Hey.
I want to strike her, thrash her, bend her over my knee ... but when I close the distance between us and reach out to touch her, I don’t do any of those things. My claws start at her widow’s peak and, so gently as not to touch her, I push her hair off her forehead. It’s wet with the blood that drips from the curling tips.
The skin on her forehead and nose has been rubbed raw, like she had her face pressed against a massive cheese grater. There’s a cut on her left cheek, and when I cup the back of her head with one hand while the other continues its sweep down her neck, I feel that the back of her hair is crispy and hard, as if burned.
I open my mouth and words sit bunched all along the length of my tongue, clogging the back of my throat. They congeal into a solid mass, and when they erupt, they erupt as one. “Hey,” I clip. The word is hard and angry.
She doesn’t flinch. Instead, she blinks at me and holds up her camera. “I didn’t get much usable footage.”
“What?” I whisper much more softly, but in just as harsh a tone. Is she insane? She’s talking to me about her fucking photos?
“I d-didn’t ... I think some of the pictures might be ... The one ...” She’s touching her chest now, feeling around her neck for something. “My other camera ... It’s gone. I should go back and look for it.” She physically starts to turn from me, and as she does, I see that she’s got a fucking stake three inches long sticking out of the back of her right shoulder. Against the Wyvern’s skin, the darts looked small, like beestings. Against her size, they look like fucking javelins.
I catch her wrist and pull her back around to face me. My gaze narrows as I focus more intensely on her eyes. Fuck. Her pupils are fully blown. My fingers circling her wrist suddenly become aware of the frenetic nature of her pulse. Even though the temperature hasn’t dropped below sixty, her skin is clammy and as cold as ice.
“Monika, I’m taking you—”
“Aaaahhh!” A sudden burst of human wailing jolts my attention to the alley. I stand up straight and wrench Monika behind me, but the men charging me are older, wearing baggy clothing over their thin frames and unshaved. All three are white and over fifty. One of them has a chain in his hand, and the other two hold planks of wood.
I give them each a zap, a light jolt of electricity, which causes them to buckle and drop their weapons.
Monika makes an odd sound. “W-wait ... they helped me!”
The man who was leading the charge looks up at me, and then at Monika past me. “You passed out. We left to make sure the coast was clear, but when we came back you were gone. Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine. I lost my camera but ...”
My brain lights on fire. She’s so far from fine. I’m wasting my time here with this. “She’s going to be fine,” I say in a rasped hiss. I’ve never felt more violent, and yet, if what Monika says is true, I owe these men her life. “You helped her?”
They nod.
“What happened?”
“Champions—” one starts.
“Villains,” another corrects.
The one who spoke first nods. “They were attacking these military folks. We ran off to hide, but she showed up alone, so we took her in. One of the villains came and smashed up our spot pretty good, but we didn’t let him find her or us.”
“She passed out,” another says, this one with a long, white beard. His jaw clenches again and again, and his pupils are enlarged. He has track marks between his fingers. “We were worried, so we went out to try to find help. She gave us her phone, wanting us to call D—”
“I called her a dozen times. Why didn’t you answer if you had her phone?”
“We didn’t know what kinda trouble she was in.”
The third man says, “The only name she gave us to call was Darius. But no Darius called. Just superhero names—Taranis, the Wyvern, and folks from the COE. We got spooked that those mighta been some of the supers fighting, and turned her phone off.”
My body hardens; my heart is harder. I swallow stones and struggle to speak through them. “I will find you again,” I tell them, looking each of the three of them in the eye, “and repay you for what you did for her.” I wrap Monika up in my arms as carefully as I can and start moving up into the sky.
One of the men shouts after me, “Didn’t do it for pay, but we’d like to know she’s okay. She don’t look so good! Got some shit on the back of her legs that looks bad!”
That’s the last thing I hear from the three men before the wind gobbles up their words and I’m left to the nightmare-inducing sound of Monika’s shallow breaths and frantic heart.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Darius
The COE has a fully equipped medical department, but not an emergency department. There is a small, private hospital the COE sends its armed staff when needed, and it’s where I take Monika now.
