Authors: Erik Schubach
She held up a hand and looked away as she said, “You don't get a vote, remember?” Then she got very serious, in an almost scary way as she said coldly, “Besides, you owe me a coat.”
I swallowed hard and blinked. People were trying to kill us, and she was worried more about the coat. Then she suddenly broke into a smile and winked at me as she slid the plywood to the side and peeked out in the alley. I smiled at her back. She was so odd and random... and I liked her. A lot.
She cocked her head to the side like she was listening intently, the light from the city highlighting her profile starkly in the night. Bringing the sharp lines of her cheek into stark focus. She looked almost half starved. Then she looked back at me and said, “They say it's clear. But we have to head toward the Bay and circle around, they're doing a pattern search. Two vehicles. Two block grid with a one block overlap.”
I blinked at her, and she shrugged in embarrassment, and I could see her cheeks color in a blush as she said, “Randy was a cop. He knows shit.”
I snorted, and she grinned, showing her teeth. I tried not to chuckle. I was amusing the woman.
As she held the plywood up for me to pass through the window, I asked her, “Tell me why we're listening to a voice brought on by a hallucinogenic episode of your manic state?”
She muttered to me, “Hey, you got wings, don't dis my voices.”
Fair enough. I knew I was going mad now since that made sense. She stepped out and slid the plywood down in place then led the way back down the fire escape.
I swear she seemed to be having a good time while I was scared shitless with everything that had happened. It was the single most terrifying and surrealistic night of my life.
I staggered, and she balanced me as I was hit by another disorienting wave as hundreds of voices whispered in my head, some close and clear some more distant whispers. They were coming from everywhere. “I wish I were taller.” “I wish my boss would drop dead.” “I wish I had enough money to eat.” “I wish I were fucking high.”
Then the wave passed and glanced over to see Dorian's face etched with worry. “You ok, Angel?”
I smiled and took a deep breath. “I'm fine.” The last thing I needed to tell a woman who was hearing voices was that I had joined her club.
She smiled and nodded encouragingly and said, “Ok, let's go then.” Dorian led the way toward the Bay.
It took us over a half hour to circle around, in a randomly circuitous route to get near Hailey's. We stopped in an alleyway across the street, half a block away.
The entire end of the block was cordoned off. There were dozens of people behind the police tape and barricades, rubbernecking at the scene around the club. There were ten or twelve police cars, a SWAT van and... I swallowed hard as I looked at the coroner's van.
There were three body bags in what looked like racks of cots in the back of the open van. I choked back a sob and covered my mouth. Dorian was there instantly hugging me to her. Three body bags. Stacy, Billie, and the man Hailey had shot. I felt a small amount of consolation knowing that Hailey hadn't got herself killed for helping me escape.
I almost growled as some reporter set up outside the police tape mugging for the camera and making sure the coroner's van was in the shot. Fucking parasites! Those were my friends in there, not a photo op.
Dorian whispered like she knew what I was thinking, “We don't know anything yet. Hang on a second. Don't go anywhere.”
She gave me a stern look, and I furrowed my brow in confusion. She stuffed her hands in her pockets and just walked out into the commotion. She moved behind the bulk of the crowd and used the coroner's van as cover to slip under the police tape.
My eyes bugged out as she slid into the drivers side of the van. Was she mental? Oh...
A moment later she slid back out. Wearing a coroner's jacket and a cap which read coroner, pulled down over her eyes. She held a clipboard, and she brazenly walked out directly past two officers who were manning the scene, keeping people behind the yellow tape.
I couldn't take my eyes off of the scene. She acted like she was supposed to be there and it was actually working. She stepped into the back of the van and then looked back at me. I couldn't see from there, but I just know she had that cheesy and toothy grin on her face.
I held my breath as she unzipped each bag to look inside. She paused and seemed to deflate at the second bag. Then she checked the last one and turned around and hopped back down to the ground and almost walked into the chest of a man in a suit with a shiny badge hanging from his belt.
They had an animated discussion for a moment, and she tapped the clipboard animatedly then the man seemed to grudgingly let her walk toward the building. When he turned to ask one of the men at the barricade something, she ducked her head down and veered off, double-timing it down the block and disappearing into the alley, shedding the cap and coat along the way.
I almost chuckled. The woman was fearless.
I sat there another fifteen minutes, and she didn't come back. Had something happened to her? My guts were tied up in knots in worry. Had I gotten her hurt or worse? Had the police detained her?
I exhaled sharply in exasperation. Damn it. I knew just as much now as I knew when those men had attacked. Abso-fucking-luteley nothing. I took a deep breath in resolve and faded back into the darkness of the alleyway behind me. I had to make sure Dorian was ok.
I circled the block then back behind the block Hailey's was on. I ducked into the alley, seeing the yellow tape at the end of it. I tried to move as quietly as I could as I stuck to the deepest shadows like Dorian had when she was earning her Mouse moniker earlier that night.
I listened carefully as I crept along. Trying to tune out all the voices and sounds of the people gathered in the street beyond. I whispered, “Dorian?” Then again, “Mouse?”
A moment later I was being thrown against the brick wall of the alley. I cried out in surprise and pain as my wings slammed against the wall. I tried to gasp, but there was a forearm across my throat, making it hard to breathe.
I blinked as I stared into Hailey's eyes, her face inches from mine, I swear I could hear the tendons in her muscled arm creaking as her eyes went wide and she relaxed. She dropped her arm and stood back in surprise, whispering, “Angelina?”
Then she was grabbing me again and hugging me tight to her as I gasped for the sweet, but the dank air of the alleyway. I didn't care if it smelled like mold, the air felt wonderful now that I knew what it was like not to have any in my lungs.
She pushed me away and held me at arm's length and asked. “Are you hurt? The other asshat was chasing you, how did you get away?”
Before I could answer, she dropped and spun backward, her leg shooting out, sweeping the legs of the figure approaching her from behind with a clipboard raised to strike. Dorian fell flat on her back, the clipboard skittering away along the ground.
Hailey was moving so fast, one moment she was crouched the next she was standing over a terrified looking Dorian with her fist poised to strike. I blinked my shock away and grabbed Hailey's arm. Even then she dragged me along as I pleaded, “No, she's with me!”
She paused and looked aback at me and relaxed and I let go of her arm and asked in amazement, “Holy shit woman, how strong are you?” I blinked as I noted her arm, where her shirt sleeve was pulled up more from where I grasped it. Her array of interwoven tattoos seemed to flow around one I had seen before in many movies. A special forces tattoo.
She looked down at her arm and subconsciously covered it with her hand then pulled her sleeve back down over her bicep.
She stood and glared down at a sheepish looking Dorian then offered her a hand and pulled her up like she weighed nothing. Then she turned her eyes to the police tape then over to me. They were cold and hard like I have never seen from her before and it chilled me. She hissed, “What the fuck is going on Angelina? Who were those men? I've had the worst time all night dealing with the fucking cops, and they want me to come into the station to answer more questions in the morning.”
I knew she was mad and rightfully so, but I needed to know. I squeaked out, my voice barely audible, “Stacy and Billie?”
Her face fell and took my heart with it. Dorian blurted, “Billie is alive. Only Stacy and two men were in the van.” She squatted and grabbed the clipboard and handed it to me for me to read.
Hailey added in a soft tone, “Billie is really fucked up. They took her to SF General. It doesn't look good.”
I started sobbing, and Hailey pulled me to her, her arm like a coiled steel band.
She grabbed the clipboard from Dorian and looked at it. She growled and handed it back. “John Does, no IDs.”
Then she moved me to arm's length. “Come on then. Let's get you inside. They'll want to speak with you. They've been looking for you all night. They've got your photo all over the television.” She added, “I thought the worst.”
I shook my head and resisted her urging me along with her arm. I said with all the shame in the world dripping from my voice, “I... can't Hailey.”
She almost growled, “What do you mean you can't? I just killed two fucking asswipes tonight. They killed one of your friends and put the other in the ICU. What do you mean you can't?”
She moved to grab my arm again, and I backed off a step, looking at my feet as I unbuttoned the trench-coat. I said with a ragged voice just above a whisper, “I mean... I can't.”
I let the coat drop, and I spread my wings wide. They made a sound akin to a sail snapping tight in a sudden wind.
She gasped and crossed herself as she muttered, “Holy Mary, Mother of God.”
It took a couple more hours, and the sun was rising before the police and forensic teams had all left the club. I watched from the window of the little apartment Hailey had on the second floor of the building. Where she had hid Dorian and me away.
Once she had snuck us up, she went back down to deal with what was sure to be another round of questioning. We had turned her television on with the sound muted and saw my picture on just about every channel.
We chanced turning the volume up slightly to hear the news reporting on a murder at Hailey's Nightclub. Three dead, another in critical condition, and a man matching Baldy's description last seen chasing me out of the club. He's considered armed and dangerous. I almost snorted at that, thinking, “Yeah no shit.”
The police spokesperson was saying that no motive for the murder was apparent, and they are still investigating. They were praising the actions of the club owner for stopping two assailants before they could harm any other patrons. Anyone with information as to my whereabouts or anyone who has any information was to call the police violent crimes hotline.
Dorian had been unusually quiet, glancing to the side nervously. Occasionally shaking her head like she was reluctant to speak to someone. I didn't want to push, I was still trying to comprehend the impossibility of the wings which were attached to my back. The wings that had saved me from a gruesome death. How was I ever going to go out in the world again without everyone staring at me, or wanting to put me in some sort of freak show?
Dorian looked up at me and cocked her head, her brow furrowed in concern. She sat next to me on the edge of the smaller bed in the little studio apartment as I held my uninjured wing out at full extension. She leaned against me in solidarity and said quietly, “It's going to be ok. Everything will work itself out.”
I chuckled with a slightly bitter note as I relaxed the wing and engulfed her with it, draping it around her shoulders as I said, “Says the girl without wings.”
She turned and gave me an overly cute grin then started playing with the smaller feathers lining the underside of the leading edge of the wing. I closed my eyes, it felt sinfully good.
My eyes snapped open in panic, and I almost jumped out of my skin when the door to the studio opened, and someone said, “Now tell me just what the fuck is going on, and how is...” Hailey pointed at my wing as I took it off Dorian and folded it to my back, and she finished, “...that, possible?”
She almost growled, “Why did I have to kill two men in my club, Angeline? What are you into?”
Dorian narrowed her eyes and shifted on the bed so she imposed her body slightly between Hailey and me. I wondered if she even knew she had done it. I was at a loss but was given a reprieve when Hailey turned her attention to my protector, “And you. Where did you come from in the alley? I hadn't seen you in there, and if I hadn't seen your shadow on the ground, you would have got the drop on me.”
Dorian blushed and shrugged. “I was trying to circle back to Angel when you stepped out into the alley to take a smoke. You looked aggravated so I hid. That's sort of my specialty... hiding.” Then her voice took on an aggravated and accusing tone, “I couldn't just hide there anymore when you started hurting her.”
The tenseness sort of seemed to bleed out of Hailey as she glanced at me, where I was sheepishly wringing my hands, and she exhaled audibly. “Sorry about that. You were skulking around a dark alley after a murder, and I didn't see your face.”
I paled, and she narrowed her eyes in concern. I still couldn't believe that Stacy was... “Oh, I'm sorry hon. I'm an idiot at times. I'm so sorry about your friend.”
She turned away from me when Dorian hissed under her breath to one of the voices, “No, I'm not saying that. Now shut up and leave me alone.”
The woman with her dark matted hair paused when she realized eyes were on her, and she just gave the club owner a cheesy grin. Hailey turned from her cautiously to look at my way, one eyebrow cocked in wary question. I shrugged and said offhandedly, “Just one of the voices that talk to her.”
Hailey snorted then shook her head, then rubbed her brow fervently. “Oh, of course, the voices... and you have wings, and what sort of fucked up drug induced trip am I on?”
She looked ready to snap, and it scared me. She was the only one of us keeping it together, and I couldn't have her losing it just then, or I might slip over the precarious edge I was walking on a tightrope with my sanity.
I stood to take a step to her, my wings spread out wide behind me, and I swept the left one forward to nudge her hand. She looked down at it and slowly took the leading edge and ran it through her fingers. She stepped closer and followed the wing around to my back, sliding her hand along my wing until she felt where the wing met my shoulder, blending into a bulge in the skin.
My wing rippled, and I pulled away, “That tickles.”
She took one quick step back with shock on her face, “Jesus, they're real! I thought maybe … you know... but they're real. You have wings. How is this possible?”
Again I shook my head and exhaled in exasperation. “I don't know. You can ask me a thousand times, and I still couldn't answer. One minute I was running for my life and some psycho was throwing me off the Coit Tower, the next I'm a fucking bird-girl.”
Dorian absently corrected me. “Angel.”
I shot her a glare which she deflected with a cute smile. I couldn't bring myself to snap at her. So instead I exhaled loudly again in exasperation. I had more questions than they did. This was some sort of perverse nightmare that wouldn't let me wake up.
Hailey furrowed her brow and reached out again. This time, as her hand contacted my feathers, that wave of disorientation swept over me again, only more localized and focused. I tried to push it away as I looked up into her face, almost pleading as my head swam. Her mouth didn't move, but I heard her clear as day like she were standing in an echoing tunnel in some forgotten part of the world and saying into the void, “I wish I knew what was going on here.”
I nodded and shoved it all out of my head as I almost gasped, “You aren't the only one Hai.”
She blinked. “What was that?”
I said, “You're not the only one who wishes that, but I have no answers, only more questions.”
She blinked and stepped back, and asked carefully, in a measured tone, “How did you know I...”
I let out a sound which was a cross between an unhinged laugh and a sob as I said, “Because I've been hearing the wishes of everyone around me since yesterday, before all the madness of the night started.”
Dorian was by my side, concern on her face.
I almost growled, “Those assholes killed my friend, hurt the other and very nearly killed me.” My voice was rising at each word until it was an almost mad rant.
Dorian looked to her side with a pleading look and then closed her eyes in resignation and whispered, “Asswaffles, not assholes.” Then she glared at something only she could see while I just reeled in shock over her wording.
Asswaffles? That was one of Stacy's made up words, I've never heard anyone else use it. I repeated in a daze, “Asswaffles? Where did you hear that?”
Dorian looked down at her hands and wouldn't meet my eyes as she shrugged and nudged her head to the side. “The new girl. She told me to say it to you. She was waiting at the coroner's van, looking at her body when we arrived.”
The... new... I looked to the nothingness beside the woman and squeaked out in a barely audible voice, “Stacy?”
Dorian looked more than aggravated like she didn't like causing me any distress. She exhaled, looking at the ceiling and saying grudgingly, “She says, 'Yeah Drake, sorry bout ruining your birthday.'” Then she paused and asked brightly, “It's your birthday, Angel?”
My head was spinning. Was Stacy really there? I... I mumbled, “I wish I knew what the hell was going on.” As I said it, voices boomed in on me, threatening to crush me beneath their weight though they were just ghosts of whispers overlapping my voice. My words seemed to encompass my entire being.
Again, there were thousands of those whispers, in thousands of languages, both male, female, young and old. All were me, my voice, repeating my words in the past and future, converging on the tone of my syllables to say them in tandem with me.
That's when my screaming began as my head felt as if it were on fire as information bombarded me, filling every recess of my brain. Tearing at that thin line of sanity I clung onto until nothing remained. Finally, the screaming stopped as unconsciousness came to claim me, a small mercy but I welcomed it as the world left me in the darkness for a time.
The darkness and nothingness cradled me like a warm blanket, the last sensation that filtered through my awareness were a cloak of feathers engulfing me protectively as my legs gave out beneath me.
***
I don't know how long I stayed in the sacred realm between sleep and waking, where the confusing and terrifying reality of my situation had no place, no hold on my mind. Wrenching my perception around and showing me stark realities. I wanted to stay in the unthinking nothingness, struggling to hold onto it so I didn't have to face the real world once I awoke.
But grudgingly, I felt the blessed fog of sleep pulled away from me, and I groaned, reaching up to place a hand on my aching head as my eyes fluttered open.
I was curled into a ball on Hailey's bed, my wings curled tightly around me as I lay in a fetal position, a blanket over me. My hand rested on the sexy club owner's hand where it rested on my forehead with a cold compress held against my head.
She smiled and said, “There you are. You had us pretty freaked, darlin'. You were screaming like someone was shoving hot pokers through your eyes.”
I gave her a weak smile as I lowered my hand into the cocoon of feathers around me. I groaned out in a hoarse voice, “That's sort of what it felt like.” Then I looked around in a minor panic. “Dorian?”
She chuckled as she removed the compress from my head and stood to walk to the little table beside the tiny kitchen area in the space. “She's fine. I told her to take a shower while we waited to see if you needed a body bag or if you would recover. She stunk.”
I felt relieved at that, I'm not entirely sure why. Well maybe because she sort of saved me, and maybe because I was running low on friends juts about then. I looked around and asked in a hopeful tone, “Stacy?” I knew I'd get no answer, but weirder things have happened, I mean, bird-girl, hello.
I heard someone over the sound of the shower running behind the door of the little bathroom of the loft, “She's out there. I made her sit out there with the others.” The shower stopped.
I took a deep breath and pondered what it would mean if my schizophrenic savior were not... well, not schizophrenic. What if she really heard the voices? What if she could speak with... I exhaled heavily at the implications.
I thought about the things she seemed to know, like the locations of the men hunting us. How did she word it? “They say they are gone now.” And that Randy “was” a cop. Was she somehow... speaking with the dead?
The bathroom door opened, and she poked her head out with a towel around herself. Her dark hair now wet, wavy, and flowing, now that it wasn't snarled and matted to her head. I blinked, forgetting the immediate dire straits we found ourselves in. The girl beneath all that grime was... I swallowed as she smiled at me. Wow.
She turned to our purple haired protector, asking in an accusatory tone, “Where are my clothes? They're mine, and you can't have them.”
Hai shook her head and said, “Relax street rat. They reeked, even through the door. I threw them in the wash. I left some clothes you can use in there. They'll be a little big on you, you're small like Angelina here, but your's will be out of the dryer in a few minutes.”
They exchanged narrow-eyed looks like they were daring each other or something. I exhaled, and snapped at them, “We have better things to be doing than determining who had the bigger dick.”
They both actually looked overly amused at that as Dorian popped back into the bathroom. I turned to Hailey, who brought a hand up to run her fingers through her thick pixie cut purple locks as she fought off the exhaustion in her stance. I asked, “Do you have any water? My throat is scratchy.”
She regarded me a moment as she moved toward the little kitchen area. “Not surprising, you had screamed your throat raw before you passed out. What was that all about?”
I opened my mouth to answer as all the information that assaulted me earlier when I made that wish came crashing back down on me. The door to the bathroom opening again, and Dorian stepping out. I had to smile. She was in some black jeans with the cuffs rolled up, and a matching black tee that was tied in a knot at her waist to take up the extra fabric.
She instantly sought out my eyes then seemed to relax. She smiled and said toward Hailey as she looked down at herself. “I'm keeping these.”
Hailey stepped back to me, and she started a retort, and I interjected, “Please, don't. I already have a headache without you two arguing.”
I slid my feet onto the floor as I braced myself on the edge of the bed. I accepted the glass of water as Dorian stepped over. I absently raised a wing, and she sat beside me, then my wing draped over her shoulder.