September 11 | Night
Surrounded by darkness, I reached for the only source of light—the bright, searing stars of pain exploding at my temple. I blinked awake. The first thing I noticed was the stark absence of other people's emotions. It convinced me I was in bed at my apartment, the one place where the outside world couldn't intrude.
But that wasn't right. I smelled the rich odor of dirt, dead leaves, moss, pine straw. There was thunder in the distance, and raindrops broke through the haze of my awareness. Something slithered across my forearm, and I yelped several times and shook off a centipede as I sat up. I wasn't in my home but the woods.
"Aurie?" I called out shakily.
Moisture trickled down my face. Touching it, I stared at the dark smudge on my fingertips. There wasn't enough illumination for me to see what it was, but I knew. When I placed my fingers near my nostrils, the whiff of blood was overpowering.
Injured and in a daze, I felt around the soft earth for the first aid kit, calling louder for Aurie. A gnawing sense of dread ate at me, but even if I'd had the strength to search the surrounding forest for her, the swelling laceration at the side of my forehead required triple antibiotic ointment and at least a butterfly closure strip until I could get real medical care.
I battled confusion. Flashbacks of what had happened unfurled bit by bit as I tended the wound. Tegan. She had struck me with the butt of Zyr's gun, hard enough to knock me out. I knew that shit took serious force. Wincing, I found my useless revolver beneath my ankle. Tegan had done a number on us.
Us? Aurie was gone. The realization knifed through me. Tegan had captured her in a magic glass bottle. I couldn't process it. It was too surreal. I patted my pockets for my vape pen and took a long hit. A temporary sense of calm flooded me as clouds of vapor floated past my lips. Just as swiftly, my distress returned. I didn't know what to do.
I rifled through the supplies for my personal cellphone, salvaged from Tegan's thieving hands. The battery slid into place, and it lit up, but I had no service whatsoever. I suppressed a powerless scream and took off toward the main road. I didn't dare use the mobile flashlight. Fext soldiers could be raking the forest. Shadows made every step a pitfall. Yet, somehow I managed to find the highway.
By the time my feet touched the asphalt, I felt like I was moving for the sake of motion. For a second, the weight of grief rendered me too weak to continue on.
I stood in the hushed rain as more than raindrops coursed down my cheeks. Images of Aurie's face the night I met her swam before my eyes, and I remembered why I had taken her in. She had reminded me so much of myself—afraid, confused, alone, but brave enough not to lay down and die. When Zyr had stepped into our world, I knew I was doomed. He was fierce and gentle, and he made me feel safe outside the walls of my home.
I had never desired to get this involved.
I had spent a considerable portion of my life pushing people away. I had used cynicism to block the painful emotions that made life ugly and unbearable. In the process, I had also blocked out love. Zyr and Aurie had blown my ambivalent wall to hell and back and made it impossible not to fall for them.
Now the broken beat of my heart needed to learn the rhythm of farewell. I wasn't ready to say goodbye. I had steeled myself for that eventuality, but it wasn't time yet. Aurie hadn't crossed over, and Zyr hadn't totally lost his damn mind, so I couldn't let them go without a fight.
Out from the canopy of trees, I jerked the phone from my pocket in desperation and tried it again. Seeing a signal, I could've sobbed with joy. I swiftly scrolled through the contact list. My lips trembled around each name, client after client.
The spike of elation plummeted. No one in my directory would drop everything and come, not even Kittie. She was probably cozied up with her significant other. I didn't have a family to call, a mom who would miss me, a dad who would wire money in times of need. I squeezed the cellphone in a balled fist and trudged forward, running out of options.
There wasn't any point in contacting emergency services. I wouldn't be able to answer their questions, like what I was doing all the way out in the middle of nowhere. Besides, I had an innate disdain for physicians. My body was a medical curiosity which made for a less than pleasant patient experience.
Despair gripped me. I prided myself on knowing when to fold. But this was different. I couldn't give up. Aurie's words came back to me, "Try harder with people." The lump in my throat wouldn't go away. I steeled myself for rejection as I lifted the phone and hit Kittie's phone number. If she didn't answer, I was on my own.
The phone rang twice. Hearing the line connect and her voice on the other end made me erupt in tearful laughter out of shock. "I can't believe you're not tied up with Terrance!" I exclaimed.
"Of course, I am, darling. What's wrong?" Kittie picked up on my distress.
I shooed off the mental image of the lovers knotted in Kinbaku-bi. "I hate to intrude on you guys, but I'm in a bind, no pun intended. Something happened, Kittie. I need to find Aurie. Unfortunately, I don't have a ride, and I'm currently at...the north end of Tangipahoa Parish." I grimaced, knowing I was asking a lot. "If you can't make it, I totally understand. I'll figure something—"
"I'm on my way."
"—out. I can try to find an Uber driver to get me to a car rental agency—"
"I said I'm on my way, Mitsuyo. I take it this is related to you-know-what, and you don't want too many you-know-who's involved. We're in luck. Terrance says we can use his car," Kittie replied.
I blinked, registering the fact my prayers had been answered. My eyes stung with fresh wetness. "You don't know how much this means to me," I whispered with emotion. I heard her sigh on the other end, a sound tinged with a smile.
"I told you, you're worth saving, darling. I'll be there in a jiff," she said.
Relief surged through me as I told Kittie Cad how to find me and ended the call. I shouldered the first aid kit, my bag of clothes, and the rucksack full of supplies. The trek through the storm was becoming more exhausting, but I had oomph in my step with Kittie meeting me at the old convenience store.
We would grab the cold case files from the cabin and present our evidence to the Humanity Embassy. Without testimony from Darcy's other victims, I wasn't sure it would be enough. Yet, I held onto a tenuous hope the Council of Overlay Affairs would at least reevaluate Zyr's case and see that Cyprian had caused his feral state. They couldn't euthanize him, knowing that, could they?
I put two-and-two together about Tegan. She had to be a consort of the vampire, meaning she likely delivered Aurie to him. I just couldn't figure out Darcy's deal. He had expended a crazy amount of resources to get Aurie. I speculated this couldn't be a simple case of silencing a witness. Everything circled back to his reason for drugging her at the party.
"She's special," I muttered to myself. Both Zyr and Darcy had called Aurie that, but it didn't seem like a motive.
As I wrestled with the mystery, something slinked from the trees and paused in the middle of the road. There was no way. Absolutely no way. Petrified, I cast a net of Empathy. It didn't work on animals, only I wasn't sure this shadowy wolf was all beast.
"Zyr?" I called out with a heart full of hope and a head full of fear that I could be wrong. The black wolf shuddered and shifted until a naked man took its place. "Zyr!" I ran to him. He caught me in a hug and spun me like in movies. I was too overcome with emotion to think it was corny. I squeezed him tighter as his lips crushed mine. Fighting sobs, I kissed him back.
"I thought I had lost you," he groaned.
"Big mood!" I giggled through tears.
"I went back to the cabin. It's destroyed. Where's Aurie?" Zyr asked. My enthusiasm paled, and I squirmed to the ground. His glowing amber eyes traced over my face. "What did Tegan do?" he whispered hoarsely.
I handed him clothes to change into while I explained how his partner had turned on us. His face blanched at the description of Aurie disappearing into the bottle. "What made you realize Tegan was involved, and what do you mean, the cabin is destroyed?" I asked. "I was gonna grab the evidence when Kittie got here to pick me up. I thought I was on my own. Come to think of it, how did you escape?"
"I hid, but someone must've called off the Fext. They would've never stopped searching for me otherwise. Before they left, however, they burned down the cabin and destroyed my truck," he stewed. "It occurred to me Tegan had access to a burner car, similar to the one that hit Aurie, and all the forensics pointing away from Darcy Cyprian came from her. I don't know why it took so long to figure everything out, but there it is. My instincts were wrong."
"Not wrong, but certainly manipulated, same as mine. She kept her intentions hidden behind a cloak of rampant sexual desire for you. Maybe my jealousy helped," I admitted.
He chuckled dryly before sobering. "Regardless, with the time that's passed since the raid, there's no telling where Tegan is now or what she did with Aurie."
"We'll search every corner of Overlay City if we have to," I said forcefully.
I saw a flash of teeth as Zyr grinned, stopping in the road and dragging me into another soul-stirring kiss. "Of course, we're not giving up on her. I have something Darcy Cyprian knows nothing about, and it gives us the edge. Kittie is on the way?" He collected the heavy supplies from me.
Nodding, I held up my phone. "She's meeting me at the convenience store."
"Smart move, keeping yours. Tegan baited me with the burner and took mine. Come on, we have to hurry if we don't want to leave Kittie waiting. The store is almost an hour's drive from here. God knows how long it'll take on foot." We picked up our pace with lightning crackling above us and thunder giving chase.
"I get that Haley has the Sight," I said over the sound of rain, "but even if Darcy thinks Aurie is the one who has it, there's nothing particularly special about Seers. You could throw a stone in a roomful of people in New Orleans and probably hit at least two. What gives? Why is he dead-set on getting Aurie?"
"There's more to it than just having the Sight, which Cyprian discovered when he hexed the party at Century Luxe. I got a glimpse of the placard the girls couldn't read outside the penthouse that night. It was marked with sigils designed to keep out humans." Zyr gave me a pointed look.
"Sigils? Like my door? Then it must have been faulty. A well-cast spell is damn near impenetrable."
"So I thought. Until I learned Haley was following their Guardian Angel that night. She recognized him as Wallace Edison...their father."
I stopped in my tracks. "Wait, what?"
"It gets more bizarre." He stopped with me in the middle of the road as the storm raged around us. "There was nothing wrong with the sign. Only magic could've gotten past the barrier. I didn't want to believe it, but I met Haley and confirmed it. She's a witch, Mys. A powerful one. That's how she saw the angel, and that's how they got into Cyprian's event."
My eyes widened at the flurry of coincidences that had lined up for that to happen. "You're telling me the Guardian Angel protected them from Darcy that night, and now Darcy's after the wrong sister while the angel—their father—is guarding Haley at the hospital?"
"Not quite. Wallace isn't at the hospital protecting Haley. He's watching over Aurie."
"You've lost me. Aurie has been with us the whole time."
Zyr displayed a tiny smile. "In spirit," he said.