by H. D. Gordon
I loosened my hold, allowing a little air.
“You… stupid… bit—”
My teeth were tight enough now to make my jaw ache. “Wrong answer,” I said, kneeing him in the fatty folds of his back, forcing out the little bit of oxygen he was retaining. “Last time I’m going to ask nicely. You are going to leave the other students alone. Deal with your pain like a man. Do you understand?”
“Aria,” Sam said for what felt like the millionth time.
In anger, my eyes flashed up to her, and what I saw there diffused me like the snipping of a red wire. There was fear in my best friend’s eyes… fear of me.
I let out a slow breath, and with a move that felt almost painful, shoved Will Landers forward onto the ground, where he coughed and gasped for air. His pudgy face went from purple to red to white, and back to red again as he climbed unsteadily to his feet.
“You’re going to regret that,” he gasped out, clutching at his throat, his eyes shooting daggers, as he snatched his backpack off the ground and scurried out of the alley like the lowly dog that he was.
I watched him leave in a sort of daze, adrenaline coursing through me at a mile a minute. Once he was gone, I turned back around to face Sam and Brian. “You guys okay?” I asked.
They both nodded.
Sam studied me behind the thick black rims of her glasses. “We’re fine,” she said. “Are you?”
CHAPTER 8
Okay, so maybe I didn’t have to choke the crap out of him, but you can’t tell me that Will Landers didn’t have it coming. In my mind, you had to be a real piece of poo to pick on someone with a disability. It was one action that I had a hard time looking past, a hard time trying to understand.
“Alright, close your eyes,” Matt said, drawing me out of my thoughts. “You too, Sam. No peeking.”
Sam and I did as he asked, closing our eyes with identical grins on our faces. We were chilling at the lair, and Matt was getting ready to reveal whatever secret project he’d been working on for the past few weeks. Sam and I hadn’t discussed what had happened in the alley after school, but I could tell that my friend had some thoughts on the whole matter.
One thing was for sure; I was darn good at making enemies.
“You guys ready?” Matt asked, the excitement clear in his voice. “Okay, open your eyes.”
We did, and I blinked at Matt, my eyebrows rising in question. Sam and I exchanged glances. I bit my lip to keep back a giggle.
Sam said, “Is that… a cape?”
Matt scoffed dramatically. “Not just any cape, Samantha,” he said. “It’s fireproof and bullet proof.” He slung it over his shoulders and latched it at the nape of the neck, pulling the hood over his curly brown hair, his face suddenly cast into shadows. “And,” he continued, “when I spread my arms out like this, it’s aerodynamically constructed to allow for gliding.” He lifted his arms, the black cape spreading out like dark wings on either side of him.
Sam and I looked at each other again. “Okay,” I said. “That is pretty cool. Is it for me?”
Matt gave me an exasperated look. “No, it’s for my grandma. She also likes to dress up in a mask and go vigilante-ing about Grant City at night. Of course it’s for you.”
He slung it off his shoulders and held it out to me. “Try it on.”
I took the cape, my hands running over the light but sturdy material. “Thank you, Matt,” I said, and draped it over my shoulders. I wandered over to the mirror we’d brought here after spotting it in a trash pile on the street side, eyeing my reflection appreciatively. I had to admit, I looked pretty badass.
“Fireproof?” I asked.
Matt nodded, grinning.
“And I can, like, leap off a rooftop and glide down with this thing. Like a bird with wings?”
Matt nodded again, biting at his lip. “Well… at least I think it will work. In theory it should, as long as my mathematics are correct… I haven’t actually tested it yet. I thought you might want to.”
Sam laughed. “Why wouldn’t you want to test it, Matt? The idea of jumping over the edge of a building doesn’t suit you?”
I spread my arms out, admiring the way the cape looked like dark wings when I did so. My eyes burned a bit and my throat grew tight. The two of them didn’t know how strange, how beautiful this gift was to me. As half Fae, one of the things I’d wished for as a child was to have wings like my full Fae mother once had. I’d lain awake many nights, wished on countless stars, asking the Gods for a pair of wings to call my own. I’d never thought I’d get them, and while the special cape technically wasn’t the same, it was enough to make my heart swell.
Still wearing it on my back, I ran up the wall and leapt onto the landing that let into the office overlooking the warehouse. Inside this office was a window that I often climbed in and out of to access the roof of the building.
“Hey!” Sam called, halting me before I disappeared through the doorway. “Where are you going?”
I grinned down at her and Matt, feeling like a kid in line to ride an awesome rollercoaster. “To test this thing out, of course,” I said. “Let’s go see if I can fly.”
***
“Matt, I love you, and you know I think you’re a genius, but are you sure about this?” Sam asked.
Sam and Matt were standing on the pavement below, their heads craned back as they looked up at me where I stood on the edge of the roof adjacent to the lair. With my sensitive ears, I could hear their conversation, could see the tension in my best friend’s shoulders.
I’d climbed over to this building because it was much taller than the one in which we housed the lair. It was twenty stories high, in fact, and Sam and Matt looked like little more than small figures from this height.
“Not at all,” I heard Matt reply. “I told you, I haven’t tested it.”
Sam gave Matt a small shove, making a smile come to my face. “What the hell? Aria! Get down from there! Get down this instant!”
I laughed, giving her a little wave as I watched the toes of my Vans peek out over open air. “You got it,” I shouted back.
With one last deep breath, I lifted my arms. Spreading the cape like the wings I never had, I said a silent prayer that Matt was as smart as I thought he was. Then I leapt out into the warm open air of the night.
Gravity tugged at me immediately, lifting my stomach up into my throat and my hair up off my head. As I watched the ground approach with a suddenness that admittedly scared the crap out of me, I had only a split second to wonder if I’d made a mistake.
Then, as I held my arms out and shifted my position, I felt the wind catch under the wings of the cape, slowing my descent and lifting me the way a sea breeze lifts a gull, gliding me over the air as if I were a half-human kite.
Below me, I heard Matt let out a whoop of achievement, and before I knew what I was doing, a huge caw of delight escaped my own lips. I twisted, soaring through the air like an eagle, thinking to myself if only my mother could see me now.
It lasted only a few short minutes, but I could see the whole city below, the evening lights blinking to life and the buzz of activity that awoke after dark. This area of Grant City was mostly abandoned buildings and crack houses, empty lots and overgrown sidewalks, rusted train tracks and broken bottles, but I loved it. I loved sailing through the skies here. It was as if the place, though unsightly, were mine.
When I finally landed, maneuvering myself so that I touched down on the pavement near my friends, my heart was pounding so hard and so fast that I felt it thumping in my throat. I ran forward a few steps to slow my body, folding the wings of the cape back down at my sides and receiving a high-five from Matt that rang out into the night.
“Dude!” Matt exclaimed. “That was awesome! You flew! You friggin’ flew!”
Relief was washing over Sam’s face and aura like a tide. Her hand was gripped over her heart, the air rushing out of her in a long breath. I grinned at this; she was like a worried mother.
“Tec
hnically, she glided,” Sam corrected, and she slapped at Matt’s arm in disapproval. “And you’re dang lucky she did. If she would’ve splatted on the pavement like a bug on a windshield I would’ve pushed you over the edge of a building, Matthew Bogart Brown.”
I snorted a laugh, my adrenaline still coming out of my ears, the blood in my veins coursing like a white water river. “You’re middle name is Bogart?”
Matt was grinning from ear to ear, though there was admittedly a little relief beneath it. He hadn’t been one hundred percent sure the cape would work.
“If you laugh at me for it,” he said, nodding at the cape draped from my back, “I’m taking that back.”
I smiled wide, my eyes sparkling with excitement, accepting the challenge with a lift of my brows. “No way, buddy,” I said. “The only way you’re getting this back is if you pull it off my dead body.”
I was joking, of course, but this statement was not too far from what would soon come to pass.
CHAPTER 9
“I look like Big Bird,” I said, eyeing the yellow dress Sam had chosen for me. “I look like I’m about to teach some five-year-olds the ABC’s.”
Sam pursed her lips at this. “Yellow is a springtime color. It’s the Spring Fling we’re going to, remember? Not a Halloween party.”
I shook my head, retreating into the dressing room and shucking the dress, trading it for the black one I’d picked out. “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, listening as Sam shuffled through her own clothing choices on the other side of the divider.
“It means, wearing a little color now and then won’t kill you, Morticia.”
I wrinkled my nose at this as I slid the black dress over my head. “How do you know it won’t? I’ve never done it before, so it very well might.”
Sam ignored this, changing the subject. “Are you bringing Caleb?”
Opening the door to the dressing room and stepping out into the area where there were three long mirrors, I sighed. “I don’t know,” I answered. “I haven’t been seeing him much lately. I think he has a lot going on.”
Sam’s dressing room door opened, and I waggled my eyebrows at her appearance. “Makes sense,” she said, eyeing her reflection in the mirrors. “It must be hard having a father who is an evil rich scientist.”
“And it’s not like I can ask Thomas to go,” I mumbled. “He’s too old for a high school dance, and things have been… weird between us.”
“He’s only twenty-six,” Sam offered. “You’re already eighteen. There’s nothing wrong with that.”
I chewed at my lip, looking at our dual reflections as Sam rested her strawberry blonde head on my shoulder. I wished she’d tell him that.
“I don’t know if it’s our ages, or if it’s something else. I guess I’m just confused.”
Sam nodded. “Well, welcome to being a teenage girl. It could be worse. We could be facing a crazy Halfling Werewolf or a mad Sorcerer who’s escaped prison.” She grinned. “Oh, wait, we already did that.”
“You’re right,” I agreed. “I guess I shouldn’t complain. Things are normal. I should be happy about that. I’ve always wanted to be normal.”
Sam sighed. “Yeah, well, we all want to be what we’re not.”
***
We picked out dresses on Wednesday, and by Friday morning—the day of my first lacrosse game—I was settling into a real expectation of the ordinary. Things between Andrea Ramos and I were no less tense, and having Raven constantly hovering over my shoulder was no picnic, but all in all, I was beginning to think things might just continue on in this fashion.
It was like I had found some sort of balance, a state of homeostasis, and may just be able to relax and enjoy life a bit, if I could teach myself how to do that.
This alone, should have served as a warning flag; some of us are just not meant to lead ordinary lives, if there exists such a thing.
As the school day passed uneventfully, and game time drew nearer, I realized that I was nervous. I’d never played on a team sport in my life. I’d never even considered the possibility. I would need to walk a fine line between being too obvious regarding my physical capabilities, and doing well enough to hopefully catch the attention of someone who might be able to offer me a scholarship. It was a long shot, but I saw no harm in doing so.
I’d been thinking a lot about my future, and I’d decided I very much wanted to further my education. I was a soldier, but I was also a student, always had been, and likely always would be. As half Fae, I understood on a level deeper than most that one of life’s primary purposes was growth, which was second only to love.
“You look a little pale,” Matt said. “You okay?”
The last bell of the day had just rung, and less than three hours stood between game time and me. I shrugged. “I’m a little nervous,” I admitted.
“Don’t be,” he said. “You’re gonna be great. You’re like a little ninja.”
We were exiting the school building, and Sam joined us as we crossed the intersection, me atop my skateboard and them on either side.
“What are you guys talking about?” asked Sam. “You nervous for the game?”
I didn’t get a chance to respond, because someone knocked into me hard from behind, sending me forward on my skateboard, my upper body pitching forth to maintain balance. Everything that followed happened incredibly fast, and had my reflexes been any slower, I probably wouldn’t have been fit to play in the game that night. Or the next few games, for that matter.
The skateboard rushed onward out of my control, taking me with it. I heard a gasp and a shout, followed by the deafening blast of a car horn that seemed to resound all the way to my bones. There was a flash of red, of unlit headlights, of the front end of a vehicle approaching at a speed that foretold inevitable impact. The brakes screeched and I caught just a glimpse of the wide eyes of the driver as she laid on the horn and slammed her foot down on the brake pedal.
My body acted for me, and I jumped off the skateboard just in time to keep from losing my legs, landing squarely on my two feet atop the car’s metal hood with a light thud. The world seemed to pause in that moment, as I stood there half-crouched on the hood of a car that should have very well hit me, my hands trembling and my breath caught somewhere in my windpipe as the fog of adrenaline slowly lifted and returned to me my right mind.
I could feel a hundred sets of eyes on me; the driver behind the wheel, my shocked and scared friends still on the sidewalk, the observers on either side of the street, the venders with their food carts, the men doing repairs to the asphalt a block east… and the smug smirk of the person who’d pushed me out into the street.
Raven.
She stood on the sidewalk beside Sam and Matt, slipping me that sly grin before feigning worry and astonishment over what had just taken place, as though it had been an accident, when we both knew it had not.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said, her hand, with it’s red-painted nails clutched over the place where her heart should be. “Are you okay?”
I jumped down from the hood with legs that I commanded not to wobble just as the driver of the vehicle got out and asked me the same. Before dealing with Raven, I assured the young driver that I was fine, and after some reassurances and my permission, she headed on her way, looking very much as though she was a heartbeat away from bursting into tears.
Once she was gone, and the people nearby decided there was nothing more interesting enough to see, I turned on Raven, my hands clenched into fists as tight as they would go.
Unsurprisingly, it was Sam who reached the evil Succubus before I could. Little and unintimidating as she was, Sam shoved Raven hard in the chest, forcing her to stumble back a few steps.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Sam shouted, getting in Raven’s smug face, drawing attention once again. “You could’ve killed her!”
Raven looked aghast, adding insult to near injury. “It was an accident,” she said, and leaned around my angry best friend to gi
ve me a wide-eyed look. “Honest. And thank goodness that she’s got great reflexes. No harm done, right?”
Even Matt looked like he wanted to punch her in the face, and it would be a lie to say that the urge didn’t come over me as well. But standing there on the crowded sidewalk, engaging in a physical confrontation would do no good for anyone. Now was not the time, and it was certainly not the place.
Apparently aware of this as well, Raven adjusted her backpack on her shoulders and gave me a smile that was so sickly sweet it made my stomach twist. As she tipped me a wink with her darkly made-up eyes and said, “See you tonight for the game, fairy,” one thing was clear.
She needed to go. I’d been foolish to think things could be balanced otherwise. There could be no homeostasis with her around, with the obvious and not-so-obvious threats she clearly posed.
Sam, of course, was on the same wavelength. I didn’t have to check her aura to feel the steam coming off of her as she stepped up beside me, her blue eyes like ice as they followed Raven’s retreating figure along with my own.
“That bitch has got to go,” she said, echoing my thoughts. It was funny how much alike we’d become the more we spent time together.
I nodded, grabbing my luckily unharmed skateboard from where it had settled by the curb. “And I need to be on my toes.”
CHAPTER 10
The whole dang city was here. Okay, that may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but who would’ve expected a full crowd at a girl’s high school lacrosse game? Not me, certainly, and the fact that the stands were packed only served to set my nerves on edge further.
Also, it would be a lie to say that my eyes didn’t scan the crowd for a certain somebody, and that my shoulders didn’t slump in disappointment when I saw he was not there.
With the enormous pads on my shoulders, this went blessedly unnoticed.
