Collide (24 page)

“Unfortunate circumstances? That’s a mild way
to put it. What happens to them?” I asked, then sucked in my breath
sharply when he pinched the end of the splinter between his claws
and quickly yanked it out, leaving a burning sting behind.

“First we talk to them, tell them what we’re
doing and who we are. Usually they’re fairly level headed and
accepting of our existence once things calm down. Those individuals
tend to be more open minded regarding anything paranormal related,
like UFO fans or people who have claimed to have seen an actual
ghost. Others who aren’t as . . . accepting tend to have their
memories erased. The folks on staff for that task are excellent
specialists who are able to simply erase all knowledge of the
incident that lead to the discovery of their true form without
taking anything else. At most they might lose an hour or two of
memory and anything that might seem odd to them is explained away
in such a way that their minds automatically accept it. Humans are
very good at coming up with all sorts of explanations for things
they can’t understand.”

“I always knew there was something not quite
right about you,” I said tartly and pursed my lips. “Things just
never ‘felt’ right, and I just knew you were hiding something.”

“You could be one of those folks with a well
developed sixth sense that allows you to pick up on things like
that,” he murmured as he turned my captured hand in his, tiling it
a little as if to get a better look at the hole. The burning
sensation had diminished into an annoying tingling that was
starting to climb its way up my arm the longer he held onto my
hand.

“I want my hand Ba-ACK!”

I stuttered into shocked silence when he
suddenly brought my palm to his lips and suckled lightly on the
abraded flesh where the splinter had come out. Shock held me frozen
as I stared at how his head bent down to my hand as he lightly ran
his tongue over the skin. I shuddered as warmth curled in my belly,
and I managed to snatch my hand back and clutched it to my
chest.

“Wh-wh-wh,” I stuttered, unable to read the
look he leveled at me due to the darkness.

“Had to make sure that there wasn’t any left
over debris in there,” he said nonchalantly, as if sucking on the
palms of people were a common occurrence for him. “If there were,
you would have run the risk for a nasty infection. I’d recommend
cleaning it again with peroxide when you get home.”

“Um, right,” I said. I tried, and failed, to
sound as nonchalant as him while I dealt with the fact that my
heart was racing so hard I thought it was going to leap out of my
chest. Now that was a lovely thought. To distract myself from
mental images of my heart exploding, I shifted and glanced down at
Maria, thankful that she had at least worn something warmer than I
had. I knew if she stayed out in the cooling air much longer we’d
be in trouble, though. I had just decided to take off my jacket and
drape it over her supine form when Akira suddenly stiffened and
jumped to his feet, his wings outspread as he crouched and drew his
sword. I dropped Maria’s hand as I scrambled to my own feet and
stared in the direction that he was glaring and my racing heart
froze when something extremely pale ghosted through the trees.

I moved away from Akira to give him room if
he needed to move and crouched back down by Maria. I wasn’t one for
the whole “man rescues damsel in distress and then fights all her
battles” scenario, but I was tired, parts of my body throbbed
painfully and I knew if it came to a fight Akira would be in better
shape than I was, though I was determined to battle to my last
breath if need be to protect my hurt friend.

The figure stepped into the moonlight, and I
blinked, hardly able to believe what I saw. Only his face, neck and
hands were visible, but those were enough to see that his skin was
chalky white, so pale that it appeared to glow in the moonlight.
But there was something extremely wrong with his hands . . . It
took me a second to realize that his fingers were grotesquely long
and looked as if they had an extra joint near the palm, so instead
of the normal three knuckles, he had four, which made his fingers a
good inch longer than they should have been. I looked back at his
face, only to receive another shock as he gazed at Akira and myself
with eyes that were completely white, no iris or pupil to be found.
I would have thought he was blind if it hadn’t been for the fact
that he shifted his eyes back and forth between Akira and
myself.

“
Tengu
,” he said, and I startled. His
voice was at odds with the rest of him. It brought to mind thoughts
of warm, rich, silky hot chocolate on a cold’s winter day. He
glanced uninterestedly at me again, until his eyes passed over the
bundle I knelt by. His entire countenance changed as he stiffened
and gave a strange, choked cry.

“Maria,” he whispered, and shifted as if to
move in our direction, but Akira stepped sideways until he was
between this new player and us, wings spread wide.

“Who are you,” Akira challenged. “Not
human.”

“No, not human,” the pale being said, and I
shuddered. I wondered what else was going to pop up out of the
woodwork. “But I know her. Please, may I go to her side?”

Whatever Akira had been expecting, this quiet
and respectful request wasn’t it. He hesitated, then lowered his
katana
and folded his wings slightly. In my dazed state I
vaguely took note of the fact that when they were folded against
his back they stretched a good five feet above his head with long,
primary feathers that lightly brushed the ground. I wondered what
his wingspan was, and couldn’t repress the nearly hysterical giggle
that resulted. Akira heard and whipped around to stare at me.
Whatever he saw in my face prompted him to return to my side and he
pulled me slightly away as the pale being slowly approached and
knelt down next to Maria. I was so overwhelmed by everything that I
allowed him to do so without protest.

The stranger wasn’t close enough to touch
her, but he was close enough that I could see how thin his hair
was. His scalp showed through in chunks, almost like someone had
ripped out hunks of his hair and it hadn’t grown back. Aside from
the unnaturally long fingers and the eyes, he could have passed as
any other pale, sun abhorring person on the street. His features
were strong with a square jaw and high cheekbones, but his nose was
a little too long and hooked at the end for him to be considered
handsome, you know, taking away any of the abnormalities and
such.

“Maria,” he called, his voice worried and I
frowned. How did he know her and why had she never mentioned him to
me before? Hurt shot through me and I opened my mouth to demand an
answer, but Akira’s hand on my arm stayed me.

Maria gave a slight moan that ended on a
sigh, and my attention jerked away from the pale stranger to her
face. Her eyes fluttered and she groaned as they opened. She stared
up at the trees, and I wondered if she had returned to herself or
if she were still in that weird blankness that had plagued her
throughout our ordeal.

“Wh-where,” she mumbled as she struggled to
sit up, disoriented. I made a move to help her, but was again
stopped by Akira’s hand. I tried to jerk my arm away, but he shook
his head and cocked it in the direction of the pale man, his eyes
fixated upon him.

“Maria,” the man said again and her head
slowly turned towards him. For a second nothing happened, and then
she let out a cry and threw herself in his direction. She was
spared a painful meeting with the ground as he lunged forward and
caught her. Sobbing, Maria began to claw at him and dragged herself
over the ground until she was curled up in his lap, her face
pressed to his chest.

I stared as she began to mumble the same
thing over and over again.

“Dellar. Oh Dellar,” she sobbed.

I managed to hold my peace for a few more
minutes, but my frustration, hurt, and residual whatevers from
before finally pushed me over the edge.

“What. The. HELL!”

Chapter Eleven

All eyes turned in my direction and Akira
tightened his hand slightly on my arm in warning. But I was having
none of it. I was tired. I had just been through a rather
terrifying ordeal. I had just had my face shoved into the fact that
mythological beings really did exist and weren’t really myths and
fictional beings. This went against everything I believed in, which
sounded stupid but it was true. It’s like going through your entire
life believing that Johnny Joe Bob was Mr. Nice Guy only to
discover that he was a serial killer. My entire sense of
equilibrium was thrown completely out of whack, so I think I was
rather justified in the slightly hysterical tone that my voice had
taken. I jerked my arm out of Akira’s grasp and stepped towards
Maria and the pasty guy she called Dellar. I can only imagine what
my face looked like, because Dellar tightened his arms around
Maria, who had paled to the point that she was almost as chalky as
he was. In fact, Maria looked a little sick. Good. My temper was
legendary when I really and truly lost it, and I teetered just on
the brink. I stopped a few feet from the pair and was rather
perversely gratified when they both cowered a little away from me,
though I think Dellar did it more to protect Maria than because he
was really afraid.

“You,” I said as I thrust my forefinger at
Maria. “Explain.”

“Wait a moment,” Akira began, but I froze him
with a single look that actually made him take a step back as his
wings twitched.

“NOW!” I thundered as the hold on my temper
slipped a bit.

“Wh-wh-y-yo-you,” Maria stuttered, and I
crouched down so that I was eye level and glared. I was through
playing.

“Don’t talk to her like that,” Dellar said as
he tightened his arms even more on her when I turned the full force
of my glare on him.

“You stay out of this, Pale Man,” I snarled,
which finally roused Maria out of her stupor.

“Don’t talk him like that!”

Crack
went the leash.

“I will talk to him however I want!” I
yelled. “I’ve just been through hell, saw you nearly get raped, I
was almost killed, and have just had my idea of reality smashed to
smithereens and now you’re cuddling up with some stranger with no
skin pigment what so ever and I think I’m a little justified in
being very freaked out, very angry, and damnit, I’ll talk to anyone
any way I damn well want to because I’ve had
enough
!!”

Maria’s eyes widened at my tirade and Akira
backed up another step. Even Mr. Pale and Protective looked like he
wanted to get up and run, but I wasn’t through. Hurt roared through
me and gave lift to the wings of my rage as I stared at my best
friend.

“What’s going on, huh? What the hell is going
on? You vanish over a month ago for seven days and come back
claiming no memory of the event. You’ve been
weird
ever
since then. You shoved me face first into my car’s hood! You’ve
never done anything like that to anyone before! You’ve withdrawn,
you haven’t spoken to me for days and then I suddenly get a phone
call from your mom saying that you had vanished again! What was I
supposed to think? And then when I find you, well, I don’t need to
relive that again, I might start screaming if I do, and now you’re
all cuddle buddy with Pasty there and you’ve never even breathed a
word about him to me! For all I know, our entire friendship has
been one huge lie, so I believe I’m quite justified in being
royally pissed off at the moment! So, has our entire friendship
been a lie, Maria? Has the entire past few weeks been your way of
telling me you don’t want me in your life anymore? Or was your
disappearance all one huge ruse and scream for attention the way
some of the kids at school claimed? I defended you, you know, big
time. Said you weren’t the type to pull shit like that, no matter
how bad it got. I do have to admit, though, that the whole ‘I don’t
remember what happened’ routine was very convincing.”

“It’s not a lie!” Maria cried as she pulled
away from Dellar and faced me, her eyes narrowed. “I do remember a
little, but only what happened the night when I vanished, not the
entire week afterwards!”

“Yeah, right,” I scoffed. “That whole routine
won’t work on me anymore, I see right through you now.”

“I swear, it’s not a lie, and it’s not
something I made up for attention!” Maria said, her voice thick
with unshed tears. I didn’t care, my anger was high and it wasn’t
about to be quenched. Mr. Pale got to his feet and edged a little
to the side, his body tense as if he were prepared to spring at any
moment and either pull Maria away from me or jump in front of her.
“The only thing I can remember is walking with someone into the
woods around here, and then waking up underneath one of the big oak
trees with my head hurting and knowing I was going to die, that
something was just waiting for me to breath my last.”

“Nice and melodramatic there,” I scoffed and
something niggled the back of my mind. “Oh yeah, I owe you
something.”

I darted forward and shoved Maria with all
the strength that I had left. She rocked backwards and away from me
with a surprised cry. Akira and Dellar both exploded into movement
with Akira grabbing and pulling me away as Dellar swung a fist in
my direction before he grabbed Maria to him and moved back. He made
a move that suggested he wanted to drag Maria off into the woods,
but Maria stopped him with a hand to his chest and a quiet, “No, I
deserved it.” Akira, on the other hand, crossed his arms over my
chest and pinned my arms to my side as he pulled his wings forward
and used them to encase the rest of me. He left my head free, and I
couldn’t help but think that I probably looked like some kind of
bizarre, feathered mummy. I struggled briefly, but even my
rage-fueled strength couldn’t break through Akira’s hold as he
hissed at me to calm down.