A Flight of Broken Wings, page 17
part #1 of The Aeriel Chronicles Series
He knew all this, of course. He couldn’t help but feel a little annoyed about having to leave Surai so soon, however, especially after what he had just found out at the Varnas’. Still, he knew that his partner was doing her best, and it did ultimately make more sense for him to make a quick trip to Rawaria than for her to drag a team from the capital all the way to the district to investigate a rumour that was as likely to turn out to be a dud as it was to turn up anything useful. Besides, there was the off-chance that the lead might turn out to be legit after all, in which case Ruban knew he would want to be there on the scene, no matter what the opportunity cost.
The warehouse, when they finally found it, was dank and dark, its crumbling walls overgrown with sundry weeds and creepers sprouting from every available nook and cranny. Ruban flicked on his flashlight, holding it out in front of him even as he drew his sifblade from its sheath and into his free hand. Ashwin followed close behind, stepping into the building cautiously, although he seemed more at ease with his surroundings than Ruban currently felt. The Zainian’s hand shot out to steady him as he stumbled over what had probably once been a part of some sort of automobile, even as the young man himself skipped lightly over the obstacle as if he had seen it a mile off.
“Careful,” Ashwin said, his voice hushed as if in deference to their surroundings. “Don’t want you breaking your leg someplace this spooky.”
“No, I daresay you don’t. The only proper place to break one’s limbs is obviously in a well-lit parlour, preferably in one’s family manor.”
“Precisely,” Ashwin sniffed the air delicately, although whether it was because he actually smelt anything or he was just being his usual obnoxious self, the Hunter couldn’t tell. “If there ever was an Aeriel here, though, it’s not here anymore. This place is empty, and has been for some time now.”
“What, your grandma gave you super Aeriel-sensing skills now?” Ruban growled, flashing his torch into the shadowy corners of the cavernous warehouse. The place was littered with what looked like abandoned machine-parts and other random detritus left behind from a more prosperous time. If there was anything living in this place, Ruban had to admit it had certainly eluded him so far.
Even in the darkness, the Hunter could practically feel his companion frown irritably. “Don’t be ridiculous. The dust on every surface is almost an inch deep. Aeriels may be light-footed but they’re not weightless. Nothing’s moved in here in a couple of days at least, most likely more.”
“Aeriels have wings, in case you hadn’t noticed. It could’ve just been flying,” Ruban retorted, though the words sounded unconvincing to his own ears. It wasn’t so much that he actually disagreed with the Zainian, but it was the principle of the thing. It didn’t feel quite right to let the foreign princeling go entirely unchallenged.
Ashwin looked around the dank confines of the abandoned structure disdainfully. “Flying? In here? Quite apart from the fact that it would be entirely impractical, not to mention uncomfortable; it’d still disturb the debris, scatter the dust if nothing else. No, if Reivaa was ever here, she’s long gone.”
Ashwin shook his head, looking resigned, just as something glittered under the light of Ruban’s still-roving torch; something incongruently glossy in their grimy surroundings. “What’s that?” the Zainian breathed even as he moved quietly towards the shadowed corner where the flashlight had briefly illuminated something small and glossy, lying discarded under a broken piece of equipment. Ashwin bent down, picking up the object of their interest and holding it gingerly between his fingers.
“Looks like a photograph. Well, part of one anyway,” Ruban said, moving forward to stand next to the Zainian, squinting down at the bit of shiny paper. He sank to one knee, passing the flashlight under the large chunk of discarded factory equipment to check for anything else out of place. “There’s more of them. Looks like someone tore up a photo in here.”
Ashwin fell to his knees beside him, passing a searching hand over the grimy surface of the floor on which the flashlight illuminated several scattered pieces of glossy photo paper. “Wanna put it together?” he asked, collecting the shredded pieces into both his hands as he stood up. Walking over to a protruding piece of wall that had probably once been a shelf, he dumped his findings onto it, spreading it out for convenient sorting. “Bring the flashlight over here,” he said, gesturing Ruban over to his side of the warehouse. “Let’s see what the Aeriels are after now.”
Ruban felt his breath quicken, even as the blood seemed to freeze in his veins as he stared down at the painstakingly reassembled photograph sitting on the dilapidated old shelf of the warehouse.
“Ruban,” Ashwin was saying, his voice uncertain and indistinct. Ruban didn’t care. At the moment, he wouldn’t have cared if the whole building had come crashing down around them. It was all he could do not to pull his gun out and destroy what was left of it himself. He staggered back, slowly, dazedly. His mind knew that he had to move, had to get out of here, do something; but the rest of his body felt numb, as if someone had just punched him in the gut.
“Ruban!” It was Ashwin again, calling his name urgently, his voice louder now, gaining in confidence. A hand shook Ruban’s shoulders insistently. “Ruban, snap out of it. We have to leave now. She might be in danger. We have to find her.”
Find her. Yes, he had to find her. He would find her, keep her safe if it was the last thing he did in his life. Ruban looked down at the photo once again. It was as if icy fingers were digging their claws into his heart and he gasped, fighting to hold back tears. But he wouldn’t cry, couldn’t allow himself to. Not until he found her, made sure that she was safe. Taking a deep breath, he closed his eyes, fighting desperately to get his breathing back under control, to stop his hands from shaking as he passed his fingers gently over the tattered picture one last time. “Yes, we have to find her,” he said finally, his voice hoarse, as he turned on his heel and all but ran out of the crumbling old building.
From within the shadows of the warehouse, a smiling Hiya stared after him from the glossy surface of the tattered photo, even as the frayed pieces began to scatter in the breeze once more.
Chapter 8: The Abduction
Silver-flecked dark eyes gazed down at him, a strange fire burning in their depths even as the beautiful, sensuous body of the Aeriel Queen moved slowly, hypnotically above him. Long, silver hair streaked with something darker pooled on his chest and in the crook of his neck like ethereal wisps of satiny smoke, as long, perfect nails etched chalky patterns over the sweat-damp skin of his abdomen. His breath hitched even as his body arched upwards, chasing the light, fleeting pressure of that silken flesh on his own. For a moment, his partner withdrew, moving upwards and slightly away, cruelly depriving him of the friction he so desperately craved even as one of her slender hands casually held both of his own in an unyielding, vice-like grip just above his head, keeping him exactly where she wanted him.
“We need the ores, my love,” she whispered, bending down over him slowly until her delicate, slightly upturned nose brushed against his earlobe. “We need them, or else all of this has been in vain. You understand that, do you not?”
His hips bucked, his entire body trembling in anticipation at the light brush of her warm breath against his over-sensitised skin. “I-I’m doing my best,” he gasped, struggling to keep his voice steady enough to be comprehensible. “I can’t just…I can’t just divert all resources for my personal use, you know that. There are – there are checks on these kinds of things, procedures and guidelines. There’s just no way–”
“Well then, find a way!” Tauheen hissed, digging her perfect nails into the flesh of his shoulder. He thought she might have drawn blood, but he couldn’t be sure. He was too busy trying to breathe through the sudden assault of the Aeriel’s lips on his own. It was like dying of thirst even as the sweetest water in creation poured down his throat. He was almost delirious with the sensation of it.
His phone buzzed.
Once.
Twice.
He reached out, trying to find it within the mess of blankets and pillows on which he lay, boneless and overwrought. His limbs felt like they had iron weights tied to them…multiple iron weights. Finally, his fingers touched the cold, metallic surface of the cell-phone, closing in around the frantically vibrating gadget.
Tauheen’s slender digits, cool and dry, wrapped themselves around his larger ones with deceptive strength. “Not now, my love,” she almost pouted. The sight was so incongruous, and yet so strangely fitting on that porcelain doll-like face, it almost jerked him out of the semi-trance he had been languishing in for the past few hours. “We have things to talk about, things to do.” Her voice was velvety, alluring. “Everything else can wait.”
“It might be…might be important,” he protested weakly, grasping one last time for the phone before allowing his fingers to go limp in the Aeriel’s grasp. His mind told him he should take the call, get up, leave; but his heart wasn’t in it. He felt his body fall back into the mattress, exhausted, relaxed. “Might’ve been something about the sif ores, you know.”
“We can deal with that later,” said Tauheen, smiling sweetly even as her head dipped down to claim his lips once more, her tongue roving possessively over his mouth. He groaned, instinctively parting his lips to deepen the kiss. “Right now, I have some things in mind you might just find a little more enjoyable than work…”
Eyes fixed on the road, Ruban grit his teeth and pressed down harder on the accelerator even as fields and villages flew past them on both sides of the highway. He was probably breaking every traffic law in the country and then some, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He would happily spend the rest of his life in jail for traffic violation if it would only get him there on time, before it was too late.
“It could be a coincidence. We still have no concrete proof that Reivaa was there to begin with,” Ashwin said beside him, navigating the GPS on his phone as Ruban drove. Despite his words, however, his voice sounded tense, brittle. His tone told Ruban that Ashwin didn’t really believe what he was saying.
The Hunter kept his eyes trained on the road. With every minute that passed, his heart beat a little faster, his vision blurred with some combination of the wind, dust and a sheer, blood-curdling fear that he hadn’t known he was capable of feeling. Not again - his mind kept repeating with an almost rhythmic consistency. Not ever again.
“Where now?” Ruban asked, his tone clipped, as they approached a crossroads a few miles into Ragah. He knew the city like the back of his hand. Under normal circumstances, he would have died before asking a foreigner for directions in what he had come to think of as his own city over the past eight years. But he wasn’t thinking straight – he was still coherent enough to realise that. It was all he could do to keep his hands steady on the steering wheel, and he wouldn’t be any use to Hiya if he drove them off the road before they found her.
“Left,” Ashwin said, voice oddly decisive. “We’ll go to the mansion first, check if she’s there. If she is, you can inform the IAW and put the place on lockdown, get a security detail around her until we figure out why her photo was in the warehouse.”
And if not? A traitorous, mocking voice screamed in Ruban’s head. What if she’s not at the mansion? What if they’ve taken her? What if she’s already dead? Dead, like everyone else that ever came near you, ever touched you. Dead and lost forever, all of them.
Ruban bit viciously down on his tongue, drawing blood, even as his knuckles tightened spasmodically around the steering wheel. He forced himself to focus. This was not the time. He had to find Hiya, no matter what the cost. She was the closest thing to a little sister he had ever had and he would not lose her; he refused to even consider the possibility. Turning the wheel with far more force than was strictly necessary, he pressed down hard on the accelerator. He would burn the world to the ground before he let those monstrous creatures touch a hair on her head.
“Did you call the office?” he asked Ashwin, trying to take his mind off his own thoughts.
“I did. Simani’s out on a Hunt but I told Faiz to inform the taskforce and send a team over to Rawaria as soon as possible, to properly search the warehouse for anything we might have missed. On your orders, of course. I called the IAW too but Ms. Saya said your uncle’s not in. He’s in a meeting with the director or something; neither of them is taking calls. You can try calling them later if you have to, but first we should try and get to Hiya. We need to get off the main road. Take the next right.”
Ruban swerved into a relatively empty alley and redoubled his assault on the accelerator. The Zainian was right; it wouldn’t do to stay on the main road too far into the city. The farther they got from the suburbs, the better the traffic laws were enforced and the more congested the main thoroughfares became. Even this early in the morning, they could be stuck in traffic for hours before they reached their destination. Keeping his eyes trained on the narrow road ahead, Ruban shifted gears with a barely contained snarl of frustration.
“We’ll find her, Ruban,” Ashwin said, over the protesting screech of the old sedan’s overworked tires, his voice unusually calm as he directed the vehicle into another bumpy backstreet followed by a lane hemmed in on both sides by barbed fences. “You’ll find her. She’ll be safe. Have faith.”
A frazzled Bala answered Ruban’s frantic banging on the doors of the Kinoh Residence, her plump face glistening with perspiration – probably from being near the stove. Wisps of loose hair stuck limply to her sweat-damp skin, having fallen out of the untidy bun at the back of her head. Her usually-neat apron was slightly askew, as if she had just been running.
Her beady, brown eyes widened when she saw who was on the other side of the door. “Master Ruban,” she gasped, dabbing at her sweaty face with the end of her apron. “And Mister…” she glanced at Ashwin uncertainly, as if trying and failing to remember his name. Ashwin smiled and supplied the required information, at which she nodded vaguely and continued with a perplexed expression: “What’s happened? What are you doing here this time of day? Mister Kinoh is at the office –”
“Where’s Hiya?” Ruban demanded, cutting her off. “Is she home?”
Bala squinted at him as if he had lost his mind. “Why of course not, Master Ruban. She’s at school.” She sighed, seeming to come to a decision. Holding the door further open, she stood back, ushering them into the house with a wave of her hand. “Well, whatever it is, it can be talked about inside. Come in, come in. You can’t just stand out there forever, it’s going to rain. Come sit down, I’ll make you some tea. You can wait for Hiya if you like, although I’m afraid she probably won’t be back for another few hours.”
Ashwin frowned, glancing down at his phone. “Why? Don’t her classes end at one? It’s twelve-thirty already.”
“Well yes, yes,” Bala said, rummaging in the kitchen for ingredients. “That’s true, but one of her teachers called just half an hour ago to inform us that they’ll be taking the children to some sort of picnic today. So she’ll be a bit late. They said they’ll drop the kids home on the school bus after the picnic, so I told Ratul not to take the car out and gave him the day off. Don’t worry, though. She’ll be back by the evening.”
Ruban looked at Ashwin, blood thrumming in his ears. “Do you have the phone number of this teacher, Bala?” he asked. He was surprised at how calm his voice sounded. He had almost expected it to come out in a terrified gurgle.
“Umm, no,” Bala said, frowning. She seemed to sense that something was wrong. “She called the landline. But I can give you the school’s official phone number. They’ll know where the kids are.” Wiping her hands on her apron, she rushed over to one of the cabinets in the drawing room, fishing a phonebook out from one of its shelves.
As Ashwin finished the conversation and swiped his phone shut, Ruban turned to look at him expectantly. He didn’t trust his voice to remain steady if he spoke, so he just raised an eyebrow and waited.
The Zainian bit his lip, his mouth setting in a grim line. For a moment, he seemed reluctant to meet Ruban’s eyes, staring fixedly at the wall behind the Hunter. “There’s no picnic planned at the school today. Class let out just a few minutes ago. All the children were picked up at the main gate as usual, including Hiya.”
“But-but who picked her up?” spluttered Bala, her eyes wild. “I told Ratul to take the day off. The car’s still in the garage. I’ll call him–”
“Don’t,” said Ruban through gritted teeth. His voice shook as fury and fear battled for dominance in his mind, making his vision blur into a crimson haze. “I know who it was. I’ll find her.”
The Holy Child Centre for Primary and Secondary Education was a series of double-storeyed, red-roofed buildings connected to each other by marble corridors on each level. The entire structure was surrounded by a well-maintained playground in the front – complete with a basketball and a tennis court – and a meticulously tended garden at the back. From a distance, it looked like an oasis of incongruent peace and natural beauty in the desert of noise and pollution that was Ragah. It looked more like an idyllic country estate than a commercial establishment in the heart of the overcrowded capital. And it was an idyll dearly bought, reserved solely for the children of the city’s rich and powerful who could afford to pay for the illusion of fashionable scholastic seclusion in one of the most expensive neighbourhoods in town.
As the car screeched to a halt outside the giant red-and-white gates of the now-empty school, a liveried security guard with a walkie-talkie in one hand and a metal-capped wooden baton in the other ran up to the vehicle, looking disgruntled. Tapping his knuckles against the driver-side window, the young man jumped back with a surprised yelp as Ruban threw the door open and leapt out of the car.
