Sky Ghosts: All for One (Young Adult Urban Fantasy Adventure) (Sky Ghosts Series Book 1) (31 page)

“Wait- ” Peter called out after him, hand outstretched, but he was already gone. “Oh, what the hell,” he waved his hand helplessly. The guard banged the door shut, and Dave was left to stare at it in confusion.

“You better stay here,” Peter said to him wearily. “You’ll be safer, and Chad will be alright with them, I hope.”

Dave only nodded, lost deep in thought. What was that about? Since when had Chad become so eager to rush into battle, being the one the Beasts came for in the first place? Or was he afraid to let Pain out of his sight, no matter if he was no help, really? He remembered their little private communication back on the roof. Well, actually he could be of help, in one case…

He broke off the thought.
In case if Marco’s dead.

No, he couldn’t be. The fact that he hadn’t come down yet didn’t mean he got killed. He just must have been too distracted snapping necks all over the place.

Dave sank into the nearest chair, putting his head in his hands. Finally, he was left alone, free to let his mind wander or doze, and he just couldn’t do it. He itched to be somewhere else, because the place made him anxious. Everyone around him seemed busy – except for those who were wounded, of course, but they sort of had an excuse for doing nothing – and he felt awfully out of place. Somewhere in Manhattan his fancy apartment was, all high-tech and extremely tasteful. He suddenly realized that in all these days he hadn’t thought about his comfort even once. Even now, just sitting here, he didn’t feel bored like he used to feel there sometimes. He could actually just slip away; he doubted that Eugene cared about him. He only wanted him along with Chad. But did he want to leave? Aside from worrying for his friend, could he just walk out of this building and forget about all this? He knew that the answer was no. Maybe he wasn’t a part of all this, but somehow being here he felt like he belonged to something important finally. Or like he wanted to belong.

“You okay?” a booming voice broke the comparative silence around him, making him startle and look up.

A gigantic figure loomed over him, blocking all the lights. He glimpsed a machete at the man’s thigh and realized it was Skull, though he could have guessed it just as well from his incredible size. He was like a black cloud obscuring Dave’s vision, and suddenly he felt very, very tiny. Like a hamster.

“Yeah, I’m alright,” he answered hoarsely, thinking about the gear that Skull was wearing. Was there a clothing size for a man like him, really? How many Xs were there?

Skull only grunted in response, coming to sit beside him. A week ago Dave wouldn’t even dare to open his mouth with him around, but now he was so drained of every possible fear that he didn’t really care, so he asked what was on his mind.

“What’s up with you, did they cast you out, too?” He turned his head to the right, giving him a half-smile. Skull wasn’t looking at him, and his face was expressionless as he stared into space. His eyes seemed somewhat sad, his look heavy, but that never changed.

“I’m Peter’s guard,” he answered simply.

“Oh, right… I guess he only has one bodyguard now…”

“Does he look like he needs a bodyguard?” Dave thought he actually heard some mockery in that deep voice, but he wasn’t sure. “Not a bodyguard. I only fight by his side.”

“Well, he’s your boss, and I thought… Whatever. But it’s your duty anyway, right?”

“Yes, it is. That’s what I believe.”

Dave frowned.

“Believe? Like, you don’t have to stay in here, but you want to?” Dave asked with weak surprise.

“I just got back from the outside. There was a bunch of Beasts. Someone had to take care of them. But whatever happens, I’ll be covering his back.”

“So you’re like his partner? Like Marco and Ryan, Pain and Jane?”

Skull grunted almost imperceptibly.

“Joseph was his partner. I just have the best chances to keep him alive, whatever comes next,” he said simply.

“Then… Jerry was yours?” the words slipped from Dave’s lips before he could stop himself. “Sorry! Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that- ”

“No,” Skull cut him off, and there was no anger in his voice. “I don’t have a partner,” was all he said, but the way he said it made it clear that he wouldn’t discuss the topic.

Dave fell speechless.
Whatever happens, I’ll be covering his back.
He saw the skyscraper’s roof in his mind’s eye and Pain, not leaving him even when Jane was in danger. Not leaving when Chad fell off the edge. He wondered what some other fighter would do if he was assigned to him instead of her. Would he be alive by now if it wasn’t for her, protecting him all this time?

He swallowed. The thought made him feel uneasy, and an idea sparked in the back of his mind.

“Hey, do you have something for me to do? Some non-decapitating help? I really feel like doing something right now.”

Skull looked at him for the first time during this conversation.

“There isn’t much to do here, but I’m sure they could use some help in the infirmary. Just knock on the door, they’ll let you in.”

Dave nodded.

“Okay.” He got up and made a few steps away from him, but then paused. Turning back, he saw that Skull was already staring into space before him again. “When you said there was a bunch of Beasts outside… How many were there?”

Skull turned his face to him – his black eyes seemed sizzling in the semidarkness. He mused for a moment, as if deciding should he answer this silly question or not.

“Not many. A couple dozen,” he said finally, and Dave made an effort to keep his jaw closed.

“Okay,” he responded in a thin voice and turned on his heels, heading to the infirmary and trying not to imagine how someone could take down two dozen fighters and not have a scratch on him afterward.

“Where’s Marco? Did you see Marco? Is Marco or Ryan on this floor?” Pain called out, running through the Ghosts that were scurrying around the hall like bothered ants. They were all heading to the staircase, wounded and bloody, hurrying to the infirmary.

“Check the fourth floor!” someone answered, disappearing behind a corner.

“Dammit,” she muttered, running back to the staircase and dashing up the steps. Jane was following her, and Chad had fallen behind.

The sisters stopped in their tracks as soon as they reached the fourth floor. The place was ruined. It looked like every piece of the furniture that had previously belonged to the rooms was broken and thrown out in the rush of the battle. The wide space of the hall was cluttered with bits of wood, glass, metal…

…and bodies. Not only the Beasts’ bodies, there were also a few Ghosts, covered in splinters and shatters, lying in sick and unnatural poses. Pain saw instantly that they all were dead. Half of the lights were out, smashed. But in the dimness she was able to see that even the walls were ragged and sprayed with blood. The place was torn to pieces.

She made a sound low in her throat, feeling the blood in her veins rise.
Eugene, you sick bastard
.

“I’ll check the left side,” sounded Jane’s dazed voice from behind her. Then she jumped over the heap and landed softly on the other side.

Pain darted to the right, taking out her katana. Some of the doors were thrown open, the rooms like black pits behind them. She walked along the wall slowly, peering into the rooms one by one, turning the lights on. It seemed there was nobody on the floor already. Nobody that was alive, at least.

There were more bodies and broken furniture inside the rooms, and even the bunks were torn off the walls. Pain came out of the second room, turning to look for her sister. Suddenly, a tall, dark figure slid through the broken window at the end of the left corridor and landed soundlessly on the floor, holding two gleaming swords in its hands. Pain stifled back a cry because at the next moment the black shadow straightened up, and even in the faint light she saw the familiar light hair and black gear – it was Ryan. He nodded to her across the corridor and disappeared inside some room where Jane must have been at the moment. As soon as he left, another figure showed up in the window, in a torn sweater and jeans, tousled hair gleaming pale-brown.

“Where the hell have you been?” Pain hissed through the space to Chad.

He didn’t waste time on landing, just flew straight to her through the hallway.

“I’ve found Ryan. He’s looking for Marco, too,” he said.

“You’ve found Ryan…” she quoted him with a scorn, opening the door to a brightly-lit room. “What do you think… ” the words died on her lips because at that moment she looked around the room and spotted something familiar under a great heap of bodies.

There were at least a dozen Beasts, all dead, blood splattered all over the place. The floor was covered in their bodies, but there was something else, too: the unmistakably familiar, dark-brown, tattooed arm with the long scar, protruding from under them.

“Oh my God…” she whispered and dashed inside. Chad froze in the doorway, his face shocked, while she was storming through the room, throwing aside the bodies as if they weighed no more than dolls.

Marco lay on his back in a big pool of blood, his head turned to the side. His eyes were closed, and he still had a knife in his right hand, as if he was stabbing someone when he lost his consciousness. There was a big wound in his side, and blood was still seeping from it. He didn’t look alive at all, except for his chest that was rising and falling faintly.

“No-no-no-no-no…” Pain murmured, kneeling by his side, turning his face to her and slapping his cheeks – he didn’t stir. Her hair fell into her face, and she pushed it back hastily, leaving a bloody smear across the cheek.

Chad watched her from the threshold, feeling strangely hesitant, distant, as if he were miles away. There was only one feeling, deep, deep inside him, the feeling of uselessness, inevitability. He knew that he couldn’t help, that nothing could be done, and this feeling just didn’t let him move from his spot.

“Pain…” he said quietly, but she didn’t seem to hear him. She was gathering Marco’s great torso into her arms, pulling him off the floor carefully, and mumbling something to herself.

“We’re gonna get you out of here…”

Chad could barely hear her against the persistent buzzing sound in his head. It couldn’t be happening, not because of him, not to Marco. Not to her.

Somehow he unhitched himself off the spot and hurried inside, his sneakers smearing blood on the floor. He glanced down and winced as his stomach churned.
Don’t stop, don’t look, go.

“He’s breathing, help me lift him up!” Pain shouted, turning to shoot him a haunted glare.

It stopped him right there, pinning him to the floor again. And then he glanced at Marco – and froze all over.

“No, he doesn’t,” he said without thinking, surprised at how distant and flat his own voice sounded. He stared at Marco’s still chest, and his blood seemed to slowly turn cold while Pain frowned and looked down incredulously.

“What?? He just- ” she broke off as she saw that Chad was right. “NO!!” she shrieked, and Chad jerked back because the air around her exploded into a seething sea the moment she realized that it really
was
too late.

She clutched at Marco’s vest desperately, her fingers white with strain and red from the blood, leaning over him as a sob broke out of her chest.

“Marco!! Marco, no!” she was crying, and Chad could only stand behind her as if glued to the spot, his mind blank and his head full of white fog.

She lowered Marco back to the floor and began to give him CPR, hands shaking, eyes glistening and frantic, tears falling on his face as she gave him mouth-to-mouth. But her movements were sure as she started to press on his chest, hard and rhythmically. Half a minute passed, and nothing changed, so she went on all over again until there was a definite crack of his ribs which Chad could hear even from a few steps away.

“I broke…” she exhaled, stopping. “I broke something!” she cried, touching Marco’s face, as if apologizing, as if he could hear her.

Chad could only stare. He couldn’t move or talk or think of anything that he should have been doing at the moment, some right things to save a dying man. It wasn’t just the shock of the situation – it was the glowing, the sparkling mist around Pain and Marco, mixing and pulsing and overlapping each other layers of air that kept him mesmerized. The room was filled with faint clicking, the sound of static, the scream of the disturbed electric field. And it was hot, so hot inside.

Everything seemed so unreal, Marco dead, Pain sitting on the floor and rocking from side to side, holding his head in her lap, her incoherent murmuring mixing with sobs. This room, full of light and blood, grief and tears, it couldn’t be real. Chad grabbed the wall as the ground shifted under his feet. It was just like his dreams, he realized.

Time slowed down as everything around him went whitish and blurry. Just turning his head seemed like an enormous effort now, but he looked at Pain again, wondering about the glowing. When the girls fought, when he watched them practice, the effect their power produced was almost invisible. The shimmering was everywhere now, but most of it was still shrouding Pain and that part of Marco that she was hugging, like a little girl holding on to her giant stuffed bear, frustrated over some childish injustice. Why would she glow? She wasn’t fighting or flying or healing…

Chad’s head snapped up when a realization struck him.

And then he saw Marco take a deep, long breath.

“Pain!”

Everything went back to clarity, and along with that, he was able to move again, darting across the room to her.

“Pain, look!! Look at this!”

She didn’t seem to have heard him. Her face was buried in her arms along with Marco’s head, her back rising and falling as she wept, sitting in a pool of blood. So Chad grabbed her shoulder and shook her, trying to break the spell that she was under.

“Pain, he’s breathing again! We should bring him down to the infirmary!” he exclaimed.

For a moment nothing happened. She was still crying, still rocking to the sides, and he felt helpless. Just like in a dream, when he spoke and no one heard him. But then she paused and raised her head. Tipping it back slowly, she looked at him with nothing but sheer pain and numbness behind her eyes, wide and reddish-pink, black smudges around them like a raccoon’s. It was unbearable, seeing her like this, with her look glassy and her face a mask of grief. Chad swallowed against a lump in his throat and raised his shaking hand, pointing down at Marco.

“He’s breathing,” he whispered, and finally she looked down, surprise sparkling in her eyes before she averted them from Chad’s face.

She blinked and felt another tear roll off her face and fall on Marco’s chest. It heaved up and fell back down, slowly but steadily. Her mind stiffened as she took in the picture before her eyes. It was as if time itself stopped or even ceased to exist.
How is it possible?

“What?”

And as a rush of gratitude and amazement flooded over her, she was already on her feet, seizing Marco’s leather vest and hauling him upright. His massive body overbalanced her, but Chad was already there, propping up Marco’s other side. She had to move, to hurry, to catch this opportunity before it was too late.

As they burst through the doorway, a loud crash resounded off the walls to their left. One of the doors banged open, and a big shape flew out of it and slammed into the wall. Jane showed up from the room then, and in a heartbeat her two swords sank in the Beast’s chest. She spotted Pain and drew her swords back.

“Hey, you found him!” she exclaimed and hurried to them. Behind her, Ryan walked out of the room and followed her like an oversized shadow, dark and silent.

“Yes!” Pain called out, a little out of breath. “Can we go through the window?” she asked Chad and saw him shake his head.

“Absolutely not, the Beasts are still there,” he answered, readjusting his hold on Marco.

“Okay, then it’s the staircase,” Pain said and pulled him forward again, but Ryan blocked her path, sheathing his swords.

“Let me carry him,” he said to Pain, and she looked up hesitantly. His voice was even, but his expression was strained with worry, and he looked down at her intently with glistening eyes.

“I’m good,” she answered without thinking.

“It’s not safe on the stairs, and it’s easier for us to carry him,” he objected, and after a moment she let go of Marco unwillingly and took out her katana as Ryan took her place, sliding his arm under Marco’s.

“Come on, we should hurry,” she said and ran to the exit.

Ryan and Chad followed her, and Jane was close behind them, both of her swords drawn out, her eyes alerted and focused on the door.

Chad thought it couldn’t get any heavier, until they reached the huge heap in the hall. Not wasting time on picking his way through the bodies, Ryan took off the floor, carrying Marco upward with him, and Chad leaped, but it wasn’t the same as flying by himself. He gasped, putting all his strength in this short leap and feeling all his muscles strain in tight cords. They landed on the other side – Ryan softly like a big cat, Chad hitting the floor hard and almost crushed under Marco’s weight.

“Carry him here,” he heard Ryan say and saw him raise his free hand to his head, “not there,” he pointed at his arm. “Then it’ll get easier.”

Chad nodded, trying to understand what the hell did that mean, but already hurrying after Pain, who paused to hold the door open for them. The staircase was empty, but still, he felt his senses prickle. If they got attacked, it could mean death for Marco. He doubted that any amount of Beasts could stand against Pain at the moment, but any delay would do them no good.

Pain didn’t waste any time and just leaped over the flight of stairs, and behind her, Ryan rose into the air, descending over them like a phantom. Relying on Pain’s vigilance and protection, Chad focused on helping Ryan so he wouldn’t be a burden rather than an aid. They landed on the square of concrete, and Pain was already at the next flight, holding up her sword in case some of their enemies would show up. She saw only a couple of Ghosts, who trotted down the stairs and didn’t even give her a second glance as she landed behind them.

Four floors down, and they hadn’t met anybody else. By the time they reached the ground floor door, it really did get easier for Chad to carry Marco. He couldn’t see if he was still breathing and couldn’t bring himself to feel for the pulse, either. It was too scary, and what if there was none? Would it mean he had to stop? No, absolutely no.

Pain slammed her fist into the door, and the sound vibrated through its metal surface and resounded off the walls like thunder.

“Open the door!” she shouted, and her voice sounded even more nervous than before.

Chad looked closer and saw that her hands were shaking badly. She curled her fingers into tensed fists and stomped on the spot, unable to stand still while the guard shouted something on the other side and opened the lock.

The door shuddered, and she jerked it to her, swinging it open at once and striding forward. There was a great gathering of Ghosts around the entrance, and she pushed them away impatiently to make room for Ryan and Chad. Gazes followed her as she walked – surprised, alarmed, worried, curious – but she didn’t see them, didn’t see who was there or how many. She didn’t really hear the exclamations of shock as Ryan and Chad walked through the door, carrying Marco in their arms, but some of the words seemed to get stuck in her head as she joined Ryan, walking with them to the far wall.
Bleeding, injured, bad, cold, dead, impossible…
She passed a hand over her face, and it came out wet and bloody. Over Marco’s drooping head, she caught Chad’s worried glance and turned away. He shouldn’t have seen her like this, she thought remotely. None of his business.