Columbine

Damien grabbed me almost as soon as Maximillion Greenley shut the clinic door. I nearly screamed, but thankfully managed to stop myself just in time.

“We have to go.” He informed me.

“You mean we’re getting out of here?” I asked excitedly. Damien merely nodded, taking a key out of his pocket.

“We have to be quick.” He cautioned, turning the key in the lock, opening the door Maximillion Greenley had slammed closed not a moment ago. “Follow me.”

I did, my heart in my throat as I fell into step after him. He led the way with an iron decisiveness. For a moment, I could barely contain my joy. I had to swallow several noises before I could be in any fit state to escape.

“I’m sure you’ve noticed the mob by now.” He said, rushing me down a corridor.

“Yeah.” I nodded. I winced as I remembered what Asmodeus had said about me being their catalyst.

“Fortunately, there’s a way around them, but we have to be fast. I suspect we’re not the only ones who are going to be heading that way.” He said.

“You mean somebody’s going to jump ship?” I panted. I could hardly keep up with him.

“Correct.” He confirmed.

Before I could say anything else, he’d picked me up and slung me over his back. I realized that it was a piggyback ride, so I grabbed onto him as hard as I could. If he was in any way uncomfortable, he didn’t show it. And then we took off so fast, my head nearly snapped back.

An unexpected memory of getting the same kind of treatment from Valentin suddenly popped up, and I bit my lip. I realized that a very faint urge to cry was sitting in the back of my throat.

It occurred to me that he might be dead. After all, why wouldn’t he be? If he really had been in a fight to the death, it was an all too valid option. Much as I tried not to think about it, I couldn’t not.

The only real disturbing concept about it all was how seriously late I’d been in deciding to make amends with him. I wasn’t sure what was worse -- not having known him well before he‘d died, or knowing him maybe just a little bit better before he’d bitten the dust. Both scenarios seemed equally daunting.

I mulled all of this over in my head while Damien, having gotten to the end of the corridor, opened a door to a dark, sewer-like place that wasn’t exactly a sewer. No one else seemed to be in there at the moment, so he went in, shutting the door behind him. It was then totally dark.

“Can you see down here?” I asked, surprised to find that there was a quiver in my voice.

“A little.” He said. “I’m afraid I didn’t bring a glow stick.”

He slowed his pace, still running, but not quite fast enough to break the sound barrier. I slowly came to the realization that we were underground, and not too far underground, from the way it sounded as though the mob was directly above us.

A few minutes later, he came to a stop. There were a few shafts of light coming down from the ceiling. We were standing underneath the exact sort of lid that covers up entrances to sewers.

“You can get off now.” Damien told me, letting me step down to the floor.

He bent down and picked something up. It was a black Demataxt coat.

“They’ve been through here already.” He said. “Smart choice to leave the uniform behind. I’d completely forgotten.”

Did that mean that Valentin was still alive? I allowed myself to hope for just a moment, before realizing that even if he was dead, Damien’s partner could have easily parted ways with his carcass and left by herself.

Damien took his own coat off, letting it drop to the floor. He had an ordinary T-shirt on underneath. I didn’t usually see agents outside of uniform. They weren’t like the police used to be, with an entire set of clothes to dress up in. Demataxt agents, from what I’d seen, could wear anything they wanted underneath their coats.

“I don’t think we’re too far from the mob.” He said, climbing the ladder that led to the lid. “I’ll just check.”

I timidly clutched my elbow as he climbed up. I briefly wondered if maybe we weren’t as far from the mob as he thought, and he’d get his head stomped on when he lifted the lid. My fears turned out to be hollow when there was nothing to see but blue sky.

“Climb up after me.” He said, beckoning to me, finally lifting himself out of the hole. I did as he said, never for a moment forgetting how easy it would be for me to slip in the shoes I was wearing.

The sun was blinding when I got out onto the surface at last, and I tried to block it with my hands. My wrists were developing bruises from having been cuffed for hours. I hadn’t paid attention to the pain earlier, but every ache I had suddenly became impossible to miss.

“It should be smooth sailing from here.” Damien said, also squinting in the sunlight. He had incredibly pale skin. It was the same kind of pale skin I’d seen on his partner.

“Where are we going?” I asked, scrambling up. We were somewhere in an abandoned part of Cairo, where there used to be factories and warehouses. No one came here anymore, because there was simply no reason to.

“Not very far.” Damien said.

So he led the way and I traipsed behind him, feeling fresh blisters bloom on my feet. I would have been mad at Sarah for forcing me into yet another over-elaborate getup, but all I wanted to do was see her alive and well. Her, Scarlett, Charlie, and Valentin alive and well was all I could ever wish for.

We came to a stop at a building that was practically on the Nile, sitting opposite a bridge that led across the enormous river.

“Is this it?” I asked, hardly able to form words, what with the way I was trembling.

“Yes.” Damien nodded. “But please stay behind me, just in case.” I didn’t argue.

He heaved the door to what used to be one huge garage open, revealing a musty interior of a building that had been stripped of everything it had. There wasn’t a speck of a single thing left inside, except for empty cardboard boxes that had become almost entirely flat after years of sitting there. There were a few rotting wooden beams piled in the corner, abandoned even by scavengers.

“Hello?” Damien called. “Alice?”

I heard something move. It sounded like it may have been a critter scrabbling away from the noise at first, but the sound soon turned into footsteps.

“Damien!” A slightly familiar voice called. Soon a female head popped out of a doorway on the opposite wall. She seemed to have more life in her than the last time I’d seen her, but it was difficult to tell from where I was standing.

“In here!” She motioned.

We rushed to the next room.

The whole thirty seconds it took me to get there, I was practically praying to see Valentin alive and well. I didn’t care how confident Asmodeus had been that Valentin would win the fight. It didn’t stop me from worrying.

When we did finally get into the room where Damien’s partner was, I could have exploded. It took everything I had in me not to scream as I did a quick visual sweep of the room. I saw a flash of red hair -- Scarlett. I saw two blonde heads and decided that one of them simply had to be Sarah. And then I finally saw who I was looking for, staring at me from the very back of the room.

“Valentin!” I cried, running up to him, already feeling tears in my eyes. His face was swollen, proof enough that it had felt more than a few blows. His once-white shirt had a red stain that was turning brown -- blood.

“What did they do to you?” He asked, grabbing my shoulders.

“Nothing.” I said, trembling so hard, I felt like I’d fall to pieces.

I would have asked what had happened to him, where the blood on his shirt had come from, but I was too afraid of the answer. From what Asmodeus had told me, I could only guess. Looking at him, he looked the same as he did the last time I’d seen him. Maybe nothing had happened, and Asmodeus had made a mistake, as unlikely as that was.

“Columbine!” I heard Sarah’s shrill voice behind me, and turned around just in time to be tackled to the floor. “Don’t you ever make me worry like that!” She yelled.

I didn’t bother reminding her that it wasn’t my fault, but even if I had tried, I probably couldn’t have. She was hugging me so hard, I couldn’t breathe.

When the hug ended, I noticed that she had a swollen eye. It was steadily turning blue.

“What the--!” I exclaimed. “What happened?”

“You should see the other guy.” She smiled. Her blond hair, which had been practically the height of style the last time I’d seen her, was now something utterly untamable. I tried not to think about how I must have looked.

“Did you see the mob?” Charlie’s voice reached my ears. I saw him slumped on the floor, leaning against the wall. He looked ill.

“What happened to you?” I asked, coming closer to get a better look.

There didn’t seem to be anything physically wrong with him -- at least not that I could tell.

“Life, sweetie-pie. That’s what happened to me.” He gave me a lopsided grin.

“Idiot went and got himself cursed.” Sarah informed me.

“Cursed?” I blinked. “What do you mean, cursed?”

“It’ll wear off soon.” Charlie snapped, not taking too kindly to the way Sarah had spilled his alleged secret.

“What will wear off soon?” I snapped at him.

“It’s the magical equivalent of a crippling disease.” The other blonde spoke up. I recognized her as the one who had warned us back in the Blood Bank just before it had been raided.

“You should have seen Liz, Columbine.” Sarah told me. I assumed she meant the blonde. “She was so amazing. She had this sword--.”

“Don’t make me blush.” The blonde bashfully cut her off. “I was never very good with compliments.”

“Well, when the time came to spring us out of the slammer,” Sarah continued unabated, “Liz here just held out her hand and pulled a sword out of nowhere. It was pretty damn sweet.”

I saw that Liz -- the blonde -- really was blushing.

“So what happens now?” Scarlett asked.

“Obviously we can’t stay here.” Damien’s partner spoke up. “The safest thing to do at this time would be to catch a boat out of here.”

“I suggested Crete.” The blonde named Liz said.

“It doesn’t matter where the boat goes, so much as that we stay off the grid for as long as possible.” Damien’s partner said.

“And how do you suppose we get anywhere near a ship?” Charlie asked. “There’s a mob the size of Texas out there.”

“We’ll just have to wait for it to blow over.” Scarlett told him.

“Believe me, honey, that out there isn’t going to blow over.” Charlie sneered. “We can either move now, before it’s too violent, or we can wait for our chances to really slim down.”

As much as I hated it, Charlie had a point. That and what Asmodeus had said was more than enough to convince me that this was definitely not going to blow over. I’d seen the mob from the window, and it had been formidable. It was about the size of an army, like I’d seen in movies years ago. Just because the crowd wasn’t in neatly divided lines didn’t make them any less dangerous.

Then suddenly we heard it: the first explosion.

For a moment, none of us were sure what had happened. We all slowly came out of the building to see what was wrong, and then we saw it. There was an enormous cloud of smoke rising from where I assumed the mob was centered. Then I heard something like an odd popping sound, and somehow realized that it was gunfire.

“Oh, no.” Scarlett uttered, sounding as if she had just burnt a cake in the oven.

“We’ve got to get out of here.” Damien’s partner said. “Before that reaches us.”

When I looked to see what she meant by ‘that’, I saw that some of the nearby buildings had caught fire.

“Fucking hell.” Charlie exclaimed. “The croissant’s right -- we’ve got to go.”

“I’m not sure that’s such a great idea.” Scarlett said shakily. “It’s a war zone over there.”

“And there’s going to be a war zone over here, too.” Charlie snapped.

“If we stick together, we’ll be fine. I’ll put up a barrier around us.” Damien’s partner said.

“I just don’t want to do anything hasty.” Scarlett bit her lip.

Charlie stepped in front of her and bent down until his face was less than an inch from hers.

“You hear that?” He snarled. “Those noises sounding like a whole lot of bubble gum popping? Well, real soon they’re not going to sound quite like that. They’re going to sound a lot like what you used to hear in movies, only a lot louder.”

I could hear Scarlett swallow from where I was standing.

“I get that you’re scared.” Damien’s partner said. “We all are, but we have to move. Now.”

So we began to walk. It felt a bit strange at first. For ten minutes, the streets were practically deserted, save for a few homeless bums just waking up, confused by the smoke rising into the sky. And then the gunshots grew louder, and I could just barely hear the shouting of the mob. We’d been sticking as close to the riverside as possible, so it had to mean that the fight was spreading.

“How long until we reach the coast?” Sarah asked.

“On foot? Could be hours.” Liz said.

It occurred to me that there was simply no way in hell we’d avoid the mob. The smoke in the air was getting thicker, even blotting out the sun for lengthening spans of time. The fire must have spread, even if I couldn’t see it yet.

I glanced at Valentin, who’d been more-or-less next to me since we’d started walking. I noticed for the first time since I’d seen him again that he was limping. I almost asked him how the fight had gone, when I realized that he’d probably ask me how I knew there’d even been a fight.

I’d have to tell him that Asmodeus had talked to me. How was I even supposed to begin telling him that I’d met his father -- evil son of a bitch that he was? To say that meeting him had been eye-opening wasn’t quite right. It was more of a wake-up call.

Suddenly we stumbled upon a dead end.

“What the--!” Charlie yelled. “Who the hell builds a city like that!”

“We have to go around.” Liz said mournfully.

“But if we go around…” Scarlett trailed off, unwilling to finish the sentence.

We had no choice, so we stuck to the edges of the buildings blocking the riverside. The gunshots were growing louder, just as Charlie had predicted.

My feet were probably bleeding in my hellish shoes by then, but even though the pain wasn’t exactly minor, I managed to focus my attention on the bullet wounds I did not yet have.

I wasn’t sure how long we were walking for. With the sound of gunshots growing ever closer, every minute seemed to go on and on. Every step I took was more and more painful, until I was practically limping with agony.

A few minutes later, we finally saw people. They didn’t seem like they were part of the fight that was growing louder and louder. They looked like they were doing the same thing we were, which was getting the hell out of the city. A great deal of them were carrying backpacks and suitcases. They were much better prepared than we were, that was for certain.

“I think I’ll go ahead and make that barrier now.” Damien’s partner announced.

“I’ll help.” Sarah joined her.

So we stopped for a few minutes while the pair of them went to work.

“As long as you all stay within ten feet of me and Alice, you’ll be safe.” Sarah explained as we picked up the pace again.

I briefly wondered if Alice was psychic at all, because about a minute later, a fraction of the mob trickled into the street we were walking on, a few of them armed. They weren’t shooting at anyone, but simply running away. I got the impression that we weren’t as far away from the fighting as I’d have liked.

“I get the feeling we’re about to get very uncomfortable.” Sarah said.

There were already more people running past us. I caught a glimpse of several bloodstains, and more than a few battered faces. The gunshots were now exactly as I remembered them from the movies, except not quite so loud. The smoke was getting thicker, even filtering into the street we were on.

“Just keep moving!” Charlie yelled out as the smoke got thicker, and I could hear more and more people running past. The gunshots were loud now, each one surprising me anew.

I was no longer paying my feet any attention. My brain had somehow managed to prioritize things in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. I was almost entirely numb.

I could see small bright flashes go by -- bullets, I assumed. None of them hit anywhere near us, thanks to the barrier Alice and Sarah had put up. If it hadn’t been for them, we’d have probably been in serious trouble.

An hour later, we’d unwittingly returned to the city center in all the commotion. It was easy to see now that a good fraction of the buildings were on fire. Smoke was billowing from them in enormous columns. The Demataxt building we’d snuck out of had acquired an enormous crater where a bomb had gone off. It, too, was on fire.

And then I did the stupidest thing I’d ever done in my life, and would probably ever do: I tripped.

Needless to say, in the time it took me to regain my composure, the distance between me and my friends had become more than ten feet. I could barely make them out through the smoke and fleeing people. I tried to catch up, and even called out to let them know I’d fallen behind, but I’m not sure they heard me.

Several bullets whizzed past me, except this time there was no invisible wall to make them ricochet away. There was nothing keeping me safe any more, and I realized with shock that the feeling of being actually alone was new to me.

I was good and lost then, trying my hardest to stay out of harm’s way and catch even the tiniest glimpse of anyone familiar. I wiped my watering eyes and coughed, frantically looking around. It was impossible to see even my own hand, let alone anyone I recognized. Anyone even a little bit familiar would have seemed like a ray of sunshine through the smoke-filled street.

I was beginning to feel dizzy. I knew that it was probably my lungs filling up with smoke, but there was nowhere to run from it. It was like a blanket over the entire city. I could hear the roaring of flames, the screaming of people, the scattered sounds of feet rapidly hitting the ground as they ran.

I regretted not paying more attention to Cairo’s layout when I’d moved to Egypt. If only I knew which streets led to where, I might not be so lost. It’s one thing not to know your way around a city on a normal day. It’s quite another thing altogether when the city is on fire, and you can’t find the exit.

I stumbled and almost fell, but managed to catch myself in time. Otherwise I’d have had my face smashed between cobblestones and been trampled by the fleeing citizens. The last thing I needed was a death so painful. No, suffocation was much better. The dizzying, muffled death of smoke slowly filling up my lungs seemed pretty alright, compared to all the other ways of dying that I’d come so close to.

My vision was growing blurry. This was bad. It meant I’d be unconscious soon. I could feel the strength leave my legs, and I stumbled again. I found myself leaning against a wall that was miraculously still free of flames. I’d managed to exercise enough control to make my way to something to lean on, at least.

I suddenly heard someone yelling my name directly into my ear. I felt someone’s hands haul me up onto that same someone’s body. I didn’t know who’s it was. At that point, I could have cared less. I noticed that I was moving really fast. I didn’t bother opening my eyes. I knew the smoke was too thick to see anything.

I dropped in and out of consciousness. It might have been seconds, or maybe days. It’s difficult to ascertain a time when you’re dying, as it turns out. I finally allowed myself to stay unconscious, but it didn’t feel anything like death. I’d always thought that death wouldn’t be so much like sleep, so filled with dreams of randomness that you couldn’t help but think that something wasn’t quite right.

When I did finally wake up, it took me a moment to realize what I was looking at. It was the front side of a shirt with a great big blood stain on it. Some fraction of my brain that had remained fully functional reminded me that I’d seen this shirt before. It belonged to Valentin.

When I finally raised my head to get a better look at my surroundings, I saw that he was carrying me.

“What ha--.” I broke off on a cough. My throat was so sore, it was painful to speak.

“You fell behind, remember?” He said.

I did remember. My pulse skyrocketed as it all came flooding back.

“Where are--.” I coughed again.

“I don’t know.” He admitted. “If we keep moving north, we’ll be fine.”

“But what about everyone else?” I finally managed to get an entire sentence out, though barely.

He didn’t answer me at once. I saw his jaw tighten, like it did when there was something he didn’t want to say, or did something he didn’t want to do. I swallowed, realizing that thanks to my idiocy, we’d both fallen behind the group. I winced at the thought of my own guilt.

“We’ll look for them, right?” I asked, trying to keep the quiver from my voice.

“Yes.” He said. “But for now, we need to keep moving.”

So we did.