Unsung Requiem: The Ghost Bird Series: #13

by C. L. Stone

  His heart raced, partially that he’d smoked pot and that he would likely get into so much trouble. Part of it was that he was driving this new car and every time he hit the gas, it shot forward.

  Focus. Focus now.

  He repeated this through the fog in his brain. They hadn’t taken that much, or so he thought. He even had tried to hold the smoke in his mouth more than his lungs, but still, the effect was so strong.

  But now, he had to get Sang. Get her and get out.

  He waited on the other side of the maintenance building. Luke had gone to get Gabriel, telling Victor to wait here in this car and don’t move.

  But orders changed once he got the emergency call from North, telling him to get Sang and drive off.

  “Don’t go far,” North said. “Just find a block you can hide in and sit. And go slow. Wait until you sober before going further. Spend the night in the car if you have to.”

  What happened to the others that they were all too busy? Why did that seem to happen? Everything fell on him.

  Victor thought he was doing much better. He managed to get the car this far.

  Victor put the call in to Sang and waited for her where he said he’d be.

  Sang appeared, her hair disheveled and her clothes dirty. She ran to the car once she spotted it, opening the passenger door. She peered in. “Victor?”

  “Get in, we have to go,” Victor said.

  She hesitated. “But…”

  “Unless you’re driving!”

  She shook her head slowly and took another minute, but then got in.

  “Buckle in,” Victor said. “I’ll try not to kill us.”

  Focus. Focus. Focus. Don’t even look at her.

  She was saying something, but with the pot fogging his brain and trying to figure out how to drive the car, he tuned her out. Just for now.

  “Don’t talk,” he said. “Let me focus. … Focus…”

  He talked to himself now, loud, about the steps he needed to take. “Push the gas. No, too much. Brake. Release brake slowly. Turn the wheel.”

  The car coasted a little while idling but didn’t go too far. He followed the road until he realized it was a dead end behind the coliseum, however, there was a field and he pushed the gas this time, going over it.

  “Maybe we can just park it in those trees,” Sang said, holding on to her seat and still bouncing a bit as Victor drove through the grass.

  The bottom of the car scraped a few times against rocks and debris. For a moment, he thought it was going to be stuck, but it pulled away with a bit more push to the gas pedal.

  “We have to find a…” Victor wanted to try to remember what North said but he was sure trees weren’t it. “We have to hide. Until I sober.”

  “Go over there, maybe?” Sang pointed.

  It was a spot between two trees, like she’d said before. Yet the location didn’t seem right.

  Victor found a single lane on the other side of the wide expanse of grass and followed it. This led to a bigger two-lane road.

  He didn’t know where they were. He didn’t really have a location in mind. Once he was on the road, he slowly pushed the gas more. A bit too fast at one point, to where the car zipped forward and he feared it was much too fast. The police would pull them over.

  “Victor…” Sang said.

  He sighed when she said his name. “I wish we could run off, Sang.”

  “Maybe you can just pull over now,” she said.

  “I do love you, you know?” Victor asked. “You didn’t say it back. I know I was drunk.” It hadn’t really bothered him she didn’t say it because it was so sudden and he blurted it out. He just wanted to tell her.

  She hesitated. “Victor…”

  His heart was beaming. He was alone with her. They were safe together. They just had to get away for a while. Maybe they could go to some motel for the night. North did that with her once. He should be allowed. “Let’s go to the beach.”

  “Can you pull over for a minute?” she asked. She sat back, bracing the seat, like he was going too fast.

  Was he?

  The speedometer was so bright, he wasn’t sure what it was saying. Or were his eyes watering? Was the window open?

  Pull over. She asked to pull over.

  He turned the wheel, what he thought was a little bit.

  And suddenly, out of nowhere, the car shifted hard to the right. Like a rollercoaster out of control, the whole car tilted right, not just turned.

  Tilted all the way over.

  There was a blankness. Darkness. His face smashed against something both hard and pillowy. The airbag had deployed.

  It wasn’t until the car settled, upside down, that he opened his eyes back again. He hadn’t even realized he closed them. Had he been knocked out?

  The airbag seemed to fade away after a few moments. Where before he felt smashed in, now he hung loose.

  He could see Sang, her hair standing up on her head, until he realized it was only because she was hanging upside down, like him, still strapped to her seat.

  The bracelet he’d given her dangled from her arm, the heart drifting across her skin.

  The horror welled up in him, but he couldn’t move. He didn’t know why.

  Something blurred his eyes. Warm. Wet.

  Her door opened. She was removed. A voice. A strange voice.

  Like multiple voices at once.

  But Victor was left behind.

  Left in the car.

  Hanging upside down.

  Alone.

  Lasciare Suonare

  (Let ring, do not damp)

  Sang

  Strong arms lifted me from the car but couldn’t carry me completely.

  “Give me a hand.”

  It was a familiar voice to me. But in my dazed state, I didn’t know who.

  I let myself be carried. Not that I could have stopped them. Working my limbs seemed too difficult.

  Across a hard surface, and then a soft one. Suddenly there were trees above, and it had grown immensely darker.

  “What about the other one?” a voice asked.

  “Not him.” Again, this was familiar, and I wasn’t sure why, because the voice was distorted.

  Panic seized me. Victor. They were leaving Victor!

  This time I tried to wriggle, trying to find the air in my lungs to call out Victor’s name. I wriggled, more violently, determined to be set free.

  My face hurt. One of my hands stung sharply with pain.

  They dropped me. I landed on sticks and bramble. I covered my hand protectively.

  I wiped at my face as best as I could with my arm, my eyes were still blurred. I was looking at two glowing masks at first, at least until my vision cleared and the two merged into one.

  Volto’s mask.

  The glowing face leaned toward me. “Having to save you. Again.”

  “Victor…” I mumbled, but my throat was both dry and tight at the same time. It was hard to talk. Was something wrong with my throat?

  The Volto mask seemed to hover in the darkness, and it shook back and forth. It looked toward someone else, a shadow on top of shadow under all the trees. “See what I put up with?”

  “You could have left her,” the other one said. Male, and again, familiar, but my brain didn’t want to piece it together.

  “And lose our one advantage?” Volto leaned down toward me. “Not your fault they lie to you so much. You’re just caught in the middle.”

  “You lie,” I said, feeling myself, my body over with my good hand, checking for anything else that hurt, adjusting how I was sitting. I wasn’t sure I could run just yet. I kept my hurt hand close to my chest.

  “I’ve never lied to you,” Volto said.

  I coughed once as I leaned forward to check my legs. I was sure I was in shock. “You’ve got a group now. Working with people from the school.” I guessed, mostly as it had to be the school.

  �
�So?”

  “You told me you work alone.”

  Volto didn’t answer, only looked down at me.

  Maybe it was the shock and the car crash, or the fact that I had seen two masks when my vision wasn’t great, but suddenly I considered everything and the answer was right in front of me. “You’re not Volto.”

  The mask chuckled. “I am.”

  “Now you’re definitely lying,” I said. I tucked my feet in closer to my body, readying myself to look like I was just getting off the brambles but I was more adjusting to run. “Volto works alone.”

  “I am Volto.”

  “The real Volto is much smarter,” I said, now angry, sure I was right about this. My hand throbbed with pain and I wanted to blame him. “He’s not breaking into houses, stealing things, and then trying to sell them on the dark web.”

  “Someone has to fund this,” the other Volto said. “Might as well be the rich kid. He’s always got something lying around. Stop by his house all the time. He’s got loads of shit. Only security is always around…”

  The voice, the mechanism, it was the same.

  Like the mask we had, a real one. Only the person behind it was different. So Volto had multiple ones?

  “Look, I don’t know who you are,” I said. “But you’re sloppy, risking the lives of people likely to get caught by the police for theft, and for what? A few dollars? A few thrills?”

  “I saved you,” Volto said, the voice box getting louder.

  “Fuck this shit,” the male companion said, his shape shifting in the darkness. “Let’s just leave her.”

  The glowing mask whipped around, facing the other one. The glow illuminated his face.

  Rocky. I thought I recognized the voice. It had been a while since I’d actually seen him. The only picture that flashed into my mind was when he and Silas had big fight in my front yard after he harassed me.

  Jay and Rocky had gotten Victor and Gabriel high. Part of their plan in some way? They had to be involved in the truck and the trade but there had to be a couple more with them. Was this Volto Jay? Or someone else? I hadn’t spotted anyone in the scramble after the Jeep crashed into the truck.

  As if realizing he could be seen, Rocky backed up. “Are you crazy? I told you we should all be wearing masks.”

  “Only one wears the mask,” the other Volto said.

  “Apparently that’s not true, either,” I said.

  “Shut up!” Rocky said. He drew closer to the other Volto. “This was all stupid. You said it was an easy job, that we’d get paid, and you fucked this whole thing.”

  “It’s not over.”

  “Why are we here?” Rocky asked. “Why are we getting her? What’s this for?”

  “I didn’t start it.” The other Volto leaned down and pointed right at my chest, pushing at it with a forefinger. “How many times do I have to save you after you’ve gotten in the middle of their schemes?”

  “I believe this was your doing,” I said. “You stole their stuff.”

  “And they tried to buy it back. And I was willing to let them buy it back because they can clearly afford to do it. But now we’ll just sell it to someone else. I can wait.”

  Rocky shoved at the other Volto. “Shut up! You don’t think they couldn’t call the cops on us?”

  “They won’t.”

  “They know our faces! You said—”

  “They never call the cops!” Volto said. “They never do.”

  “Fuck this,” Rocky said and stomped away. “I’m out. Jay and I are definitely out.” He stopped walking and turned, although I couldn’t see him now, just hear him moving. “Sang, they told us a bunch of lies.”

  “I believe you,” I said. I knew just how tricky the real Volto could be… and how not so smart Rocky could be. At least he had been working with Volto and knew so much. But was this really not Jay?

  So someone else maybe?

  Rocky continued. “The house… he said we were just taking it back. This is the first time I heard it actually belonged to them.”

  “Yeah,” I said hesitantly, because the excuse sounded dumb.

  “Then said we’d sell it. Never told us… never said it was yours… or that Silas… tell Silas I didn’t know.”

  I couldn’t help it. My hand was in pain. I was so angry. I was worried about Victor. I wasn’t sure I could run yet, and I couldn’t outrun Rocky if I tried, let alone both of them. “But… you stole a lot. A safe out of the wall.”

  Rocky raised a brow. “When?”

  “You broke into Nathan’s house. All his things. The safe. The boxes of stuff that had been pulled out because Nathan was going to move.”

  Rocky tilted his head. “We didn’t break into Nathan’s house. The one on your street? We only took a trunk.”

  “Shut up,” the other Volto said.

  So it wasn’t them? They just took the trunk from someone else? “Who is behind the mask, Rocky?” I asked. “Is it Karen? Or someone else from the school?”

  “Can’t be Karen, she was the truck last I saw.”

  “Wil?”

  “Wil? What? Wait… I mean, I left the truck on foot after the crash…” He squinted at Volto. “You’re too tall. Is that you, Jay? Tell me if you’re fucking around.”

  Volto’s hovering mask flew away from me, toward Rocky. “That’s it. We should leave.”

  Rocky shoved at Volto. “Get off of me. Let me see.”

  With that, Volto bolted, off into the woods.

  Rocky chased the mask into the distance. They both disappeared quickly, not difficult to do among the trees.

  I didn’t hear them after that.

  I didn’t wait to find out. We could find Rocky later and ask. It was so clear now, how none of it from the start made sense.

  Someone else had found a mask, too, only they used it. Or maybe they’d started out together and split.

  This Volto… said they saved me. And Volto had done so a few times. But…

  There was something else. The smell. I hadn’t noticed but now that the immediate sense of threat was gone, I picked it out.

  The light jasmine scent. Something I associated with Volto a long time ago. I realized, now, that wasn’t always the case.

  I should have known.

  I wondered what happened because the last Volto… who I thought of as the real Volto… had been much more quiet, clever, and very clear with what he was doing. He was aware of what was going on around me, and often just warned me, or gave me direction.

  This one… was like the muscle, and I recalled a time of running around the bottom of a hospital away from someone trying to hurt me and Volto getting involved to save me.

  There were two, running around with the masks. Two who seemed interested in the guys on my team, and myself.

  I wondered how many times had been the alternative Volto, and the real one, what I thought of as the real one. The smarter one. The more subtle one. No wonder I’d been so confused at times when it seemed like he risked lives and also tried to help.

  Which only left more problems, because now we had to figure out two instead of one.

  Funebre

  (Funeral)

  Victor

  There was only pain.

  Every movement, from when he got pulled from the car.

  By North.

  And he held him. Held him so close Victor felt warm under the pain.

  North wiped at his face, until Victor cried out.

  Suddenly, North was gone. Eventually, he was forced to lie back and was carried into an ambulance.

  And he was alone. At least, not with people he knew.

  They spoke to him. People wearing EMS uniforms. People in police uniforms.

  But he didn’t answer. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t.

  He didn’t trust himself. He left his name. That was it.

  He did what they said. He breathed from a face mask that gave him oxygen. He lifted an ar
m when he could.

  His face was pain.

  His body hurt.

  Sang…

  He wanted to ask but couldn’t.

  And then there wasn’t pain, only sleep.

  ♥♥♥

  In the night, there was a melody on his mind. Something that sounded familiar. Some slow, sad song, maybe a nocturne, something appropriate for darkness.

  Was it familiar or was he just making up the notes? He couldn’t tell.

  He heard voices, but he couldn’t hear well over the song playing in his head.

  “I want to know everything he said.” It was his mother’s voice. He knew that one. Louder now.

  “He hasn’t said anything,” another voice, unfamiliar. “His name. And then nothing. He’s still out of it.”

  “Is it a coma?”

  “No, they gave him pain medication as soon as it was safe for him. He was in shock before. He’s been examined.”

  His mother sounded angry. “I want to know how soon I can get him on a flight.”

  “To another hospital?”

  “To Europe.”

  Victor wanted to react to this, but he couldn’t move. His body was too heavy.

  Sang.

  Where was Sang? Suddenly, just for a moment, his brain was utilizing every ounce of energy to simply remembering what was going on.

  The doctor laughed shortly. “Are you kidding me?”

  “I’m serious. When will he be ready?”

  “I can’t sign a waiver for him to be transported across an ocean.”

  “I’d prefer it be done before he wakes up.”

  Silence for a moment. “Are you seriously suggesting you’d risk his life… there’s no way any flight would allow an unconscious teenager to fly to another country. The country wouldn’t even accept him in his condition. No sensible airline—”

  “I’d like another doctor.”

  “Ma’am… you’re not going to get another answer.”

  “Right. Now,” she said in her sternest voice.

  More silence.

  He needed to wake up.

  Where was Sang?

  Where did she go?

  There was silence for so long, he was unsure if he’d even dreamed it all.

  ♥♥♥

  He needed to wake up.