The lights of the city began twinkling back on.
I could see over the edge of the parking deck as SWORD agents hurried to deliver medical attention to the injured parties. My gaze jerked over to Elysian. “Mikey!”
I didn’t even really register until later I could’ve asked Elysian to carry me down to Mikey’s dumpster.
But when I came over to him, I saw him try to sit up and stumble, shaking so badly he couldn’t move much.
“Hamilton,” Mikey spoke up. So he was awake. And he knew it was me. There was a huge bump on his head, multiple cuts on his arms and legs, and there was a black eye slowly swelling up on his face. “You're Wingdinger.”
I nodded. “Er, yeah. I would appreciate it if you didn’t mention that to anyone.”
“Dude, that's awesome! Don't worry, I won't tell. You can trust me.” He glanced away. “I'm sorry I was jealous of you.” His voice had a straggling quality to it when he spoke. “It's hard to not be, when I see you with your grades and your abilities. And now I have this superhero business to get used to as well.”
“I can't help being who I am,” I shrugged.
“You could work on your bragging and attitude about it, though, if you don't mind my saying.”
“It's okay, I don’t mind. I’d been thinking about working on that anyway,” I told him as Elysian finished landing beside me. “I've heard that a lot this week.”
“The kid here doesn't make anyone's life easy,” Elysian told Mikey. “And jealousy's not an easy emotion to deal with in the first place. But if you trust in each other, it will help you to overcome it.”
Mikey gaped at Elysian with an open mouth. “You can talk?!”
I laughed heartily. “Hey, Starry Knight's still here.”
“You both saved me,” Mikey muttered sleepily.
“She's right over–” I looked up, realizing I’d left her alone several stories up. “Well, she was–”
A pair of wings fluttered behind me. I sucked in my breath sharply. I had seen Starry Knight up close in a long time a number of times today, but somehow her beauty always cut right through me.
No wonder Mikey had been obsessed with her, I thought. She was nothing short of beautiful. Up close, I gathered she was around our age. Too bad for her zero personality, I thought, mustering up a grim look.
Mikey straightened wildly, spurring on a dizzy spell. “It's you!”
Starry Knight barely acknowledged him. “He seems all right now,” she murmured delicately.
“Yes, I'm fine,” Mikey spoke up, nearly falling over as he reached for her. He cleared his throat. “The name’s Michael; my friends call me Mikey, but you can call me 'Darling.'”
“He's a big fan,” I explained brusquely.
A softened look came over her face. She knelt down next to Mikey. Her eyes met his and held them for a long moment.
I rolled my eyes, frankly annoyed. After all, it wasn't fair of her to lead Mikey on like that. Of course she deserved–no, not her, Mikey–deserved so much better.
“You are not the one I’m meant for,” she told Mikey gently. “I doubt I will call you 'darling,' but Mikey suits you well enough.”
Mikey wasn't deferred in the least. “I might not be the one you're looking for, but I'm the one you found.”
It was rather tragic to see him trying to flirt with Starry Knight and stay awake, I decided.
“Okay, Mike, that's enough of Lover Boy tonight,” I interjected before turning to Starry Knight. “Can you heal him?”
“Sure,” she agreed. Her hand went out and took a hold of his. After a moment of consideration, she took off one of her gloves. She held up her right arm and pulled back the bracelet that she wore. I could see her own Emblem of the Prince on her wrist.
Shining in the moonlight, there was a mark very similar to my own; the only difference between the two was the color. Starry Knight's mark was silvery in color, while mine was blood red. “We can't always see everything that is real with our eyes, you know. You have been marked, Wingdinger–the very essence that is you, not the DNA of the body but of the soul, has been marked for a purpose.”
She’d obviously caught me staring.
As her power seeped from her palm, I reached out involuntarily, wanting to touch Starry Knight's mark. She moved away before I could. And then I wondered why she had been marked, too, and what her purpose was for being here. Was it different from mine?
I watched as Mikey fell back into a healing slumber, and then turned to her. “Do I know you?” I asked again. “Have I seen you before?”
A small smile flitted to her lips, one of her rare, genuine smiles. “It's doubtless you have seen me,” she told me. “But I doubt you would know me.”
Awkwardly, I turned my gaze away from her. “I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything helpful from you.” There was long moment of silence before I turned back to face her. “That reminds me, I have another question.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the black gem-like stone that had appeared with Alcyonë's destruction. “What is this?”
I didn’t have long before I got my reply. Starry Knight came over and swiped it right out of my hand.
“Hey!” I objected. “That’s mine.” I gritted my teeth. My hand instinctively tightened on my sword.
Starry Knight frowned. “You might have sealed them away,” she conceded, “But they are still meant to belong to me!”
“I don’t see your name on it,” I fought back, trying to grab it back from her. I looked over to see Elysian had finally managed to come over to the parking lot. “Elysian, tell her to give me the thing back!”
“Never mind asking me how I am. What are you fighting about?” Elysian asked sleepy-sounding, as he looked back and forth between our two churlish, childish figures.
“See for yourself,” I muttered angrily. What good was having Elysian’s help if he was going to be such a slowpoke about it?
Elysian squinted down at the object Starry Knight was trying to concealing in her palm. He shrugged. “I have a better idea,” he announced.
“What?” The simultaneous reply from Starry Knight and me was the perfect distraction. Seconds later, the intentions of the changeling dragon became clear, and even I was impressed.
Elysian had transfigured himself into a smaller snake-like animal, and had wrapped himself around Starry Knight’s body, preventing her from flying, moving away, and to some degree, breathing properly.
I laughed to see the shock on Starry Knight’s face.
“Sorry to do this,” Elysian told her, “But I was afraid you would leave before we could talk.”
“I have no idea why you would ever think such a thing,” Starry Knight muttered back, struggling to find some loosen area to get free through.
I was still laughing, and finally Elysian had enough of the apparently awful sound. “Enough!” he nearly shouted. “Can’t you see that this is serious?”
“Hey, I have my sword now,” I replied back, “And I am not afraid to use it!”
“Or qualified, apparently,” Starry Knight replied easily enough.
Elysian had to fight the temptation to laugh on that one, I could tell. But he let it go. There was business to attend to. “All right, that’s enough of you, too!” he told her.
“Elysian, let’s get the crystal thing and let’s go,” I spoke up. I looked down at the street to see some of the members of the SWORD had managed to lock away Taygetay and were coming back for more.
“Can’t you see this is more important than just a crystal?” Elysian groaned. “She is a threat to us!”
That stopped me there. “No she’s not,” I said slowly, as my mind tried to find Elysian’s line of reasoning. “We agreed that we’re going to be allies . . . ” But she did just take the crystal from me. And it is obvious she doesn’t want me to know anything . . .
I thought carefully about this.
“It doesn’t matter? Don’t you remember earlier? She was just about to bl
ow open the space-time continuum earlier tonight!”
“What?” I was confused; I didn’t know much about space. I wasn’t supposed to take Astronomy until twelfth grade. There was also the matter I was getting tired. I’d been through a lot tonight. There was so much to go over and to do I didn’t really want to know where to begin. And it didn’t help I was going to have to take Mikey to the hospital and make up some story about how he’d been stuck in a pothole on the other side of town for two weeks.
Elysian gave up. “Talking to you is wasting time, I see,” he said through bared fangs. He turned his attention back to Starry Knight. “Who are you? Tell us!”
Okay, I’ll listen to this, I thought as my attention was instantly caught. The desire I’d felt earlier, to know who she was, and how I was connected to her–because there was little doubt in my mind that, as the only other defender-type supernatural fighter around, Starry Knight wasn’t connected to me–came rushing at me, plaguing me anew.
Starry Knight looked hatefully up at Elysian. I thought she was going to spit on him or something, she was so frightfully disgusted. I decided to take a step closer in case Elysian needed him for back-up or something.
That was when she looked at me, and I thought if she could, she would try to send some kind of mental pain package.
After a moment of studying her face, I felt something behind my heart step back.
This was not the right thing to do. I wanted it. But I would have to hold off for now.
I looked up at Elysian. “Let her go, Elysian.”
“No!” the fangs flashed and Elysian’s temper was up. “Those Sinisters called her their sister!” He glared back at Starry Knight. “And the leader, Orpheus, called you the Guardian of Justice. Whether you are or are not, we need to know.”
“Sister?” My brow crinkled, trying to remember that one. “She couldn’t be their sister, Elysian . . . ” But my voice trailed off as I noticed Starry Knight’s eyes had narrowed.
“What they have said was true, once,” she spoke, her voice embittered by anger. “But they are not the same anymore. And neither am I.”
“But you were a star!” Elysian exclaimed. “And a Guardian, no less. You have retained your powers.”
“Yes, but my purpose has changed,” Starry Knight told him.
“Does that make a difference?”
“Yes. All the difference in the world.” There was no playing around or joking inflection in her voice.
I suddenly wondered if she was going to be able to keep her promise to be my ally. I had to admit, I wouldn’t want to be allies with people who treated me like we were treating her.
“All right, Elysian,” I spoke up. “Let her go for now. We are not getting anywhere in questioning her like this.” I looked over at her and added, “We will just have to trust her for now.”
Elysian stretched out his head, allowing himself to talk into my ear privately. “Uh, kid? Are you crazy?”
“What? It’s not like she’s going to kill everyone tonight,” I objected.
“Don’t you remember she tried to supernova the city earlier this evening?” Elysian asked frustratingly. “I just reminded you of that!”
I grabbed him by the horn and lifted myself up next to his ear. Or where I assumed his ears were (Come on, dragon anatomy is hard.) “Come on, I’ve got my sword now, and I’m not really hurt anymore, and you’re fine. We can take her if need be. Besides, why don’t we just wait until that other girl comes back? She should be able to tell us more. And she seems like she’s capable of being nice about it, too.”
“You don’t know how important this information is!” Elysian scolded. But I had to smile; Elysian was losing his resolve to argue.
“We need her trust more than we need her information,” I reminded him.
And that was the deal breaker. Elysian sighed, and released her. “You do realize you’re not getting your crystal back, right?”
“What?” I’d forgotten about that. I turned only to see her kick the ground and fly off before I could say anything else. I cursed.
“It’s your own fault,” Elysian taunted. We watched her fly off; as she disappeared into the midst of the city’s lights, Elysian whistled. “She sure can fly fast. She looked really sick earlier. Wonder where she gets all that power?”
That triggered something in my mind. “Elysian, is there something about her power that I should know about?”
“I don’t know, remember? If you’d wanted to know you should’ve asked her before making me let her go.”
“Stop it, I’m serious here. She mentioned, when we were breaking out of prison, that her full power had returned. Where had it gone? Is it dependent on something?”
Elysian thought about it. “She was tired before, and weaker, when you weren’t around,” Elysian recalled. “If I had a guess, I would say that her power is dependent on you.”
“What?” I cocked my eyebrow. “I doubt that. She’s stronger than me.” That was a rare admission I didn’t like to make. “And I’m her biggest weakness, according to Alcyonë.” Thinking about her, I reached into my pocket and felt the other crystal. At least Starry Knight didn’t get a hold of this one, I thought.
“That makes more sense, actually,” Elysian said. “She began to be less powerful when you went away, and stronger when you came back. If she loses you, I wonder what happens to her?”
“Do you really think so?” It didn’t sound quite right to me.
“Well, it’s still a guess. But a pretty good one, I’d say. If it is true, we will definitely find out.” Elysian’s eyes glared at me. “I guess we’ll just have to trust her.”
I decided that my own words tasted too sour for my liking. “Ugh, let’s go,” I muttered. I watched as the SWORD agents began tending to the wounded. I was glad to see a medical squad was coming around the corner, and while I didn’t see Dante’s face, I imagined I could see him glowering at me. “Come on, Elysian. We have to take Mikey to the hospital.”
☼25☼
Aftermath
“Hey, Dinger, you'll never guess what! I've got tickets to the space pirates movie that just came out–I got them on the way to school . . . ” Poncey was telling me as we walked into first period.
I sat down, barely listening to Poncey go on and on (and on and on and on) about the new sci-fi flick at the cinema.
When you are in the middle of a battle, and then you hear about it later, there’s a jarring discordance ringing in your head while it happens. It’s almost as if some kind of surrealist or expressionist decided to paint a memory in your head, and then the news came along and tried to dissect all the shapes and blotches, classifying them somewhere between ‘houses’ and ‘rocks.’ I don’t know; my paint metaphors are a bit messy.
That’s more or less how I felt about most of mind and body though. It was messy. Too messy to deal with at the moment. I settled into my seat in the back of Mrs. Smithe’s class, and pulled out my Game Pac.
City power had been restored to normal within the hour of the Sinisters’ defeat and SWORD’s departure. The Time Tower and its surrounding area had been closed until proper maintenance could be finished. Several streets needed repairs and a lot of windows had to be put in.
Mikey had been admitted into the hospital upon his arrival; they didn’t ask me about the dumpster odor. He was there for a couple of days, in a coma, before he began waking up. It was a good sign, the doctor said. I envied him for it.
While the days following the attack were blurry, my nights were full of stark clarity.
I would dream of that moment where I had kissed Starry Knight, only to be full of longing and confusion as my eyes opened up. Talk about reality’s brutality. I would hate the thought of going to bed, but then once I was asleep, I dreaded the thought of waking up.
Needless to say, I did not exactly sleep well.
And Gwen did not help, either, what with her finally deciding to be my girlfriend and all.
I looked over at her a
s she sat down in her seat. She glanced over at me and waved shyly, before she blushed and looked down at her notebook. I didn’t have to wonder what she was thinking about.
With Mikey in the hospital over the weekend, I’d gone to see him. He was still sleeping a good portion of the day, but on Sunday afternoon I checked in on him.
After a rousing discussion of what had happened at the swim meet, his likeliness of getting back into school without some kind of juvenile record, and the chances of Starry Knight changing her mind about dating him, I’d left him to continue on with his rest and recovery. Conveniently forgetting to tell him his dad was back in town.
That was when I passed by the delivery room quarantine, only to see Gwen mooning over Tim again.
As I watched her, I decided something. It was okay if she didn’t want to commit to a relationship with me. Even with the swim season winding down, I had school to worry about, Cheryl had finally harangued me enough to schedule an appointment with the mayor’s office this week, and there were my now-normal scheduling conflicts with Elysian, Starry Knight, and demons of a Sinister nature. All which were largely impromptu, and could not be ignored due to potential disasters of epic proportion.
I thought about all the dangerous adventures which awaited me, and I realized I couldn’t really share those with her. I leaned against the wall outside the quarantine, and decided to tell her that.
That’s when I heard her.
“Tim, you’re such a wonderful guy, and I did really love hanging out with you while we were working on Romeo and Juliet together.”
Tim, weak but awake, nodded. I could see that much from where I stood.
I peeked in, hoping none of the nurses around would call me out on what I was doing.
Gwen had her hand in Tim’s as she spoke to him. “I hope you don’t mind, but I’m going to be dating Hamilton now.”
Shock hit me like a bumper car. I think I even physically stumbled. I heard some noise from inside the room. When I regained my balance, I saw Tim had jerked away so quickly his heart monitor had fallen off of him.