by A. P. Moraez
“We can’t do anything for him,” Duke said. “We have to find shelter. Now.”
They’d just gotten behind the wall of Mercedes and turned around to look at the house when the impossible happened.
A beam of light burst right through the roof of the house and shot towards the night sky. It was massive, thick as an ancient oak. It thundered and thundered, and that buzzing Ash had noticed just a few minutes ago while he was still in there with Billy now roared through the air as the light pierced the clouds up above, and then… then it was in him. Ash barely noticed the arms holding him for a second, before letting him go. He fell to his knees behind the Mercedes and cried out as pressure like he’d never imagined amassed in his head. At the far back of his consciousness Ash knew he was screaming, but the very capacity for hearing was gone. All there was was the roaring, sizzling, massive beam of light running to the skies and the pressure bringing his head to the brim of bearable pain.
Flash.
A pale young man inside a clock-tower, face saddened as he gazed through glass and wrought iron, resting on his wheelchair. There was a city down there. It looked big against the night sky. Like an irregular ocean of stars. He leaned forward and pressed his palm, fingers stretched, against the glass at the same time thunder crisscrossed the night sky.
Flash.
A ginger, bearded, muscled man, shirtless and sweaty, fists wrapped in white, stained cloth. He winked to the crowd around the ring and squared off against his opponent, both nostrils bleeding. He smirked and raised his arm to throw a punch. Something sparked around his fist right when it was about to connect with the other man’s face.
Flash.
A young man inside the caverns of a mine, pickax in hand. Solid, tanned. He smiled to the bearded man at his side. The walls started to shake and his friend was swallowed by rocks. Tears smudged the man’s clean-shaven, dirty face. He fell to his knees, holding on to his friend’s little finger and threw his head back in sorrow. The ground between his legs cracked right in the middle.
Flash
A sunny day. The janitor, young, tanned, with the anchor tattoo on his left wrist, dropped the mopping stick as soon as the boy fell into the tank. He ran and jumped in. He got to the boy and grinned underwater. The smile was wiped off of his face as soon as he realized how close the rushing shark was to getting to them. The man embraced the kid underwater and closed his eyes.
Flash.
A slim, emo-looking young man. Pale as death itself. He stared down at the dancers in the club as flickering, multicolored lights took his face in and out of Ash’s sight. The guy leaned back from the railing and took a look at his phone. With a last look at the dance floor, he lifted his hood and, like smoke, vanished in shadows.
Flash.
Ash opened his eyes to see that the beam of light was gone. Everything was darkness and Duke had both hands squeezing his shoulders.
“Ash!” he cried. “Ash, talk to me.”
The pressure in his head was gone.
What the hell had just happened? Who were those people he’d seen?
“Down!”
All Ash had time to process was Duke’s strong arm wrapping all around him and bringing him to flush with the ground before a deafening explosion shook the very ground and cars all around him.
His ears rang for several moments before he could hear clearly again.
People were checking with each other, asking if they were okay. He only wanted to know where Logan was.
“Are you okay?” Duke asked. Ash nodded, already pushing him away.
A wave of instant relief ran through his whole system when he saw Logan right there, also sitting up. He was pale and sweating, leg probably killing him, but thankfully alive.
Ash crawled to him. “How you feeling?” he asked at the same time he brought both hands to Logan’s sweaty face and pressed a kiss on his forehead. Sweat and dust had never tasted better.
“I’m okay,” Logan responded, voice small and fragile.
“No, you’re not.”
“Just lost a little blood.”
Ash scowled at him and closed his eyes. But then he remembered something.
“Diana, come here.”
She was seated a few feet away, clutched to Henry as if she never intended to let go.
“Why?” she asked, voice as small as Logan’s.
“Just come here, please.”
She threw Henry a look, but then withdraw from his arms and crawled the few feet that separated her from Logan and him.
“One more thing you can’t talk about to anyone, okay?”
She nodded hesitantly, looking beyond confused.
Ash rested his right hand over Logan’s wound and the other he closed lightly against Diana’s arm.
Both gasped in pain, but didn’t utter a single word.
Ash closed his eyes and visualized the wounds closing. He visualized bullets coming out and tissues closing back together. Bones mending and blood vessels healing. What was becoming now the familiar effervescent warmth followed by blinding cold pulsed once, twice through both his forearms, then diminished to a dull pulse.
Both Logan and Diana hissed and groaned, but otherwise didn’t complain. When the pulsing in his arms finally vanished, Ash allowed himself to open his eyes and remove his hands from where they’d been. Nothing had come out of Diana, but Logan’s leg gifted him with a small silver bullet. Ash pocketed it immediately, so nobody would see.
Logan had seen it all before, so his reaction was nothing more than widening his eyes a bit and then raising sparkling sapphires to him with a grateful smile playing on his lips. Diana, on the other hand, looked like she was about to pass out. She darted her eyes from the unmarred skin that now was in the place of the gaping bulled hole that had been on her arm just a few seconds ago to Ash, then back down, then back to him.
She shook her head. “When we get back, I’m not going to bed without at least half a bottle of Jack.”
Ash and Logan laughed and she gave them a rare smile. A genuine smile. Maybe there was still hope that they’d become friends.
“Look! There’s someone there!” someone shouted from a couple feet behind them. A stocky woman wearing lilac pajamas with bears printed in them. A neighbor, probably.
Ash hushed to his feet and spun around to see what she was pointing at.
Nothing had remained of the house but its structure. There was a heavy cloud of dust that reached the middle of the street and covered the whole space where the house used to be. It was heavy and thick, making it hard to see. But there was one thing easy to see: how the force of whatever it was that had just happened had cracked or dislodged the sidewalk and first few cobblestones immediately attached to the house. Ash’d never thought he’d see something like that.
There were sirens coming in the distance. He could only hope someone had called the firefighters. There were little spots of fire rolling off the blown-up house’s structure. It could easily spread around with the furious wind the blizzard was blowing everywhere.
The snow was also making it extremely difficult to see anything, but Ash narrowed his eyes and tried harder.
“It’s a boy, I think,” one of Duke’s guys said to his side.
And it was.
Billy.
He was sitting there, only his vague shape recognizable among the clouds of dust and unrelenting snow.
“Billy!” Ash cried, already running toward the ruins.
“You can’t go there alone,” Logan growled, hand clasping around Ash’s upper arm. “It’s too dangerous.”
“I’m the only one who can,” Ash responding, looking right at the sapphires. Logan studied him for a moment, then let him go.
Hushed voices reached his ears as he rushed to the house, hand raised in front of his eyes to protect himself.
The smell of smoke and ashes was intoxicating, but Ash forged through, boots crackling over pieces of charred wood and destroyed stone. He approached carefully, making sure he
wasn’t stepping on anything dangerous.
When Billy’s shape became sharper against all the dust and blinding snow flakes, Ash’s arms started pulsing their warm-cold soft pattern and, just a few seconds later, Ash thanked all that was sacred that he was the one seeing this, and not someone else. Someone to whom weird things hadn’t been happening the last few days. Someone who wouldn’t understand why there was a boy floating in a bubble of clean air amidst so much dirt and chaos.
Little tendrils of light were rolling, dancing all over his hands, and when Billy lifted his head to look at Ash, his eyes were all filled with light; it seems to be alive there, pulsing. He was still naked, hugging his knees, floating a few feet from the floor. The creepiest thing, though, was his hair. Gone was the deep, rich dark brown; it all white now. Whiter than the snow that stopped and vanished as soon as it touched whatever the circular field protecting Billy was made of. Ash didn’t dare take a single step forward.
“Billy?” Ash tried. “You’re okay?”
It took a few seconds, but the young man nodded. The waves of light that’d been dancing along his arms, neck, filling his eyes, suddenly disappeared, leaving a very normal-looking — white hair aside — Billy behind.
“What’s happening to me?” Billy asked, voice shaky. “What just happened?”
“I don’t… I don’t know. You sure you feel okay?”
Billy squeezed his eyes shut and, for a second, his hands flared with light, but then were back to normal.
“Is everyone okay? Is Logan okay?” he asked, ignoring Ash’s question.
“Yeah. Yeah, he’s right across the street.”
“Good,” Billy murmured. “That’s goo—
The field around him seemed to disappear as Billy passed out, falling to the side. Ash removed his sweater and covered him before too much ash and snow could shroud him, and then the ambulances were there. And the firefighters. And the local news channels. And then everything was chaos.
it will be alright
LOGAN SQUEEZED ASH’S hand even stronger than he’d been doing since they’d stepped out of the Lexus twenty minutes or so ago, as they watched the casket being gently rolled down into the earth. It was just a symbolic burial, of course. They’d put a few photos and a few of Ian’s clothes inside, since his body had probably turned to dust when Billy… when whatever happened to Billy that night happened, two nights ago. It didn’t make the experience any less painful, though; the loss less significant.
They were both wearing similar outfits: dark suits covered by dark coats. Ash brought their intertwined hands to his lips and kissed the back of Logan’s hand gently, then circled his left arm around Logan’s waist as they watched the casket drifting lower and lower. When it hit the ground seven feet down, Ash thought Logan was gonna crush his hand, but he squeezed right back and didn’t let go.
There were tears constantly escaping from under Logan’s shades and even though Ash knew it was healthy to grieve and let the pain and loss run their courses, there was nothing he wouldn’t have given to take Logan’s pain away. Unfortunately, that was not how life worked, so he just hugged Logan close and let him squeeze his hand and cry silently as the O’Farrells, one by one, walked forward and let their handful of white rose petals fall over the casket down there.
Diana stepped forward as soon as Cass — today free of color and artifice, natural chestnut hair having under the remnants of the blizzard which had thankfully somewhat abated at some point this morning — stepped back, holding Peter’s hand. Diana brushed by them, but then stopped in her tracks. She turned to them and it was shocking seeing the usually flawless woman — always with her stylish outfits and makeup game on point — just looking utterly devastated, no makeup to cover her puffed-up, red-rimmed eyes.
“Come on,” she urged, voice low, as she reached out to Logan’s free left hand.
It took a second for Logan to unfreeze, but then he took a shaky breath and wrapped his way bigger hand around hers. As a trio, hand in hand, they shuffled closer to the edge of the grave and let the petals go. Just days ago, he’d been surrounded by rose petals for a completely different reason. Now… now this. Life was funny that way sometimes.
When they stepped back, Diana lost it and hugged Logan, her front to his side. He lifted his arm and pressed a kiss to the top of her platinum head. Ian had been a part of his life when he was a kid and just the few month’s they’d had together here in the mountains had been enough to remind Ash how much he loved the man. Logan and Diana, though? Ian had been their friend every day for close to fourteen years now. Sharing meals and laughter, and the lows too. He couldn’t even imagine how hard the loss was hitting them.
They stood there, silent, crying, as Father Williams spoke the practiced speech, even though he hadn’t known Ian at all. Generic things like how he’d been a good man. How he’d be dearly missed by everyone who knew him. How he was in a better place now. It felt wrong, the words, the scene, the very fact that he’d never get to hear Ian’s laughter again. Never get to see that glint in his eyes wherever he’d catch Logan and Ash having a sweet moment, completely oblivious.
Leo was gone now. He should be happy and relieved, but all he felt was… empty. Because Ian was never coming back. Because Morgan was never coming back. And Eric. And so many others. The angel of death was gone — this time beyond a shadow of a doubt — but the song he left behind with the last flapping of his wings was heavy and long-lasting; covered everything in gray and dull and empty.
“C’mon,” Logan said after pressing one more kiss to Diana’s head. “We should go see if Billy woke up.”
The boy had been asleep last time they left the hospital, a few hours ago, before going home to get ready for the burial. Two nights ago, right after Billy passed out, the street had been overtaken by ambulances and firetrucks and reporters in a matter of minutes. Their faces were probably plastered all over the globe right now, smudged with ash with a blown-up house as a backdrop. Duke had dealt with them as Ash and Logan entered the Lexus — which had thankfully been discarded just a few streets away and readily found by some of Duke’s teams — and followed the ambulance taking an unconscious Billy to the nearest hospital. Henry had driven them there, since Logan’d been too weak from blood loss and Ash had been too shaken by the events of the night.
As a thanks, and also because he just wasn’t an asshole, Ash had healed Henry’s black eye and whatever minor injuries he’d had, before they crossed the hospital doors. Later in the evening, when Duke finally got there after more than an hour of dealing with the media, Ash had dragged him to a darkened corner and done the same to his injuries and bruises. Poor guy, Ash’d never forget his face in that moment, how he couldn’t grab his jaw back from his feet.
The story they had quickly come up in the few minutes before being swarmed was that they’d just been visiting a friend when a fire had started in the kitchen and the situation had escalated from there. Thanks God Ash had thought quickly to remove Billy from the middle of the wreckage before anybody else aside from Duke’s guys and the few neighbors around could see what the hell was happening, because nobody would believe a boy of barely eighteen had escaped unscathed from a house blowing up due to a gas-leakage.
Before Logan could turn around to lead them to the car, Diana stepped back from him and wiped off stray tears from her cheeks, then she rose her brown gaze to them and said, “I actually can’t. I’m on the first afternoon flight back to LA.”
“Oh, right,” Logan said. “I forgot.”
She leaned on her tiptoes to give him a hug, then surprised the hell out of Ash when she let Logan go and did the same to him. He’d never imagined that they’d become the kind of acquaintances — were they friends? Ash didn’t think they truly were; not yet — that hugged each other. Apparently, Diana thought differently. Maybe surviving a crazed psychopath and witnessing what Ash was pretty sure was magic operating all around them did that to people. When the woman leaned back, she looked Ash in the eye
and said, “Thank you for…” she darted a glance to her arm “…for helping out with your alien-mumbo-jumbo thing.”
Ash snorted out a laugh. “No problem.”
“Son,” Tom rumbled from behind them, making Ash turn around, Logan with him. “We’re going ahead and going home to settle things. You guys going to the hospital first?”
“Yeah,” Ash responded. “Last time we checked on him was last night. We wanted to go again to see if he woke up.”
Martha had her hand clasped with her husband’s. She smiled kindly at them right when Jeff and his family approached the group, Cass and Peter behind them. “Send him a hug,” she said. “From all of us. In case he’s awake, that is.”
Ash smiled back. “We will.”
Their family threw him and Logan little smiles of support and followed along, disappearing at the bridge in the corner. Hoofslope’s little cemetery wasn’t too far from O’Farrell’s that they’d needed to take cars. It was a little ways away from Jeff’s house, but since they’d all agreed to have lunch together, later, at Tom’s, that didn’t matter. And just the fact that they could do it now, safe, without a target on their backs, was overwhelming. Ash couldn’t fully believe it yet. Almost three days later and the coin was still to drop. That Leo was gone. That they were safe. That the nightmare was over.
“Well, that’s it, then,” Diana started, “See you, guys.” She made to turn around, but seemed to remember something. “Oh, Logan, I almost forgot. The agents responsible for the two scripts that we discussed a few days ago replied. They’ve accepted our terms, but I know that now… that you aren’t in the head space to think about work right now, so I can call them and cancel everything, if you want.”
Logan contemplated her words for a moment, biting his bottom lip. His eyes fluctuated to the grave to the side, then he puffed out an exhale and shook his head. “No,” he said, “you can proceed with the normal protocols. I think working on something I like is exactly what I need right now.”
