Sky Ghosts: All for One (Young Adult Urban Fantasy Adventure) (Sky Ghosts Series Book 1) (6 page)

One of them, seemingly old but still pretty rough, ran diagonally through her back from her right shoulder to the waist, its ends visible from under the narrow top. As she came to the mirror and pulled her wet hair forward on one shoulder, Chad couldn’t help but peer at her back, unable to tear his eyes away from the scar. He wondered how she had got it, or more importantly, how she had managed to survive such an attack.

“I take it we’re moving up?” she said, pointing to the new bunk over hers.

“I guess so,” Jane answered. “I’ll go shower quickly and make beds for you two.” She winked at the guys and got up from her recliner.

As soon as she disappeared in the bathroom, the guys tensed again. Pain didn’t seem to notice them, though, making herself busy with the linen for her and her sister’s beds and whistling an idle tune. With that carefree mood of hers, she actually made Chad wonder if that was the real danger signal, not the bristling and yelling. By the time Jane was done showering, their sheets were made neatly on the upper beds, and Pain was standing near the vanity table, still silent and remote.

“Who’s next?” Jane asked cheerfully. She was wearing almost the same clothes as her sister, and without makeup they looked pretty much the same now.

“I am!” equally drowsy Chad and Dave jumped to their feet. The clock over the door showed one AM – time had passed quickly, and they seemed to have lost the track of it.

Chad smiled and said, “You go first,” and sat down again. His light sweater was splattered with blood from the terrible bloodbath that Pain had made earlier at the street, and he clicked his tongue involuntarily, looking down at it.
What did Peter say about clothes?

“I’ll go fetch you two something to change into. The supply room is just one floor down,” Jane said, as if reading his thoughts. She was smirking, seeing how he grimaced at all the blood.

“I’d be very grateful,” he replied honestly, at the same time realizing that it would leave him alone with Pain, and he couldn’t comprehend if he was anticipating or anxious about it.

With their beds finished, and sneakers and a loose hoodie on, Jane left the room. Pain was drying her long hair with a hairdryer, standing silently in front of the mirror and seeming to have forgotten about him. So he made himself look away from her and stand up, flexing his numb legs. The place was nice, he admitted, looking around once again. Somehow this room was homier than his empty-looking rented apartment on the other end of Brooklyn. He wandered to the wall idly and looked over the photos that hung there. There were about two dozen, and in all of them the sisters were pictured together or with other fighters, cutthroats of all colors and shapes. It didn’t seem like Ghosts still wore long hair to cover their Marks – most of them had shaved heads or Mohawks. Despite the fighters’ smiling faces, they all had the most menacing looks, tattoos and scars covering their arms and even heads, biceps the size of watermelon, and heavy swords in their hands. Chad grunted. The girls didn’t seem to have any tattoos, at least big and noticeable ones. Was it a trend among male Ghosts only? On the pictures they were hugging the sisters while sitting at a lunch table or aiming their weapons waggishly into the camera or grimacing at the gym. They looked happy with their lives in this place. Even the giant with the skull tattoo was there, holding the girls, one on each arm, his face a grotesque grin. All of them wore the same black gear of that strange fabric. Chad itched to ask Pain what it was, but didn’t, not wanting to run into another biting answer. At the moment he was too tired for it.

The hairdryer went silent, and he heard her voice:

“You like the photos? Don’t worry, you’ll meet them
all
tomorrow,” she bared her teeth in a sarcastic sneer when Chad looked at her reflection.

He ignored the provocation and just got back to his seat without a word. If she thought he was worried about any of this, she was wrong. It was strange, having to stay here with them, strange and a little overwhelming, but his life got so boring by this time that deep inside he welcomed it. As for the thugs on the pictures, he barely cared. Actually, the skull-guy seemed much less bugging than Pain herself.

The door squeaked open, rousing him out of his reverie, and Jane showed up in the doorway with a big pile of white and black clothes. She kicked off the sneakers and dropped the clothes onto the recliner.

“Here, it’s for you both. Pants, shorts, Tshirts, and sweatshirts. The rest you’ll be able to get tomorrow. We have a small shop here on the first floor,” she said and went to her bed. “By the way, towels are on the top shelf of the wardrobe, though usually there’s a couple in the bathroom, too. No plans for tomorrow, so we sleep as much as we want.”

The bathroom door opened at that moment, and Dave looked at her with interest, trying to catch what she was saying. Jane pulled herself up lightly, climbing onto the upper bed, and crawled under the covers. Her sister already lay on her side, watching the room with a cold look.

With a towel wrapped around his slim waist, Dave dashed to the recliner and grabbed a pair of shorts.

“Wow, clean clothes! Can I use these?” he exclaimed cheerfully.

“No, they’re for us. We decided to do some cross-dressing and sexual roleplay. You can put on a thong, though,” Pain responded.

He grimaced, snatching the clothes and dashing back into the bathroom. Chad only grinned after him. Dave was back in a minute, dressed and pleased, and slipped nimbly under the thin blanket. It seemed nothing could ever disconcert him as long as he could take a shower and change into something clean. Chad only wished he could be that simple.

He got to his feet, took some clothes, a towel, and went to the bathroom. A pair of troubled green eyes stared back at him from the steamed mirror. His face, already tanned from the summer sun, looked haggard, and there was stubble on his jaw. He should have cut his hair long ago, too. Some of the locks were falling into his eyes, and altogether, he looked like a shabby stray dog. Why didn’t he have at least some of Dave’s obsession with his looks? At least he looked his age, and Chad with his strong features had always looked older than he really was. At the moment he could easily pass for a thirty-year-old, and he was only twenty-three.

He sighed. Whatever, he would get a good haircut after this was over, and as for the rest, he had never been eye-candy and he couldn’t care less. In the medicine cabinet he found a new toothbrush, and after he was done with the shower, he left the bathroom. Everybody was already asleep. For a moment he wondered how incredible a usual Saturday night had turned out. He was going to sleep at a strange place with people he barely knew, and he didn’t feel even a little uncomfortable.
Crazy.
He shook his head, turned off the light, and lay down to sleep.

“WAKE UP, FORRESTER!”

The voice came along with a punch in the shoulder, and Dave sat bolt upright in the middle of a dream, trying to make out groggily what just happened. He was seeing red for some reason; no, it was just a red print across someone’s black T-shirt, six fat letters, “Bite me”. Long black strands of hair tickled his nose, and when he craned his head back, he saw Pain’s face, her black-lined eyes irritated.

“What are you staring at?? Get up already, sleepyhead!” she exclaimed and stalked to the vanity table, flashing the cut-up back of her T-shirt. Considering her trade, it looked somewhat creepy.

He grimaced, glancing across the room at a little more awake Chad. Apparently, he was awakened by Jane. Or woke up from the disturbance that every now and then the big sister caused. And then the clock above the door caught his attention.

“Hey, it’s only eight AM!” he exclaimed resentfully and threw up his hands. “I thought yesterday someone said we could sleep as much as we wanted?”

Pain turned back to him, rolling her eyes.

“Man, you really ain’t got any self-preservation,” she commented, crossing her arms on her chest wearily. “WE,” she emphasized the word, “sleep as much as we want. And YOU sleep as much as we do,” she explained with a shrug.

“I tried to make her let you sleep a little longer,” Jane said, appearing from the bathroom, “but she just couldn’t accept the idea of waiting for you before we can go eat.”

Chad smiled at Dave ruefully from the other side of the room. It was a beautiful day outside the window, though. The sun was streaming into the room, the sky clear blue; even birds were singing somewhere not far away. Dave grunted:
Well, that’s new.
There weren’t any birds around his penthouse apartment downtown. He sighed and got to his feet, heading to the bathroom to wash up.

“I’ll go get us something to eat. If we wait until everybody’s ready, we’re gonna have to eat supper instead of breakfast,” Pain raised her voice on the last words, leaning closer to the bathroom so that Dave would hear her, apparently.

“I thought Peter said to stick with them,” Jane noted with disapproval.

Pain straightened from the heap of shoes in which she was rummaging and looked at her sister.

“You kill people just by looking at them, you can survive one floor ride in the elevator without me, can’t you?” She put on a pair of sneakers and slipped outside, nimble as a cat.

Jane sighed, coming to the mirror and taking her mascara out from a drawer. Her hair was already in a neat braid, and she was dressed in loose black pants and a narrow tank top. Chad thought that even in such clothes she looked sexy somehow. And he had to admit, he had never seen a girl with a stomach flatter than his before. She finished her makeup and looked at him with her dark brown eyes.

“What?” she asked, a little frown appearing just over the bridge of her nose.

He realized he must have got lost in thought staring at her for too long and looked away instantly.

“Nothing.” He got up from his bed just as Dave came out of the bathroom.

“I’ll wait outside so you two can change,” Jane said and went to the door. “Oh, your clothes are already at the laundry.”

“Thank you,” Dave said heartily. Chad, already clenching a toothbrush in his teeth, only nodded through the bathroom door.

Five minutes later – Chad and Dave wearing identical loose black pants and white Tshirts – they came out of the room and stopped at the elevator. Jane pressed the button, and Dave already opened his mouth to ask why wouldn’t they just use the stairs, when he spotted a sheet of paper pinned to the wall. It carried a few lines of printed words:

1. Use the elevators.
   
2. No banging doors.
   
3. No smoking inside.
   
4. No throwing knives at walls AND doors!
   

And one more, written in handwriting with a black marker:

1. No marijuana in the building!! (Read this twice, Marco. Pot, weed, hash, dope, joints, and Mary Jane are also prohibited!)
   

Dave scoffed.

“That’s a lot of names for weed from a man like Peter…” he murmured, and Jane looked at him with her eyebrows raised. Quickly, he changed the topic. “So, why use the elevator?” he asked, noticing Chad giving her an interested look, too.

She shrugged.

“It’s a common rule. The stairs are for emergencies.”

The elevator doors opened and they walked inside.

“Emergencies? They happen a lot here?” he asked again, narrowing his eyes at her, but she only gazed at him wistfully. “I’m sorry if I ask too much, but… I don’t get it.”

“I meant life-saving emergencies. And yes, they happen a lot. So it became a common rule not to use the stairs at all, because otherwise people would crowd there, and it’s no good when you have a dying man with you. If the stairs are clear, we can fly up to the infirmary in one minute,” she explained.

Dave’s eyebrows went up, “Oh…”

And then the elevator pinged, and they came out, Jane in the lead. He gave Chad a troubled look, but he wasn’t looking at him, because they had entered the canteen already.

The room was pretty snug. It didn’t have the usual banality, white walls or cheap plastic furniture. The walls were wallpapered in warm beige color, and almost all the space of the room was filled with sturdy wooden tables for four. There were a few big windows along one wall, barred with iron, and pictures of still life and plants on the others. At the moment half of the tables were occupied, and at a table by a wall Pain sat, gnawing on an apple. The table before her was groaning with food trays, glasses of juice, and cups of tea. The guys looked over it all with appetite as they reached her.

“Is this for us?” Dave wondered.

“Nope,” Pain said lazily, “Just me, committing suicide by overeating.”

He exhaled sharply before saying, “Can you not be a pain in our asses at least for a minute?”

“Can you stop being stupid at least for a minute?” she retorted crossly.

At that, Jane gave a long, martyred groan.

“Would you two stop it already??” She turned on her sister, who only gave her a surprised look. “It’s not his fault Peter assigned you to him, you know.”

Pain snorted.

“Yes, it is. If he just had the decency to die silently yesterday, not squeal like a girl, I’d be free right now. Probably even doing some
real
job,” she sneered.

Dave opened his mouth to say something else, but then got distracted because two more people were heading to them.

The guys already knew the first one, it was Jerry, one of Peter’s office guards. He was dressed differently, wearing a plain gray T-shirt and jeans. He smiled and waved his hand at them. But it was the second one who had their full attention.

It was a tall African-American guy with a short Mohawk on his shaved head and a line of stubble framing his jaw. He had a semicircle tattoo with an indecent word on the back of his head, suggesting all people around him to leave him alone, in a much more impolite manner. The black T-shirt that he was wearing seemed about to split any moment around his huge biceps, and his shoulders were so broad that at least two Daves would easily fit in. Though they were of the same height, somehow the fighter looked so much bigger, it made Dave feel like a gawky teenager. There was an ugly, unevenly healed scar running along the outer side of his right arm, from the wrist to the short sleeve. Besides, both of his arms were covered in tattoos, which looked very natural on his dark skin and almost didn’t stand out, like inborn patterns. Despite the terrific appearance, the guy had a mischievous smile on his face, and the look that he gave Chad and Dave as he passed by was friendly.

“Hi, sisters!” he boomed loudly in a deep, husky voice, following Jerry to another table.

“Hi, Marco,” Pain and Jane greeted him tonelessly, one from her apple and another from a glass of juice.

The fighters put their trays on the table and lifted it, moving it up to the girls’ one. Dave got out of the way silently, pulling his chair with him and trying not to stare. When they put down their table and pulled up the chairs, Marco sat beside Jane, and Jerry at the head of their improvised table, across from Chad. Dave took the only empty spot in front of Marco without a word, staring at his scar. He tried to imagine himself having one like that on his arm and failed. No, this was something from a different world.

Meanwhile, Marco tilted his head to Jane’s ear, looking at Dave sideways and saying in a low conspiratorial voice, “You’ve got some men on your table.”

“Not funny,” Pain replied for her sister, cutting her eyes toward him. “Chad, Dave,” she pointed with her chin at each of them, “this is Marco.”

Immediately, Marco made round eyes, his face astonished.

“Just ‘Marco’?? That’s it?”

She sighed, pulling on a solemn face, “Okay. Chad, Dave, this is Marco – the light of my eyes, the joy of my heart!” she announced. “Here, you happy now?”

He nodded with appreciation, his grin spreading from ear to ear. He stretched out his long arm to shake the guys’ hands.

“So-o-o, you decided to get yourself some boyfriends, finally? Are they both yours, Pain, or Jane’s, too?” he asked; Dave choked on his juice. “I must say, the hairy one looks just like your type,” he added, making Chad choke this time, while Pain only shot him an indignant glance.

“If I did get myself a boyfriend, I wouldn’t allow him within less than a mile near you so you wouldn’t accidentally cut off something vital,” she retorted once she got her composure back.

“You let Dean near me…” he muttered under his breath, looking at his tray.

At that, she gave him a blazing glare and hissed, “He was a cutthroat just like you, jerk- ”

“Okay, okay,” Marco interrupted her quickly. He switched his attention to Dave, who was still staring at his arm. “You like it?” he stretched it out at full length across the table, showing Dave his scar in all its ugliness. Dave grimaced, averting his gaze.

Marco continued with an excited smile, “Wanna get yourself one of these? I can help you!”

“N-no, thanks,” Dave answered with a stutter and looked at the food tray that Jane moved up to him, shoving Marco’s arm off the table with a scowl.

“Or even better, you could ask the professional,” Marco continued in a conspiratorial tone, and looking into Dave’s eyes, pointed sideways at Pain. “She and her katana work wonders! She will do it quickly and so-o-o smoothly, you won’t even feel a thing!”

Jane smacked him on the nape sharply.

“Stop harassing him! Dave, eat, don’t listen to him.”

Marco grinned, obviously happy to have somebody new to make fun of. Dave picked through his plate with a frustrated frown. Suddenly, his appetite was gone. He wished it all was just a dream, and he would wake up and turn out in his apartment, maybe even with a brutal hangover from yesterday’s party. It seemed bad enough to be a nightmare, right?

He cut his eyes to the side and saw Pain glower at Marco across the table.

“I’m gonna take this tray of yours, and I’m gonna beat you to death with it,” she muttered murderously.
Nope.
No way Dave’s imagination could conjure up something like that. Killing people with food trays was just her prerogative.

Marco didn’t seem to be very bothered. He was grinning wildly, swallowing huge pieces of chicken and potatoes from the tray as he talked.

“No, seriously, pal. All you need to do to get such a lovely scar is to come to Pain’s room late at night and suggest some fooling around,” Marco chuckled at his own irony, and Dave glanced at Pain again. He doubted he would ever talk to her at all after seeing what she had done to Marco’s arm.

“You are a big, fat idiot! I was seventeen and you were drunk! And by the way, not all the girls in the city are crazy about wild animal sex, which you, no doubt, offer to every next person,” Pain gloated with a grimace.

Marco pursed his lips thoughtfully, undisturbed by her comment.

“Not all the girls, of course… But according to my calculations, it’s about a half of them…” he replied. Jerry chuckled, and he continued. “At least now you know what such a scar on any cowboy’s arm in this room means.” He grinned and stole a glance at Pain, enjoying the produced effect. “And I’m not fat!” he protested, pointing his finger at her accusingly. “I’m curvy! I’ve always been like this, don’t start this again!” He slammed his fist on the table. “Actually, don’t start this ever, ever again! I’m hurt, I’m literally hurt!” he even sobbed a little at the last sentence.

She rolled her eyes wearily, like it wasn’t the first time and she was bored of such scenes. Then she ate a spoon of her vegetables and mumbled discontentedly, “Thanks to you, jackass, these two now will think that a good half of our fighters tried to molest me.”

At this, Dave heard Chad chuckle quietly. Opposite of him, Jerry was laughing, too, and Marco grinned, watching Pain over the rim of his glass. He finished his orange juice and stomped the glass sonorously on the table.

“Well, actually, Jerry told me about your assignment,” he said and switched his look to the guys. “You’re not the first clients staying here. If the sisters haven’t told you yet, the place is pretty cool,” he said, gesturing with a plastic fork and a piece of chicken on its end. “There’s everything we might need. But there is one huge flaw, too,” while Marco broke off to swallow, Jane and Pain interrupted him.