Last Ascension Read online

  One second, she scurried across the street; the next, she collided into what felt like a solid piece of wall. She gasped and fell backwards. A hand stretched out, catching her before she fell.

  “You"re okay,” a deep voice told her when he set her on her feet. Her hood slipped off, and she stared into the bluest eyes she had ever seen.

  “I didn"t see you. I"m sorry.” And how she could have missed him blew her mind. Even looking at the ground, he had such a presence she should have noticed him. Unless she was so out of it she shouldn"t even allow herself to cross streets.

  He ran his hand through his blond hair before he rubbed his chin. “No, my fault. I came in rather suddenly. You couldn"t have seen me.”

  “Oh.” What a strange answer. Who was she calling strange? She was the odd one. Who was odder than her? “Well, I"m glad we"re both fine.”

  “Right.” He nodded. “Let me ask you something. Did you hear anyone screaming over here?

  I thought I heard a woman calling for help in this direction.”

  He wanted to know if someone yelled? Didn"t he realize where he stood? Hollering seemed to be the norm in this neighborhood. “No, but there is almost always someone calling for help.

  All the time. Are you looking for someone in particular? I mean, not that I know anyone, I don"t.

  Well, sorry I can"t help. Got to go.”

  She turned on her heel, wanting to flee, but he took her arm. “Wait a second.”

  Margot yanked her arm away. “Don"t ever grab me.”

  “Okay.” He retreated a step, hands in the air as if she were a mugger. “I"m not trying to hurt you. I swear. I wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  She breathed heavily. The warning inscribed on the note weighed on her. Don’t trust anyone. Who was this dude? Where had he come from? She needed to get away from him—to flee immediately.

  “I"m fine. It"s none of your concern. Stay away from me.”

  Blondie raised an eyebrow. He had great cheekbones to go with what had to be a six-foot-five frame. The man was built akin to a Greek god. She shook her head. Maybe girls who weren"t crazy could think thoughts about men. But not her.

  “Are you okay?” He cocked his head to the side when he asked the question, almost as if he considered her when he spoke, as if she were a fine painting he wanted to see from many angles.

  She wished he hadn"t.

  No one should look in her direction or at her. Ever.

  The temptation to tell him swept over her. Other than the clerks at the convenience store, she hadn"t spoken to anyone in weeks. He might even believe her if she told him how she opened her eyes one day and didn"t remember anything. Of course, maybe he could very well walk away from the crazy lady and pretend he"d never seen her.

  “I"m fine.” She tried to smile, but her chin wobbled. If he cared to really analyze her words, she suspected he"d find them not convincing. But what did she know? In this case, nothing at all.

  Maybe she was the best actress ever.

  “Well.” He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back and forth on his feet. “My name is Lael Hudson. I work over on Eighth Street at the food kitchen. I"m not out front usually. I"m the manager of the place.”

  Why was he telling her all of this? “Okay.”

  “If you need anything come and see me.” He didn"t ask her to come; he ordered, and she wondered if he was the type of guy who expected obedience.

  “I won"t.” Please stay away from me. I can’t talk to people. It’s too dangerous. Even if you’re harmless, I can’t let them get you.

  He smiled, a crooked grin. “Well, a guy can dream.”

  Her cheeks heated. She should not be standing on the street flirting with a stranger. “Bye.”

  This time, when she walked away, he didn"t try to stop her. She rounded the corner and pushed up against one of the walls of the buildings. Passing her own apartment had been her only choice. If Lael watched, she didn"t want him to figure out where she lived. Margot counted to ten, making herself wait before she poked around the corner to see if Blondie still stood there.

  In another life, she"d have reached out and touched the slight growth of blond hair on his chin. The whiskers would have felt rough, and she could have savored the sensation for the rest of the night.

  Margot checked around the corner. Lael was gone. She took a deep steadying breath and tried to get her hands to stop shaking. Why did she feel disappointed he"d left? Thinking he might stay to find out more about her constituted paranoia.

  He was simply a nice guy who worked in a food bank and offered to help her. Maybe he was a freaky-deaky cult guy. If she went over there, they"d try to convert her, and she"d end up wearing white and passing out pamphlets at the airport.

  She chewed her lower lip while she made her way into her apartment building. He hadn"t seemed the cult type, not that she knew much about people who were in them. Truth was, she had no idea why she knew anything about it at all.

  The problem with no memory was the lack left everything a blank. Her whole life before stretched behind her—one long hallway of emptiness.

  Chapter Two

  Lael watched the woman disappear into her apartment building from the roof across the street. The high winds blew at her hair, and he hoped she had something warmer to wear for the winter headed their way soon. Her heart rate had kicked up while they talked, which had told him to leave her alone, but the plea for help in her brown eyes had burned his soul.

  He wasn"t a Guardian anymore, but the need to help others had been imprinted on him years earlier. She needed someone to care, and, whether she knew he assisted her or not, he had to help her in some way.

  The no-name-given redhead didn"t belong on the tough streets. Although dark circles marred her eyes, she possessed an undeniable element of innocence. Her stare wasn"t hard or empty, and the soft glow of her skin spoke of health. He guessed her age to be somewhere around twenty, but she might be older. It was hard to tell.

  One thing was certain. She hadn"t been living the way she was now for very long. Her stomach rumbled, and he heard it from across the street. She needed to eat more.

  Until recently, someone had taken care of her.

  Why had they stopped?

  He rolled his eyes at his own musings. It wasn"t as though he"d be able to help her. Why did he think he could? He hadn"t even been qualified when he"d been a member of Powers, Inc. Just plain old non-Guardian Lael Hudson was virtually useless to anyone. He should just mind his own business and leave the girl alone.

  But, even as he pondered all the valid reasons why he should stay away, he knew they didn"t matter. She needed him. If he could offer her assistance, he had to try.

  Lael scanned the street. He didn"t want to get caught jumping down off the roof. When he didn"t spot or feel any eyes on him, he took off into the air. The exhilaration of air flight filled his blood, and, even though it was a short jaunt from the roof of the apartment building to the roof of the homeless food kitchen, it felt good to let loose and move above street level.

  It had been four months since he"d quit his job and left his family. He didn"t even have a cell phone anymore. He"d called himself Hudson with the girl, but, in his new role in life, he was Lael Jones. No one asked him for too much verification, and, with his years of hacking to provide support, he knew how to forge enough documents to get by.

  His flights to the sky had been few and far between.

  But, then again, soaring through the heavens had become a love-hate experience for him since he"d dropped June and ended her life on her sixteenth birthday.

  Lael landed with a gentle thud, then made his way downstairs from the roof to the main kitchen where he worked.

  The smells of cooking food wafted to his nose, and he smiled. They didn"t have much to work with here, surviving with minimum state funding, grants, and donations from the public.

  But what they had they made good use of. It helped that his sister-in-law had taught him how to cook. Alic
e Styles hadn"t become the queen of cooking by not having talent in the kitchen. She"d insisted he and his nieces and nephews knew how to prepare food.

  Even if all they could make was beans and chicken, he"d make sure the people who ate there enjoyed the best beans and chicken they"d ever consumed.

  “How are we doing?” He bent over one of the chefs to see how the stew was coming.

  Marcus stirred the pot and smiled at him. “Good, boss. How was your break?”

  “Fine.” Lael shrugged. “Everything good?”

  Marcus was a recovering alcoholic who didn"t get to see his wife and kids. When Marcus had disappeared on a drunken binge, his wife had taken their children and moved across country.

  Right now, the other man was in full on recovery mode.

  Most of Lael"s co-workers were and so, he supposed, was he in his own way. They were all trying to rebuild their lives together.

  “All is well. It"ll be the usual crunch right before dinner, but we"ll make it.”

  Lael leaned against the wall. There were papers to fill out and a grant application to write for more money. He"d get to it, even if he had to stay late. It wasn"t as if he had a million things pending or anyone who required him to get home. His nightly order of Chinese food and Jimmy Fallon on television could wait.

  He scanned the room. Something had made him edgy all day, and he"d spent enough time around his brothers to understand he shouldn"t ignore his senses. Everything seemed fine except for Henry. The man hadn"t shown up for work, which was unusual.

  “Hey Marcus, where"s Henry?”

  Marcus and Henry usually went to meetings together after work.

  Marcus shook his head. “The boy has disappeared.”

  Only fifty-year-old Marcus would call thirty-year-old Henry a boy.

  “Really? Doesn"t seem typical for Henry.”

  “I know.” Marcus stepped away from the stove. Sweat dripped down his face, and he used a paper towel to wipe it away. His dark gaze was sad when he faced Lael. “He was doing well.

  Working the program. I thought he was on track. But I guess he"s fallen off. My guess is, if you find a meth dealer nearby, you"ll find Henry.”

  “Right.” Losing one of his to drugs or apathy didn"t sit well with Lael. He wasn"t an expert and would never pretend to be, but Henry had been making plans. He"d saved enough, and he wanted to go see the Grand Canyon. The guy had been talking about riding a donkey for months.

  “I never get used to the sight.” Marcus pointed to the television hanging on the wall. It was a small machine, and sometimes it didn"t work at all. but when Lael could make it work, the staff appreciated having it there.

  Lael followed his gaze to the screen. Shots of Ace, Draco, and some of the others fighting off a giant slug monster filled the screen. Lael"s pulse shot up and he forced his respiration to slow so his heart rate calmed. His brothers had managed the unthinkable before. This wasn"t even their first amphibian problem. If he"d been there, they"d have made him wait on the sidewalk. No one needed his help. Where were they?

  He checked out the background of the fight until he recognized the location. Having travelled nearly everywhere, he had a pretty good sense of locations when he saw them on TV. It was hard, for example, to believe a show took place in New Orleans if he knew the streets he looked at were in Vancouver.

  Right then, he got a good look at the landscape behind them. Draco and Ace battled the beast in Hawaii.

  Lael clenched his jaw and looked away. There was food to serve. Fighting monsters was their life. Feeding the hungry was his.

  Marcus snorted. “Must be nice. They"re going to get to bill the country for this. Make a fortune. Some people think they bring out the monsters themselves to make a buck.”

  It was an old story and one he"d heard for years. Draco had started Powers, Inc. to give Guardians some security. It was incredibly hard to maintain a secret identity, work real jobs to pay bills, and help people using their super human powers. Powers, Inc. had been Draco and Ace"s solution to the problem. Get paid to be Guardians, bill for services, and have health insurance. It didn"t fit the traditional idea of altruistic service of the Guardian.

  Too often, the masses forgot anyone could petition for help through their charity department.

  The Guardians all did a fair amount of free work. But no one ever focused on what they gave—

  and, in some instances, sacrificed. In any case, it was no longer his problem.

  “Sounds crazy, Marcus.” He feigned amusement. Easier to distract and deflect the

  conversation with humor than scorn. “Why bother making the world nuttier? Things are bad enough already. Trust me, my mom got blown up when I was a kid, but not before she went completely off her rocker and started screaming to anyone who would listen aliens were coming to take over everything. She wasn"t special or gifted. Just a normal woman who couldn"t control her imagination. We don"t need more cray-cray in the world. I"m going to assume the Guardians aren"t adding to it.”

  “So what you"re saying, son, is you"re probably two months away from going completely off your rocker.”

  Lael laughed. It had been a long time since anyone had said something funny to him.

  “Exactly. Any second now I"ll start wearing a tutu and running around singing the Sound of Music.”

  “As long as you"re not naked, then we"re all good.”

  “I think everyone prefers I keep my clothes right where they belong.” He shook his head.

  “But this Henry thing. He went missing. Anyone else not shown up? Maybe before I started here?”

  Marcus patted him on the arm. “That"s the nature of this place. It"s transient. We"re all just passing through. Living in a neighborhood that should have long ago died when the factories closed. Holding on as if it might ever get better. When what we"re really hoping is we"ll get better ourselves.”

  Lael took a second before he spoke. “Deep, man. I mean it. Maybe you should write

  philosophy.”

  His co-worker laughed and walked over to the stove. “Who knew you were funny, kid?”

  Not Lael, that was for sure. "Funny" had never been a word anyone had used to describe him. Intense, moody, troubled, damaged. They all applied. He turned to walk into his office.

  “Oh, Lael?” Marcus called out to him.

  He stopped and stared at Marcus. “Yeah?”

  “How did your mother get blown up?”

  “A bomb.” He left the man to his work, walked into his office, and closed the door. Just then might have been the only time in his entire existence he answered with the truth when asked what had happened to his mother. He"d had a slew of good stories about her over the years, including one where she was spinning silk in the streets of San Francisco. But never the truth.

  His mother had gone boom, killed by people who were part of the Organization—a group dedicated to killing Draco Powers and other Guardians.

  Not talking about her was just one of many ways Lael denied his early years . Who his brothers were, where and how they lived, whom they were married to, who his nieces and nephews were, and their true names were all things he could never reveal either. They were lies

  told for no other reason than protection. The innocent had to be protected, or they would be at risk for simply knowing the Guardians.

  His skin tingled. The truth—what a strange concept. He"d opened his mouth, and he spoken what was real. A man could get used to it.

  He crossed to his desk and sat down. It was a small office, but it was his. He was good at his job, and there was pride to be taken in knowing, even though he"d never be a Guardian, he could help in his way.

  But this thing with Henry bothered him. He drummed his fingers on his desk. If he was still at Powers, Inc. he"d have called for his Handler and asked for some help with research, but here he was on his own. If he really wanted answers—and as the minutes passed he did more and more—he"d have to get some results on his own. Someone had to find Henry. He would jus
t have to be that someone.

  ****

  Margot woke with a jolt. She"d actually managed to sleep for a few hours, and now her neck had a crick. She rubbed the spot, trying to loosen the taut muscles.

  She"d had the strangest dreams. Lots of lights and strange people talking to her. Some of them had weird faces. Their noses were flat and their ears green. She rubbed at her eyes. If rest came with nightmares, then she"d prefer to continue to do without.

  Even though her neck still hurt, she had to get moving. The beef jerky was all gone, and she needed to find food. Her note had advised her not to trust anyone, but, unless she planned to starve, she had to work, and therefore people were necessary. At some point, bills might start arriving, too. Or maybe they"d never come. She had no idea. Did she have a mailbox somewhere, and who owned this place?

  She bathed using the bucket on the floor that somewhat resembled a tub. If she only tried to get part of herself in it at once, then it actually worked. Sometimes it gave her hot water; sometimes it didn"t. And the water had a yellow tinge she"d rather not dwell on. Feeling lucky she could clean herself at all, she got out of the water, dried off with the small towel she had gotten at the convenience store, and dressed in her second t-shirt bearing a picture of a hot dog and her sweatpants.

  As had become her routine, she walked to the sink and washed her clothes from the day before in the same yellow water. She needed to make what laundry detergent she had last, and she hoped she used enough to actually get her clothing clean. When it was done, and she wrung out the excess water and hung them over the bathtub to drip-dry.

  Her mother would be proud. She"d always wanted her to be the kind of woman who could take care of herself.

  Margot froze. She"d had a memory. Sort of. A recollection of something banal and yet elusive regarding a member of her family.

  She had a mother. Well, of course she did. Every human on earth had a mother. They were a necessity to actually existing, but she had a mother who desired something for Margot and Margot could remember it.