A Touch of Truth by Bella Forrest
“Useful for what?” the girl responded. “We don’t need anyone.”
Still, the boy stayed where he was. “Fire is always useful,” he replied, even as his eyes settled on me again.
The girl breathed out in frustration. “I don’t like this. I really don’t like this.”
“If she starts turning, we can always leave her behind,” he replied. “What’s the harm?”
The girl continued to glare at him.
But the boy already seemed to have made up his mind. “Come on, Maura,” he pressed. “I said we can dump her if we have to.”
Dump me. Like a pile of trash. Not that I could blame them.
My heart soared with relief as Orlando moved toward me. He wrinkled his nose as he eyed my wounds. Then he said, “Keep your head down.”
I wasn’t sure why he would ask me to do this, but I wasn’t about to argue. I leaned my head closer to the metal ruts of the ladder.
He shifted a dial on his remote and the rotor blades sped up, sending the substance spraying in all directions—including all three of our faces. Only mine wasn’t covered by a mask.
The wheel moved past me and tilted sideways before heading up the tunnel above me, through the round sewer hole, and up into the street where it continued to hum.
“All right, it’s safe to climb out now,” he said.
He gripped the first rung and nudged me in the back to start moving up. Something I didn’t exactly appreciate considering how much pain I was in.
Gritting my teeth, I forced myself to climb. As I moved higher, rain began to splatter heavily on my head—rain that was previously a nightmare was now a relief. It helped to wash off the grime I was coated with.
The rotor blades whirred above my head as I pulled myself out of the drain and rolled out onto the street. I glanced around fearfully for more Bloodless. But this drain was situated in between a large vehicle and a wall, so I could not see if any were approaching yet.
The girl and the boy climbed up next to me. I struggled to rip my bloody lower pants to free the skin on my leg. Orlando assisted me, withdrawing a Swiss Army knife from his pocket. He cut through the fabric, and I had full view of the damage inflicted by the Bloodless. I felt queasy as I stared down at four deep puncture marks that had ripped wider left and right in my flesh—due to my attempts to pull away from the monsters while still in their grasp.
At least I could be grateful for one thing. It seemed that Orlando was correct—I wasn’t showing signs of turning… yet. I felt dizzy and nauseous from the pain, and it felt like all I wanted to do was throw up. But I hadn’t started shaking yet, and there was no burning sensation running across my skin…
“Well, what now, Captain Genius?” the girl murmured sourly.
“Shut up, Maura,” Orlando snapped. “You know what we have to do next.” He moved over to me and placed an arm around my waist before pulling me upright.
“It’s a serious question,” Maura responded, sounding equally annoyed. “How are we ever going to get back with her like this?”
“You can still walk, right?” Orlando addressed me, his dark eyes digging into mine.
I nodded. I could, though it was painful—my legs were not paralyzed.
Orlando turned to Maura. “Then if she can walk, she can glide.”
Grace
“If she can walk, she can glide.”
I hadn’t the slightest clue what Orlando had meant by that, but I didn’t have to wonder long. He kept one arm around me in support while he worked the remote with the other hand. The three of us moved around the vehicle blocking our view and looked up and down the street for Bloodless. There were none that we could spot, but he kept the blade-wheel circling protectively around us all the same. I could only wonder how these people had gotten hold of such a device… and who the heck these people were, for that matter.
They led me to the other side of the road, and we moved down an alleyway. At the end we reached a narrow external staircase that climbed up a gray-walled skyscraper. I stared upward at the building’s dizzying height. I was nervous as Orlando and Maura moved me to the first step, and we began to climb.
“Uh, how far up do we go exactly?” I rasped.
“To the top,” Orlando grunted.
As we began to climb, from the speed at which they both were climbing, I could tell that they were human. Though my speed wasn’t even a match for theirs. Orlando soon realized that he had underestimated my strength as I lagged after the second flight.
“Get on my back,” he ordered, turning to me.
“You’d better not slip in this rain,” Maura mumbled.
Orlando ignored her comment and helped me climb onto him. He was taller than me, but he hardly felt stronger as I wrapped my arms around his shoulders. His build felt slim and narrow beneath me. As we wound higher and higher, he had to stop more than a dozen times to catch his breath, even setting me down on the steps for a minute or so while he regained his stamina. All the while, the rotor blades followed us.
Finally, we reached the top of the stairs. The rain continued to hammer against us, and a strong wind blew fiercely. I was truly impressed at the craftsmanship of the wheel—how it managed to stay where Orlando guided it, even against this resistance.
When we arrived on a sprawling roof, we were all thoroughly drenched. This meant that at least my wounds had been cleaned, even though I felt frozen to the bone. Worryingly, however, the bite marks were still stinging.
Were the Bloodless only sucking blood from me? Or did they try to turn me?
I didn’t know if their biology worked the same way as regular vampires’.
I was distracted from my worries as I gazed around the open rooftop. This was the best view of this wrecked Chicago I’d had so far.
Why had this duo brought me up here?
Had they really been the ones to save me from the river in the first place?
Who were they?
I had so many questions, but now was not the time to ask them.
Orlando lowered me to my feet. They led me toward the edge of the roof, where a thick metal cable was attached. The cable was strung from this skyscraper to the neighboring one, a street away.
Maura reached for the thick belt wrapped around her waist and unclasped a small compartment at its front, which I had previously assumed to just be a metal buckle. A hook was situated beneath it, and as she tugged on it, I realized that the hook was attached to a wire, about four feet long.
My jaw dropped as she leapt onto the ledge. Crouching over, she fastened her hook to the cable. Then she leapt off, launching into a terrifying glide over God knew how many feet, until her feet collided with the building opposite us. She clambered up over its ledge and rolled over, disappearing from view.
My heart was thumping as Orlando approached the wire. He released the hook from his own belt and proceeded to do exactly the same as Maura. But before he swung off, he cast a glance down at me.
“I can’t risk traveling with you like this,” he said sternly. “If you want to come with us, you’re going to have to do this yourself.”
I stopped breathing for a few seconds.
“I’ll throw back my belt and hook to you once I’m on the other side,” he went on. “Make sure you catch it.”
My heart was in my throat as he leapt off and glided the distance to the other building.
I might be half supernatural, but I still had fears. This was… insane.
Now that I eyed the buildings surrounding us, I realized that many of them had cables attached, interconnecting them just like this one. Maybe this was how Maura and Orlando—and whatever other non-Bloodless lived out here—got around. I guessed it was safer than traveling by foot on the ground… at least safer from Bloodless.
As I neared the ledge, it sure didn’t feel like there was anything safe about what I was about to attempt.
Once Orlando had lowered himself onto the opposite roof, he did as he said he would—removed his belt and hurled it
My hands were trembling as I stood next to the cable. I dared not peer over the edge. I felt vertigo just imagining the height without gaining an actual glimpse of the distant ground.
God. Am I really going to do this?
How am I going to do this?
But I had no choice. I couldn’t stay alone up here on this roof.
I wrapped the belt around my waist and adjusted it to my size. The buckle was already opened, the hook ready to use. One less thing for me to do. One less excuse to procrastinate.
I winced and raised myself to the slippery ledge. I pulled out the hook and fastened it to the cable. My palms were sweating as I trained my eyes on the opposite building.
Well. Here goes nothing…
Grace
I could have sworn that my life flashed before me as I went flying off the roof of the building. For several harrowing seconds, as I rocked violently from side to side from the force of my launch, I feared that I had not attached the hook properly and I was about to hurtle down to the ground in a gut-mangling freefall.
What happened was only slightly less terrifying.
Now that I was out in the open, exposed to the horrifying drop, my eyes could not help but shoot down to gauge the distance. It felt like my heart might stop.
But then my feet hit against the other building, shooting agonizing pains up my already injured legs. Orlando reached down to me and gripped my forearms. He hauled me upward, over the edge, and rolled me down onto the roof. Onto a beautiful, hard, flat surface. And it was all over.
As he dipped down to detach his belt from my waist, I realized that I was shaking all over—not because I was turning (at least, I hoped not)—but because of the shock. Even the leap I’d made over the IBSI’s fence had not felt as scary as that. For one thing, there had been water on the other side.
It took me several moments to regain composure. Breathing heavily, I sat up straight and slopped back my wet hair away from my face. I gazed up at my two companions.
Orlando was in the process of navigating the blade-wheel over to us from the roof we’d just left. And they had both removed their masks. For the first time, I had a full view of their faces. Faces that took me aback. It was clearer than ever that they were siblings—other than their eye color, they shared similar facial features: the same sharp, slightly hooked nose, thin, small lips, and longish faces. But that wasn’t why I was gaping.
They were pale. Too pale to be humans. And their skin appeared thin. I could practically make out the veins beneath it, even through the gloom. Their dark hair, which almost matched their eye color, was cropped short. But it looked thin—for both of them. I could almost see their scalps beneath it. And their lips were an odd color—almost the color of someone who’d gotten frostbite. Slightly blue and purple. It struck me all of a sudden just how much their sickly appearance reminded me of Lawrence.
Orlando’s brows were heavy and severe, forming almost a unibrow when he frowned, as he was doing now.
“Wh-Who are you?” I stammered.
“There may be time for that later,” Orlando replied.
May be time… I found his phrasing discomforting.
“We need to keep moving,” Maura pressed.
They both put on their masks after breathing in deep, concealing their faces once again.
Before I could utter another word, Orlando grabbed my right arm and pulled me none too gently to my feet.
Then, to my deep despair, they led me to the other side of the roof, attached to which was another dreaded cable leading to the next roof. Maura mounted it, attaching the hook before launching off and ziplining to the building opposite.
Oh, no.
Orlando seemed to catch the crestfallen expression on my face.
“Yes,” he said, pointedly. “We have some way to go yet.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Back to base,” he replied even as he attached his own hook to the cable and launched off.
Where is “base”?
I was leery of anyone using the word “base” by now. It made me think instantly of the hunters’ headquarters.
Once Orlando reached the other side, he threw me back his belt. And once again, I was forced to undergo the traumatic process of ziplining from one building to the other. As I hit the other side and Orlando helped me climb onto it, I couldn’t help but ask, “Why not just travel on the ground? You have a powerful weapon.” I eyed the rotor that Orlando was coaxing along with us.
“It’s for use in emergencies,” he replied, before the three of us walked to the other side of this third building. “Besides, although it can be effective on small crowds, it’s way too risky to rely on for large ones. Sometimes the rotor breaks down.”
Large crowds. The crowd that had been chasing me had appeared to be large in my eyes. I dreaded to think what Orlando’s definition of “large” was.
No more words were spoken as we continued traveling from building to building. After the fifth stretch, I hoped that I would’ve gotten a bit more used to it, but each one was as hair-raising as the last. I found myself constantly expecting something to go wrong: for the safety belt to give way, for the cable to snap… Finally, after what felt like over twenty rooftops, we stopped in the center of a roof.
I was still alive. Shivering from cold and still in gut-wrenching pain from the stinging in my legs, but alive.
Relief washed over me as Orlando and Maura did not move to the ledge of this building, as I’d been expecting them to. Instead, they headed to a door, which I guessed led down into the building. It was secured with a heavy-duty lock. Maura withdrew a key from one of the many small compartments in her wide belt and unlocked the door. Orlando lowered the blade-wheel to the floor and stalled it before picking it up. We stepped inside, out of the pounding rain, and emerged at the top of a rundown stairwell whose olive-green walls were peeling. Maura quickly slammed the door shut behind us and locked it again. She began hurrying down the stairs with Orlando following after her. I, however, could not move so quickly. The gliding certainly had not done any favors for my injuries, and I was only able to move at half of their pace. Orlando, appearing quite exhausted himself, did not offer to carry me again. Instead the pair slowed down a little, so that I would not get so far behind.
Thankfully, they stopped after two flights of stairs. We parted from the staircase through a brown doorway and emerged in a narrow hallway, so narrow that it would be a stretch to fit two people walking side by side.
I couldn’t help but wonder what this building was, but I had too many other mysteries to wonder about to dwell on this one long.
We stopped about halfway along the hallway, where Maura and Orlando’s eyes rose to the ceiling. Paranoid, I feared for a moment that they had spotted a snoozing Bloodless… but no, thank God. They were gazing up at a trapdoor.
Orlando removed the hook from his belt and, with perfect aim, threw it up to the ceiling where it connected with a metal loop that was attached to the trapdoor. He pulled downward hard, and the door dropped open. Then Orlando dropped to his knees and Maura climbed onto his shoulders before he stood again on slightly unsteady feet. She reached up into the hole in the ceiling and grabbed hold of something. A sliding ladder. She drew it down to the ground as Orlando lowered to his knees with her. Removing herself from his shoulders, Maura steadied the ladder on the floor and then began climbing up.
Once she was halfway up the ladder, Orlando gestured for me to follow, which I did eagerly. The thought of escaping to somewhere safe—however dark or damp or cramped it might be—was incredibly appealing to me. As long as it was dry and Bloodless-free, I would find relief there.
Indeed, the loft I entered as I reached the top of the ladder was both of these things. It was also a much nicer-looking loft than the one I had woken up in some hours ago. Well, nice might be too strong a word for it, but it
“Who are you?” I asked.
Maura and Orlando took their time in answering. Orlando set the blade-wheel down in one corner. They both removed their masks again and placed them on the table. Then they removed their jackets and headed to the narrow door. As they stepped inside it, the lamp light revealed that it was indeed a bathroom. It held a toilet, a small sink, and a shower. Is there running water in this place? If there was no electricity, I didn’t understand why there would be running water.
Orlando and Maura pulled off their soiled pants, stripping to their underwear and dumping the pants in the bathtub. They did the same with their jackets, socks and tops, until they wore nothing but their underwear. With such an extensive view of their bodies, I could see just how emaciated they looked. It really was a wonder they were able to pull off the stunts they did.
Finally, they removed their gloves. My eyes bulged as I caught sight of their hands. Of their fingers. They… they had no fingernails.
“Guys,” I said, my breathing quickening. “Please, give me some answers. Who are you? Are you the ones who saved me from the river and put me up in that old loft? Please, answer me.”