Dave sighed and rolled his eyes.
“You didn’t know me when I was a virgin,” he muttered.
“You sure? Hey!” A couch pillow smashed into his face suddenly, and Jane grinned at them, catching the pillow for Chad.
“Hey, you know what I don’t understand?” Dave turned to her, eager to change the topic. She only glanced at him questioningly. “Why didn’t Peter send Marco and Ryan with us? We- ” his voice broke off as Pain cut in.
“What do you mean? Like the two of us are not enough for your safety, Richie Rich?”
Dave made a face, but decided to dismiss the Richie Rich issue.
“No, what I mean is if it’s so important right now, what harm would it do if the guys came with us, too? The more the safer, isn’t it?”
Pain shook her head, glancing at her sister. Jane returned her look with a calmer one and turned to Dave.
“It doesn’t work like this; we don’t work like this. It’s no big deal, just usual routine where we always work in pairs. Of course, it’s a little different because this time we don’t work on a contract, it’s in our own interest to save you. Usually we don’t stay with our clients for so long, we just accompany them somewhere for a day or two. But still, nobody sends a dozen fighters to guard some client just because it’s safer. We send a couple, and the others are busy at other jobs. It works just fine, and besides, we wouldn’t raise any money if we only focused on a few clients. Our men are always out there in pairs or even alone, guarding somebody, and nobody would ever think that one or two are not enough. Besides, the more of us would go with you, the easier it would be for Beasts to track us down. We’re lucky we have at least a couple of tunnel exits that they don’t know about yet. I bet they’re watching all the others now.”
This explanation seemed simple, but still, it wasn’t good enough for Dave. A hundred of other questions bubbled up in his mind momentarily, but he suppressed them and just said,
“Hm-mm… I see.” He thought there was a spark of surprise in Jane’s expression, which disappeared quickly. So he really did ask too many questions, didn’t he?
A half-hour passed, and Pain was bored beyond measure. She sat on the edge of the couch, her feet on the coffee table, her hands twiddling with the katana idly. Days like this one, empty and pointless, annoyed her more than anything in the world. Who needed that much rest when it was so boring? She sighed. It was too early for sleep and too dark for reading, and the cartoon was beginning to get on her nerves. With an annoyed click of her tongue, she got up and headed to the bedroom. The necessity to be far from home for some obscure circumstances made her feel hung up in space. She missed her routine, fighters, training. The only thing that could help her get rid of this uneasy feeling was the view of the night city from the height of bird’s flight. This was what always helped her if something troubled her mind. Skyscrapers’ roofs were one of her favorite pastime: the New York streets not only looked fantastic from above, but also instilled in her a peaceful feeling of estrangement from everyday routine. Up there she felt different, like someone stripped of feelings, emotions, and worries. A ghost of her real self.
She walked through the dark bedroom, her face a floating pale shape in the big mirror, and pulled a chair up to the window, seating herself in it. The heavy curtain covered the glass, letting in only a faint hint of moonlight. She pulled its fringe to the side, peeking out onto the busy streets. The weather seemed perfect out there. She could imagine the warm wind blow in her face as she would soar above Manhattan, the brightly lit streets flashing far below. It had always been like this for her, one day she had something she was used to, and then if she couldn’t have it, she would feel like it was taken from her forever. She sighed, wondering what Marco and Ryan were doing at the moment. Too bad Peter ordered them not to call, except in case of an emergency, so that Eugene wouldn’t track them down.
Back in the living room, another episode began, and Chad realized that he already knew it by heart. He got up and stretched. The only distraction in the room, aside from the TV, was the window. He watched the city for a few minutes, seeing the roads shimmer with cars. They streamed like electricity through wires, bringing the avenues to life. It wasn’t even midnight, and yet he could see apartment windows disappear into darkness every now and then, whole buildings turn dark and eerie. It was fascinating somehow, watching Manhattan go to sleep from above as if he wasn’t a part of it. He felt strangely detached, all his worries left below. All his life seemed insignificant now, as if it didn’t even belong to him. He realized he didn’t miss his work even once in the past few days. He had called there only once to notify his boss that he fell sick and would be absent for a week or so. Usually he got bored after one day without his hands being busy with some wrenched piece of metal. Now he was shocked at how distant it all seemed to him. He grunted uneasily in his mind and wondered what Pain was doing there, in the bedroom. There was only one way to find out, so he headed there, hoping to distract himself with a small chat or by getting some dislocations, in Jerry’s opinion. He wasn’t sure, because it depended on her mood. Anything would be better than watching any more cartoons, though.
He found her sitting by the curtained window and gazing through a narrow gap between the cloth and the window frame. Looking over her dark silhouette that slouched on a chair like a weary phantom, he once again wondered at such a determined mind in such a small form. The thick carpet silenced his footsteps as he neared the window, stepping slowly and wistfully, not wanting to startle her, although he knew it was silly. She wasn’t easily scared or surprised.
As he grabbed a chair for himself, she slewed around. The expression on her face was unreadable in such darkness, but with her weary posture, her chin on her palm and her elbows on her knees, she didn’t seem particularly happy. After a quick glance in his direction, she returned to watching the streets outside. And since his elbows and knees still looked in the same direction as before, he took her silence as – well, not quite an invitation – but as a permission to stay. He put his chair beside hers, spinning it around and flinging himself onto it so that his arms rested on its back. The sleepiness was slowly descending on him already, and the dimly lit room made it even worse, but he stubbornly didn’t want to go to bed.
“So, the TV has got on your nerves, too?” she asked, peering into some object far below.
“It got boring.” Chad shrugged, leaning with his chest against the chair’s back.
She scoffed at that.
“And with me it’s different, that’s why you came here?”
“It depends…” He shrugged again, holding back a smile and watching her. Her expression changed to an ironic half-smirk.
“Oh, come on, no need to pretend. I know that the only person who’s always happy to be around me is Marco. And I think that’s only ’cause there’s something really wrong with him. Like, maybe he’s been dropped on his head as a child. And one time, I think I saw him kick himself in the head during practice, maybe that’s why. I’m not sure. But I’m pretty sure about one thing: you two are awfully bored with us and it’s okay. It’s not our job to keep you entertained, after all. And you don’t have to worry about us, either. We’ve been to hell and back more than once, and this mission is practically a vacation so far. So don’t bother trying to keep me company, ’cause I’m better with swords than words,” she said it all in one breath, not letting him even put in a word, and he snapped his mouth closed before anything could slip from his lips. The thoroughly prepared speech got all mixed up in his head, and he sighed, unsure if he should still say what he wanted to say or just jump out of the window sparing himself the humiliation of returning to the living room. He decided not to give up so easily, though.
“Actually, I wanted to ask about something.”
She looked at him skeptically.
“Yeah? About what?”
“How did you get that scar on your back?”
Pain clearly didn’t expect that, because her face expr
essed pure puzzlement for a second. The pleasure from seeing it was a surprise for Chad – it wasn’t often that he could see her without that tight self-control. She cleared her throat and asked,
“Which one of the dozen?”
“You know which one I’m talking about,” he answered wearily, “that long one.”
“Why do you think I want to talk about it?” She touched the curtain lightly, acting as if she was more interested in the view than the topic in hand, but he could feel how she tensed.
“It’s not an idle curiosity,” Chad answered. “I just wondered how somebody managed to sneak behind your back,” he teased her.
“Planning on using his tactics, huh?” She smirked darkly. “Then you’ll have to kill at least three people first, so that everything would be exactly the same.”
Curious about his reaction, she turned to look at him. Moonlight brought out the angularity in his face, and his brown hair looked silvery-black. His nose was a little uneven, but it didn’t spoil his looks. She doubted that anything could spoil that look. She envied boys since she became a teenager – if only she could look half that cool without makeup and everything. And they managed to stay perfect even when they just walked out of bed. With his mouth a flat, stern line, he looked like one of those Greek statues now: all angles, his cheekbones high and sharp, and a tousle of curly dark hair, falling into his eyes and on his neck. Dazzling, she admitted against her will. Chad was gazing back at her, waiting patiently for her next words, and though his eyes were hidden in the shadows under his eyebrows, she could feel his look almost tangible on her skin.
Finally, a corner of his eyebrow quirked questioningly, so she exhaled and said,
“Fine. At least this story I remember perfectly.”
He only nodded, showing that he was ready to listen.
“It was almost two years ago. That night I took Jane with me for a pilot patrol – back then I was still patrolling, getting some experience. She was only fifteen and did great at training, but testing in a real fight is quite different. You need time to learn how to listen to your mind and the adrenalin at the same time. At first, the adrenalin captures you, and you do really weird stuff.” She smirked, looking out the window all this time. Chad only watched her silently, somehow mesmerized. “We went patrolling with three more boys, which didn’t have much experience before that shift either. I was nineteen. Up until that day I’d had about… I don’t know, a hundred shifts? But Peter sent us to a relatively quiet district, so we were sure everything would go smoothly. I should have known better than that,” her voice got grim on the last sentence, and he tensed without even realizing it.
“Apparently, Beasts had tracked us down and decided to have some fun ambushing five young fighters. Scabby bastards. We were on a roof when they attacked us, seizing the boys and killing them right in the air. Jane got knocked off the roof, and I was thrown into a wall of some warehouse. It all happened in one moment, and I didn’t really have the time to cushion the blow.
“When I came around a minute later, I had a split temple and a broken leg, a bad closed fracture just below the knee. I was seeing red, but I managed to make out Jane. She was fending off four Beasts. I shouted for her to go away, to fly home; but stubborn as she is, she stayed, of course.
“I guess you figured that we can heal minor wounds pretty fast. But serious ones, like a damage of internal organs, and especially, fractures, when a bone is shattered and there are splinters…” Pain shook her head slowly, “Such wounds require enormous energies and focusing, they exhaust us, and often it only helps for a short time. The bones would break again later, and the splinters wouldn’t disappear without surgical intervention. And I had a concussion. Head injuries are the only ones where our powers are mostly useless because they come from our heads. So it wasn’t helping that everything was spinning and I was about to throw up.
“I saw that Jane wasn’t going to make it on her own. Those fighters were too good. She was fast, but she couldn’t finish them all by herself, and eventually they would have caught her. Reinforcements would take at least fifteen minutes to come. So the only thing for me to do was to concentrate on healing my wounds. I was done with the temple pretty fast, but the leg,” she glanced at her left foot involuntarily, wincing, “it was a real mess. The vertigo made it hard to focus. While I was busy with getting my leg together, one of the Beasts must have seen that I was alive, and attacked from above. I noticed him at the last moment before the blow, so I could only duck away from the knife. He got me in the back, not too deep, but he split some of the muscles and the skin all the way down to my waist. It was awful, but the shock must have cleared my head, so in the next second that bastard was on the ground.” She turned her head slightly, focusing her thoughtful gaze on some car down on the street. “I was able to stand by that time, but too weak to use the katana, so I had to go with a knife. I dragged myself to where Jane was fighting – one of the attackers was already down – and called out for them. As they got distracted, Jane beheaded one, and one of them I took down myself. A knife is no katana, but it pierces a heart just fine,” she smiled grimly. “I blacked out after it was over. I barely remember the rest because I was drifting in and out. Jane carried me home. She only had lots of scratches, nothing serious.
“I came around on the third day with a bandage on my back and a cast on my leg. That night I’d been delivered to our infirmary and anesthetized. Then they had to break my leg again, straighten the bones, and put them all together as they must be. Later Doc said Marco had helped him with that. I’d been unconscious for a few days, and over that time, the wounds on my back already began to heal in the ordinary way, stitches and all. That’s why the scar remained,” she fell silent, gazing out the window sightlessly. Even stunned with the story, Chad couldn’t help but wonder how long she could sit like this, looking at the nightly New York.
“Wait, if you mean that it’s all about not healing the wound quickly…” He speculated for a moment. “Then why does Marco have that scar on his arm, the one you made? He didn’t get it in a battle, he had a chance to take care of himself…”
“Marco isn’t very good at it,” she replied with a grimace. “You have to practice and develop this skill. He doesn’t have the patience,” she ceased talking, falling in thought. “Actually, Jane is the best at it. It’s like it happens by itself with her.”
“So, if she was fifteen then, now she’s only seventeen?” Chad’s eyebrows rose in surprise. Pain nodded.
“She’ll turn eighteen this September.”
“Wow…” He fell silent and thought about it for a minute. He tried to capture what defined Pain as the big sister and couldn’t. Jane was much more mature and thorough and keen, but still… There was something missing, something that would always make Pain the leader. And at the same time, only Jane’s wisdom and readiness to follow her sister wherever she went made their partnership possible. “She’s very mature for her age,” was all he said at last, and she nodded.
“Yeah,” she replied very quietly, sighing and hanging her head. “Sometimes I’m really proud of her. When I see how she manages everything with you two, how she thinks everything through. I’d never be patient enough.” She smiled, raising her head and looking out the window again. Chad was obscurely glad about that, because it was so much easier to talk to her without those pitch-black eyes staring right into his soul. “You know, poor Marco gets annoyed with this sisters’ stuff pretty often. It’s just, he’s the only one with whom I can talk about Jane. Peter’s too busy with his work,” she said and shook her head. “And Marco, he listens to it over and over again, and then he’d be like, ‘Oh, enough, you’re like a grandma!’ and leave or fall asleep…” She smiled again, making him absently smile in return.
The city outside was much darker now. Pain was silent, and Chad didn’t dare to say anything. Her sudden frankness had driven him into a stupor. He knew how to deal with the indifferent Pain, with Pain being moody, even with the annoying si
de of her that took pleasure in bullying the others. But this Pain, open, sincere, and caring, this was something he needed time to get used to, something he had yet to figure out. And not that he hadn’t realized that there was a reason for that thick mask of arrogance and mortal boredom, that she just used that attitude to hide her real emotions, to disguise the thin-skinned, vulnerable, and passionate individual that was underneath. But he certainly didn’t expect her to open up so suddenly, even a little bit.
The silence lingered, and he felt uncomfortable just staring at her like a curious kid at a zoo. So he decided it wouldn’t hurt to ask.
“Is it hard? Not having a normal youth, you know, school and parties, and to raise a little sister without anyone to take care of you?” He leaned closer over the high back of the chair, waiting for her answer, but she just frowned, her talkative mood vanishing in a blink of an eye.
“Okay, you wanted to know about the scar – I told you about the scar.” She pushed the chair back and stepped away from the window. “Get back to the telly, and I’m going to sleep,” she added with finality and turned to the bed, but he caught her arm, almost without thinking.
“Hey,” his voice, equally surprised and disappointed, sounded a little too loud even to his own ears, and she spun around, fixing her piercing gaze on him with none of her former friendliness.
“What?” she snapped, and he realized that he really was dangerously close to a dislocation at that moment. But she just stared at him, angrily, demandingly… and alarmed.
He peered into her eyes – two black coals smoking with indignation – and suddenly he could see how she tensed, braced herself, as if waiting for a blow. What seemed like aggression really was a defense. What sounded like rudeness, in reality was just another piece of her protective armor activating in response of his behavior. And the look in her eyes, strained to the point of terror, almost pleading for him to let her go, not to push her down the road she wasn’t used to sharing with anyone, it made his breath catch in his lungs. Her arm felt like iron under his touch, and he knew she wanted to hit him, he could almost feel it in her, but something made her stop. And all of it – her reaction, her look, and that vulnerability he saw behind her eyes – it was so sad that it made something inside him tighten and ache for fixing it, only he didn’t know how. All he could do was ease the tension by letting her go, so he did, but his eyes still held her gaze as he said,
Sky Ghosts: All for One (Young Adult Urban Fantasy Adventure) (Sky Ghosts Series Book 1) Page 11
