Shade of Human

Eleven - SoH

Eleven:

You know when you are watching a movie, and everything is going the heroine’s way. Like the world is just easy-peasy, and nothing can stop her?

That is when reality face-checks you, and slams you to the pavement, reminding you that the world you live in is not so beautiful or easy. That would have been an improvement upon what I came out to, as I struggled to register the scene outside the hospital.

Clarke was dangling by his throat as a mass of fluttering shadows circled him. The things were all haunts—according to detective hot panties. The black-purple writhing masses of miasmic film and translucent energy, made nearly corporeal mass, were sucking him like ghastly vacuum cleaners. I was carrying several clipboards and a thick patient file in my backpack. I leaped over the fence, this time jumping clear in a single leap without thinking about it.

I felt the heat forming in my palms on instinct. I vaguely noticed the swirling silver bolts of light rotating rapidly, building up momentum. Power permeated the air. I felt as if my entire core self was vibrating with some unseen force that was primal, cosmic, and unimaginably powerful. Energy crackled like lightning, and the haunts all dispersed from Clarke, fleeing from the edges of the light.

Two of the spectral monsters rushed towards me, as if deciding that a frontal assault might be their best chance of victory.

The claws raked out almost from nowhere. I raised one of my light-clad hand’s in defense. The energy burned through the creature, causing blood curdling screeches as it withered, crumpling like black dust, and gooey tar on the pavement of the front parking lot.

Skittering darkness swarmed me, encircling me. The haunts lashed at me wildly as they hovered just out of reach. They appeared desperate to rid themselves of me, yet they kept moving. Kept avoiding the brightness of the lights emanating from my hands. I dodged back from the slashing claws and my dark top slit open along the navel, but the edge missed skin narrowly. My adrenaline seemed to surge higher as I dashed forward and slammed my fist into the haunt. It vaporized on contact. I heard the growling and screeching of the others. I turned in time to trust my palm of energy into the next mass of purple and black shadows.

They rushed in mass now. The claws slashed blindly. I felt freezing burns along my arms and my back as thin claws raked flesh. I was punching and thrusting flaming palms into the ghostly figures as quickly as I could reach out to each of them. It was confusing to my senses. They were both translucent and yet I contacted them, nonetheless.

I gave a glance towards Clarke’s limp form. I felt fear for the first time since Ariel’s death. The terror of another person I love galvanized me into faster action. I ignored the burn and freezing pains of the light injuries. I punched and flailed my way to Clarke’s side. Ash and dark mire piled on the pavement. An acrid smell of something unrecognizable to my human senses assaulted me.

“Duck, you i***t!”

A familiar female voice roared at me, as I caught the edge of her white-blonde mop as the slim, tall detective rushed amid the haunts. She had a strange large silver gun in her hand. The green flaming rounds that it expelled were anything other than a normal police issue. She fired off rapid bullets. I lost count quickly as the sound threatened my hearing and the ringing in my ears became a howling vacuum.

Green spread through the haunts and they disintegrated, but slower than they had from my fiery clad hands. Whatever it was, she was shooting. It was a less than perfect version of what I seemed capable of naturally. Though, she was like a deft stunt woman on a movie set in her element. She was bending and juking their attacks like an old pro.

There was no wasted effort in her movement or her offense. She did not so much fight them, as she merely brushed them aside two at a time. With their attention split, I crouched and launched myself at the closest bottleneck of spectral enemies. I tackled three of them in a single charge. I punched them all wildly until they vanished.

Behind me, I could hear the echoes and reverberations of battle, but I had to believe that this mysterious beauty could handle herself. She moved like a reaper or a death goddess on the battlefield, harvesting souls for the damned maw of whatever hell she worked. Her garb was anything but a standard-issue. She wore silver-lined black leather and a matching leather trench coat. The pockets appeared full of various items and pouches. She had a belt of shiny silver weapons. Even a short sword on her belt. Everything screamed Van Hellsing.

Her white-blonde hair flowed around her freely and was hypnotic to behold. She fought as if in the most seductive and deadly dance. Her every second seemed scripted like she read all the crazed being’s movements before they happened. Her cunning was almost preternatural. Something in how she moved and how she reacted told my mind that she was merely amazing at reading body language and predicting motion at a glance. She did not appear to be using some superpower, just deeply intuitive. Perhaps a supernaturally inclined individual just knows these things?

She dropped her gun as I heard it click empty. She pulled the sword from her sheath. She swept her free hand over the length of the blade and it erupted with a white flame that almost threatened to blind my keenly sensitive eyes as the bright flame danced along with the black steel into existence. The flames were hungry. They seemed to burn towards the surrounding presences as they bent towards them seeking purchase on the spectral bodies.

She swept the sword in arcs of perfect semicircles. The flames spread and her veins glowed silver as they had for that moment this morning. Her eyes glowed blue, and silver veins ran their length through her blue eyes, but the most alarming thing was how the silver seemed to spread through her face, making her look very inhuman. She was almost like something out of a comic book.

White flames bathed the entire area in brilliance. I grabbed Clarke and pulled him away, as the haunts were devoured in the flames. I quickly checked his pulse and scanned him for physical injuries. Clarke’s pulse was low, but it was steady. His breaths were coming in regularly. Since I had worked as a lifeguard for two summers, I knew to keep his head tilted back, and to gently hold it elevated above his chest level.

“Call an ambulance!”

I exclaimed to the silver-veined detective who was approaching me with her sword still drawn. Fire danced wildly around her with a power to it. Something I could feel and could reach out and touch—if not physically at least. I didn’t know the mechanics of how, but I knew I could grab her powers if I desired. That knowledge seemed to arm me with the comfort I sorely lacked in this seemingly helpless and hapless situation.

“Comments like that are why I did not come to introduce myself to you before now.”

She stated coolly, factually. The human upbringing inside me almost blurted out the question, “what are you even doing here?” However, I knew intuitively that she was following me. She was tailing me like detectives would in the shows I watched with Clarke and Jerry.

“Why are you tailing me, Detective?”

She smiled a feral and almost terrifying smile. Her teeth were pearly white, and they had an almost inhuman glint to them. I did in fact check the lengths of her canines because I had just finished killing ghostly beings referred to as haunts.

“They are human length since you appear to be pondering if I am a Stoker monster.”

She acutely observed, using the classic Irish author as an instant reference point to the vampire mythos. She read me as if she could read my thoughts, however, I could only barely pick up the very beginning of her mind. I could skim the surface layer, but she appeared to be thinking so many confusing things and in several languages that sounded nothing like any I had ever heard in my life. I soon realized that she was also attempting to scan my thoughts, I felt the blunted impact of something unseen on my mind. I could feel that the sturdy wall that was in my mind was shut like a steel trap.

“What are you? No one can block me on this planet.”

She stated in the absolute surety of her mental abilities.

“That’s an awfully offensive and potentially racist question coming from the human glow-stick!”

I returned in a volley. She smiled a more amused smirk this time. Her expressions almost reminded me of a female Han Solo. She had that sleek scoundrel appeal coming from her loud and clear. If it were not for the fact that she was wearing a weird platinum badge on her belt I would never pick her for any cop. She was a little too sketchy for me to associate her with police. She would make an excellent undercover cop.

“I’ve been expressing power to cleanse your friend’s aura and energy signature for three months. Two days back and you have two haunt problems.”

She explained in a deadpan tone. I felt my eyes widen at this implication. I had wondered how Clarke had been safe while I was gone. Even if prison was protected, he should have been long dead.

“How do I know I can trust anything you say?”

She gave me a sad smile and said, “I never claimed to be trustworthy. In fact, never trust me and we will all probably live longer and safer lives.”

Her tone rang of truth to my ears, which seemed to somehow conflict with my emotional impression of her. I did not trust her, but I did not feel danger for her or from her. She did not act in any way that showed she was planning to harm me or even arrest me.

“Safe to assume you know what we were here for?”

I asked. She nodded crisply.

“But I am afraid you will find no more meaning to your life in those notes than I did three months ago. I am still not sure what to make of you. I have had over a thousand years of practice at reading advanced beings from all the known planets and dimensions.”

Something in me stirred at the way she spoke of multiple worlds. The human inside my mind screamed “impossible” yet the rest of me knew intuitively that it explained my life and my abilities far more than a simple genetic mutation or human evolutionary off-shoot. If I was human, it was not all that I was.

“So, are you planning to arrest me for this?”

I asked. I squared myself, ready to fight if I had to. The woman studied me, and she sheathed her blade on her hip.

“You will come to discover that it is too much a bother for immortals to worry themselves with every trifle infraction of their little penal codes. In fact, your mere presence is illicit in most human opinions.”

She looked towards the direction of the hospital. I turned, saw orderlies with searchlights sweeping the yard. I Swore, turned, and the detective was gone, taking all the answers I sorely needed along with her!