by Lisa Beeson
“What’s sifting?” Ari asked, confused.
He looked at her like she was stupid. “What you just did back at the store to get that bag of yours.”
Oh, so there’s a name for it. Huh… Good to know, she thought then shook her head. “Wait, you were watching us?”
“I’m a tracker. It’s what I do,” he said nonchalantly, taking a hold of Cam’s arm. “Now, grab his other arm and let’s get out of here.”
Ari held on to Cam’s right arm, trying to give him a reassuring look.
His face crumpled. “Oh please, no…,” he whimpered, knowing what was coming next.
After a quick nod, they sifted together, and went faster than Ari had ever been able to go by herself. It felt like their energies were feeding off each other, propelling them forward. Shiny-man guided them down the street and onto the highway, dodging the motionless cars frozen in place. Her eyesight seemed clearer when she sifted, everything came into focus around her, unlike poor Cam, who probably only saw a crazy blurriness whooshing around him. It only took them about five seconds to get to where his black SUV was parked on a dark street. When they stopped and let go, Cam stumbled over to a trash can, held on for dear life, and vomited.
Shiny-man narrowed his eyes and looked at Ari in that weird part-angry, part-confused way he had back in Savannah.
“What?” she asked. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
He continued to stare, making her think that he wasn’t going to answer her. But then he said, “Because I’ve never seen someone without an energy signature before.” He looked as though he was trying to figure out what was wrong with her. “It’s how I track people. The energy signature makes a path behind them and shows me where they’ve been.”
She assumed he meant a person’s radiant energy leaves a trail behind them that he could follow. And when she thought about it, it made sense. Energy doesn’t just disappear, it leaves traces behind. Then, as if something clicked in her mind, she saw Shiny-man’s and Cam’s radiant light trailing behind them, like a map showing where they had been through the city. He was right. Each path was different, kind of like a signature or a finger print, and she was able to hone in on one path at a time, making the millions of other paths swirling around her fade away.
Holy crap, I did it again! I learned another ability!
Hoping that she was able to hide the shock on her face, she tried to distract him with another question. “If I don’t have a signature, then how did you track me to Chicago?”
“I’m good at what I do,” he said simply. “I tracked you to New Orleans, but then I had some important matters to tend to up here in Chicago. I was planning on going back down to pick the trail back up later, but you have a habit of augmenting people’s energies. And when the path of Prince Charming over there started sparking like a firecracker, I followed and it led me to you.”
They both looked over at Cam, who had just gotten done vomiting up the contents of his stomach into the trash can. He looked over and gave them a shaky thumbs up. “I think I’m getting better at this sifting thing,” he said optimistically.
As Shiny-man walked over to the driver’s side of the SUV, he said, “Get your arses in the car...” Then he pointed at Cam. “But I swear, if you puke in there I’ll throw you out while it’s moving. Yeah?”
Cam nodded. “Don’t worry. I don’t think I have anything left anyway.” He got in the back, behind the driver’s seat, and slouched down holding onto his stomach, closing his eyes. Ari got in on the other side and sat by him, neither of them wanting to sit up by Shiny-man. With the adrenaline wearing off, her whole right side was stiff with a sharp, throbbing pain. It was hard to move, and her right hand was starting to get tingly.
Shiny-man started the SUV and pulled out onto the street. Unable to sit back, she leaned forward. The pain was getting worse, and she had to constantly blow out streams of air to prevent herself from screaming.
Shiny-man glanced back at her. “What’s the matter?”
Ari grimaced. “…I think I got cut by a piece of glass when that light shattered back on the roof,” she said, gingerly slipping her right arm through the strap of her back pack. She slid it off onto the floor between her and Cam’s feet. Her back felt warm and wet.
Cam sat up. “Where?”
Ari leaned further forward, resting her head on the back of the passenger seat. “My right shoulder blade.”
Cam looked over and gasped. “Omigod, Ari! You’ve been shot!” he said, panicking, “And you’re bleeding all over!”
It was worse than she thought, and she knew it must be serious if Cam called her Ari instead of Pipes. She could feel the blood oozing down her back and pooling in the waistband of her jeans.
“Bloody hell… Take off her jacket and staunch the wound. Quick,” Shiny-man’s voice was authoritative, as he laid his foot on the gas.
Cam unzipped Ari’s hoodie and gently took it off. Balling it up, he pressed it firmly over the wound, making her yell out in pain.
“Sorry, but I have to stop the bleeding,” he explained, brushing her bangs out of her face and tucking them behind her ear.
Skin beading with cold sweat, she was beginning to feel lightheaded.
“Stay with me, Ari!” Cam pleaded, noticing her face getting paler. “Hurry up, man!”
“I’m going as fast as I can, boy. We’ll be there in a minute,” Shiny-man said as he expertly weaved through traffic. He made a sharp turn off the highway and down a road that led to the industrial part of town.
Cam held onto Ari so she wouldn’t get knocked around too much, still putting pressure over her wound. “Watch it, you’re hurting her.”
“Do you want me to go fast or not?” he yelled back.
Cam looked around at the factories and industrial yards on either side of the road. “Where are we going?”
“We can’t take her to the hospital, so I’ll have to stitch her up at my place.”
Ari looked around, feeling nervous.
Where does he live, a junkyard?
Her vision was starting to get starry around the edges, like static on a TV, and it was excruciating to breathe.
Who knew your shoulder blade moved so much when you breathed…
Cam looked around dubiously. “Yeah… it doesn’t look like he’s going to take us to his kill chamber and chop us up into little pieces at all,” he said, trying to make it sound like a joke, but the nervous look in his eyes gave him away. “...Not…at…all.”
Shiny-man’s eyes shot up to the rearview mirror, so he could stare at Cam. “I haven’t ruled it out yet. I can use the girl, but I don’t need you. Remember that.”
Cam laughed nervously, looked over at Ari, and whispered, “He doesn’t mean it.” He shook his head, but it seemed like he was trying to convince himself more than Ari.
Her other hand and her feet were starting to feel tingly as well.
“How’re you doing back there, girl?” Shiny-man asked, glancing back over his shoulder at her.
“I’m alright… It doesn’t hurt as much anymore. I’m just sleepy.”
He cursed, and cut through an industrial yard.
“What? What is it?” Cam asked panicking.
“She’s going into shock. Stay awake, girl. Keep talking to me.”
It was hard for Ari to concentrate; her thoughts were getting fuzzy. “What’s your name?” She was tired of having to call him Shiny-man.
“Lothan Kael.”
“That’s different,” Cam said. “So what do you want us to call you? Lothan…? Mr. Kael…?”
“I go by Kael, but you...,” he said, indicating Cam, “…can call me Sir.”
Cam narrowed his eyes. “Mr. Grumpy Pants it is then…,” he whispered to Ari.
She chuckled and a spasm of pain shot through her body. “Don’t make me laugh, Cam…it hurts.”
“Keep talking, girl…,” Kael demanded.
It was hard to think. “Um…why do you want my necklace so ba
d?”
“Let’s just say I’m an avid collector,” he evaded. “And it would have been my bloody necklace if I’d gotten to that store earlier. How did you find it anyway?”
It was hard to organize her thoughts. “It called to me…um... just like the other one did.”
His head whipped around to look back at her. “You have another one?”
“Yeah…I found it in New Orleans. Do, um…do they call to you too?”
“No,” Kael said. He pushed a button on his high-tech dashboard and a door rose up on an old factory building, leading to an underground garage. As he pulled into the garage, all the overhead lights clicked on, and Cam – finally able to get a good look at Ari’s back – cursed under his breath.
Kael parked the SUV by an expensive looking sports car and hopped out. He opened Cam’s door and told him to help move Ari towards him. Cam helped her over, then got out of the back seat.
“Give me her jacket, and help her sit up straight.”
Cam handed over the blood soaked hoodie, then ran over to the other side of the car and slid into the back seat to help hold her up on her bad side.
It was getting harder for Ari to hold her own head up, but she tried her best so they could do what they needed to do.
Kael shook out the hoodie, stretched it out by holding on to the ends of the sleeves, and rolled it up like he was about to flick it like a towel. He wrapped it around her back, brought the two ends under her armpits. She winced in pain as he tied the sleeves as tight as he could in front of her chest, making a make-shift tourniquet. He slid his left arm under her knees, then gently wrapped the other one around her lower back, and easily lifted her out of the car. She cradled her right arm against her stomach, trying to hold it still with her left hand. When he shifted her in his arms, another spasm of pain shot through her, and she could feel the warm blood soaking through the tourniquet. Not able to lift her head any longer, she rested it against Kael’s massive shoulder. Ari felt like there was a good possibility she could bleed out, but for some strange reason it didn’t seem to bother her as much as she thought it might. It was as if her mind was being merciful by numbing the fear and panic of dying. Her eyelids were so heavy. She was starting to go in and out of consciousness.
“Wake up, Ari!” Cam yelled.
Ari opened her eyes and tried to focus on him. Her heartbeat felt like a hummingbird trapped in her chest.
“Make yourself useful and open those doors to the lift. Press the button for the second level,” Kael instructed as he made his way over to the elevator on the back wall.
Cam ran ahead and pushed up the wooden grates, then opened the metal cage doors to the old-fashioned elevator. He waited as Kael rushed in with Ari in his arms, and pushed the button for the second level.
As Ari rested against Kael’s shoulder, she noticed his iridescent tattoos poking out from under the collar of his shirt. They reminded her of the doodles she would make during class. Strange thoughts kept popping through her mind, like how something about Kael seemed strangely familiar, and that his cologne smelled really good.
The elevator stopped and Cam opened up the doors. Kael carried Ari through the industrial loft apartment to a wooden table in the dining area by the kitchen, sitting her backwards in one of the chairs that surrounded it. He quickly checked her back, then walked off towards the kitchen. She leaned forward, resting her head on her left arm on top of the chair’s back, and keeping her right arm against her side.
Cam came around and sat in a chair facing her. He carefully held her right hand, which had been resting on her knee.
Kael came back and handed her a small glass of what she thought was water. She was parched, so she clutched it in her left hand and gulped it down. An intense burning coursed down her throat and into her stomach.
“Gah! What was that?” she coughed, handing him back the glass.
“Vodka,” Kael said as he put the bottle on the table beside her.
“Did you just give a thirteen-year-old straight vodka?” Cam demanded in utter disbelief.
“If I don’t get that bullet out and sew her up soon, she’ll bleed out. I don’t have any anesthetics. So drinking the vodka will help dull the pain. Or would you rather I dug around in her back without anything?”
“No!” Ari said emphatically.
Cam reluctantly shook his head. “No, I guess not.”
“That’s what I thought, so keep your mouth shut and let me do what I need to do.” He poured more into Ari’s glass and handed it back to her. “Bottoms up… I’ll be right back with my stuff.”
Ari took the glass back as he stalked off. She drank it down quickly, but this time, the burning spread through her whole body. It numbed the pain a bit, and somehow made her feel like a heavy balloon.
Cam grinned. “How you feeling now, Pipes?”
Ari plopped her head back onto her arm and giggled. She didn’t know what was so funny, but she felt like laughing all the same.
Cam smoothed back Ari’s hair, “You still look really crummy, but at least you’re smiling like a trooper.”
Kael came back with a medical bag and a leather case and placed them on the table. He opened up the medical bag and sat down in a chair behind her. He rolled up his sleeves, put on a pair of latex gloves, and undid the makeshift tourniquet. He used a small pair of scissors to cut away some of her tank top so it wouldn’t cover the wound. Then, he gently pressed around the area where the bullet was lodged in her back, making Ari jerk and hiss in pain.
“The bullet must have ricocheted off the lamp before it hit you. It grazed across your scapula before it struck muscle. That’s why you’re bleeding so much.”
“What’s a scapula?” Cam asked.
“My shoulder blade,” Ari mumbled into her arm, panting. “How do you know words like …acerbic and…predicament, and not know what a scapula is?” The alcohol was slowing down her thinking processes, but she had been wondering about this for awhile. Cam had a way of throwing out random SAT-sounding words in casual conversation.
“Grams was a fan of those ‘Word of the day’ calendars, and whenever I got in trouble, I had to stand in the corner and memorize a word and its definition.”
Kael looked over at Cam, unimpressed. “Are you wearing a belt?”
“Uh…yeah,” he answered warily.
“Good, take it off and give it to her to bite on. This is going to hurt.”
Ari grabbed the bottle of vodka on the table and started chugging.
Cam stood up and took the bottle away from her, putting it back on the table. “Whoa there, Ms. Drinky McDrinkerson... we want to dull the pain, not do permanent damage to your liver.” He took off his leather belt and placed it between her teeth.
Kael spread iodine around the wound, and Ari bit down on the belt. He took out some tools and started digging around for the bullet in her back. Ari clenched down hard and let out an involuntary scream. It was the most pain she had ever felt in her life. It took all she had to keep still.
“The bullet’s in one piece, but it looks like some fabric from your clothes got lodged in there as well…” Kael informed them as he worked.
Tears leaked out from the corners of her eyes as she squeezed them shut. Her arm and her back felt like they were on fire, incinerating her from the inside. Darkness was encroaching on the periphery of her vision, and she could feel herself starting to pass out.
Cam grasped her hand tightly. “Please open your eyes Ari, and stay with me.” She peeked through her lashes and watched as Cam held her hand. He was unknowingly transferring some of his energy to her, keeping her conscious. It was amazing to see. His energy surged and melded into her where their hands touched, fortifying her. She wondered if he was giving the energy or if she was taking it – or both. She felt a pulling, and something clinked into the empty glass on the table behind her.
“I got it all out,” Kael said. “Now I just have to sew it up.”
As Kael got what he needed from the kit, Ari
looked up at Cam’s worried face. She felt a compulsion to tell him how she felt. She took his belt out of her mouth so she could talk, but the alcohol was making it hard to find the right words. “Cam…” she slurred. “…you are my best friend…I had two best friends back home…butchu’re my new best friend. You’re nice …you… you helped me…and…you’re nice…”
Cam grinned. “Aww, Pipes. You’re a chatty drunk.”
“And…and it’s kinda annoying when you call me Pipes… but it’s also kinda sweet so I…so I let it slide.”
“….and an honest one too,” he said with a slight grimace.
Ari propped up her chin on her forearm so she could look in the general direction of his eyes – it was getting really hard to focus. “Cam, d’you think I’m gonna die?” she asked seriously. “Because I feel really crappy and it’s so hard to stay awake.” Her limbs felt cold and heavy now.
Cam held her head between his hands. “Ari, you are not going to die. I won’t let you.” He rested the top of his forehead against hers. “You’re like my little sister. And I’m not going to lose the only family I have left.” She could hear the emotion start to choke his voice. “Do you hear me?”
She nodded slightly to show him she understood, but she knew he didn’t say the last part as much to her as to the ultimate power that had already taken away his mother and grandmother.
“I’m stitching you up right now. You’re going to be just fine,” Kael assured her. She could feel him tugging on her back.
Even though it stung, it didn’t hurt half as bad as when he took the bullet out. She laid her head back down on the crook of her elbow, and her incredibly heavy eyelids started to close.
“Stay awake, Ari! C’mon!” Cam said, panicking.
“I’m trying …but it’s so hard,” she mumbled.
“I know it’s hard, sweets, but you have to keep those pretty blues open for me,” he said, clutching her hand and transferring more energy to her. “I’d rather look at those than Kael’s ugly mug anyway.”
Ari forced her eyes open, and managed a weak smile.
“That’s my girl,” Cam said, relieved.
