Hey everyone, thanks for stopping by to read this week's installment of the rough draft! The usual warnings apply. Hope you enjoy!
Stirling’s first reaction was to dash away, but after all he’d been through in the last day, the best he could do was to flop onto his chest, his legs quivering and useless beneath him.
I have no legs, and I must run. He rolled over and hefted the fist-sized stone he still held in his hand. He eyed it speculatively and threw it at the courier. It was a feeble throw, and it struck the fence five feet to the right of the woman before rolling away.
“Run!” Magnon urged him.
“Don’t you think I would if I could!” Stirling shouted back at the circling crow, frustration welling up inside and making the words come out angrier than he intended.
Magnon meanwhile, began diving at the woman and buffeting her head with his wings.
“Wait!” she cried, bringing her arms up to fend off the bird. “I’m not going to hurt him!”
“I have three big fucking holes in my best winter jacket that say otherwise,” said Stirling over his shoulder as he began to crawl away. He didn’t know if it was the burst of adrenalin at seeing her, or if he was just feeling that sick, but he was finding it hard to coordinate his limbs. Time to step up his game. He began to loosen the tight mental barriers he habitually kept in place.
“I’m sorry, alright?!”
“You’re sorry you tried to kill me or you’re sorry you stuffed me in a barrel to die?”
“I’m not in the best mental headspace right now,” she said, fending off another attack.
“Normal people try aromatherapy or exercise before they move all the way up to homicide!”
“Enough!” The sound of flapping behind him stopped and Stirling turned his head to see that she’d snatched Magnon out of the air and was holding his wings against his body. He didn’t look injured, but he wasn’t going anywhere.
He was pecking at her fingers for all he was worth but it didn’t appear to be having any effect. She was wild around the eyes, and having her hair styled by an attacking crow hadn’t done anything to make her look any more well-adjusted.
“If I wanted to kill you, I’d start by crushing the life from your emissary here,” she said between gritted teeth, giving Magnon a little shake. She took a deep breath. “I’m sorry I tried to kill you, alright?”
Magnon stopped pecking at her fingers and cocked an eye at her. His voice projected calmly into Stirling’s head. “Hey, Stirling. I’ve been thinking. Maybe you should sit down and talk with her. Grab a coffee or something”
Stirling hummed the opening bars to Gloomy Monday and familiar cold began to flow off his body. It was like stepping into a cool shower after a long, sweaty day of hard work. The weakness and shakiness washed from his limbs and he stood easily with a sigh of relief. He pushed his sweaty hair out of his eyes and faced her.
She looked him carefully and took a half step back. “You seem… improved,” She said.
He exhaled a lazy plume of breath into the air, it was dense and white. “I’m feeling much better, thanks.” A puddle next to his foot, still half-filled with the previous day’s rain, began to rime over with ice.
“Why don’t you let the crow go and we’ll talk. Deal?”
The courier suddenly looked a lot less sure of herself. “It’s not that I don’t believe you, I’m just a bit surprised at your sudden recovery. You were close to passing out five seconds ago.”
“I was, now I’m not. Listen, between the two of us, I’ve got the most reason to not trust what you’re selling.” He fingered the hole in the front of his jacket. “If you want to talk, we’ll talk, but first you have to drop. The fucking. Bird. Alright?”
The woman carefully placed Magnon on the ground. As soon as he was free, he flapped back to his spot on the fence.
“Great! Now, what was it you wanted to say? It might not look like it, but I’m actually pretty busy.”
She took a step in his direction and as she did the light in the parking lot dimmed. A thick whip of shadow dropped from his palm to coil on the ground next to his boot. The gravel turned white with frost where it touched.
She held up her hands up in front of her. “Hey! I just want to talk!”
“I can hear you from there. Honestly, you probably don’t want to come closer anyway. I’ve been told that I can make people uncomfortable when I’m like this and I’m pretty fired up right now.”
“Fine. I’m sorry I tried to kill you.”
“You said that part already.”
“Yes I did. I did what I did because I recently had someone close to me murdered using… your, um, kind of magic,” she said, indicating at the black whip in his hand. “When I felt you using it at Strangefellows, I sort of lost control.” She took in a deep breath and let it out. “I was wrong.”
“Well, that’s very big of you to admit. Are we done having this Hallmark moment?” The cold was already beginning to make the long muscles in his legs quiver. He hoped this wouldn’t take long.
“Wait! I think we have a mutual cause. I think the person who killed m-my friend also kidnapped your Rebbecca.”
Stirling narrowed his eyes at her. “How do you know about that?”
“You were talking with your crow and I have really good hearing. Listening to you talk was how I decided that you probably didn’t deserve to die.”
“Probably!? I probably didn’t deserve to die?!”
“It’s nothing personal, I’m not in the best head-space right now. I’m honestly not a hundred percent sure of a lot of things.”
“Uh huh. So other than freakishly good hearing and a willingness to stab first and ask questions later, what other qualities would you bring to the table?”
She looked around and pointed at the gate as though for permission. Stirling gave her a bemused shrug. She walked to the gate, gripped the vertical steel pole with both hands and calmly folded it in half.
“Well there’s that, I guess,” Stirling conceded.
Stirling looked over at Magnon and indicated with his whip hand in a puff of cold fog, “Is that normal? I mean even with the rest of us freaks?”
“No, that’s definitely not normal.”
“Good to know.”
He turned back to where the courier stood waiting. “What’s your name? I just can’t keep thinking of you as Stabby Gabby the Homicidal Bike Courier.”
“Katherine. You can call me Katherine,” she said, returning to her spot.
“Alright, Katherine, you’ve advanced to the bonus round. Say I agreed to go in with you on this tag team malarkey. What do you see as your final goal in the enterprise? What do you really want out of this? Bonus points will be awarded for the words, ‘massacre,’ and ‘viscera’ in this question.”
“That’s dark.”
“Necromancer,” he reminded her. “I’m supposed to be darker than a Goth locked in a box at midnight. Now answer the question, Claire.”
“Honestly? I just want my own life,” she said, her voice was dull as winter overcast, “but knowing Knox is out there and free of consequence for all he’s done is like trying to pretend everything’s fine with a nail in my foot. It’s all I can feel and think about. I don’t think I can enjoy anything or even grow as a person until I know he’s been repaid for the harm he’s caused.”
Stirling started to reply, but Katherine continued over him with a note of surprise at her own words. “Do you know, if I could make a fire from my own heart, I would use it to slowly burn Knox to the ground, inch by inch, and smile the whole time. I don’t think I’d even be sorry that it was my heart. Isn’t that a strange thing to say?”
“Yes. Yes it is, and you call me out for being dark. How about this though, we leave our hearts where they are and use Knox’s heart as kindling instead? Sound reasonable?”
Katherine shrugged noncommittally. “As long as he burns.”
“It’ll be a squad goal,” he said.
No comments:
Post a Comment