I Fell In Love With A Girl Who Died Before I Was Even Born

I wasn't designed for grace.

My wings beat like they belonged to a smarter man who had trained for this instead of a fevered idiot with a stolen cop-badge and a vampire tucked under his arm.

Clarksburg bucked and rolled under us. Hot air, diesel breath, a smear of summer loud enough to make thought optional.

"Higher," Shion yelled in my ear, which is hilarious because I was already trying.

Her nails dug into my shoulder hard enough to make sure I would remember it if I lived through the next fifteen seconds.

"I am," I croaked, and then lied. "Totally fine."

Below, a cop on the roof fumbled for his radio, eyes saucer-wide.

Another one pointed. Someone took a picture. Somebody always takes a picture.

I chuckled darkly, trying to keep myself and Shion aloft.

"Look, we're the new Mothman," I said.

Yuki kept pace at my left, a pale ribbon of light clawing daylight out of the sun.

"Ryu, your right wing is pitching," she said.

Calm. Terrified. Both.

"I can tell," I said through clenched teeth, because pain is very motivating.

Every beat of my wings sent a jolt through my fevered back, hot and electric, like someone had wired a car battery into my spine.

Shion clung to me, her arms locked so tight around my ribs I could feel her heartbeat kicking against mine, which was new.

I could get used to her having a beating heart, but I'd worry about that once we escaped whatever this place was.

"Blondie, you're—" she started, but the words got swallowed in the rush of air.

I didn't answer.

I simply couldn't.

Every breath felt like I was inhaling fire and coughing up glass. The fever was still there, coiled in my chest, burning through whatever scraps of strength and sanity I had left.

Below us, Clarksburg smeared past in a chaos of rooftops, stoplights, and the dull groan of morning traffic.

I could hear the cops somewhere back there, muffled by distance but still too close for comfort.

Then, inwardly, I accepted what I'd known as soon as I'd lifted Shion, I needed somewhere to land.

Somewhere they wouldn't think to look.

The library flickered into my mind, my old fallback.

But no.

Too obvious.

I'd already dragged my sorry ass there too many times before.

It was so close that every cop in Harrison County probably had the place circled on their little mental map of "Where the Lunatic Will Go."

No, I needed something bigger.

Something they'd never see coming.

Then I realized where I needed to go.

Lana showed me a long time ago: The Meadowbrook Mall.

Even just thinking it felt stupid.

Only problem? Bridgeport might as well have been on the moon.

The fever whispered that I'd never make it, and my muscles screamed in angry agreement.

I banked hard to the east, wings snapping in the air, and locked my sights on the thin grey ribbon of Interstate 79.

If I could hug the highway, keep low, maybe I could follow it all the way there. Or at least far enough to ditch into the woods before my wings gave out.

Shion's grip tightened.

"You good?" she yelled into my ear.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Ha. I wish.

"Not even a little," I shot back.

But then I saw it.

Up ahead.

Not on the ground but floating in a bank of clouds above me.

The damn thing looked like it had been waiting for me the whole damn time, that impossible, goddamn bus tunnel.

The same one I'd seen when I was on the bus riding into Shin'yume what felt like years ago.

Every part of me clenched at once, my heart, my wings, my lungs, like my body knew before my brain did that this was it.

The fever didn't matter.

The cops didn't matter.

Bridgeport didn't matter, because all I had to do was reach it.

"Hold on," I growled, beating my wings so hard I felt the bones shudder.

Shion twisted to look, her voice catching in my ear.

"Is that—?"

Yuki floated ahead, seeing where I was going.

"Yeah," I rasped. "It's our way home."

And I aimed straight into the clouds.

The edges of Clarksburg blurred beneath us, rooftops, half-dead parking lots, the slow churn of summer haze. Sirens bled through the wind, not far behind, wailing like they already had me in their teeth.

"I gotta have at least three stars," I muttered to myself.

Shion's breath was hot against my neck.

"Blondie… can you keep going?"

I didn't even have the dignity to lie this time.

"No."

There it was.

Just the truth, raw and heavy in my mouth.

My arms ached. My wings felt like wet laundry in a hurricane. Every beat cost more than I had left to give.

Shion wouldn't look at me. She turned to stare at the tunnel half-hidden in the cloud banks like a forbidden city.

That stung worse than if she'd just taunted me outright.

Then something touched my cheek. A soft, cool brush against the fever-burn.

Straight away I knew. Yuki.

She wasn't just floating anymore.

She drifted close enough for me to see the pale shimmer of her hair catch the sun, then she began to spiral around me, a lazy, graceful orbit. Her shape cut the air, pulling little currents into a dance.

"I told you," she said, her voice steady, threaded with that rare steel she saved for when she meant it, "you don't have to do this alone."

Her orbit tightened.

The air started to stir.

"You saw me," she went on, her voice all around me "when no one else did. You took the time to be with me. So now—"

The wind swelled around my battered wings, a strange, buoyant push.

"—I've got your back."

The currents wrapped under my arms, into my black, leathery wings.

It was faint at first, but each time she looped past my face the lift got stronger, as if she was spinning a storm from nothing just for me.

I saw Shion's eyes grow wide as Yuki circled us.

"Ohhhh, look at that," she muttered hoarsely.

Yuki smiled, not the shy, glass-fragile kind, but one that reached her eyes, and said, "Let me be the wind beneath your wings, Ryu."

The ache in my shoulders didn't vanish, but the weight shifted.

My strokes weren't drops in an empty well anymore. With each beat, we inched forward, higher, toward the bruised white of the cloud bank.

And for the first time since this fever dream began, I thought… maybe we were going to make it.

"Blondie," Shion screamed. "I don't know what the hell is going on, what I'm doing looking like this, why you look like this, or where we are… but if you get us back home, I promise you something."

She leaned closer, making sure I heard what she was about to say.

"I'm so going to bite your neck and drink your blood because you owe me big time!"

What the hell?

I wasn't about to argue with her. It wouldn't accomplish anything.

The clouds swallowed the horizon until there was nothing left but white glare and the shadow of the thing ahead.

Each beat of my wings felt heavier, slower, but the tunnel didn't waver. It hung there, impossible and solid, like it had been waiting for me since the day I first saw it.

The roar of blood in my ears drowned out the wind.

Shion's grip tightened. Yuki drifted closer.

And I realized that I felt better somehow.

Maybe it was the cold, thin air up here helping reduce my fever, but I felt better, stronger, as I approached the tunnel.

And then, I felt the air change as we neared the entrance.

"Watch out everyone!" I yelled.

The tunnel's mouth yawned open in the clouds, black and endless, and I drove us straight into it.

For a moment, the three of us hung there, like a dust particle floating on the edge of a black hole.

Time stood still, and I felt like my soul was exhaling, or slipping into a vast, infinite, warm ocean, or I'd just taken the best hit of ecstasy to ever exist.

Then, everything started to move, and I heard a distant droning that grew louder and louder as I flew deeper into the tunnel.

Shion began punching my chest, or she had been punching my chest and I'd just noticed, then I realized why.

I was screaming into the darkness.

"Blondie!" she shouted back at me. "Knock it oooOOOOFFFFFFF…"

Then, I opened my eyes.

It was dark, all around me, but not inside a tunnel, no sunlight dark.

This was an outside dark, and the air was moist, damp with familiar evening dew.

I took a breath, feeling it enter my lungs, and it felt wonderful.

"Ryu?" I heard a voice ask.

Yuki.

"Hon?" I answered.

Then, as if replying, I saw her soft, faint, ghostly light as she floated to my side.

"Oh, gracious! Ryu! It's… it's you! It's really you!" she cried when she saw me.

I reached up and felt my face, then my hair.

I felt it. Long, slightly unkept, blond hair again.

"Yuki! We're back!" I said.

Then, we tried to hug, and it worked for a split second.

Until we floated though one another. After that, we just shrugged and laughed because, what else could we do about it?

We were in the woods, just outside the entrance to the bus tunnel in Shin'yume.

"Shion?" I called out to the darkness, hoping my friend would answer.

Someone else answered instead.

"Hey, you naughty American boy," Lana said.

And I felt all the air suddenly leave my chest as she stepped out of the shadows and into the pale starlight.

Her red hair flashed as she tossed it over the side of her face with a nod.

"You didn't think it'd be that easy, did you?"

Yuki looked from Lana to me.

I took a step backwards, then another, but nowhere was far enough away for me to escape the sound of Lana's laughter ringing in my ears.