She wove slowly out of the stadium, letting the crowds rush around and past her in a haze of perfume, sweat, and laughter. This was all she had now, these few hours. She supposed she could follow their entire tour, but then she’d become too attached. It was best to keep a safe distance, as much for her sake as for his, and it was a gift just to be able to watch him; to see all his mannerisms, memorize every inch of and mark on his skin well enough to be able to call his face to mind at any moment. He’d been beautiful that night, as always, and his voice had been better than she expected- heavenly. It was strange to see him in that setting, with thousands of girls screaming his name, imagining they had the same passion for him that she had, a part of the lives of more people than was imaginable.
Josephine allowed herself the luxury of thinking about him, thinking about being with him as if it was a real possibility for either of them. She wondered if he’d even recognize her as his soulmate. Sometimes it had been hard to find him- not this time, but sometimes in the past. What if they could be together, but he never saw it in her. . . if he never knew. . . It was a stupid thing to worry about and, in her circumstances, sounded like a nice problem to have. She suddenly wondered what he smelled like. It was a minor detail that became obsessively important to her as she walked, her head down, looking at the dry, cracked pavement and the weeds struggling through it.
She was about to hail a cab when she hesitated and stood still, concentrating on the silence inside her. There was an insistence of movement in her body that wasn’t there of her own free will. She refused it for a few moments, and found that it swayed her to one side. No choice was involved here.
She turned in that direction and walked, trying to stop the surprise and fear from showing on her face or in her eyes. She put her hand in her pocket, where the opal was. She’d started taking it everywhere with her, because it seemed somehow necessary. It was warm to the touch. So that was what was happening.
He would be there. He wouldn’t have a choice, but he would be. What this time? Would he die this time? She wouldn’t let that happen. She wondered how much she wanted to live, if it was enough that she’d be able to die for him. It wasn’t important. No one would miss her, and millions would mourn him. Something would have to give, if they couldn’t be together and yet they kept being thrown together, and it would have to be her. There was as little choice in the matter as where she was going.
A wind started to come up. A dried weed that hadn’t won its struggle through the pavement blew across her feet, the roots petrified in the ending of a futile stretch for safety.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
“Are AJ and Kevin gone already?” Brian asked. The concert had come to a close moments ago, and they could still hear the screaming of the fans who had waited, hoping for a last glimpse.
“Yeah, they’re on their way to the hotel already in the first van,” Howie answered.
“We’re staying overnight here? I thought we were leaving,” Nick said.
“No, change of plans, we’re staying,” Brian said. “They told us that this morning. Weren’t you paying attention?”
Nick grinned. “Apparently not. Oh, guess what, Bri?”
“What?”
“She was here.”
“She was?”
“Yeah. Way the hell up there, but she was.”
“How do you know that?”
“The magnet thing. It was there. So she was too.” He smiled to himself. “I could learn to live with the climate here, if I had to. . .”
“She hasn’t said anything to you,” Howie pointed out. “Not a word. In fact, she fled in terror. I’m not trying to be mean, but you I don’t want you to work yourself up about something that probably doesn’t exist.”
“There’s something there. I know there is.”
“Right.”
“Um, guys?” Brian interrupted, nervously.
“Yeah.”
“Feeling a little something on your left?”
Nick froze. “Oh fuck. How the hell are we supposed to get there now?”
“What about AJ and Kevin?” Howie looked behind them, hoping that the other van would spontaneously appear again.
“Dammit.”
“We’re going,” Nick said. “Second van.”
“You’re saying Chris is going to be kindly taken along to watch us fight aliens?” Brian hissed.
“Chris isn’t driving.”
“What?”
Nick opened the drivers’ door of the van. “Chris, man, we need a big favour.”
“What?”
“You’re going to have to get out.”
“What shit are you up to?”
“Please get out. I’ll give you money for cab fare back to the hotel. We just need you to get out right now.”
Brian grabbed his shoulder. “What to you think he’s going to say to the tabloids? How much are you going to throw away just to see her?” he whispered.
“What if she’s there and we’re not?” His eyes were uncharacteristically hard.
Brian turned away, and Nick’s eyes returned to Chris’ with the same determination.
“I don’t think you have the authority to remove me from the vehicle.”
Nick handed him a random wad of cash from his wallet. “Get out, and go back.”
“I don’t think so.”
Nick stood up straighter and leaned slightly forward, emphasizing his advantage of size and strength over a guy who drove vans for a living. Chris looked at the money, realized it would more than pay for his cab fare, and complied.
Nick jumped into the drivers’ seat while Brian and Howie climbed into the back. All three doors slammed shut at once. “Call Kevin,” Nick told Howie, and started the van.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
“Hello?”
“It’s time.” Howie’s voice was nervous.
“For what?”
“You know what.”
“I can’t really do that right now.”
“You have to.”
“You forget that there’s a driver and a bodyguard in here.”
“Kevin. The girl. What if we don’t get there?”
“Okay, that’s reasonable, but I don’t know how you expect-”
“Put AJ on.”
“What?”
“Put AJ on. Now.”
“Why?”
“Put him on.”
Kevin sighed in frustration and threw the phone over to AJ.
“Hello?”
“Hey.”
“Yo, D, what’s up?”
“It’s that time again.”
“Time for us to go to work, y’all?”
“If that’s how you wanna’ put it. Anyway, Kevin doesn’t seem to have any creative solutions to your problem.”
“What are you guys doing?”
“Oh, we kicked Chris out of the van, and Nick is speeding like hell, leaving angry motorists and soon- to-be police reports in his wake.”
“You let him drive?”
“It wasn’t really a group decision.”
“Ah.”
“We’re almost there, man. It’s the same park as last night. You gonna’ take care of this?”
“Raise some shit?”
“If necessary.”
“You know I’m up for it, D.” AJ hung up. “Yeah, Trevor, you’re going to have to turn onto Fountainhead, and then you’re going to stop the car, let us out, and wait there. Mike stays here too.”
“Say what? Does this have something to do with hookers?”
“This has nothing to do with hookers. You’re going to do it, however.”
“Uh, Mike. . .”
“You don’t understand, and I’m not about to let you understand,” AJ said to Mike. “But it would be wisest to let us go.”
“And if I don’t?” Mike crossed his arms across his imposing body mass.
“Then someone is probably going to die, and it’ll be our fault.”
Mike frowned. “Then I’m coming.”
“No can do, man.”
“What the fuck is going on?”
“I still don’t know,” Kevin sighed.
“This is Fountainhead. We’re getting out now.” AJ looked challengingly at the other passengers. Mike stared back for a few moments before looking away and opening the door.
“What the hell are you guys doing?” he called after them.
“Our civic duty.” AJ turned and started to run, followed by Kevin.
“Aren’t you going to go after them?” Trevor said.
“No. I’ve got a feeling about this, and that feeling is that I stay right the fuck here. And so do you.”
“I’m not going to argue with that.”
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
Josephine was in the park again, but this time no one else was there, and quite possibly no one else was coming. The reality of this sank into a tight, hard ball bobbing uneasily in her stomach. The lights along the pathway illuminated everything in an eerie, false way. She was standing in the same place she’d been attacked the night before; the jacket was gone, but the blood had remained. She looked at the base of the tree where the body had been. The space was empty. She wondered who cleaned up that kind of thing, and smiled briefly at the morbidity of the thought.
She turned back to the path and saw two of them. She knew they were classified as “them”, though they appeared to be two human males. Their appearance wavered from human to alien. Both facial expressions looked pissed off.
It felt like something was pressing on her brain. It quickly retreated, and she saw their expressions turn confused. “Where are the others?” one of them said, somehow in English.
She shrugged. “I don’t know.” She pressed the opal to her chest and let the extremes of temperature cover her for a few moments. It left her with a feeling of unnatural strength that she hadn’t noticed the first time in her confusion.
“So you’re alone.”
She shrugged again, definitely noncommittal. “I guess.”
“Certainly makes things easier, doesn’t it?”
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
The van tires screeched to a temporary halt. “Is that her?” Brian squinted into the darkness at a faraway illuminated figure in white.
“Yeah. Shit.” Nick turned the steering wheel sharply and jumped the curb, driving over the grass towards her.
“Oh dear Lord. . .”
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
They started coming towards her. One drew out a long, curved knife, the other an electronic device that she didn’t recognize, and edged towards her. She drew her broadsword and they moved around each other in a tight, choreographed circle. The first move was hers. She tried to strike the knife out of its hand. She failed, and the knife glanced off her shoulder, dangerously near to penetrating the bizarre plastic armour.
“This could be over very quickly,” the other one suggested.
“But it won’t be,” Josephine said brightly.
The rumble of a vehicle interrupted their standoff, as they jumped to the side just in time to clear the way for a plain white van going 140 kilometers an hour, narrowly missing a collision with a tree as it skidded to a stop.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
“You fucking moron! You come to save her and you almost kill her yourself?”
“Fuck off.” Nick took out the stone, pressed it to him, and as the warmth and subsequent coolness overwhelmed him he got out of the van. He glanced behind him to see Howie and Brian also in their suits. The girl turned and saw them, backing away from the aliens and closer to them.
“Get out of here,” Nick hissed at her.
“Make me.” She stared up at him.
“I don’t think you understand-”
“And I don’t think you do either.”
The magnets seemed to force their eyes apart and back to their enemies. The human face of the one with the unidentifiable device smiled, and pointed the small, unassuming box towards a tree. It pressed a button. A ball of distorted air, seemingly silver, hurtled towards the tree, breaking it in the middle with a deafening crack before falling and crushing the van.
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way,” it said, “as you say in movies.”
“You should leave,” Nick told her again. “Please.” His eyes darted from her face to crushed van to the alien.
“I want you to go.”
“Do you have any understanding of what this is?”
“Do you have any understanding of what I am?”
Her eyes were intense enough to make him turn away. He saw anger, deep sorrow, and a tenderness so vast that he could barely identify it. He didn’t see fear. “What I am.” By all laws of science, she should have died the night before, but she was alive next to him, held there by one thing and pushed away by another.
He was startled out of his thought by a laser blast which narrowly missed the box. “Kev?”
“Here.” He ran up next to them and looked at Josephine. “They weren’t too late?”
“No.” She glanced at Nick, this time without accusation. He almost reached for her hand before he realized the enormity of the action and decided against it.
With everyone present, the outcome of the fight seemed decided- six against two. The groups circled each other less cautiously. It was AJ who attempted to strike first. He fitted his bow with an arrow and shot it towards the one holding the small black box. As it was just about to hit the creature, a rippling wall of distorted air appeared and deflected it back where it had come from. He managed to duck as it flew where his head had just been.
“What the hell is that thing?” he said hoarsely.
The alien pointed it towards the van again. With the touch of another button, a red shaft of light caused it to disintegrate into a small pile of unrecognizable, compact rubble. Heat drifted across the park towards them in a malevolent wave.
Kevin attempted to shoot through the force, only visible when it was touched. The beam of his gun was turned backwards on him, and narrowly missed his body.
“How are we supposed to fight this?” he asked. No one answered him.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
The creature looked down at a set of meters on the box. It had been careless with displays of power; and now the device would not be good for much longer. At least one of them needed to die by it to make it worth the investment. The blond one in green seemed stunned at the situation- an easy target- and his death would surely affect the woman he’d been arguing with.
It pressed a button.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
Josephine saw another ball of warped silver, this time aimed for Nick, leaving a trail of silver ripples. This is the right thing, no matter what happens. You knew, didn’t you? You knew. . . no time now. . .. She coiled for a moment before pushing off and sideways towards him. Someone grabbed her arm and she shook him off. She deserved this much, to give her life for him, because hers hadn’t mattered for a long time. There was no sound as she was flying, just a slowing of time.
The force had been aimed for his chest. She wasn’t going to catch enough of it to help him so she twisted her shoulder upward and held her arm across her face. The ball struck her body and there was an explosion of violent blackness.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
As it struck her, some of the force deflected and made Nick stagger backwards. He stepped forward again, but not in time to catch her, and her limp body slid across the gravel with a horrendous grinding noise. The others stepped back to see what had happened, and when they saw Nick staring at her body they formed a wall several feet in front of him and did not call him back to them. If they did, he never heard.
When he bent down and rolled her over, he saw a bloody scrape on her cheek. He gently brushed the dirt and stones out of it.
She was dying. She was unconscious, barely breathing at all, and when he worked his hand inside her glove to take her pulse he found it sluggish and weak. The magnets too had weakened, and there was nearly no repulsion between them.
“It’s not fair,” he said. “I don’t even know your name.”
She laid there, unresponding, the first time he’d ever seen her without sorrow in her face. Despite himself, he started to cry. You can’t show me heaven and then never let me in. . .
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
They were stunned at her choice to take the blow for him. It was the first time they’d seen someone do this sort of thing. They wondered if his life was worth more here.
The meters were dangerously low. The force field would not operate. One of them wondered if a larger crew would have been a better idea. Their enemies had obviously been underestimated.
*** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** *** ***
The aliens seemed distracted by Nick, and Howie lunged at the device, swinging downwards with his axe. Before the creature could activate it to defend itself, the box was cleaved in two, sending out a shower of sparks.
Now things became simpler. Howie attacked the defenseless one while Brian dispatched the other. Howie found himself swinging long after it was necessary and stepped backwards from the mangled corpse, breathing heavily, ashamed of his own brutality. The others weren’t next to him when he finished and he turned to see them in a tight cluster around Nick. They were uncharacteristically silent. When he entered their circle, he saw the girl’s body cradled in Nick’s arms. She was no longer superhuman, but mortally fragile. Nick was crying soundlessly.
“She’s dying, D,” he choked. It was the first thing he’d said since they went to him. “I don’t even know her name. . .”
“Call 911.” Even Kevin was struggling to remain in control of the situation, awed by his friend’s grief.
Howie removed the orange stone from its berth and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. He dialed the number and selected the ambulance option. “A girl, unconscious. . . the park on Fountainhead. . . no I don’t know her. . . on the path. . . I don’t know, she was just there. . . okay. . . okay. . . thanks.” He closed the phone. “The ambulance is coming. Apparently the hospital is close by. You’re not supposed to move her from where she fell, Nick.”
He blinked at Howie a few times before he understood. “Oh. Whoops.” He laid her down on the path again, saddened by the indignity of letting the rocks dig into her back. A few strands of dark hair had fallen into the scrape on her face and he pulled them free of the blood.
“Tell me she’s going to be okay. She’s gonna’ be okay, right?” Nick looked at their faces, searching for comfort and finding only silence. He looked back down at her face and opened his mouth as if to say something, but he couldn’t speak.
”You should call Mike and Trevor. They’re in the van parked on the street,” AJ said softly. Any loud noise seemed like sacrilege. Howie walked away from the group as he talked so as not to disturb Nick.
“You need to take the stone out,” Brian gently reminded Nick.
“Yeah.” He took it out and put it in the pocket of his jeans, hoping he would return it to her later. She looked even more defenseless now, the smallness of her body exaggerated by the oversized hockey jersey she was wearing, her face seeming so much younger now that her eyes were closed.
Sirens screamed obscenely through the night. “You’re gonna’ have to let her go,” Brian said.
Nick bent down further to kiss her unbloodied cheek, then took her hand and squeezed it as he whispered in her ear. “You can’t show me heaven and then never let me in.”
He let go of her hand and stood up as the ambulance
lights started to dye them all red.
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