enemies, Mr. Pendrick,” she said seriously. “That knife was meant to kill you.”
“Apparently,” Asher said although he didn’t know anyone that wanted him dead. He was nobody special. How did he a Jules end up in some kind of gang fight? It had to be a mistake.
“As I said, you are very lucky,” she said with all seriousness. “Do you understand?”
“Yes,” he said.
The doctor gave him a quick nod as she finished the bandages on his side. Then she took a clipboard from the counter and picked up a pen.
“Are you allergic to any medications?”
He shook his head while she wrote on the clipboard. She pulled off the perforated part and handed him a prescription. “This is a prescription for an antibiotic. Tylenol for the pain. If you have any relapse, don’t wait. Seek medical attention,” she said.
Asher nodded and the doctor left him. He poured himself a glass of water and chugged it. He felt like he had a hangover. The dry mouth was annoying and his side ached, but as the doctor said, it could have been worse. He eased off the gurney and grimaced as a sharp pain laced through his side with the movement. He reached for his clothes. His shirt was bloody and had obviously been cut off of him, and his leather coat was sliced with the same long cut as his side. He looked at it for a long moment. Asher considered the flaking blood on the ruined garment. He sighed. He had liked this coat.
A smiling nurse came in and repeated the directions that the physician had just given him. Asher held up his ruined shirt. “Can you by chance, find me something to wear,” he said. “I don’t want to put the coat on over the bandages. It is rather bloody too.”
The nurse found him a scrub shirt, so Asher could speak to the police. They took both his shirt and his coat for evidence. It didn’t matter. The clothes were ruined anyway.
One officer was petite and female. She had short blonde hair and a gun on her hip that seemed almost bigger than she was. She introduced herself as officer Cobb and her partner as Turner. “To tell you the truth,” Cobb said as she put his clothing into an evidence bag. “There is little chance that we will find the culprits without more of a description, but we will do our best. The doctor seemed to think this was a deliberate attempt on your life.”
“And the other boy,” said Officer Turner. He shook his head sadly. Officer Turner, was obviously a military sort with short dark hair cut close to his deep mahogany skin. He could look Asher in the eye, so six foot or so, Asher guessed.
“Didn’t security catch them?” Asher glanced from Cobb to Turner. He was somewhat worried about the man he had attacked, as well as the other kid.
Officer Cobb shook her head. “Security was there…eventually,” she said. “But the culprits escaped.”
“By the time we got there, they were long gone,” Turner said in a soft melodious voice that did not seem to match his imposing exterior.
“Maybe it was just a random mugging,” Asher said hopefully.
Officer Cobb shook her head again and Asher thought of the boy behind them who was stabbed.
“Did you know the young man in line near you?” the male officer asked.
Asher shook his head thinking of the mouthy little guy. “No. He was just in line behind us. He’s dead, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” Officer Cobb agreed sadly. “Could you recognize the men? Anything distinguishing?”
Asher shook his head. “We were facing the convention center and then.” He shrugged. “It all happened so fast. I really couldn’t see anything to identify them.” What could he say about them? They had claws? He must have been mistaken.
“If anything comes to
mind,” Officer Cobb said. “Let us know. We will need you to come down to the station to give us a full statement.”
Asher agreed.
“Have you called someone to pick you up?” offered the male officer. “We can drop you…”
“It’s fine,” Asher interrupted. “I’ll be ok.”
He went out to the waiting area to find Jules. She had a lovely shiner, and a split lip. Her make-up was wiped from her blackened eye and the other was smeared giving her the appearance of a tired panda.
“You look like shit.” Asher said, cheerfully.
She grinned at him. “You should see the other guy.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Asher replied. They went through the automatic double doors and out into the cold. The rain had finally turned to a wet snowfall.
3
The Watcher
Asher and Jules took an Uber from the hospital back to his car in the convention center parking garage. Jules insisted on paying for the ride, and finally Asher let her even though he knew she didn’t have easy cash. She still had her pride.
They were dropped at the entrance to the parking area and Jules complained about the long walk through the complex, because Asher was still only wearing the light weight blue scrub shirt.
“It’s fine,” Asher said. “It’s not that far.”
They were almost at the car when a homeless man caught up with them. How did he even get into the parking garage? When the man started spouting nonsense, Asher grasped Jules’ arm and increased their pace. He sucked in a breath at the pain that laced through his side at the sudden movement. He did not need this today. The man followed them, insistent. Asher dug in his jean’s pocket for some spare cash, but the man shook his head. Since when did the homeless refuse money?
“It’s almost midnight and I’m tired,” Asher said to the man. “Go home or find a shelter.”
The man shook his head again.
“Fine. Suit yourself.” Asher pushed the bills back into his jeans pocket.