The Haunted Hero (Aria Fae #4)

by H. D. Gordon

“Yeah, we all heard him,” Raven said. “How does that help?”

  “What happens at the end of the seven days?” Caleb asked, his aura taking on some real concern as his blue eyes found mine.

  Sam nodded. “My question exactly.”

  “Then, he’s going to ‘take from me what I took from him,’” I said, remembering the man’s words to me and trying to hide the fact that a shiver had just raced up my spine. “The things I love most in the world.”

  These words hung in the air for a moment, the five of us staring at each other with sense of foreboding so strong we could almost smell it, the sun fading in the sky with each passing second. Just then, the door to the warehouse opened, and Thomas Reid entered in all his manly glory.

  “We’ve got a bigger problem,” Thomas said, his chest rising and falling as if he’d just run here. “The emergency generators at the Grant City Penitentiary failed about an hour ago. Over a hundred prisoners broke out in the process.”

  I uttered a curse word and went to suit up without hesitation. Sam separated from the others and came over to me with worry etched in every line of her face.

  “It’s going to be fine, Sam,” I assured her.

  “Be careful,” she said, pulling me into a hug that was impressively tight. “Of the hundred or so prisoners that escaped the pen, how many do you think the Masked Maiden put behind bars in the first place?”

  I knew the question was rhetorical, meant to prove a point, but in my head I ran through the last half year of crime fighting the Maiden had done. The answer was, too many to count.

  I nodded my understanding and slid the hood over my head, adjusting the black mask over my eyes. Outside, the day was fading, the sun slipping below the line of buildings and ushering in the shadows. The second day of darkness had ended, and the third night was about to begin.

  ***

  The scream drew me the way the glow of a bug zapper draws a moth toward its deadly blaze. My senses were being bombarded, the sixth among them the hardest to ignore. Being an Empath, with the ability to sense life energies and auras, came with its set of advantages, and like most God given gifts, each one was matched with a disadvantage.

  Fear rolled upward in waves, seeping out of the buildings like steam, or the wavering air just above a hot surface. Panic, anger, sadness. These things slammed into me from every angle, probing at my skin in attempt to reach my soul. I gritted my teeth against it, Sam’s calm voice in my ear a comfort I latched onto.

  “Just help where you can, love,” she told me. “And be careful.”

  I nodded for my own benefit more than Sam’s. Then I took off running toward the sound of that scream, the soles of my boots barely touching the rooftop with my otherworldly speed. I leapt, and for all of two seconds there was nothing but open air beneath me, a forty-foot drop that ended in concrete. As always, adrenaline rushed through my veins, sweeping away the feelings of guilt, confusion, and inadequacy that had been so filling me as of late.

  Beyond my desire to ease the suffering of those around me was the fact that this whole thing offered a feeling I just couldn’t find anywhere else. I wasn’t sure when exactly it had happened, but at some point, putting on the mask and cape, pulling my hood over my head and flying over the rooftops of Grant City had become a real addiction for me.

  Truth was, when I became the Masked Maiden, I felt alive.

  And that’s all we really want, right? Human and Halfling alike.

  I spread my arms wide, the cape flaring like the wings of an eagle, catching the wind and carrying me down with gentle hands. The breeze kissed my face, my stomach rising and flipping. I landed with a grace that felt as natural to a Fae as flying.

  I reached behind me and removed my magical staff, running a hand over it and whispering the incantation that made it grow to its full size in a single smooth motion.

  The man with the knife uttered a curse as he took me in, and he barely had time to glance at the couple he’d been robbing before I’d swung my staff to the side and knocked the weapon out of his hands. I swung the staff back the other way, and this time caught the jerk across the face, a fine mist of blood spraying from his mouth before he hit the pavement with an oomph!

  “Thank you,” the couple said, tears brimming in their fear-filled eyes.

  “Get home quickly,” I told them.

  They nodded, clutching each other, and hurried away, the shadows of the night swallowing them as they rounded the corner.

  I didn’t have to go far before I ran into more trouble. It was as if the sanity of the citizens had leaked away with along with the power, and the longer the lights stayed out, the further into this darkness we all slipped.

  “There you are,” said a voice behind me as I turned down Fourth and Grand.

  I spun on my heels, spotting the source of the voice, and tilted my head as I tried to pinpoint from where I knew the speaker.

  He was a large man of Latino descent, with a wide neck covered in thick black tattoos that ran over his shoulders and all the way down to his thick wrists. Since the last time I’d seen him, he’d added a small black teardrop to the corner of his left eye.

  Sam spoke the name in my ear at exactly the same time it floated to the surface in my head.

  “Papi Santos,” Sam said.

  I swallowed hard, covering it with a sly grin that only fueled the hatred filling Santos’s dark eyes.

  “Been looking for me?” I said, gripping my staff in preparation.

  “Damn right,” Santos said. “We all have.” He stuck two fingers in his mouth and blew a whistle loud enough to make my sensitive ears ring.

  Following this, dangerous men of all manners began to skulk out of the shadows, surrounding me like a circle of human hyenas.

  CHAPTER 13

  Sam cursed in my ear, her view through the camera attached to my suit showing the scene before me in high definition on her computer screen. I stood in the center of the sidewalk flanking Fourth Avenue, the lack of streetlights and buzzing neon store signs turning the familiar setting into something dark and sinister.

  As if seeping up through the cracks in the concrete and grates of the sewer system, familiar faces began to appear around me, different in structure but all carrying the same malice in expression. Their auras were similar storms of black and red, filed with hatred and anger… and a dash of electric blue that indicated their excited anticipation about the task ahead.

  That task, obviously, would be taking down the Masked Maiden, the one who’d taken away their newfound freedom in the first place.

  There was very little chitchat, no stalling. As four angry men turned into five, then six and seven, there was only time to steel myself for the attack.

  I rotated, eyeing the men and judging the states of their auras to determine who would be the first to make a move. A chubby guy with two missing front teeth and a patchy beard whose name I couldn’t recall was the winner of the chicken dinner. He rushed toward me like a linebacker, his jowly cheeks rippling with the movement.

  I spun, facing him and twirling my staff as though it were an extension of my arm, the movement having become second nature long ago. The blunt end of the weapon caught him across the temple, making a sound when it connected with his skull that I never got used to now matter how many times I heard it. It was the distinctive sound of solid wood striking bone, and the connection rippled all the way up the staff to my fingers.

  There was no time to stop and survey the damage, because following on the heels of Toothless, the flash of a large knife caught in my peripheral. I ducked just in time to avoid being sliced, swinging my staff low this time and knocking the guy off his feet with enough force to send the knife clattering out of his hand.

  One after another they moved in, my focus tunneling until there was nothing in the world except the angry escaped prisoners and me and my staff. It seemed every time I knocked one down, another one was there to take his place, calling me names and throwing insults through gritted teeth. I respo
nded to these offenses with my fists, my feet, and my staff.

  “Reinforcement is on the way,” Sam’s voice said in my ear. “Hang in there, tiger.”

  I couldn’t spare a witty aside, was too busy running up the wall of a brick building and diving behind a big metal dumpster to avoid the bullets that tore through the air, the report of gunfire ringing in my ears. Bullets ricocheted off the metal dumpster and skidded off the concrete, sending up little sparks like tiny firecrackers. My Maiden suit was bulletproof, but it couldn’t stop the lead from going through my forehead should someone’s aim get lucky. Bulletproof suit or no, guns certainly complicated the matter.

  I crouched, trying to steal a moment to catch my breath, when the dumpster shuddered behind me, scraping over the concrete as it was shoved to the side. I acted before I even saw what had moved it. Whoever was big enough to move the dumpster like that was not someone you waited to tackle. It was a good thing I did, too.

  A sledgehammer whooshed through the air and came slamming down on the concrete in the exact place I’d been crouched only moments ago. The heavy, deadly head of it cracked the ground there and left a crater the size of a basketball. I was busy rolling between the spread legs of the man with the hammer, a move a full human would have been incapable of accomplishing for lack of speed alone.

  This brought me head to head with Papi Santos, who’d been standing behind Sledgehammer Guy—(I remembered now that his name was actually Billy Bob Garrett, though Sledgehammer Guy was an equally apt fit)—who caught me in the face with the back of his knuckles hard enough to rattle my teeth.

  “You’re not getting away this time, puta,” Santos told me, the words swimming in my head as I found my feet. “We got plans for you.”

  I heard the shift in airflow, bent my knees and leapt vertically into the air, using every bit of strength my legs had. The soles of my boots lifted above the heaved sledgehammer by a clearance of only a couple inches. More gunshots rang out. More sparks and cracks in the concrete, bullets peppering the bricks of the buildings. The smell of sulfur, sweat, and savagery rented the area. Those black and red auras stormed and swirled.

  I’d jumped a good twenty feet upward, and at the same moment, the sky lit up like daytime as multiple bolts of lightning ripped through the atmosphere. They left bright imprints behind my eyes, like the flash of a brilliant camera bulb. Despite this, I gripped the ledge of a fire escape and hauled myself up onto it, eager to get out of the center of the chaos below.

  As it would turn out, this was a foolish mistake, because the fire escape on which I was standing was made of metal… and metal is a great conductor of electricity.

  “You can’t run from us, puta!” Papi Santos called up at me. “We got plans!”

  I was close to forming what would have surely been a wildly witty comeback when the sky flashed once again. This time, it was not several bolts of lightning, but one single bolt.

  That single bolt of lighting was directly over my head, and it snaked down and struck me before I could blink at the brightness that momentarily lit up the terribly dark night.

  An awful shock of pain shot through me, spreading outward from my chest and running all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes. The last things I was aware of were my legs giving way and my body falling heavily over the railing of the fire escape to tumble end over end, toward the concrete and wolves waiting anxiously below me.

  ***

  I swam back to consciousness with sluggish effort, my head pounding and my muscles weak and alarmingly unresponsive. My eyelids felt heavy, my thoughts a jumble of unintelligible nonsense. Slowly, things began to come back to me, and as they did so, urgent panic weaved through my chest.

  My chest. It ached awfully. It hurt so bad I thought I felt my heart pause for what should have been a handful of beats. A groan sounded somewhere nearby, and it took me too long to determine that it had come from me.

  “She’s waking up,” said a voice in the darkness, and I forced my eyes to open against their will.

  I tried to move my hands, which were held painfully high over my head, and found that they were bound together at the wrists. I lifted my gaze to see that my bound wrists were in turn attached to a thick chain hanging from a rafter on the ceiling, my body dangling like a large fish on a hook.

  I tried to move my feet, but the toes of my boots did little more than scrape over the hard floor below. I noticed with dawning panic that my hood was no longer covering my head, though my mask was still covering my eyes. My staff was gone. Where to, I hadn’t the slightest, and the smell of my own blood filled my nose. When I ran my tongue out to wet my dry lips, I tasted blood on the corner of my mouth.

  Glancing around through blurry eyes, I saw that I was in some sort of warehouse, likely somewhere near the docks, though I had no way of being sure. Honestly, with the way that bolt of lightning had struck me, it was a wonder I wasn’t dead. Had I been full human, I surely would have been.

  The question was, why was I still alive? If memory served, the lightning had knocked me off the fire escape and into a small mob of dangerous men with personal vendettas against me.

  “Rise and shine, sleepyhead,” came a voice from the shadows.

  I twisted my neck to get eyes on the speaker, the movement uncomfortable with the hanging position I was suspended in. His aura was what caught my attention first, and I knew within an instant that this was the man who’d been on the Jumbotron, the madman in the mask.

  His aura swirled violet, the color of vengeance, often visible in those taking the first steps down a path of destruction. He was of average height, middle-aged, and had the scrawny frame of a man who likely made his living using his mind rather than his body. His hair was a dull brown, his likewise chocolate eyes intense as they stared back at me. A little grin tugged up the corners of his thin mouth, teeth bared behind it.

  “Who are you?” I said, the words coming out weak and scratchy, hardly more than a mumble.

  The sound of the man’s soft-soled shoes skidding over the hard floor and that of his gently thudding heart seemed to rebound off the walls as he approached me. He looked at me in appraisal, his aura revealing that he was not so impressed with the girl dangling on a chain and rope before him, as though in person I did not live up to the hype.

  Considering my current circumstances, I supposed he was right.

  “My name is Leonard Boyce, but to you I’m no one,” he said, and his voice was no longer disguised with a modulator, as it had been when he’d addressed the city from the Jumbotron. I would’ve expected a deep, angry tone, but instead his voice was soft and almost gentle, as if he were speaking to a small child.

  “No one that matters, anyway,” he added.

  I was fighting to clear my muddy head, to buy time for… Well, something. A daring escape, or maybe even a rescue by Thomas and Sam.

  “There’s a entire city out there losing its mind,” I replied, my voice growing stronger now. “Seems to me it matters a lot.”

  He was silent for a moment, still looking over me with those appraising eyes. Then, as if deciding he could no longer stand it, he reached up and ripped the mask off my face, scratching my cheek with his fingernails in the process.

  He tossed the mask aside. I stared defiantly back at him, though my mind was inching closer to a state of real panic with every second I hung there.

  “You’re… just a girl,” he said, as if this were both amusing and disappointing. He repeated, “Just a girl.”

  I spread my hands. The wrists were really starting to ache where they were bound together with rope, my fingertips growing numb. “You got me,” I said.

  “You’re right about that,” he said. “It wasn’t easy, but I got you.”

  When he followed this up with more silence, I said, “Is that where the plan ends? Tie me up, beat me? Talk a bunch of crap to make yourself feel better?”

  These words had barely left my mouth when he slapped me across the face, the palm of his hand striking
me hard enough to cause a few stars to burst before my eyes. I gritted my teeth and refused to cry out. Gathering it in my mouth, I spat a wad of bloody saliva at his shoes and glared at him defiantly.

  “You’re going to regret that,” I said.

  His head tilted and he shoved his hands nonchalantly into his pockets. “Doubt it,” he said. “I’ve got all the cards, sweetheart. I’m calling all the shots.”

  I summoned my strength and yanked on the chains holding me. They rattled but didn’t give way. From somewhere behind me, I heard the barrel of a gun cock.

  “We should just kill her while we have the chance,” said a voice I knew but couldn’t pinpoint; likely another lowlife I’d thrown in jail. “If we don’t, someone will come for her.”

  Leonard Boyce, with his dull brown hair and vengeful violet aura, grinned as though it were Christmas morning and Santa had been particularly generous with the boxes beneath his tree.

  “Oh, they’ll come for her, all right,” he said. “I’m counting on it.”

  CHAPTER 14

  “Death would be too easy,” he continued. “She doesn’t deserve it. She needs to suffer the way I’ve suffered. She needs to know real pain.”

  All sorts of things went through my head at these words, and I was helpless against the shiver that ran up my sweaty, aching spine.

  “What did I do to you?” I asked, my voice a confused, weak whisper. “What did I do to make you hate me so much?” I studied his face, certain I’d never even seen it before the night of the parade, and the name Leonard Boyce meant nothing to me. “I don’t even know who you are.”

  The man snapped his fingers twice, his lips twisting into white, crooked lines, teeth bared again. “Of course you don’t. You just come through the city like a tornado, destroying everything you touch and not bothering to look through the rubble you leave behind you.”

  My brows furrowed and I shook my head. Unless I was missing something here, this guy was just plain crazy.

  “I’ve tried to help this city,” I said. “I’m pretty sure you’re the one who killed the power and the mayor, and now you’ve released some of the most dangerous criminals in town… but I’m the tornado?”