The Stelter City Saga: Ultranatural (2 page)

“
Lee,” he cooed, “Angel,
don’t cry.”

Lee sucked in a big breath of air as an
attempt to regain her composure, “No you’re right.” She finally
said though her lip quivered. “You need to go to Heleow. I- I’m
just being selfish.”

“
You’re the least selfish
person I know.” whispered Ace wiping her last tear. “That’s why I
love you.” He leaned down to peck her lips but she pulled
away.

“
Could you…” But Lee’s voice
faded before she could choke out the words. It had been somewhat
lonely having a large empty house to herself. Even Ace had decided
to live elsewhere since the gang had split up. She had grown so
used to having his touch on hers in the day time that she felt
vulnerable when she laid down in bed. But she couldn’t ask that of
him. It would upset the boundaries they hadn’t even drawn out
yet.

“
I’ll come over for
breakfast.” Ace answered for Lee. “We’ll go meet up with Rose and
DH tomorrow so I can tell them what I have planned.”

Lee glanced down at the tile ground and
nodded without a word.

“
Hey,” Ace cooed, tilting
her face up by the chin. “Look at me angel.”

Lee frowned but looked up at him just
like he had asked. He was so beautiful to her, it was a wonder he
was even in love with her dull, washed out features.

“
You look so much prettier
when you smile.” He said after they held eyes for a
moment.

Lee couldn’t resist. A lopsided grin
spread over her lips before she stood on her toes and pressed her
lips to his for the last time that evening. “I’m in love with you,
Ace.” She whispered as she pulled away.

Ace didn’t let her get too far before
he pulled her back and kissed her gently on the forehead. “I will
never stop loving you, Lee.”

~Lee’s hair was still wet from a shower
when she climbed into bed. The lights in her room turned off the
moment her head hit the pillow. That was one thing she liked about
the North Side hideout. It was so revolutionary, the house did a
lot of the things she had hated doing in the orphanage. For a
moment she watched as the glass wall let in the city light. Slowly,
as time went on, the glass began to tint itself until her room was
nearly pitch-black.

Sleep was just around the corner. In
her dream she was teleported back in time. She was with her best
friends, sitting in their dusty attic of a bedroom crouched beside
the narrow sliver of window longing for freedom. Larissa lay supine
on the dirty mattress and as usual, tossed the red ball up in the
air. Zach sat on the floor doodling in the splintering wood. The
sight was so real; she knew it wasn’t a dream. She was reliving a
moment in the past.

“
Let’s go bother Delilah,”
suggested the gorgeous Latino Larissa.

“
Larissa, do you want to
lose all your food privileges?” Lee asked playing with the thick
chrome tracking device on her wrist. In the memory, Lee lay on her
bed, right across from Larissa.

“
But I’m so bored!” Larissa
bellowed clenching the ball so tightly it might burst. “I want to
go on an adventure.
Que quires
Zach?”

The brown haired boy glanced up from
the floor, his hand-me-down shirt covered in dirt and a tired look
sat over his green eyes. “I’m all adventured out Larissa. I just
saved a koala bear from wrestling a woolly mammoth. So, yeah…
pretty tuckered out over here. ”

“
And you did that with your
eyes closed no doubt.” Larissa added.

“
Eyes closed, wearing
mittens, shoelaces tied together, and crowning you the Queen of
Sarcasm.” The boy sprung to his feet so that he could give Larissa
a low bow. “Your highness.”

Though Larissa was stubborn enough to
want to peg him with the ball, she laughed along with Lee. Leave it
to Zach to make everyone giggle. It had forever been his dream to
be an actor and Lee always figured he’d do well as a
comedian.

The setting remained the same, but in
Lee’s dream, time spun backwards. It was the day Larissa arrived at
the orphanage. They were around thirteen years old and Lee had
hurried Larissa into the attic to avoid being teased because at
that time, Larissa spoke nothing but Spanish.

“
Are you okay?” Lee asked
patting Larissa’s thin shoulder as she curled up on the dirty floor
weeping.

At that time Larissa’s dark auburn hair
was short and more tangled than a field of weeds. Lee had hurried
over to the box under her bed, pulled out her three pronged comb
and began untangling. Ever since then, Larissa’s hair had been the
radiant envy of the orphanage. Lee combed for a moment until she
heard the pounding of approaching steps. Moments later, the door
was thrown open. Instead of seeing Zach with his wild brown hair
and energetic green eyes, it was Jacob.

“
I heard we got a new
friend.” He announced smirking.

Larissa had glanced up. Her large
almond shaped eyes wide with both curiosity and fear.

“
I’m not gunna hurt you.”
Jacob grinned flopping down cross-legged in front of her. “I’m just
here to say
hi.”
He
extended one of his slender pale hands and waited for Larissa to
shake back, but all she did was stare.

“
You’re scaring her, Jacob!”
Lee wailed.

The boy had shrugged and tossed his
oily dark hair over his long face. At the time Lee had though he
looked like a pirate with the way he wore his hair over his eye
like an eye patch. It wasn’t his fault he never got a haircut and
because they all lived in the slimiest orphanage, they all appeared
mal-nutritional by default. But for some reason, Jacob set a
record. He was the shortest of them all and his skin was sickly
pale- so pale it almost looked blue and the places in his cheeks
where there was no bone sank in like a bowl. Lee always thought he
looked like a lizard when he pulled his thin white lips back in a
smile. It was the way his cheeks dimpled combined with the fact
that his blue eyes seemed to pop out of his skull that made it
so.

For the most part his eyes were almost
the same midnight as Ace’s- except Ace didn’t have specks of brown
in his eyes like Jacob had. Sometimes during one of their more
lengthy conversations, Lee would find herself staring at the
largest one. It was in his right eye just over his two o’clock.
Sometimes, he would get upset at his friends for staring at it and
Lee could never understand why he didn’t just part his hair to the
other side. But as Lee stared at her old friend in her dream, Lee
found herself staring at that spot again.

“
Well what can I say,” began
Jacob snapping Lee’s attention back to his shady smile, “I’m a
scary guy.”

Lee never thought of him as that. But
she was thirteen when she had known Jacob and she was too naive to
know any better. Now in her legal adult state, Lee could see that
he was right- or at least to some degree. There was something
different about Jacob, something menacing. From the way he talked
to the way he smirked. Even his swagger seemed shady. But they had
all been friends. The four of them. The quartet of orphans always
causing trouble. Humorous Zach, stubborn Larissa, innocent Lee, and
sinister Jacob. He was the one who lead the four in most of their
adventures. That was until he miraculously escaped the
orphanage.

To that day, Lee couldn’t figure out
how he had done it. And as the times changed again in her dream,
she tried to push that thought from her mind. Her visions morphed
and so did the time. She was alone in Garden Park in the late
summer. Even in the dream world, she knew what moment she was about
to relive. At that time, she had sat on the edge of a glass and
steel fountain staring at the chrome band no longer on her wrist
and wondered how Ace had managed to get it off without damaging
it.

Her eyes flickered open and she was
back in bed. The warm sun had just begun to float above the city’s
towering horizon and was preparing to melt the snow off a
blistering winter. Lee sat up in bed and glanced at the
clock.

Ace had said he would come over first
thing in the morning, but he probably wouldn’t be there for another
half hour so Lee decided to climb out of bed and make some
breakfast. As her footsteps sounded down the spiral staircase, the
walls of glass automatically began to lessen their tint and allowed
sunlight to illuminate the entire home.

She slumped down the hall and rubbed a
fist against her eye before crossing through the large dining room.
As she walked past the massive oak table, she though she saw
someone standing in the corner. Startled, she lowered her hand and
took a second glance. Nothing.

It was just a trick of the eye. At
first Lee thought maybe she had seen Ace, and that he was using his
abilities to play a joke on her. But that wasn’t Ace’s style. He
was more of a ring-the-door-bell-and-surprise-with-flowers kind of
guy and definitely not a lurk-in-the-shadows-and-scare-playfully
person. With Jacob fresh in her mind, Lee thought about him as she
continued into the kitchen to turn on the radio. Lotus Stelter’s
newest single featuring Michael Caster rang through the
house.

Lee squealed and spun on the
spot. She loved that song. Not just because it was titled
Freedom
, which was the one
thing she daily wished for at the orphanage, but because the lyrics
matched her love story with Ace. He had freed her from the
orphanage but wouldn’t allow himself to fall for her. But
eventually he did because he couldn’t be contained inside his
fears. She also liked the song because it had a nice
beat.

“
Louder!” She commanded the
radio and the volume increased.

She twirled around the kitchen until
she ran into the fridge then thrust the door open. Milk, eggs… and
maybe some leftover Chinese takeout. There was some bread on the
counter she could toast just in case Ace showed up early. Lee
kicked the door close and skipped over to the stove. Ace had taught
her a shortcut in making scrambled eggs in the microwave, but she
preferred a skillet.

The chorus beat through the speakers
and Lee sang along hitting every note with perfection. Not only did
Ace mention that she sang like Lotus Stelter, but in a way she
resembled the billion dollar heiress. However Lee’s eyes were
green, Lotus’s were blue, and their hair colors were off a shade,
but there was something about the bone structure that was
similar.

Just as the chorus neared the end,
something shattered from the dining room. Lee almost didn’t hear it
over the music, but she spun around and glanced down the hall.
“Quiet.” She muttered and the music came to a decrescendo. “Ace?”
she called.

Rule number one in cooking: never leave
the stove unwatched, but Lee had to see if what she heard was real.
Sure enough, as her eyes scanned across the dining room, a vase
that had once held flowers on the table had been thrown across the
room. The pieces of glass laid there in a glistening mess. She
would have scurried over to clean it, but she could feel eyes
staring at the back of her head.

There was a vile laughter behind and
slowly Lee turned.

“
Let’s play a game.” Said
the huge man. As he leaned against the fridge, his eyes glued to
her hungrily. “You run, and I’ll come kill you.”

Everything about that man read
murderer. From the long black trench coat to the row of metal
spikes sprouting from his spine. There were even spears the size of
knives protruding unnaturally from his shoulders, fingers, and a
metal cluster seemed to grow over his brow. At that sight, she knew
three things; he was a supernatural, he was going to slaughter her,
and her chances of escape were next to none.

A terrified scream sprang from Lee’s
throat and she bolted down the hall before she even registered that
the scream was hers. By the time she reached the front door, his
demonic physique was right there to greet her. “Strike one.” He
announced as a playful grin spread across his blood colored
lips.

She turned and bolted for the back
door. But the moment she spun around, he was right there to meet
her. “Oh, come on sweetheart, you’re going to have to do better
than that.” He teased.

Lee didn’t wait for him to say anything
else. She sprinted for the kitchen knowing that if she couldn’t out
run him; she could at least defend herself and the first thing she
saw was the pan on the stove. Without thinking twice, she hurtled
it at the intruder. The flat heated part collided with his cheek
and sizzled before clattering to the floor.

An excited smile gleamed across his
face as he kicked the skillet across the floor. “Much better.” He
hissed, “Now we can have some fun.”

Lee fumbled trough the drawers for
something else, but she wasn’t fast enough. The man had spun her
around and pinned one of her arms in a J to her back. He held her
so tightly she could feel one of his horns pressing against her
shoulder. Tears sprang to her eyes as he tugged on her fragile
limb. “This is only going to hurt a lot.” The intruder smiled as he
spoke.

He jerked on her arm and with a pop,
pain exploded from her shoulder. An agonized scream ripped through
her teeth as the sensation shot down her body. She felt as if her
entire back was on fire and for a moment the lights left her eyes.
“That’s strike two.” He hissed in her ear.