Page 29 of Angel of Water & Shadow

A desperate cry gurgled in the trickles of a drainpipe, loud and unsteady, like someone was applying pressure to my ears, on and off. A forlorn wail slipped through the incessant yowls of a prowling feline, so rough and unbearable that every hiss and whine curdled my blood.

I parsed through all the noises, praying their choppy wavelengths would yield something I could read. But they just built and split and sputtered, exhausting my concentration, as I hyper-analyzed every little variation of sound.

The outside world fluctuated in and out the harder I tried to focus. My legs folded under me, and as everything grew louder, oppressive, unending, I curled into a fetal position, clutching the sides of my head in the middle of the alley.

I lay flat against the ground, hiding from the soundstorm like it was violent, whirling, desert sand—hoping to meet the Voices, dying to hear them reaching out for me, as I was for them—when a human-shaped glowing apparition flickered through tears that had started to form. It billowed against the night with a rhythmic crackle that shushed everything else around me.

In the silence, I mustered the strength to stand. The alley and the darkness swirled around me as I took a step towards the figure, my foot thudding into the asphalt, heavy as an anchor dropping into the ocean. Feeling like the slightest wind would knock me over, I tried to blink through the dizziness and balance myself by clenching every tooth and bone. But before I had a chance to try to walk again, my knees once again struck pavement as the apparition exploded into flames.

My lungs ignited as I gasped at air that was heavy, burnt tasting, like it’d been torched—like someone had come down the alley with a flamethrower and I was sucking up all the fumes while being burned alive. My eyes fluttered to stay open, searching for the source of the white-hot light, but there was no visible blaze. The phantom had disappeared. The flames were gone. Yet somehow…I was still burning.

I screamed the heat pushing my body further into the ground, grit scraping my cheeks. Every inch of me ignited. I pounded my fists until the indents bled, until the pain numbed, and I could no longer feel it, could no longer feel myself.

Then…there was nothing.

Hours, days, decades later—I had no clue how long had passed—someone picked me up and carried me through the sky. My muscles immediately went lax, the breath whooshing out of me as I drooped against them. It was over. Death had come for me, finally, and carried me like a princess.

A raw scent—pine—entered my nose. Mmm. Death smelled good.

Wait a minute.

Despite my tender skin, and mind even tenderer from the phantom burning I’d just endured, my eyelids showed no resistance when I shot them open and peered into the dark expanse. The blackness was punctuated by stars and planets and—nope, I wasn’t facing up, I was facing down—that was gum and glass I was staring at.

I flopped, frantically waving my limbs as the gravity of the situation hit me. I wasn’t floating in the hands of a saint. I was being carried in the arms of a stranger.

I glanced at nails, stained in Sharpie, bunched into my corduroy shirt, the smokey-lettered knuckles wrapped around my torso, the strange tattoo that resembled an N and an S wrapped in a snake head on the web between their thumb and index finger.

Instinct took over from there. I didn’t direct my legs to kick or my throat to scream, they just did.

“Watch it!” My courier huffed.

“Let me go!” Slipping out of their grasp, I dropped to the ground and bear-crawled away. “Who are you? What do you want?”

Pressed against the brick wall of a building—a safe distance, enough—I surveyed my…Abductor? Savior? Whatever they were, suited in black from head to combat-boot toe. If their leather jacket hadn’t reflected the face of the moon, they’d pass for the grim reaper.

Death isn’t that stylish, but I knew another creature of the night that was.

When he flipped off his hood it came as no surprise. If anything, it explained the bank-heist ensemble, the after-hours loitering, the fluttering in my chest…

This time the ocean’s mist didn’t block the moonlight—instead, it revealed the parts of him my imagination had once filled in. Like his untextured waves, the darkest brown, longer strands curling around his ears. And the twin to his freckle, mirrored on the apple of his cheek on the other side of his face. And the glyphs on his clavicle, that area a minor shade lighter than the rest of his visible, ivory skin.

I might’ve been staring, and he seemed to relish that. Damn him.

Still, I demanded some answers. “Ryder. What are you doing here?”

“Great running into you, too.” He snickered and considered me, hunched on the ground. “And I mean that almost literally.”

I declined his bid at formalities and pushed myself to standing, having—and hating—to clutch the wall when my stiff limbs refused to bear my weight at first.

It was slightly less humiliating up here, even if I had to crane my neck to meet his eyes. Arranging my face into a scowl, I crossed my arms. “Stalk much?”

He raised an eyebrow. “We do live in the same town.”

“And take the same shortcuts?” I wiped the dirt off my thighs.

“You know, this is the second time I’ve saved you, and I don’t think I’ve heard thank you once.” He tilted his head, as if waiting for the gratitude to come singing out of my mouth.

My ass. It may have been cute the first time around, but were we really doing this again? He evaded my questions like he did the city streetlamps—at some point, he’d have to come into the light. Or I’d just straight up walk away.

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