A Flight of Broken Wings, page 18
part #1 of The Aeriel Chronicles Series
“Sir, you cannot park here. You have to go round the back. This is–”
Ruban flashed his badge, cutting off the man’s agitated protests. The guard’s eyes widened as his mind connected the badge with the face that had been on the news on and off for the last few weeks and he gulped nervously, recognition dawning on his face. “Ah, sir, I’m so sorry I didn’t…I mean, how can I help you?”
Wordlessly, Ruban held out his phone to the guard, a picture of Hiya on the screen. “This girl is a student at your school. Her name is Hiya Kinoh. I need to know where she is now. Who picked her up from school today?”
The youth frowned, tilting his head thoughtfully. “Ah, Miss Hiya. Of course. I’m afraid you just missed her, though. She left a few minutes ago.”
“With whom? Where did they take her, do you know?” Ashwin asked urgently, stepping out of the car.
“Uh, a lady in a silver convertible came to pick her up. Volkswagen, I think. It wasn’t Miss Hiya’s usual ride of course, so we stopped her at the gate. But she had her pickup ID and she said that Miss Hiya’s usual driver was on leave so she was here to pick her up instead. So we let her through. She just left with Miss Hiya a few minutes ago. Why, is there a problem?” He sounded genuinely worried.
“Which way did they go?” demanded Ruban, ignoring the question. There was no time for small-talk now.
The young man looked nervously from Ruban to Ashwin, then back again. “I - uh - I think they were headed towards Select City Walk in Kanla Park. Lots of students go to the mall after school so I didn’t think anything of it. Look, do you want me to call the police? Why are Hunters here anyway? I don’t know what’s going on but if something’s happened to Miss Hiya–”
“That won’t be necessary. We’ll take care of it,” Ashwin said, his voice gentler, more reassuring. The rational part of Ruban’s mind – what little of it was still functional – supposed it was a good idea. The young man looked spooked enough as it was; the last thing they needed was police flooding the streets before they could find Hiya. It would only make matters more volatile. “Look, we’ll go now,” the Zainian continued, his voice steady, soothing. “You don’t need to worry about it. Just…can you tell us what this - ah - lady looked like?”
The guard looked confused, almost pained. “Um…I couldn’t see much of her, sir. She was in the car the whole time but ah…she rolled down the window when I asked for the ID and…”
“Yes?” Ashwin prompted encouragingly.
“Well, she had long hair, sir. Long, straight hair and she was wearing shades so I couldn’t see much of her face but I think as she was pretty,” he said, almost guiltily. “Pretty, and-and very fair.”
Ashwin looked over at Ruban, and the Hunter knew exactly what he was thinking.
“Goddamn Aeriels!” Ruban growled as he jumped back into the car, followed by Ashwin.
They caught up with the silver convertible at the crossing in front of Kanla Park. Ruban tried to overtake the car, push it off the road, but the vehicle was far more powerful than their old sedan and it revved past them, gaining speed as it swerved and manoeuvred to dodge the other vehicles on the road. It was like some bizarre, real-life parody of Need for Speed, and it was all Ruban could do not to lose the car in the afternoon-rush. His hands itched to reach for his gun, but the place was too crowded for him to do anything but try and keep up with the convertible, biding his time.
Pressing down hard on the brake to avoid crashing into a truck trying to overtake them, the Hunter snarled. “Goddamn it! We’ll never catch up to them like this.”
Looking up from the GPS on his phone, Ashwin said with the same uncharacteristic calm he had worn like a cloak all day, “It’s alright. Just focus on not losing her for now. I think I know where she’s headed.”
“Where?” Ruban demanded impatiently, swerving to the right to avoid ramming into a lethargic biker who insisted on driving at a snail’s pace right in front of him. It was as if the whole damned city was conspiring with Reivaa to throw him off her trail.
“Zikyang forest. It’s around fifty miles north of Select City Walk and the area is almost completely deserted. I’d say it’s as good a hiding place as any for an Aeriel harbouring a human hostage. Just keep driving; she’ll have to stop somewhere.”
Traffic thinned the further up the city they drove. By the time they had reached the vicinity of Zikyang forest in the northernmost fringes of Ragah, one or two bullock-carts every couple of miles was all that crossed their path. The paved road disappeared into cobbled, uneven pathways too narrow for comfortable driving and the sedan jerked and heaved as it struggled to keep up with the slick, fast convertible.
“Uh…I don’t mean to impose or anything,” gasped Ashwin between one bout of violent, lurching turbulence and the next, his head banging loudly against the padded headrest of his seat. “But I think you should do something about this…um…problem now. There isn’t any more traffic here so, you know, feel free to do your thing.”
“You know what? I think you’re bang on about that. Take the wheel.” And with that Ruban leapt up onto his seat and leaning out of the window, his feet planted on the leather upholstery, pointed his gun at the convertible a few feet ahead of them and pulled the trigger. Two shots rang out through the forest in quick succession, even as a flabbergasted Ashwin threw himself onto Ruban’s abandoned seat to take control of the steering wheel.
“A little warning next time wouldn’t kill you, you know,” he shouted over the din of gunfire with ill-concealed annoyance. “Seriously, you’ll kill yourself one of these days.”
The convertible lurched and shook as the stench of singed leather filled the air. Both the back wheels of the vehicle had been hit. It kept moving for a few more seconds, driven by sheer momentum, then came to a screeching, wailing halt, leaning precariously to its right. It looked almost ready to topple over.
Ruban threw his door open and leapt out of the car, ready to dart across to the bullet-ridden convertible even as Ashwin stepped out the other side of the sedan. Before they could advance any further towards the ruined vehicle, though, the front door of the Volkswagen – and Ruban could see now that it was indeed a Volkswagen – fell open with a metallic clang.
Out of the silver vehicle emerged a tall, light-skinned young woman with straight, reddish-brown hair that reached down to her hips. Her eyes were covered by dark sunglasses and her full lips quirked upward on one side in a mockery of a smile. Before her she held a young girl in a white-and-red school uniform, one hand resting on her shoulder and the other wrapped almost gently around her throat, stroking the delicate skin just below the jawline. The girl stood stock-still; short, caramel curls sticking to her tear-streaked face, her clear brown eyes wide with terror. “Baan,” she breathed, the word barely audible as she stared up at the Hunter. “Help me.”
The woman laughed as Ruban lunged at her, held back only by Ashwin’s hands gripping his arms from behind. He snarled, fighting to free himself, his eyes fixed on the woman whose melodic laughter echoed through the forest. He burned with a hatred so raw in its unfiltered intensity that it staggered him. He hadn’t felt this way in years…in almost eight whole years. “Let me go,” he growled, trying to shake the Zainian off him. “I’ll kill her.”
“If you do anything now, she’ll kill Hiya,” Ashwin snapped behind him, pulling him back beside himself with one last forceful jerk. “This is not the time for a fight. We have to get Hiya out of here. She could kill her with less than a thought.”
“I really could, you know,” the woman said, her tone amused. “And I would too. Snap her little neck like a twig, if I didn’t have strict orders to bring her back in one piece. She’s a pretty little girl, isn’t she? Would make a pretty little corpse.”
A guttural sound, barely human, escaped Ruban’s lips; every fibre of his being strained to lunge at the enemy, to tear her to pieces. At the moment, he would gladly have traded his soul for a chance to tear into the Aeriel’s flesh with his bare hands.
Ashwin’s cool voice, measured and deliberate, cut through the crimson haze clouding his mind and vision, forcing him to focus. “Orders from whom?” the Zainian asked, tilting his head as if he were asking the Aeriel if she took milk with her coffee. “Tauheen? What does she want with the girl anyway? What has a child got to do with the sifblade formula?”
Reivaa laughed again, the sound ringing through the forest like a dark melody, harsh and caustic, but still beautiful. “Just as naïve as ever, aren’t you, my little prince? Always so curious, so inquisitive about every little thing, sniffing around where you had no business to be. I see your sister hasn’t been able to beat any more discipline into you since we last met.”
“Just let her go,” Ruban said, taking a step towards his cousin, his hands held up in front of him. He had no idea what the Aeriel was going on about, and at the moment he couldn’t have cared less. “Just let Hiya go. I’ll give you anything you want in return.”
Reivaa smirked, tightening her grip around Hiya’s throat infinitesimally. Hiya whimpered, her eyes widening as a tear trickled down her face and into the already damp collar of her uniform shirt. “You think you’re in a position to bargain with me right now, Hunter?” she asked, reaching up to pull the sunglasses off her face, silver-flecked black eyes shining like uncut diamonds in the light of the setting sun. Somehow, they reminded Ruban of the Aeriel Queen. “There is nothing I want that you can possibly give me. I want you dead, and I’ll kill you, as well as your little pet princeling. And if you try to stop me, well, I’ll still kill you. But not before you’ve watched this pretty little girl die screaming at my feet. Give me an excuse, Hunter, and I’ll give you a show you’ll never forget in your life – not that it will be a very long life, one way or another.”
“You want to kill me? Do it,” Ruban said, throwing his gun to the ground, followed by his sifblade and taking another step towards the Aeriel. “Just let her go. She has done nothing to you. She’s just a kid. Let her go, and you can do what you want with me. Just please, don’t hurt Hiya.”
“How very touching. Almost like a poorly written soap opera. Humans and their dramatics,” she sighed. “Not that it isn’t a tempting offer. You’ve single-handedly caused me more trouble than a hundred humans are worth together, you know? You for the girl, you say? You and the little prince, of course. He deserves to live even less than you, if that’s at all possible. Conspiring with humans,” she spat, like it was a dirty word. “Keening and simpering for the favour of lesser beings. Disgusting, the lot of them. Vaan requires a change of guard; a cleansing, to be more accurate. And this is as good a place to start as any.”
To Ruban’s surprise, Ashwin spoke before he had had a chance to think of a reply, his voice mocking. “A cleansing, is it?” the Zainian said derisively, voice dripping with contempt that almost rivalled the Aeriel’s. “You’d know, wouldn’t you? When was the last time you saw it, Reivaa? When was the last time you saw Vaan?” As he spoke, Ashwin walked slowly to his right, away from Ruban. “Not in centuries. And you never will, I can promise you that. It doesn’t matter what happens here today. Doesn’t even matter if you manage to kill me – which honestly, I wouldn’t count on if I were you. But even if you managed it somehow, it wouldn’t matter. ‘Cause my death wouldn’t change what you are. The only thing you’ll ever be. An exile. An outcast. Now and forever.
“All your delusions of power and grandeur aren’t going to change that. Dominion over all of earth, even if you somehow managed to gain it – like the old days – wouldn’t change what you’ve lost. You’ll never see eternal sunshine Reivaa, never again. Not all of Mommy’s petty little schemes nor all your silly posturing before mortals is going to get you what you really want.” He smiled beatifically, leaning against a tree some distance away from Ruban. Reivaa had turned almost ninety degrees to maintain eye-contact with the Zainian, as if trapped in a hypnotic trance, unable to look away. “You’ll never see home again, Reivaa. Never be more than an outcast, a stray wandering the earth for all of eternity.”
Reivaa howled, baring her teeth at Ashwin in an almost animalistic snarl. “You know nothing,” she spat, practically vibrating with fury. “Nothing of what we’ve done, what we’re capable of doing. When we take Vaan you’ll all be dead. You and your sister and all the rest of the cowards who ran away – a disgrace to our kind. We’ll burn all the traitors out of Vaan; restore her to the glory that’s her due. All the realms will cower at our feet, when this is all over.”
Ashwin doubled over, laughing as he clutched at his stomach. “And you call the humans dramatic? Really, the irony of it! But then, I suppose I shouldn’t have expected any different from a vankrai. Try as you might, you just can’t get it out of your systems, can you? That pesky little stain of latent humanity. You call us cowards, when you were the ones who let the puny mortals drive you into the ground all those years ago. Couldn’t even win the stupid fight that you started, could you darling? If anybody’s a disgrace to their kind here, I’m fairly certain it would be you. After all, you lost earth and you lost Vaan. Can’t keep a hold of anything, can you? Really Reivaa, you’re so pathetic, it’s almost sad,” he smirked. “Or it would be, if it wasn’t so utterly ridiculous.”
With a hair-raising screech Reivaa lunged at Ashwin, pushing Hiya to the side as she flew towards the Zainian, silver wings unfurling around her like clouds of saturated electricity. Twin strokes of crimson marked the tips of the sterling appendages. Thunder sounded somewhere in the distance. Ashwin leapt lightly to his left just as Reivaa crashed into the tree he had been leaning against, the force of the impact uprooting it and throwing it a few feet further into the forest.
Reivaa snarled and turned right, her eyes flashing with uncontained fury, just in time for Ashwin to leap onto one of the lower branches of a nearby oak and land a resounding kick on his airborne opponent’s exposed neck. There was a crack, and Reivaa screamed, flailing blindly at the Zainian who once again leapt off his branch and landed squarely on the Aeriel’s back, snaking his arm round her neck and hanging on as she flew further up into the air, trying to dislodge him.
Hiya, now safely away from the infuriated Aeriel, picked herself up and sprinted into Ruban’s outstretched arms, even as he ran forward to meet her halfway. The Hunter picked her up, holding her close as he turned to kiss her tear-streaked face, struggling to hold back his own relieved tears. “Oh God, you’re alright. You’re safe,” he whispered, his voice coming out in a sob. He didn’t know who he was trying to convince, Hiya or himself. Perhaps it was a bit of both.
There was a crash somewhere deeper inside the forest, and Ruban looked up to see Reivaa, hovering mid-air with her wings outstretched, holding a struggling Ashwin down against the forest floor strewn with dead leaves and wildflowers. Reivaa’s hands were wrapped around the Zainian’s throat, her nails digging into his skin as he bucked wildly under her, trying to throw her off. After another moment of futile struggling, he managed to plant his knee into her stomach, distracting her for a few seconds, which was all he needed to jump back onto his feet and put some distance between them, gasping for breath.
“What’s wrong, little prince?” Reivaa snarled, mocking, as she advanced towards the Zainian. She too was gasping, and she had folded her enormous wings closer around her body. “Show yourself, why don’t you? Fight me to the best of your capacity. It would be no fun to kill you when you’re holding back.” She flew at him – moving faster than Ruban could follow – and struck him across the face in a shattering blow, throwing him off his feet and into the nearest tree.
“Or are you afraid? Afraid of the human?” she spat, raising her hand for another blow. Ashwin tore off a branch from the tree he had crashed into and used it to parry Reivaa’s attack, sliding downwards and driving his fist into the Aeriel’s gut before jumping back to avoid the flying kick that missed him by a hair’s breath. “Vaan has made you complacent, little prince. You and all your ilk. You’ve forgotten strife, forgotten pain. No matter, I’ll gladly reinitiate your education. You are but a child to me, Shwaan. A stupid, arrogant child, at that. You think it would be hard for me to kill you? Think again.”
Hiya screamed as Reivaa flew at Ashwin once again, wrapping her arms around him in a strange mockery of a hug as she picked him clean off the ground and drove him straight into a line of trees. The forest echoed with the sounds of snapping branches and tearing tree roots. As they crashed finally into a gigantic banyan that shuddered and lurched violently under the assault but refused to give way, Ashwin used the leverage of the tree at his back to throw Reivaa off him and land a solid blow to her sternum, causing her to stagger back.
“Don’t just stand there, you idiot,” he yelled, turning towards Ruban where the Hunter stood at the edge of the forest with a terrified Hiya in his arms. “Take Hiya and get out of here. I’ll handle Reivaa.”
For a moment, Ruban stood still, staring at the scene of carnage that was Zikyang forest. He didn’t really understand what was going on, but he knew that there was more to the situation than met the eye. He was tempted to turn back, to drive away with Hiya safe in his arms, and come back later with reinforcements, when he would have a better chance of winning against this monstrous creature. But it was at least a two-hour drive to the Quarters, more if he tried to reach the IAW. Ashwin wouldn’t survive that long against Reivaa, not alone, Ruban knew that with an absolute certainty. There would be no one left to come back for.
“Don’t be ridiculous. She will kill you,” Ruban shouted back even as Reivaa made another swipe at Ashwin, which the Zainian dodged at the last second, throwing a kick of his own. Putting Hiya back down onto the ground, Ruban spoke into her ear: “Run to the car and stay inside until we get back, okay? Don’t go anywhere, and don’t be scared. I’ll clean this mess right up and take you home, you get me?”
