Collide (23 page)

My body shook violently; shock, adrenaline
crash, and pain all formed a horrible cocktail that had my vision
doing funny things. One minute there was a single winged
individual, the next minute there would be two that appeared to be
further away than they actually were. The man flexed his wings
again, and turned to face me for the first time since the fight
started. My heart froze as I dropped Maria’s hand and scrambled to
my feet.

“A-Akira?” I squeaked and winced at the
pathetic sound of my voice and the fact that I weaved back and
forth where I stood.
I probably look like a drunken city dweller
trying to stand on the deck of a heaving ship.

“Where are you hurt?” he asked as he walked
towards me. His wings stretched out behind him.

“You have wings,” I said, stupidly stating
the obvious but unable to come up with anything else to say. My
brain had waved bye-bye and showed no signs of returning anytime
soon.

“
Tengu
generally do,” he said and
sounded amused despite the concern he was showing.

“
Tengu
,” I stupidly repeated and
blinked when my vision went all wall eyed and grey. “Oh dear.”

My knees buckled, my eyes rolled up, and I
had just enough time to think
this is going to hurt
because
real faints are a lot less graceful than the ones they show on
screen before my mind blanked out.

Ok, I freely admit it, fainting is extremely
embarrassing, especially considering that I prided myself on having
pretty strong nerves. However, I had just seen two mythological
beings battling it out in front of my eyes. Then one said
mythological being, who just happened to be my partner on a project
for school, stabbed the other in the heart and made it vanish. I
think I was allowed a little bit of a faint.

I wasn’t out for long, which was good for my
wounded pride, just a second or two. It took me a little longer to
regain control of my motor skills, so I clung to Akira’s arms as he
held me steady until I felt like I could actually move without
splatting all over the ground.

“Um,” I said. “Um.”

“Take it easy,” Akira murmured as my knees
buckled again and he helped me to sit, his arms still around me as
my hands came up to clutch his shirt. “You’ve had a horrible shock,
give yourself time to recover.”

My body started to shake and my teeth
chattered uncontrollably. Akira let out a long stream of words that
started out Japanese and then ended with a string of a certain set
of four letter English words that surrounded something that sounded
like “shock”. I couldn’t stop the sudden squeak when he pulled me
to him, nestling me into his lap and wrapping his arms (AND WINGS!
HE HAD WINGS!!!!) around me. I was cocooned inside a sheltered wall
of warmth. I continued to shudder violently against him as he
frantically rubbed his hands up and down my arms, pausing only long
enough to button up my jacket, which I barely took notice of as I
stared at the feathered appendages that surrounded me. I was so
cold, but a little warmth had started to creep back into my skin.
The heat of Akira’s hands soaked through my jacket, and the more he
rubbed my arms the more my emotions began to calm down, though I
was hard pressed to get my shuddering under control. It didn’t help
that my face throbbed every time my heart beat.

“If I had some brandy or sake, I’d give you
some,” Akira said above me, and he dropped his chin on top of my
head as he tucked me even closer to him. “But I left it back in the
nest.”

I snorted weakly and managed to say, “I’m
underage.”

“Yeah, yeah, and from what I’ve seen of most
American kids, a lot of them don’t care much whether or not they’re
underage, they drink anyway. In this case, though, you’d be allowed
because it would be for medicinal use only.”

“So says you,” I retorted. “For all I know
you’d use it to get me drunk and then do whatever it is that
Tengu
do to helpless people in the forest.”

I couldn’t believe that I was talking to him
this way. I mean, Maria and I had been attacked, I had just seen
him stab said attacker in the chest, and that person/thing/whatever
vanished and . . . My stomach heaved.

“Let me up!” I cried and struggled against
his hold, desperate to not lose it all over him. He sensed my
urgency and quickly opened his arms and wings (WINGS!) and I
scrambled out from the warmth of his hold. I made it ten steps
before I lost the battle against my stomach, and I fell to my knees
as I wretched into the grass and leaves. I heaved up what little I
hadn’t digested from Joe’s and plenty of stomach bile. I wanted to
crawl underneath the nearest rock and hide in mortification, but
all I could do was moan slightly and rock with my arms wrapped
around my middle. I felt rather than heard a presence behind me,
but I couldn’t do anything but whimper a weak, “don’t” when I felt
Akira gather up my hair and hold it away from my face.

“Hush,” he said as I heaved again. He shifted
my hair into one hand, and then he reached around and began to wipe
my forehead with a cloth of some sort. I was too focused on my
stomach, but whatever he was doing seemed to help lessen the
throbbing in my face. “It’s all right to be weak in front of others
every now and then, Jane.”

“Ugh,” I managed to get out. My stomach was
still roiling, but I didn’t think I was in danger of spewing again,
so I took the cloth from him gratefully and wiped my mouth. I
wished that I had some sort of drink with which I could rinse the
foulness out.

“Can I ask you something?” I whispered.

“Sure.”

“What happens now?”

“You’ve seen my true form, so I’ll have to
kill you.”

I jerked away from him and lurched to my feet
while I swung a fist, which he easily dodged and held his hands out
in a placating manner. I noticed that instead of fingertips he had
claws similar to the
Oni’s
, only more refined.

“I’m kidding! I’m kidding! Calm down before
you fall down!”

“Not funny!” I moaned as I weaved my way back
to Maria’s side, bypassing his offer of help by knocking his hand
away when he held it out to me. “You REALLY need to work on your
timing of jokes, jerk.”

He laughed softly as I settled myself back
down next to Maria and picked up her hand again. An occasional
shudder still rippled through me but I was no longer in danger of
totally losing my cool or going into shock. I grunted when Akira
sat down to my left, and a rustling of feathers caught my
curiosity. I looked behind me to see that he had stretched his
right wing out behind me and created a thick barrier against the
night air.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“No need to sound so grateful, you might hurt
something.”

“Look, I’m having a really, really hard time
right now. I was nearly killed, my would be rapist and killer
turned out to be an
Oni
, AN
ONI
, for Christ’s sake,
my best friend was almost raped and hurt, you have WINGS and claim
to be a
Tengu
and why won’t Maria wake up?” The last bit of
my tirade ended on a whimper as tears leaked down my cheeks, the
fear having finally caught up with me after the rage and shock had
worn off. I was still slightly dissociated from the whole
“
Tengu
” subject that was sitting next to me, but maybe that
was a good thing. It kept me from completely losing it any further
on Akira, who was my only help for several miles.

“I know, I’m sorry. My sarcastic self tends
to come out after I’ve had a bad scare.”

He sounded truly contrite, so I forgave him
with a watery sniff and didn’t protest when he tentatively put his
arm around me and pulled me closer to his side, “for warmth” he
said, and since fine shivers still wracked my frame despite the
barrier his wing provided, I wasn’t about to argue.

“Maria will wake up,” he said reassuringly
while I fought the urge to lean into him and let my head rest on
his shoulder for a minute. I was suddenly so tired, but I made
myself concentrate on his words. “I think she hit her head on a
rock when he sent her flying. I don’t see any blood, but I don’t
want to touch her just yet until she wakes up in case she’s hurt
her neck. It won’t be much longer, though.”

“How do you know?” I asked as I drew my knees
up and rested my chin on them.

“Part of being a Reiki healer is being able
to see how energy flows in the body. If I look at her as a healer,
I can her energy is very strong, just a little out of balance in
her head area, but everywhere else looks fairly normal. You, on the
other hand, are full of out of balance energy and your wrist and
shoulder area looks painful. I can give you a little healing right
now if you give me permission. I’ve given Maria some healing energy
since it’s an emergency situation, but in order for me to work on
you I need to know I’m allowed.”

I winced as I pulled my free hand to me and
looked at the area in question. I didn’t want to think about what
they were going to look like tomorrow, or how I was going to keep
Mom from asking all sorts of embarrassing questions that I just
could not answer. I mean, really, telling her I saw a
Tengu
fighting an
Oni
and said
Oni
was going to try to rape
and kill Maria and myself for who knows why? Yeah, right. I’d be on
the fast track to the Looney Bin.

I thought about Akira’s offer, and nodded my
consent. He didn’t shift positions in anyway, but I saw him make
some kind of symbol with his fingers. After a few seconds I opened
my mouth to comment that nothing was happening when the throbbing
in my shoulders, wrist and face all seemed to lighten a bit. The
pain was still there, but it wasn’t as sharp as it had been before.
I sighed, and gave voice to something that had bothered me, but
that I hadn’t taken time to think about until now.

“Did you kill him?” I asked as a shudder
worked its way down my spine and I clenched my teeth against the
renewed rolling of my stomach. I was NOT going to lose control
again.

“Not really.”

“Not really?” I questioned. “What do you
mean?”

“The
katana
that I carry is special.
It doesn’t kill whomever it stabs as long as I can stab them near
their heart chakra. It’s designed to send paranormal beings such as
Oni
back to the place that they originated from. In a way it
disrupts their connection to the Physical Plane, causing the
vanishing act you saw. That
Oni
got sent back to his gate
where his master resides in what mystics call the Astral plane.
That guy was one of my previous assignments before my brother was
changed; he’s been hunted for several years now. I know for a fact
his master is highly displeased with his behavior.”

“But, you cut his arm off. Blood was
everywhere, and yet your
katana
didn’t kill him?”

“Nope. My
katana
can cut things like
any other sharp blade, but when dealing with something paranormal
like the
Oni
, it affects the soul of the being directly. If
I had cut off his head, instead of returning him to the Astral it
would have destroyed his body and sent his soul to wherever it was
supposed to go upon death. I would have done this if I hadn’t known
that his master has some special punishments planned for him upon
his return. But because I stabbed him, he was sent back to his
master instead. If he learns from his punishment then he may be
granted permission to return to the Physical again years from
now.”

“What exactly is your job? And this time
without all the secret agency stuff.”

“But it is a secret agency. It’s made up of
individuals like me all across the world.”

“Individuals like you?” I puzzled. Ugh, I was
having a really hard time keeping up with the conversation. Brain
equals mush.

“Paranormal beings who don’t exist outside of
stories, and yet the proof of our existence is right here in front
of you,” he said and flexed his wing slightly so that I felt the
tip of a feather brush softly against the palm of the hand that I
had let fall to the ground. I twitched away at a sharp pain and a
hurt look passed over his face before he blinked and returned to
the concern he had been showing the whole time we had been
talking.

“Sorry,” I said as I pulled my hand up and
peered down at it. “I got a huge splinter earlier and you brushed
the tip of it.”

“Let me see, I have better night vision than
you,” he said, and I reluctantly placed my hand, palm up, into his
clawed appendage. He gazed down at it and let out a low whistle.
“That’s in there pretty deep.”

I squeaked when I saw him take the tip of his
claw and place it against the palm of my hand where the piece of
the branch had dug in. I tried to pull away but he closed his
fingers around mine and held my hand firmly in place. I gulped.

“Job, job, tell me about your job,” I begged
in an effort to keep my mind off the pointed tips of his fingers as
they dug lightly into my skin. The only pain I felt was from the
splinter, but I knew what was coming and I desperately wanted to be
distracted.

“What I and my fellow agents do is we are
Guardian’s of a sort and police the paranormal world. You probably
think of it as a world of faeries and fairy tales, but believe me,
right outside of the corner of your eye there is a whole different
place made up of every mythological being you can think of, and
probably even more you’ve never even heard of. What the Guardians
do is we maintain order for those who want to explore the Physical
Realm. We track down rogue individuals like the
Oni
who have
begun to hurt the human population, which is always risky because
humans are very scary when they become curious and frightened about
things that they don’t understand, and such behavior threatens to
expose us to scientific testing. There are other humans that know
of our existence such as shamans, witches, warlocks, and others
that work with the Arcane Arts and spirits in whatever capacity.
Even simple elemental work with fire or wind is working with the
spirits. Then there are a few ‘normal’ people like you who become
aware of us through unfortunate circumstances.”