The Stelter City Saga: Ultranatural (20 page)

“
Okay with what?” asked Lee.
There were people bustling around everywhere and yet it still
wasn’t even close to Tarrillian’s pedestrian traffic. She followed
him silently through the terminals for a moment before Ace
answered.

“
You and me,” he began in a
low voice, “In a hotel room.”

Lee flushed. The thrill of coming to a
new exciting place had completely overridden her thoughts on living
requirements. Once more an awkward atmosphere was beginning to
creep over them and Lee swallowed hard as she tried to act casual.
“When the gang was still together, we lived in the same home
remember?”

Ace frowned, his eyes illegible as
stone. “Yeah, but this is different.”

Ace was right. While living with Ace
and the rest of the gang, there were rooms to separate the two. But
now that they were planning on sharing a hotel room, there would be
nothing to separate their embraces.

That should have been a perfect time to
talk about their boundaries. Except, Lee wasn’t even sure how far
she was willing to go. Her body and her mind were like two
different things. During their kisses, she would want so much more
from Ace. But when his fingers brushed against the skin beneath her
shirt she flustered and would insist that they stop immediately.
Sometimes kissing him was fun. But other times, it was
embarrassing. She couldn’t talk to him about the physical part of
their love life if she couldn’t even figure it out.

So instead of saying anything at all,
Lee just continued to follow Ace through the airport. It was like
navigating through a corn maze but Ace seemed to know the way as if
he owned the place. Once they reached the front of the entrance,
there was a train of cab cars waiting to transport visitors. They
hopped in and watched the scenery zip past.

As they sped along, the radio buzzed
with a traditional Hawaiian song over the dry rumbling of the car.
When no one said a word, Lee pulled her eyes away from the
magnificent mountainous scene and glanced at Ace. Through the
reflection in the car window, she could see the dead tone in his
eyes. Anyone who didn’t know him would have thought he did well in
hiding his expressions, but Lee knew him better than that. She
would have thought he would be overjoyed that they had arrived in
Hawaii and finally his list of questions was about to be answered.
Yet why was there a faint frown in his perfect lips?

“
Ace,” she called reaching
for his hand. “Are you okay?”

At her touch, Ace slowly raised his
eyes to meet her. “Don’t worry about me angel.” He said; his voice
weary. “I’m just thinking.”

“
About…?” pressed
Lee.

The corner of his lip raised in a
dreary smile. It was the sort of face he made right before leaning
in for a soft kiss. “I need to treat you right Lee. I can’t mess up
with you.”

Lee raised her eyebrows as she giggled.
“I haven’t a clue what you’re talking about.”

“
Don’t worry about it.” He
replied calmly, “Just know that I love you. Endlessly.”

After a short drive they finally pulled
up to a hotel. It wasn’t beach front, but even as Lee ducked her
head out of the cab, she could see the endless stretch of white
sand just down the street. Every fiber in her being craved to
sprint across the practically empty street just so she could feel
the sand on her toes and the moist ocean breeze through her hair.
She wanted to experience something so unique and foreign and take
in as much of it as she could before returning to
Tarrillian.

Silently, Ace paid the cabbie then
hauled the luggage through the spinning glass doors before
reappearing in the lobby of a four star hotel. He wasn’t surprised
to see that everything there was themed Hawaiian- except for the
purple Christmas lights strung up around the glass elevators and
climbed ten floors to the top.

Lee took Ace by the arm and shivered.
The Christmas lights brought up memories. They were wonderful at
first- memories of dancing in Ace’s arms in a silent lobby with
nothing but the glittering Christmas trees illuminating the moment.
But what had followed was the bloodshed. The grotesque level of
that memory was enough to outweigh the brilliance of a short
dance.

The clerk at the front office didn’t
even find it odd that Ace had requested a two bedroom suite. In
fact, the clerk didn’t even blink when Ace paid for two nights in
advance with cash. The clerk simply handed Ace the room key and
mentioned that breakfast was free in the morning from five to ten.
After declining the luggage cart, Ace ascended up the elevator to
the seventh floor.

“
Seriously Ace, are you
alright?” asked Lee timidly when the glass door slid opened with a
ping.

“
I’m fine.” He said and Lee
was astounded to see that his eyes didn’t lie, but his voice wasn’t
convincing.

“
You’re doing it again.” She
muttered as Ace counted down the rooms until they came to a stop at
their door.

He didn’t seem to notice she said
anything as he unlocked the door. Ace flicked the light on and
tossed the luggage down on the sofa by the door.

Lee was too busy nibbling nervously on
her nail to take a look around their room. She did notice the cool
air conditioning smell and got a big mouth full of it when she
said, “You’re not telling me something.”

Ace wasn’t even looking at her. His
serious set eyes gazed blankly at the ground. “I’ve just been
thinking about the past lately. There are some things… never mind.
I’m just tired, Lee. Jetlag, I guess.”

The past? For some reason, Lee felt
like he was talking about something that happened before the
letter, before the blood. Even before he met Lee. Were there other
questions he needed to answer? Even more so than what was triggered
the night at the opera house?

Lee’s eyes darted around for a clock
then finally found one on the nightstand between the beds. She had
to read the time backwards through the reflection of the sink
mirror. “It’s only two, thirty.” She mentioned.

Ace’s long fingers raked through his
hair, “It is? That can’t be right…” he shook his head. “I didn’t
sleep a wink last night,” he said stifling a yawn, “I guess that’s
why I’m so tired.”

She could hear it in his voice now. He
was exhausted and it seemed like he was trying to do anything to
keep him from caving into the sudden demand of sleep. His feet
shuffled toward one of the beds facing the small bathroom and he
barely had time to kick off his shoes before collapsing atop the
covers.

Lee glanced down at him and saw that
even as he lay on his stomach with half his face hanging off the
pillow, he was fast asleep. She had never seen him asleep before,
and even then with that low amber light, she could still see the
pinkness of his slightly opened lips and the faint blush over his
cheek bones. His skin seemed washed out as if he had just collapsed
out of exhaustion.

Lee stroked the feathery black hair
from his brows and wondered if it was normal for him to fall asleep
so suddenly. She wanted to wake him, but he looked too peaceful.
Instead she pulled the blanket from the foot of the bed and tucked
the thin material under his chin.

Her fare hair brushed against his nose
and she tucked it behind her ear before leaning down and pecking
him above the brow. She knew if it had been her asleep in that bed,
Ace would have done the same. For a moment, Lee admired the
tranquility in his face as he snoozed deeply.

Lee crossed to her bed and for a
moment, she sat there wondering what she could do. She didn’t feel
jetlagged. If anything, she was ready to help Ace find aswers. Her
eyes scanned their living space. There was a mini fridge by the
front door along with a small kitchen and her beds sat facing the
bathing area and a wall of dressers. Immediately, she knew how she
would kill time as Ace slept.

This was the only time she would feel
comfortable showering with him around so she sprang to her feet and
rummaged through her suitcase for pajama wear. The water steamed up
the small room quickly. She took her time and even read the labels
on the shampoo bottles before lathering. The scent was an
intoxicating fragrance of coconut and pineapple and, according to
the shampoo; the fruits used to make the product were grown on the
island.

She showered until her fingers pruned,
then dried herself off and dressed before flinging the bathroom
door open. The steam flooded out as she wrapped the towel on her
head. Her eyes went straight to Ace. Lee had figured the sound of
the shower might have awoken him yet he continued to doze. He
hadn’t even moved.

Lee stood there for a moment wondering
what else she could do. The clock indicated that it was roughly
three so she figured she might as well unpack and set her things in
order. Intentionally, Lee worked slowly and as she folded her
pants, she found her thoughts spinning back to what Ace had said
just before he fell asleep. Never had he shown her the words
scrolled in that letter, but from what she was able to piece
together, Lee imagined it had something to do with the supernatural
race and something to do with his inability to remember where he
came from. But what if there was more?

Lee hadn’t realized she had stopped
folding just to ponder and hesitantly placed her shirts in a small
wooden dresser before moving back to her thoughts. Ace; leader of
the Uncatchable yet she had never seen them rob a bank. Come to
think of it, she hadn’t understood half of the underground things
the ginger twins had mentioned when the gang was still together.
Was that what Ace had been thinking about? She never knew the dark
side to him because from the moment they met, he had changed for
her.

For a strange reason, Lee couldn’t
continue thinking about what Ace was like when stuck in the heart
of the gang life. It was odd to be thinking about him like that and
as she finished tucking the last of her clothes away, another
question popped into her head.

What to do next? Ace was
still sleeping like a baby. As quietly as she could, Lee crept to
her bed and flopped down. She glanced over at the clock, and for
the first time noticed the television remote sitting beside it. She
hadn’t seen a television in the
suite
anywhere or else she wouldn’t
have wondered around the room. Hanging on the wall across the bed
was a random cupboard and as Lee fidgeted with the remote, she
realized that inside the cupboard was the television.

She smacked herself in the
forehead after realizing how dumb she felt at the moment, then
scurried across the room to thrust the cupboard open. Once nestled
back in her bed, she flipped through the channels. Finally she
found a station that played movies and leaned back to watch the
climax of
Jurassic Park
.
Then
the
sequel
came on and Lee had expected Ace to
have at least rolled over in his sleep. He didn’t.

After several premieres, Lee finally
nestled down and let the low voices of the television lull her to
sleep.

~“This is the second
payment.” Hotaru announced in the damp cold rum cellar of a Waikiki
pub. “It totals to
seventy
-five percent of the whole
payment.”

The two other head members
of Pele sat around the beer stained pool table as a pair of guards
stood by the door. A single light bulb swung on a string attached
to the ceiling and whenever
a
c
ar
drove
overhead, the light bounced
across the dark room. The only other illumination came from a
barred hole in the wall form which every high officer could see the
flip-flopped feet of pedestrians moving about the Honolulu
afternoon.

Hotaru scratched his balding
head; his fingers felt the taught part of his skin where the fiery
ink permanently imprinted. His firm hand continued down his jaw to
the graying goatee before he finally grabbed a hold of the suitcase
at his feet. With a thump, the heavy container landed on the old
table and he flipped the lid open. With a bewildered gasp, the slim
woman to his right leaned in to make sure she was seeing all
the
paper
correctly.

Heather whistled.
“Only
two payments
?”
S
he had
been working on her English,
and if it
weren’t for the fact that Hotaru wanted her to perfect in English,
she would be speaking in her
Japanese
tongue. But the fresh snake
bite piercings on her lip weren’t helping her speech. Her bites
didn’t aid much with anything other than making her appear angrier
than she really was. Heather was already short, poorly nourished,
and her eyes hung from years of smoking. Her once radiant black
hair now hung in a thin mess down her tattooed back. As she leaned
over for a closer look, the back of her cami rose up to expose an
intricate tramp-stamp swallowing her entire lower back. “How much
did he say he was going to pay?”

“
Enough,” Hotaru replied.
“After we finish distributing the pay among ourselves, I guarantee
that we will all live luxuriously for the next several
years.”

“
Murder pays.” Heather
muttered under her breath. She was nibbling on her new piercings
again and they began to bleed but she made no attempt to wipe away
the dribble.