Luke: It sounds like this narrative has spun off from a traditional story and has now become something else entirely. Readers won’t like that. TBH, I feel like a talking head has been in so many books and anime. You know, if this wasn’t happening in real life, I’d think you regurgitated this from all the pop culture you’ve consumed.
Me: You would be correct. But yes. I talked to a head. And he was rude. So now he goes back in the backpack. I’m sorry, I had two CoronaRitas. Do you have CoronaRitas in Canada?
Dorian appeared next to me. She saw me pecking away at my phone and took a seat on the armrest, her warm body pressed against mine. I perched my elbow on her hip and got comfortable.
“Luke?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“You still haven’t introduced me.”
“All in good time, my dear,” I said with a stupid smile plastered across my face.
Luke: CoronaRita?
Me: More importantly, is there Mexican food in Canada? Are there even Mexicans there? I know it’s a stupid question, but, I mean, well, are there?
Luke: Of course we have Mexicans here. Why is it you always ask me stupid questions about Canada? And we have Mexican food, btw. Hey! Incoming news. I just put in for a new book cover for Star Defacer 3, and I’m supposed to get the mock-up soon.
Me: [Excitement intensifies]. Did someone say new cover? Because I’m balls-deep in writer’s block, and I could use a little cover session.
Luke: I don’t have it yet, but when I do, I’ll share it with you. Hopefully it’ll knock that writer’s block out of you.
Me: Hold on, I’m getting an email from a guy I need to talk to.
I opened the email from Ken to find a single picture attached.
Chapter Three: An Impromptu Date with Dorian Gray
I knew better than to download the attachment. I’d seen enough from the image preview to get an idea of what they had done.
“The fuckers,” I said, trying to calm myself with deep breaths. “Fuck!”
Who’d do that to someone?
I quickly told Luke I had to go.
Dorian squeezed my arm. “Show me.”
I turned the phone to her and she bit her lip. “That’s …”
“Let’s get inside,” I said, no longer giving a shit about how beautiful a night it was. Dorian dropped her hand into mine as I turned to the back door.
“What do you want to do about it?” she asked softly.
“Nothing we can do. I just wish we’d gotten him out of there. We even offered, you offered. We should have done it.”
We stopped in front of the door and she looked at me, a sad expression on her face. “But there’s nothing we can do now.”
“We don’t know that he’s really dead.”
“You saw the same picture as I did, right?”
“I did.”
“He’s really dead, Gideon.”
“He could still be alive.”
She grimaced. “Not after that.”
Just then, another email from Ken came in, this one containing a zip file of information.
“I need to go through this stuff,” I told her, realizing that he’d somehow arranged to have an email sent if he ever died.
Only problem was, it likely took a few hours before that service was triggered, which meant he may have been dead since this morning, or hell, yesterday.
“What can I do to help?”
I stuffed my phone into my pocket. “We have to keep to our mission,” I finally said, part answer part inner monologue spoken aloud. “Goddammit! Every time something like this happens I question what we’re doing, but we have to remember – I have to remember – there’s a reason for all this.”
“I’ll go through the stuff with you if you want,” said Dorian. “I have a lot of energy right now; I won’t be able to sleep.”
“No, you can watch your shows.”
“Those shows are entertaining, but I’d rather help you go through this stuff.”
Veronique appeared at the back door, staring at me intently, her blonde bob framing her sharp face. “What is it?” she asked.
“They killed Dr. Kim and mutilated his body.” I pulled my phone out and showed it to her.
“The screen is black.”
“Aware,” I said. “Do you really want to see it?”
Veronique shrugged, not coldly; more of a shrug that suggested she could have predicted this would happen. “We’ll get them back.”
“That we will,” I said.
Dorian and I went inside and headed for the back bedroom. Angel was in the closet now, back in the backpack, and there were no leftover signs that Veronique had cut off the bottom part of his body.
I opened my laptop and navigated to my email to download the zipped file. Just as I hovered my pointer over the file, the thought came to me that this could be a way for them to track me. Rather than open it, I went to GoogleFace and researched tracking someone’s location through a zip file, or any sent file, and found out that it was indeed a possibility.
“We shouldn’t open it,” I told Dorian, who was in the process of taking her ribbed sweater off. She wore a black tank top underneath, the tattoos running up her arms hyper-visible.
“Why?”
“They could use it to track us,” I said, leaning back in the chair.
“Then we should go to Dr. Kim.”
“In New Haven?”
Dorian came around and sat on my lap, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and neck as purple energy radiated all around her.
The two of us flashed away in a matter of seconds.
Instead of reappearing somewhere else, we blasted through a vortex of lights, sounds, and blurry colors. Dorian’s hair was slicked back, her mouth was open wide, and a huge smile was on her face as we traveled.
We popped up in an alley. My first response was to bend over and hurl. From seeing what they’d done to Dr. Kim, to traveling through the vortex … all of this was too much.
But I also didn’t want to look like a weakling in front of Dorian, so rather than throw up, I swallowed it down, the acid burning my throat. Damn, did that taste bad.
“That was … shit … where are we?”
“Nashville, Tennessee,” Dorian said. Same place I traveled to when I went to get the GPS key from Dr. Kim.” A vein pulsed on her forehead. She didn’t seem tired though, and while her face was a little red, she looked just fine.
“That’s what it’s like to travel long distance? Did you say Nashville? What the hell?”
She nodded, still catching her breath. “Amazing, right?”
The temperature had dropped, and there was something different about the air here. It held the weight of the city, the inhabitants, the pollutants. Nothing like the quaint cliffside home we’d come from.
“Want to explore for a second?” she asked, slipping her hand into mine. “I need a moment to recharge. Possibly eat.”
We weren’t far from the main street – clearly a busy street, with several music joints and a few barbeque places to boot.
While her tattoos were exposed, Dorian also wore a pair of long black gloves that went all the way to her elbows. Her hand was warm, even with the glove on, likely because of the teleportation.
“Um, sure?” I said still not quite processing it all. I’d flown across the country before, as far away as Canada and London when I was younger. I knew the feeling associated with travel.
This was nothing like that.
I still couldn’t believe we were now walking down the streets of Nashville as if we’d been there all along. There was something almost dreamlike about it … or nightmare-like, depending on your take.
I recalled a quote from Travels with Charley in Search of America: ‘We find after years of struggle that we do not take a trip; a trip takes us.’
I don’t think Steinbeck was talking about teleporters, but he might as well have been.
Another deep breath in and I relaxed into my body. My stomach was s
till doing cartwheels, but a little willpower went a long way, and I was able to keep my dinner down.
“That’s the place I grabbed a sandwich at last time,” she said, pointing to a food truck across the street. “I’ll recharge and we can get to New Haven.”
“Wait,” I told her, pulling her hand back. A guy passing by with a guitar case in hand tipped his cowboy hat at us, snorted, and moved on.
“What?” she asked.
“I never agreed to go to New Haven. We can’t be impulsive like this. If something happens to us while we’re there, how will Grace and Veronique get to us?”
Dorian smirked. “Grace will take over the mind of a truck driver and have him drive her there with Veronique. They’ll stop and feed along the way. Maybe she’ll get an army going as they drive, storing them in the back. Relax.”
“We can’t treat people like slaves.”
“They won’t be slaves, and we won’t be treating them like that. We’ll be captured by Mother and company. Kidding.” She tightened her fingers around mine. “I’ve got your hand, remember? If anything happens, we’re gone, and there’s no one that can stop us. Remember that about me; as long as I can touch you in some way, I can get us out of any situation.”
“Got it.”
“Now, let me order a sandwich because they have white barbeque sauce here and it’s yummy.”
I waited in line, Dorian in front of me, her hand behind her back as she pressed her body into mine. Eventually, I untwined my fingers from hers and just placed my hand on her waist. It was much less awkward this way.
She ordered a sandwich. I pulled out a serious wad of cash to pay for it and tipped the guy ten bucks. We found a bench to sit on while we ate. She kept her leg hooked around mine just in case, and as she ate, we shared a big glass of sweetened iced tea.
I still hadn’t pegged Dorian, literally and figuratively.
Grace was sweet and soft, mysterious, the girl next door even if she was a powerful psychic shifter. Veronique was the opposite of Grace, sharp, a little robotic at times, all business at others, violent, and less mysterious.
But I still didn’t know what to make of Dorian half the time.
She was more worldly than the other two, sarcastic and funny, and the fact that she had the rocker look going on only made it harder for me to pin her down. She vibed with coolness and originality.
“Good, huh?” she said after offering me a bite.
It was a small bite. I didn’t know if I’d be able to keep it down, but I confirmed it was good with a thumbs up.
“Are you ready to go to New Haven?” I asked when she finished her sandwich. I wanted to get back to the other two. It felt safer that way.
Dorian looked at the tattoo parlor across the street. “Do we have time?”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I mean, let’s go to New Haven first, and on our way back we can get tattoos.”
“Me? Get a tattoo?”
It sounded like a terrible idea, but something about the way she was looking at me made me want to do it anyway. Maybe it was the alcohol from earlier. I still had a little liquid courage left, it seemed.
“I still don’t understand why we’re going to New Haven anyway, especially just the two of us. You do realize I’m the weakest member of the Cherry Blossom Girls.”
“Grace called us that too, but you’re not a girl.”
I shrugged. “Cherry Blossom Girls and Boy sounds stupid. So it’s easier for me to say that, or CBGs.”
“Cherry blossoms could be a pretty cool tattoo,” she said, showing me the back of her arm. “I have some space here I’ve been wanting to fill in, and cherry blossoms would be kind of interesting and sexy. It’d be sexy on you too.”
“Cherry blossoms?”
“Why not?” she purred. “Tattoos are fun to get.”
“I doubt it. Let’s just make it back from New Haven alive.”
Chapter Four: An Explosive Tattoo
Dorian and I rocketed through the vortex for the second time that evening. She kept one hand in mine as we went, her hair beating in the crazy wind, that same smile on her face. This was the exact opposite of the look on my face, which could be defined as fear with a hint of ‘about to shit himself.’
Teleporting a short distance was cool but long distance was like being shot out of a cannon into a Super Bowl fireworks display.
Our forms took shape in New Haven and not a second too soon.
I fell to my knees again, got up, kept the food down, and took in my new environment.
East Rock, I thought after I saw the sign for State Street.
East Rock was a rich neighborhood in New Haven that was mostly populated by grad students and adjunct Yale professors who lived in large, three-story homes with basements that sat directly next to Brownstones and bricked apartment complexes.
“I’m going to be sick …” I said as a swirl of cold, New England air whipped at me.
“It’s a good thing you didn’t eat back there,” Dorian laughed, patting me on the back.
I’d never been so happy to see concrete in my life, and had I not been a stronger man, I would have been on my knees kissing that concrete.
Once the world was no longer spinning, I shook my hands out and adjusted my glasses.
“You’ve been here before?” she asked.
“Yeah, I had a girlfriend a few years back who lived in Buckingham Apartments, which is on the corner of Cottage and Livingston. I spent a lot of time at her place, and we’d walk around the neighborhood a bunch.”
“Sounds romantic.”
“We walked around because we were poor and there was nothing else to do.”
Dorian chuckled. “It still sounds sweet.”
We turned toward State Street, home of one of New Haven’s most famous pizza restaurants called Modern Apizza.
“Does he live on State Street, or in the neighborhood?” I asked, but Dorian wasn’t really focused on what I was saying any longer.
Her paintbrush was out, and she held it almost as if it were a wand. Her other hand was dedicated to me – or better, to holding my hand – just in case we needed to get away in a jiffy.
My question was answered when we turned right on State Street and passed a rundown gas station. Dorian pointed at an apartment over yet another pizza restaurant.
We were in the hallway in a flash, her grip on my hand tightening.
The hallway was empty, and it stunk of Indian spices. One of the apartments across from Dr. Kim’s had a television on, or maybe it was a video game.
Damn, did I miss playing video games.
Focus, I reminded myself.
“I’m going to go in and out as quick as I can,” Dorian said. “Stay here.”
Before I could protest, she dropped my hand and disappeared.
It doesn’t take long for my mind to wander, and in that thirty-second span I thought of one of my favorite quotes from Ready Player One: ‘It’s you against the machine’ and how that didn’t exactly relate to my life but it was a cool quote; I recalled talking to Angel’s head and how fucked that was; and for some reason, I thought of the big Mexican named Diego who drove us around Austin.
Cool guy.
“Holy shit!” I said when Dorian popped out of the air behind me. “Sorry, you scared the hell out of me.”
“You knew I was coming back, right?”
“I sure as hell hoped you were. Anything?”
“Not a lot. It’s a pretty small place.” She grabbed my wrist. “Want to see?”
“By all means.”
We flashed into Dr. Kim’s apartment.
It was a sparse place with a small TV, a couch in the living room, tile floors but no rugs, and a dining room table with a single placemat on it. I moved toward the bedroom, where I found a perfectly made bed and a standing computer desk.
“I’ve got a weird feeling about this,” I told her as I pulled her with me over to the desk, still holding her hand. I jiggled t
he computer’s mouse and noticed the afterglow of a blinking red light in the closet. “Dorian!”
The next two seconds played out in slow motion.
A bloom of orange tore through the closet door, but we were already partially gone by that point, our bodies reforming on the street outside as the explosion blew through the entire apartment, blasting out windows, sending debris onto the street, and triggering more explosions in the apartments below.
No time to scream; Dorian squeezed my hand again and we were back in Nashville.
“There were people in there!” was the first thing I managed to say as I checked my body for injuries.
Dorian stood beside me, still holding one of my hands as she checked her own body. Her face was red, the vein on her head pulsing.
“There’s nothing we could have done by staying there; it was a trap,” she finally said, vocalizing what both of us already knew, and the first thing I thought of when she said those last words was Admiral Ackbar’s famous line.
This is what happens when you grow up on memes.
But I cast my silly thought away and got back to what had just happened. We could have been killed.
And I wanted nothing more at that moment but to get back to Grace and Veronique.
“How long till you can teleport again?”
“I thought we were getting tattoos,” she said, in a tone that barely told of what she’d just been through. “I’d like to get a tattoo tonight, even if we were just almost killed. A tattoo would be a great way to celebrate the fact that we’re alive.”
“Are you being serious right now?” I knew she was, but I figured I’d check anyway. Damn, these women were strange! No time to mentally unpack potential death by explosion? Only with the CBGs.
“Like I said, celebrate that we’re alive.”
We had nearly been killed mere seconds ago, or maybe it was about a minute now. While I did agree with her that we should celebrate that we hadn’t been killed, I didn’t know if getting inked up was the best way to go about doing it.
But I didn’t have time to say either of those things, because she’d already reached for my hand and started dragging me to the tattoo parlor.
Cherry Blossom Girls Box Set Page 45
