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

I could've held Shion forever, by the stop light at the corner of Pike Street, but the people shouting and the approaching police sirens told me that was impossible.

Shion let go and stepped back, looking around.

"Where the hell are we?" she asked.

She looked at my fevered face and scowled.

"Why the hell do you look like an old man?"

The police were getting closer, and a crowd was forming around the two of us, and I couldn't exactly blame them.

A moment ago, "Alyssa" had been screaming for help, and now she was hugging the crazy-looking old bastard who'd been grabbing her.

None of this added up.

"Never mind all that," Yuki yelled. "You've got to go! Now!"

Shion turned, lazily, towards the sound of the sirens.

I grabbed her hand.

"Yuki's right," I said.

I pulled, and she stumbled along behind me like we were on a casual walk through the park.

"Go where, Blondie?" she asked. "Or should I say Baldie?"

Wow.

That hurt, but she had a point.

"I don't know," I admitted. "It's not like I've got a plan."

Shion laughed.

"Hey, maybe we can ask my mom for a ride."

I tried to hurry, but it was impossible with my aching, fevered body.

Then, I saw the flashing lights, and the police siren's blaring horns overwhelmed everything else.

"Is this it, Blondie?" Shion asked. "Is this how we go out? Limping away from the police?"

She sighed, a strange sound coming from a living girl who I was used to being an undead vampire.

"I'm no good to you in a fight like this," she muttered.

I nodded, my breath coming in ragged gasps.

But I didn't know where to go or what to do, only that we needed a way out.

I scanned Pike Street, brain fogged and buzzing, searching for any kind of exit. Storefronts, parked cars, an alley wedged between a nail salon and a pawn shop. Anything that was too narrow for the cops' cruiser, maybe just wide enough for us.

The crowd was closing in, and I caught snatches of their muttering.

"Wasn't she screaming a minute ago?"

"Some pervert—"

"Call the school—"

None of them sounded like allies.

"Sounds like you really made a mess of things," Shion taunted.

Yuki floated ahead of us. She pointed towards an open door by an alley, and a flight of stairs leading up.

Shion followed my gaze.

"Ooh, back alley? How romantic. What's the plan once we get to the top? Jump?"

"Not now," I hissed, tugging her toward the alley.

My legs screamed in protest, every step a new spike of pain, but we were moving.

Then I heard car doors slamming. Red and blue continued flashing all around us.

The sirens cut off with a sharp bark of feedback from a radio, and a voice rang out.

"Stop right there!"

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We didn't.

Instead, we ducked into the doorway down the narrow alley.

Shion was grinning now, not the fake one from a minute ago, but the sharp, dangerous grin I remembered. She glanced over her shoulder and then leaned close enough for me to smell whatever perfume her "Alyssa" self wore.

"Blondie," she whispered, "tell me you've still got it in you."

I didn't know what she meant until I saw the brick wall at the end of the alley and realized it wouldn't take the cops long to realize where we went.

I slammed the door shut behind us anyway as Shion climbed the stairs.

Every single step was an agony, but I couldn't waste any time.

Yuki floated behind me, and she stuck her head though the building wall to look outside.

"Hurry, Ryu!" she yelled. "They're right behind you!"

I took the stairs two at a time, every step like a hot spike up my legs. The cops' boots thundered below, getting closer.

Halfway up, I blew past a dusty relic bolted to the wall, and I couldn't believe my eyes.

It was an ancient stair lift, the kind meant to creak retirees to the second floor in a glacial half-hour.

My grandma had one I used to play on as a kid. It was old back then.

Yuki floated ahead of me, glancing back once.

For a second, my fever-addled brain thought she might be ready to leave me behind.

"Watch me now, Ryu!" she yelled.

Then she veered, sinking right into the stair lift's cracked vinyl seat.

Sparks coughed from the old wiring, casting frantic flashes against the stairwell walls, and it reminded me of the HVAC unit she turned on yesterday.

The cops were nearly level with her when the stair lift gave a tortured shriek and bolted forward; not up, but down.

"Whoa—!" one of them yelled, too late.

The seat tore free of its rail and dropped like a guillotine toward the first floor. It hit hard, taking the unlucky cop with it in a tangle of limbs and metal, and I wasn't sure whether to be thankful for the win or terrified at how quickly this building could fall apart.

The second cop froze for a heartbeat, staring down at his partner sprawled in a heap of busted machinery.

Then his head snapped up, eyes locked on me, and I remembered I had urgent business elsewhere.

I lurched my way to the top.

"Big man, pig man!" I laughed. "I know what you are! Charade!"

Shion was there, waiting, her hand on a steel door at the end of the hall.

She gestured towards the writing on the door with a shrug.

The faded letters read ROOF.

"Why not?" I muttered.

She shoved the door open, and we ran.

Inside, the three of us were in a room no bigger than a large closet.

A small, iron ladder was bolted to the grey block wall, and outside, I could already hear the sound of the police officer running towards the door.

Shion took a wooden 2x4 and dropped it in front of the door, one end at the door and the other against the wall.

When the cop tried to shove his way though, the door hit the wooden board, smacked against the wall, and came to a sudden stop.

"Open up in there!" the officer yelled.

I started climbing the ladder.

"Oh, save me, officer asshat!" Shion barked.

The officer threw his weight against the door, but the wooden board wouldn't give.

I shoved the latch open, and the light hit me like a hammer.

Sunlight exploded across my vision, raw and white, and for a second I thought I might pass out right there. The air on the roof wasn't relief; it was a thousand sensations screaming at once.

The tar under my hands reeked in the heat, burning and bitter, mixing with the stink of car exhaust, cheap diesel, and my own rank sweat.

The whole stew hit the back of my throat like something I'd regret swallowing for the rest of my life.

Crescent Moon Academy's Donner Family Memorial Cafeteria wouldn't serve this, and that's really saying something.

Somewhere below the stink, I could hear Clarksburg breathing. The constant drone of traffic, brakes whining at intersections, a dog barking somewhere too far away to help me, and the faint hum of power lines trembling in the summer heat.

It was all noise, but not one sound told me where to go.

I stumbled out onto the roof. My legs were lead, my muscles tight and fevered, but I couldn't stop.

I felt like I was close. Close to what? I couldn't say. But I had to keep moving.

Somewhere, though the burning fog of fever, I could hear Lana telling me to keep pushing.

Shion clambered up behind me, swinging herself onto the roof.

Yuki rose through the tar paper like a ghost from a nightmare, her pale glow fighting the sunlight.

Below us, the barricaded door gave one last, hollow protest before it burst inward. Wood splintered and clattered away as three officers shoved it off its hinges.

Shion's eyes darted to me.

"So… what's the plan now, genius?"

I turned to her, taking what was left of my ragged shirt, and threw it to the wind.

"Stand back," I said, with exhausted triumph. "There's a hurricane coming through."

She gave me a look like I'd just started speaking fluent Martian.

Then, her eyes lit up, reflecting the fever in my own.

"What, you're gonna use your wings?"

I grinned, grimly.

"That won't work here!" Yuki barked, her voice high and urgent.

I tightened my jaw, hearing the police battering the door below us.

"I won't know unless I try."

The clang of boots on iron told me the cops were on the ladder. They were coming fast.

I wasn't going to jail.

Not now. Not ever.

I threw my arms up in a V, ignoring the stinging in my eyes, the way my head swam, and the splintering noise of the door beneath me.

Heat pooled between my shoulder blades, and then it was like something tore through me — huge, leathery, black shapes ripping their way into the daylight.

My wings.

They were hideous. Glorious. Reptilian membranes stretched between bone-dark fingers, glistening in the sun like oil and shadow.

"Yeeeeeeeeeeehhhhh," I yelled, feeling my wings tearing through my bare skin and stretching like a limb that had been asleep and numb for hours.

"Ryu!" Yuki shouted! "You've got them! Your wings!"

There was no time to lose.

I grabbed Shion, one arm locking her against me.

The first officer's head rose over the lip of the roof just in time to see me beat my wings once, hard enough to send grit and dust spiraling into his face.

And then we were off the roof, the world falling away beneath us.

The tar and stink of the building dropped into the chaos of Clarksburg's streets, and I was in the air, Shion clinging to me, Yuki keeping pace at my side like a pale wisp that refused to be left behind.

I headed for the one place where I thought I might be safe: the empty sky.