Aria began towards the other end of the bridge where the figures were, but skid to a stop. “Ooh. One last thing…uh, well, two. Don’t try to save me. Ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever. And do not try outrunning Glut–you have to face it head-on. And don’t lie to Onyu. You’re not smart enough. No one is.”
“Onyu? Who is that–?”
“And,” Aria pressed on, “a lot of things are going to be painful before they feel good. It does get better but it is really going to fucking hurt. Truly. Or it should get better. I can’t see into the future, ya know? You can escape this place if you change and if you fight. You must fight, Jin. Gather the strength to survive. Oh, and–”
Jin cocked her head to the side. “That’s like five things.”
Aria laughed. “You’re going to be alright, cub,” she said. Jin had only seen that sort of warmth in her eyes once. After Ahn stabbed her. “An’a aasifa, Jin,” Aria finished, bowing her head.
Jin did not like the look in her eyes. That warm look always preceded a bitter cold feeling. Jin began to make her take it back, whatever it was, whatever it meant, when she felt the pressure again, this time stronger than before, vibrant, electric, almost driving Jin to her knees. The air crackled with energy and Jin could feel it lifting the hair off the back of her neck. Aria looked at her one last time and Jin gasped at the color of her eyes. They were like gold faceted gems with a thin ring of purple dilated iris circling them.
“Alar,” Aria whispered and then Aria was gone, her image blurring, then reappearing further down the bridge, her hair flowing in the current, her sword at her side.
It was hard to see. Not because Jin was too far away or the smoke and debris obstructed her view. No. It was hard because Aria moved, burred at the edges, disappeared and reappeared in a blink of an eye.
Jin had never seen Aria fight. Honest to God fight, for her life, for anyone else. She’d caught glimpses here and there in her head, in memories that shouldn’t be there but had never seen it with her own two eyes. And damn, if it wasn’t something to behold! Her movements were fluid, her sword moved like water, and her tattoos made her look ethereal. She fought as if she were a graceful dancer, a warrior made of liquid and steel and fire. Aria dispatched a number of them with ease, her sword singing its death song for all to hear.
One of the figures sat back, just out of the range of Aria’s swing. The figure moved towards her, surreptitiously, maneuvering themselves to Aria’s back as she continued to fight through the circle of attackers. Jin noticed the movement, noticed the figure pulling out the long sword, the metal shining with the same iridescent sheen Aria’s blood took.
Qeres? “Aria!” Jin began.
Don’t try to save me. Ever. Ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever.
Yeah, right! She wasn’t about to let her only means of escape die! “Aria! Behind…you…” Jin tore her eyes from Aria when a loud noise cut through the air, the sound reminiscent of a mighty roar.
“…before Glut reaches us.”
Jin’s mouth dropped in horror.
Glut wasn’t the ocean. Or a boat or a ferry. It was a wave. A huge, thunderous, towering wave!
“You can’t outrun Glut.”
The hell I can’t! Jin turned back towards Aria, to get her attention, to try and warn her again, but the words froze in her throat. The tides in her fight with the cloaked figures had changed and Aria was on her hands and knees, her chest heaving, and her side bleeding. Her injury, the gash across her side, was horrifying to look at. Her skin was ripped and the edges of the wound were ragged like torn paper.
Aria’s eyes fluttered as she desperately grappled for a sword that was just out of her reach. Blood so dark it appeared black seeped out of her mouth and pooled below her. Her lips moved as she tried to say something, but Jin couldn’t hear. She couldn’t hear anything.
The figure raised a sword over Aria’s back. Fear choked her, Aria’s fear choked her, wrapped its hands around her neck and squeezed until tears filled her eyes The sword plunged down, viciously, sparking against the ground as it ran Aria through and hit the asphalt.
Jin felt Aria’s pain.
“NO!” she screamed and took off for her. She didn’t have a weapon. She couldn’t fight worth a damn but the grip of terror she shared with Aria’s soul was enough. She couldn’t die. She couldn’t. Jin clutched her chest but it wasn’t her wound that was hurting.
Everything is set. Inevitability cannot be stopped. A butterfly’s flutter cannot cause chaos here.
Her voice was lost in the eclipsing roar of the water and she stopped dead in her tracks when a shadow cloaked the bridge in darkness. Jin stared at the wave as it hovered over them, her eyes quivering, her breath short, hands shaking. Jin sought out Aria again only to find her lying on her side, her limbs akimbo, her eyes, once brilliant gems, now murky like river rocks, were blinking Just…blinking. Jin and Aria’s eyes locked and her perception shifted, time did something funny like freeze or speed up, she didn’t know.
Again, she heard Aria’s voice in her head.
“You can’t outrun Glut.”
As if Aria could read Jin’s mind, the angel smiled and nodded in an aimless fashion, as if she’d lost the energy to keep her head up, before her eyes rolled to the back of her head.
“Let go.”
Glut slammed into the bridge and the impact knocked Jin off her feet. She scrambled to stand as warm, salty water sprayed across her face.
The sound of it was deafening. It silenced the screams in Jin’s head. It overpowered the roar of the wind between her ears. It eclipsed her cries. Whitewater crested over the bridge and extinguished the fire with a hiss and a rise of steam.
She watched Aria and her foes disappear in a spiral of water. She watched the water speed for her.
In the space between heartbeats, the water crashed into her. She frantically reached for something to hold on to–the ground, her sanity–to try and keep from going under. She wrapped her hand around the rail just as the water washed over her.
Jin looked out as blue and black surrounded her, as the weight of the water pressed against her chest, sucking the life from her. Her body began to get colder and colder and with every passing second, her grip on the railing began to weaken.
“Let go.”
Jin closed her eyes.
CHAPTER TWO
Blue Charisma
Six Months after departure from Caeli
The sound in the bar was a little more than Jonathan Kim could take–it was a Wednesday for Christ’s sakes! Some bozo with a handful of quarters was being territorial over the jukebox and Jon was at his limits for any more rounds of “Wishing Well”. This was the fourth time! Jesus, man! Terence Trent D'Arby? He groaned and rubbed his temples. He had a headache, a bad one caused by the music, of course, but also too much quiet and a misplaced sense of direction. The dull ache was compounded by charging full steam ahead, in the dark, towards a goal he couldn’t see or conceptualize.
…Or maybe it was just the beer. He looked down at the bottle in his hand. Yeah. It was the beer.
The place was Blue Charisma, a bar owned by a former high profile event planner name Dee, famously known for its selection of international beer and Asian soul food, gutsy Korean inspired meals infused with country cooking, like Kimchi Gumbo and Tex-Mex bulgogi. Jon considered ordering a bowl of hog maw bibimbop–it smelled so good–but he still had the food baby from his rabid attack on the food trucks down the street, so maybe not.
Today, he’d met Aiden for drinks. It seemed he’d been meeting Aiden almost every other day for the last month or so for a drink. It was the easiest way to get him out of the house. As of late, he’d been married to his work, addicted to long hours and a top-heavy workload. His imbalance had grown so lopsided that he was practically forced to take a sabbatical. It was a pale substitute for someone he actually wanted to marry. The fact that Aiden didn’t remember that wish was not his fault.
Aiden called today pre-birthday c
elebratory drinking. The beer they were guzzling down was something domestic, expensive, and frankly the most disgusting thing Jon had ever drunk, but Aiden was paying so he suffered through it. He wouldn’t let him do this to him on the next round. Who comes to a bar in the middle of K-Town and orders something domestic? You order soju. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Order soju. Next round, they would get the cheapest soju available. The kind of cheap soju they drank when they got their first big arrest or the night Jon achieved master marksman. This stuff they were drinking was pathetic.
Jon felt a pair of eyes on him and the hairs on the back of his neck rose and his skin crawled. Irritated, he scanned the crowded bar. He connected eyes with a woman giving him a more than thorough once over. She seemed out of place in the more conservative spot, her purple chin level bob standing out like…well, a purple chin level bob. He made it obvious he’d caught her staring, and he’d give it to her, she held it, running her tongue across her bottom lip and take liberties with the straw in her water.
He narrowed his gaze at her, just shy of outright hostile, hoping to scare her off but she laughed like she thought it was cute and continued to stare at him as though she wanted to eat him alive. He thought about it for a short, sharp moment when she winked. It. The action? No. To give in to the temptation of something else, someone who wanted him.
He dismissed the idea as soon as he looked away. What good would the distraction serve? One night, maybe two? Because he didn’t feel he could offer anything more. His capacity for infatuation was already full. There was a certain hell pixie that plagued his thoughts and the fact that he saw the demon spawn every day wasn’t helping.
His phone buzzed and he glanced down at it. Speak of the devil. Err…angel.
“We need milk.”
He pocketed his phone and sighed. He shouldn’t complain. A request for milk was mild, doable in less than twenty minutes. The angel must be in a good mood. Key was prone to leaving him cryptic, demanding text messages about what he needed to do and what he needed to say and how he needed to say it and what to wear and all kinds of shit. Yesterday’s task of the day was to pass a message to a woman named Song–another one of these freak angel people marauding on earth as a human. The day before, he was commanded to get a library card. A library card. What the hell was he going to do with a library card?
“Some kid attacked me today,” Aiden announced, his tone nonchalant despite the suddenness and gravity of his statement. He rubbed his thumb across Jin’s pocket watch necklace absently. A coping mechanism, Jon noticed.
Jon paused with the beer bottle at his lips, some of the pale liquid spilling out of his mouth as he just…stared at Aiden.
Aiden snapped his fingers in Jon’s face. “You here?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Jon shoved his hand away. “What do you mean a kid attacked you?”
Aiden took a swig of the beer and grimaced. “This shit sucks.”
“Glad you finally noticed. But focus. You were attacked?”
“Yeah. So I was submitting my paperwork for my sabbatical when some detective named Valkynhymer from 6th approached me at headquarters, going on and on about a gunfight that happened a few of months back.”
Jon choked on his next sip. “Don’t worry about it,” Key said. “We’ve handled everything,” Key said. “He isn’t going to remember a thing!” Key said. This doesn’t sound like handled! “Uh...then what happened?”
“So the detective is grilling me, right? Keeps showing me these pictures. I mean, I get it; the guy kind of looked like me. It looked like you were there, too.” Aiden paused, a look passing over his features. It stormed over his face for a moment, and Jon panicked because he had no idea how memory recollection worked on a man who had had his wiped clean. But then it cleared and Aiden leaned forward, elbows on the table top. “But the moves you pulled were wild, all over the place. You’re the best shot I know. You’re calm and steady. This looked like something out of a back alley shootout. Couldn’t have been you.”
“Glad you know me so well,” Jon grunted. “I wasn’t even in the country, how could it have been me?” Jon lied with the art of practice, not comfort. “Did he check anything out before he approached you? Sounds like he was trying to clue bullshit together.”
“Never got the chance. One minute he’s grilling me and the next, someone was calling him out of the room. When he came back, he said he had no more questions for me. Strange.”
Jon exhaled, relieved. That was close.
“Hey, you remember Jin Amaris?”
Jon’s next inhale caught in his throat. Fuuuuck.
“Yeah I…uh, I remember her,” he stumbled, rubbing the back of his neck. “Why?” Jon asked, trying to keep his voice steady.
“It kind of looked like she was in the photo, too?” Aiden laughed. Well, short, breathy noises that sounded less like laughter and more like thick nervousness. He took another sip of his beer. His thumb returned back to Jin’s pocket watch. “It was crazy.”
Jon’s eyes narrowed. Key did a number on you, man. “So, what about the kid?” Jon asked wanting to change the subject.
“That little asshole! The dude was nuts. So I’m leaving the precinct and he attacks me right outside of it. Like, broad daylight! The balls on this kid, you know? Slammed me up against a wall and everything. I thought about breaking his damn arm because it hurt but he put his finger to his lips and there was this look in his eyes. It was weird. Like…something was telling me that I could trust him. Stupid, I know, but I’ve always trusted my gut even when it was the dumbest thing ever so I gave him a moment to make a damn point.”
Only one kid would be stupid enough to do that. Jon groaned so loud in his head that he thought everyone in the bar could hear him.
“What did he look like? You run him through the system?” Jon asked, knowing damn well running Rooke through the system, through any system, wasn’t going to pull up a thing.
“Possibly, but I’m on leave, remember? I didn’t feel like calling in favors day one of my sabbatical. There wasn’t anything notable about him, anyway. He wore a baseball cap cocked on his head, blue and red, that tell-tell “B” staring back at me. Boston Red Sox’s fan. Whatever favor he had with me died in that instant.”
Jon scoffed.
“He starts with this speech telling me that the police wouldn’t be bothering me anymore after today, which really, okay, thanks? I never gave them a reason to. But then he–then he starts to tell me about my own dreams! And tells me for my own good, not to indulge in them. If I start thinking crazy, to just ignore it. And then he was off. Flying down the street like a character from one of those animes. It was weird, man. That kid was weird.”
Jon tried to keep the nervous quality out of his chuckle. “That’s craaaazy, man.”
“Right? But what I wanted to ask him how was...” Aiden leaned even closer. “How did he know? How did he know I was having strange dreams? Was he psychic? Or what do they call the people who can absorb your thoughts through touch? Like a mutant?”
Jon’s eyes narrowed. “You thought he was a thought absorbing mutant.”
“It’s not the craziest idea. I mean how else would he know I was having dreams about Jin Amaris? I mean she was beautiful and everything but I doubt it makes sense to have dreams about a dead woman.”
Jon thought his tongue was going to fall out of his mouth so he snapped it shut. Holy shit! Is this seriously happening? They made him think she was dead? Dead? Key never told him that. Jon needed to get out of there and he needed to get out of there right now before he said something stupid to un-mind-fuck his friend. Digging into his pocket, he fished out his cell phone, held the phone up and pretended to take a call. When he turned from Aiden, he could see straight out of the front window of Blue Charisma’s.
He saw the flash of a red and blue baseball cap and Jon resisted the urge to bang his head on the table.
This is making Barnum & Bailey look like a 2-bit side act!
Jon poc
keted the phone and stood. “Hey, man.” He slapped a twenty on the table. “Something just came up. I’ve got to report in.”
Aiden’s brows shot up. “Oh, yeah, yeah. Sure, no problem man. I’ll walk out with you.” Aiden finished his drink and slid a couple of bills on the table, enough to cover the rest of the tab and tip.
The late afternoon air was thick and humid, stifling in a way that promised your clothes would stick to your back. People populated the street, idling up and down the sidewalk. There was a man hustling three card pickup across the street, parked next to an elder gentleman shining shoes in front of a bodega. Aiden stood at the curb, his hand raised as he tried to wave down a yellow cab. The driver drove past him and onto the next customer, a young white lady with two kids leaving a restaurant. Jon chuckled when Aiden’s look slid from annoyance to acceptance. New York. He tried again and this time a silver cab standing out in the sea of yellow ones pulled off the road and up to the curb.
“Where are you headed?”
“Down to Federal Plaza. Thought about what you said earlier. See if I can track that kid down. I want answers.” Aiden opened the door to the taxi but paused. “I’ll see if I can get ahold of those pictures. You’ll never believe it. It really looks like the two of us in them.”
“Uh, yeah. You...you do that.” Jon nodded and turned to leave but Aiden called out to him again.
“You still working that case? The one that’s got you stateside for so long? It’s been a while and I didn’t hear anything about it while I was in the office.”
Jon turned. “Something like that. I’ll explain later. We’re on for the game, right?”
Aiden grinned. “As long as you don’t wear that Dodgers cap. That thing is blasphemous in Yankee Stadium.”
Jon laughed. “I’m not making any promises.”
A Third of the Moon and the Stars Struck Page 3
