Days of Fury

by B. J. Castillo

  “We must leave soon.” Tadhg adopted a more upright posture.

  Evelyn agreed. She approached Caleb.

  He took a step back when he saw her.

  “Wait,” he said. “What danger are they talking about? Who is he, Evelyn?”

  “I work for your father's agency,” Tadhg lied. Caleb turned to him. “So is. The bodyguard agency of Mr. Taddeus White is more than that; it is a research center that provides witness protection.”

  “Witnesses?” Caleb chuckled. “I do not know what you're talking about.” He turned to Evelyn. “Who wants to murder...?” He was interrupted.

  Evelyn sprinkled littium on his face. She was surprised at how quickly she had moved, copying Tadhg's agility. At first, Caleb blinked confused from the unexpected dew. The particles took effect almost immediately. Caleb gestured an unintelligible word and then collapsed backward. Evelyn thought that Tadhg was going to catch him on the flight, but he didn’t. Caleb fell limp into the ground and a strangled thud resounded.

  "You're kidding," he scolded Evelyn. “Now how will we get this idiot out of here?”

  The girl had not thought about that detail. Something occurred to her.

  “There must be a back exit, deep down," Eve pointed out. “Charge him —and tell Rhys to wait for us at the back of the club ...” She broke off. Beyond, she saw a familiar face with nightmarish eyes. “Tadhg...”

  Tadhg frowned and followed her gaze. As soon as he noticed that the pyxis'avalh were approaching them, Tadhg bent down and carried Caleb over his shoulder. Evelyn motioned for him to go to the back, to look for the exit. Tadhg shook his head. Eve put her hand indiscreetly under her skirt and extracted the weapon that was attached to her thigh. Tadhg was perplexed, but started running towards where she had indicated.

  Evelyn took a deep breath and glanced around. The pyxis'avalh were already almost upon her. She raised her weapon. She caught sight of Ivvy screaming in horror. Evelyn fired the defibrillator against the screen behind the DJ booth. Sparks flew. There was an explosion. The music stopped. People started running in all directions; from the boxes and the catwalks to those who were given to the music on the dance floor, they ran away in terror.

  Another explosion.

  The lights went out. Just a few bulbs kept the darkness at bay here and there. —The screen still threw red and gold sparks—. In the midst of the shadows and the stampede that was heading for the exit, Eve spotted one of the pyxis walking at a mechanical pace towards her. His dark eyes did not leave her for a moment. Evelyn raised the gun and fired. A fiery scarlet laser pierced the intermittent blackness and pierced the abdomen of the avalh, or at least the poor man she had possessed. The man collapsed on her knees, and then sprawled full-length. His gaze never changed. Eve's hand, holding the defibrillator, trembled. She felt the metallic surface of the weapon warm, and overwhelming, in her palm.

  Another explosion. Absolute darkness. Evelyn jumped and dropped the defibrillator. The metal resonated. Shit, she mumbled as she leaned over to look for it. She began to feel the ground in the extended darkness. The bustle of confusion was hardly a whisper in the distance. Evelyn felt something solid... a shoe...

  Another explosion. Back light of the play of lights. Evelyn discovered that she was touching a converse shoe. She looked up. The boy watched her with an impassive gesture; his look was dark and bright at the same time. He bent down, grabbed Evelyn roughly by the back of her hair, then lifted her up. She bellowed.

  There was a laser shot. Eve managed to see a puff of smoke rising from the shoulder of the pyxi that held her. There was also blood and torn skin. The pyxi did not show any pain. He pressed his lips, angry, and threw Evelyn to the ground. She fell hard on one arm, and it hurt her. The deep exhaustion in her body kept her from getting to her feet at once. Painful and besieged, she saw when Tadhg and the pyxis'avalh entered combat.

  Tadhg tried to fire his weapon against the pyxis, but it was faster. He leaned over, dodged the shot, and threw himself on Tadhg before the next. —Man and pyxi rolled across the floor, punching each other, hitting each other's sides, and even an unsuccessful attempt to bite by Tadhg—. He did not succeed, the avalh was very fast. He had already taken blood from Tadhg on his lip and nose, plus a bruise on his cheek, which he earned while kicking him with both feet to put a little distance between them.

  Then Evelyn found it. Defibrillator. It was next to one of the overturned tables. The room was almost empty, although he saw faces watching from the boxes, recording everything with their mobile phones. At the moment she paid no attention to them. She got up, went to the defibrillator and took it. Tadhg was on the ground, crawling back to put distance between himself and the pyxis'avalh. The avalh was advancing towards him, walking slowly and tortuously towards his victim. Eve noticed what Tadhg really intended to do: get the weapon he had lost in combat.

  Evelyn tried to pierce the center of her back, but the passage of the avalh was very uneven and, in addition, her pulse did not help. Tadhg was a few inches away from finding his weapon. —At that moment the pyxis'avalh seemed to notice the intentions of the future man, as he hurried forward and threw himself forward. Evelyn fired and missed.

  Another explosion. More sparks. A laser splitting the tense silence. Back to the dark.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A small group of CIA agents appeared at the scene five minutes later. Apparently, Evelyn had noticed, each of them had a bottle of ettalim, which was using at that time to erase the memory of the witnesses as they ensured that they also eliminated all the evidence captured by their mobiles.

  “What will they do with the bodies of the pyxis'avalh?” Eve asked Rhys.

  They were in the back of one of the ambulances that had come to the scene shortly after the CIA arrived. In it, Claire had Tadhg lying on a stretcher and healing his wounds. Fortunately, Evelyn and Tadhg had been the only ones affected by what happened, as far as injuries were concerned.

  “Disappear them,” Rhys said, his eyes on the club's rear exit. From there she could hear the music. The guests who had witnessed what happened, were taken by this route, and then returned once their memories and others were erased. There was a false alarm and the guests who had come out through the front filled the club again. Evelyn was surprised at how clean and fast the entire procedure had been. “Incinerate them. Deliver them to their families. I don’t know.” Shrugged.

  “How came the CIA so fast?” Eve asked.

  “Well, Tadhg told me to warn you at the moment she left my sheltered in my arms.” She raised an eyebrow and composed a stunned smile. “Only half a dozen CIA agents, here in New York, know about TFA.”

  “And what about the governor?” Evelyn snapped. “He also know about the Agency?”

  “Yes,” Rhys replied matter-of-factly; she was a little distracted, Evelyn noted. “Robert Schmidt knows about us, just because we are within his jurisdiction and we arrived at this time during his first years in office; future governors will not know.”

  Schmidt knew it. Evelyn wondered, given the close friendship between her father and the governor, if he had entrusted such a secret to his chief of security. Eve did not think it was possible; but if her father knew...

  “By the way,” Evelyn asked in passing. “Where is Caleb?”

  Rhys looked at her and smiled.

  “I had to draw strength to take it to the other street and get a taxi.” She sighed wearily, although she looked a little amused. She looked back. Until that moment, Evelyn had not noticed that Rhys's distracted gaze was not that, it was a smiling look; and she also noticed that she was seeing one of the CIA agents who was doing his job: erasing evidence from a girl's phone. “It was not easy to carry him, you know? In front of the library, I had to ask Dawit and Juno for support to take him inside. I was still unconscious when I left it.”

  “Ah.”

  Evelyn thought of Becca's words, of Caleb's face sprinkled with shadows and colored lights, and Caleb c
ollapsing at her feet. Everything was spinning like a whirlwind in her head. Evelyn glanced back, where Dr. Claire healed Tadhg's blows.

  This one was very serious. However, he looked up when he noticed that Eve was watching him. He remained unmoved until Claire made him complain, for the first time, of the pain of his injuries. Evelyn turned and took advantage of the fact that Rhys was a little distracted.

  “Who is he?” She asked.

  “Who?” Rhys whispered absently.

  She looked at Evelyn, who pointed out to the CIA agent that she had not stopped seeing all the time.

  “Ah, he,” Rhys said loudly. “His name is Brian. It's from the CIA, as you see.”

  Brian was tall, fair complexion and dark blond hair. His eyes were light brown. Maybe he was twenty-six, like Tadhg. He was attractive. His face lit up every time he glanced over to where she and Rhys were. Eve could not help asking:

  “And you like it?”

  Rhys tensed like a stick; she looked at her with wide eyes. She was about to respond when a scream from Tadhg interrupted them. Rhys straightened and Evelyn imitated her. Tadhg and Dr. Claire came out of the back inside of the ambulance. She, smiling and satisfied; he, aching and with a couple of littler ribbons covering him the cardinals of the face, surly as always. At that moment agent Brian approached them.

  “Everything is solved,” he said. “Evidence erased, memories forgotten.”

  “Thank you, Brian,” Claire said.

  Brian nodded.

  Eve caught a glimpse of the peek he threw at Rhys. No one, besides her and Rhys, seemed to notice. Brian and the other CIA agents climbed the ambulance, where they had been transported to get to the site of the events, and left as they had arrived, quickly and discreetly.

  * * *

  “What time is it?” Eve asked.

  Tadhg snorted. Although later he contracted the face of pain. According to Dr. Claire, he had a superficial contusion on the left side of his torso. If it hurt, Tadhg barely showed it.

  “Four and half," he answered. He draped his jacket over his shoulder, carelessly, and stood up belatedly after the elevator doors opened. Eve had watched him all the time, and had the suspicion that Tadhg was aware. “We should stay at the party. I think a girl was beginning to undress...”

  “Tadhg,” Rhys lectured him.

  “What?” Tadhg laughed.

  Claire had gone to the clinic to make sure Caleb was healthy and safe. Evelyn, Tadhg and Rhys were walking silently through the corridor when Eve suddenly stopped, urging the other two, after her, to do so as well.

  “What's wrong, Eve?” Rhys asked.

  “I knew it,” said Tadhg. “She wants us to return to the party.”

  Evelyn turned to them. The look she gave them erased Tadhg's booted smile from his lips, and Rhys forced her to close her mouth.

  “When were you going to tell me that Caleb will be my husband in the future,” Eve said, “before or after the night is over?”

  The brothers were perplexed. They did not talk; neither moved nor looked at each other, as they used to. Evelyn stared at them from side to side. She wondered what they were thinking at that moment, if they were plotting a lie to calm the annoyance she did not allow herself to hide.

  Finally, Tadhg adopted a nonchalant expression; he pulled his jacket off his shoulder and let out a sigh.

  “In fact,” he began. “Neither one nor the other. You were not supposed to ever know. Also, you know that there is a certain law that the Agency demands to comply, right?”

  Evelyn nodded reluctantly.

  “Did you know that you knew Caleb?” she ask.

  This time, Rhys and Tadhg did look at each other.

  “Yes,” she said, hesitating at first. Evelyn was not able to look angrily at Rhys, having behaved in those last days as a true friend with her. However, she had hidden the truth; what kind of friend she was? “Well. We knew that they were going to the same secondary school, that possibly they did know each other.”

  Tadhg approached Evelyn, squinting, scanning her. Nearby, she could glimpse in detail the faint reddish stain between her nose and upper lip, the blood that had made the blows of the pyxis'avalh; and also the two cardinals: a slight one in one corner of the lips, and another in the left cheekbone that reached to the beginning of the hair.

  “It was Becca, right?” He asked Evelyn.

  She did not answer; she held his gaze.

  “Yeah,” he said, without a hint of amusement. “I knew it.”

  “It does not matter who told me,” Evelyn snapped. “I had the right to know, despite any stupid law. He...” She paused and looked down. “He will be my husband.”

  “And do you dislike the idea?” Tadhg inquired.

  Yes? Evelyn wondered to herself at that moment, did she dislike him? How much was her anger? She had not thought about it until that moment. Well, she had avoided it. Caleb... He was the most popular and desired guy in high school, and they had been best friends before. How would it be possible for them to end up together?

  She opened his mouth and closed it. She looked up and saw two pairs of eyes, blue and coppery, fixed on her.

  She was about to say something when they heard footsteps approaching down the hallway in front of them. Saved from giving a silly answer, and grateful with the fact, she turned to see who was approaching. It was Dawit. He stopped before them, next to Eve, and watched them three with a look that suggested he knew he was interrupting a conversation.

  “The boy is waking up,” he reported. “Dr. Claire believes that it is best if you are by her side.” Evelyn realized that he was looking at her. “She says it will do him good to see a familiar face amid so much confusion.”

  Inside, Evelyn's soul teetered with nerves; on the outside, she remained strong and determined in her face. She nodded and allowed Dawit to accompany her to the clinic.

  * * *

  She was not at all surprised that the clinic, on the Upper floor, was white and shiny like almost everything in the Agency; after all, that was the hospital rooms. Dawit had accompanied her to the door and then he left. Inside, Evelyn met Dr. Claire by the bed where Caleb Goodbrother lay, apparently dozing.

  “It's okay?” Eve asked. “I thought he was waking up, as Dawit said.”

  “That he does,” said Claire; although she was frowning, her lips were a thin smile. Claire, dressed in her impeccable white doctor's coat and with her hair regally picked, was as lucid as ever, despite not having rested as she should. It was close to five in the morning, Evelyn knew. “Wake up from time to time, comes and goes. They are effects of the littium; often happens.”

  “Already.”

  Evelyn had not looked away from Caleb, not even to concentrate on Claire's words. The sheltered was lying down in one of the three individual beds of the clinic. His eyes were closed. Although later, as a legitimization of the doctor's words, Caleb opened them a little and tensed his lips.

  “How long will it be like this?” Evelyn asked.

  “Some hours.”

  “And he will remembered what happened at the club?”

  “A little, yes. Fragments.”

  There was a moment of silence.

  “There is something else,” the doctor added. “I was studying his eyes and I noticed that they were dilated, so I did some tests...”

  “I know,” Evelyn snapped, and looked at the doctor for a moment before looking away again and taking her to Caleb. She remembered that glint in his eyes, his unusual laugh, and the cold sweat of his hand closed on her arm. “Do you know what drug it is?”

  “Cocaine,” Claire said in a warm voice. “There was not much in his system, which is good. Otherwise, I could not say what adverse effects would cause mixing in large quantities with the littium, which is in a way a different kind of drug.” She paused, and added, “Although less satisfying, of course, it is very fast and it leaves you unconscious long before you feel the slightest hint of ele
vation.”

  Evelyn stared at him. Caleb was sleeping like an angel. She did not know what else to say.

  Claire sighed and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “I'll leave you alone,” she said. “He will not wake up fully in a few hours, stay a moment with him, and then go to your room and rest. You need it.”

  Eve looked at the woman, nodded and smiled thinly. As she watched her leave, she wondered if Claire knew the truth. Of course she do—, she told herself. Or how can it be explained that she sent Dawit to find me because Caleb needed to see a familiar face? And how did she know we knew each other since before tonight? Even Rebecca knew she knew him, she concluded, why not sweet Dr. Claire? That could mean that Rhys had lied to her, which angered her even more.

  Evelyn went around Caleb's bed and stood to one side; she sat on the edge, on the side of the boy's hip, in silence, and devoted herself to contemplating it. Caleb half-opened his eyes, tensed his lips and hands, which were held together over his chest; he did not make greater movements than those. Soon after, he closed his eyes again and relaxed. With him, Evelyn also relaxed.

  She was not prepared to tell him everything that had happened; she was not prepared to look him in the face and exchange words of consolation, far from it. Her stomach tightened at the thought of that moment. She knew it would be inevitable. Caleb Goodbrother would be back in a few hours and she would have to calm him restlessness, being in an unknown place and with strangers. She was the most important piece so that the mission did not fail.

  Caleb had not suffered any damage during the course of the event. Tadhg had gotten him healthy and safe long before any of the pyxis'avalh approached him. And there he was, alive. Despite his milky skin and the bruise-colored bags under his eyes, Caleb was still the most handsome boy she had ever seen. His dark gold hair was messy, so Evelyn extended her hands to brush a few strands from his face.

  She remembered those days of their childhood, playing with the snow during the winter and touring the Prospect Park in the spring. That boy with bright blond hair and huge gray eyes, whom she had consoled during the death of his father and then cried and missed after the move. That child was there with her, and he was no longer a child, the past had been left behind...