Collide (29 page)

“We all need to get together and talk.”

“We all need to get together and figure out
what’s going on.”

I rolled my eyes when I got the texts back to
back and wrote in return, “What have I been saying for the last,
oh, month?!”

There was silence from their end until my
phone rang. I jumped and nearly dropped it in surprise. I checked
the ID and answered when I saw it was Maria.

“Hey,” she said. “You still sound like a frog
that’s been run over by a truck. Twice.”

“Thanks a lot,” I snorted.

“I see the sarcasm is still intact, though.
That’s good,” she said and her voice gave away the smile that I
knew graced her features.

“Yeah, yeah, you’d be lost without my sarcasm
to drown in,” I said.

“Truer words have never been spoken,” she
laughed. “Do you think you can come over tomorrow around twelve
thirty?”

“It’s Monday,” I protested.

“Teacher Work Day,” she said, and I looked at
my wall calendar and saw that she was right.

“Mom’s going to be out, and while I’m
confined to my room because I’m sick, I thought it would be a good
time to try and get you, Akira and Dellar here so that we can maybe
get to the bottom of just what’s going on. I don’t want to worry
you more than you already are, but you’ll just hurt me if I try to
keep it from you again, so I’ll just tell you now. I’m starting to
get worse, Jane. The times when I feel separated from my body are
starting to happen more frequently. I’m feeling far more run down
than I ever have before and when I wake up I find that I’ve done
weird things without being aware of it.”

“What kind of things?” I asked as I
frowned.

“I’ve pulled books off the shelf and formed
patterns or towers with them on the floor, there will be words
scribbled on pages that I don’t recognize, and Mom said that I
threw a glass at her head. I told her I was having a fever-induced
nightmare at the time, but I’m starting to get really scared. This
is worse than when I first found out that I was no longer
alive.”

I winced at how matter of fact she sounded
making that type of statement, but I suppose she had had a longer
time to get used to it than I had, and taking into consideration
that she actually had to exist with that knowledge probably helped
her accept her state of being that much faster. It still didn’t
change the fact that I had to fight off the urge to bawl and scream
and stamp my feet about how unfair it all was, but fight it off I
did.

“I’m free, and I think I can get Mom to
release me from my tower if I tell her that I’m going to be
visiting you. It might help if I mention that Akira will be meeting
me there so that we can use you as our sounding board for how our
presentation will sound when we finish Mr. Miller’s project,” I
mused.

“Sounds good. I’ll let Mom know that you two
are coming over to work on your presentation so that if she comes
home early she won’t be surprised by your being in my room. The
only one I’d have to explain is Dellar, but he’s good at ducking
and covering when needed.”

“Good,” I said, unable to prevent the dark,
wary tone that entered my croaky voice. “Because I want to know
just what all that is about and I want the truth.”

“I’ll try to explain it, but I don’t
understand everything,” Maria said, and I nodded, which was rather
silly since she couldn’t see me, but I knew she would have
understood if she had seen the gesture.

“It’s a promise,” I said.

We said our good-byes and hung up. I stared
at the phone for a moment, debated about calling but gave up and
fired off a text to Akira telling him that Maria wanted us over at
her house around twelve thirty if he could make it. I called myself
a coward many times as I typed the words, but for now I wanted to
err on the side of caution and I just did not feel like dealing
with my own confused thoughts and emotions when I knew a clear head
would be needed tomorrow to piece together a possible answer. And
if an answer couldn’t be found, then maybe we could come up with a
solution to the
Gaki
problem. Because it had become very
obvious to me as I thought about all of Maria’s changes, mood
swings and blank out sessions that this being needed to be removed
from this existence. I just didn’t know how to do it, but I wasn’t
alone and I didn’t have to come up with a plan by myself.

I sighed when Akira texted back that he’d be
there, and then got to my feet and wandered downstairs. It was time
to convince Mom to release me from my tower and unleash me upon the
world once again. Or just to Maria’s house, whichever came
first.

Mom was rather easy to convince to let me go
to Maria’s, though I believe that the whole “we need to practice
presenting before the big day” mini freak out that I managed to
work myself into helped a lot. It was true, we had our research,
the paper was coming along nicely, but we had yet to really work on
putting together our presentation, and those were almost always the
most stressful part of a group project. I hoped that, along with
working on a solution to our big problem, we really would get a
chance to go over ideas for the big day.

The only car in the driveway was Maria’s, and
I let myself in the front door without knocking. I quickly bypassed
the downstairs and bounded my way up to the second floor, where I
paused for a second when I heard two voices murmuring to each
other. I thought I had been the first to arrive.

Maria’s door was open, and she looked over
from her bed where she was propped up against a pile of pillows and
gave me a bright, welcoming smile when I entered. I frowned when I
noticed that Akira was sitting comfortably on the edge of her
bed.

“How’d you get here?” I asked as I pulled out
Maria’s desk chair, turned it so that it was facing backwards and
straddled it. “I didn’t see any other car but hers in the driveway.
Did you teleport here?”

“Not hardly. The person I’m borrowing the car
from needed it today,” he shrugged. “Your voice is sounding better,
by the way, though you still have a bit of a sexy rasp going.”

“Thank you, it doesn’t hurt as much to talk
anymore. Still doesn’t answer my question of how you got here,
though. I know you didn’t walk, it’s too far from the apartment
complex,” I said, deliberately ignoring his “sexy” remark and
taking refuge in the fact that I sounded a little too formal. I
don’t know why I was being so belligerent about the subject of
Akira’s transportation, but I had had a sneaking suspicion the
night before from my scholarly reading and I wanted it
confirmed.

“I flew here. Easy enough,” he said and his
lips twitched.

“In broad daylight? What if someone saw you?
It’s not every day that a person with wings flies around town, you
know.”

“It’s ok, I have another form I can shift
into,” he said, his eyes glinting. He knew I was onto him.

“You shift into a raven,” I asked, though it
was really more of a statement than a question.

“Yep,” he said and grinned. “
Tengu
have more than one form. There’s the human guise that you see, the
half changed form that you saw the other night, and I’m one of the
Karasu Tengu
, or Crow
Tengu
, and my other form is
that of a raven. It’s really convenient, and allows me to get to
places pretty quickly over taking a car or walking.”

“So it
was
you I saw in the trees that
night!” I said and a flush crawled up my cheeks (why did I keep
doing that?) when I thought of all the times I had seen a raven
around or felt like one was following me. It also explained the
black feathers that had been scattered around him the night I had
clobbered him with my book bag. He had been in his raven form
behind me when I swung around, and looking back, my stomach lurched
when I thought about how I could have broken his neck instead of
bruising his arm.

“I should punch you,” I grumbled. “Do you
have any idea how creepy it is to feel like you’re being stalked,
only to find that it’s a bird watching you? I thought I was going
crazy.”

Maria glanced back and forth between us, her
face alive with interest and curiosity. I had seen that look on her
face before and it usually meant that she was planning something in
that brain of hers. I shifted, uncomfortable with the way her eyes
darted back and forth between us.

“Do you always resort to violence when
something upsets you?” Akira wondered as he gazed at me.

“Usually,” Maria and I both said in tandem,
then giggled.

“Can we see you shape shift?” Maria asked,
her eye eager. Akira shrugged and moved to the center of the room
where he stood with his hands in the pockets of his jeans.

If I hadn’t been watching him closely I would
have completely missed the change. There was no big fanfare, no
snapping and twisting of bones, no groans or screams of pain that
always seem to accompany all the werewolf scenes that Hollywood has
been churning out here lately. One minute Akira was standing there
with a slight smirk on his face, and the next there was a very
large raven standing in the middle of the room, wings folded
against his body and his head cocked to the side as if to say,
“Well? What do you think?’ I blinked and once again Akira stood in
the room, smirk still in place and hands still in his pockets.

“That was cool!” Maria exclaimed, and I
nodded in agreement.

Akira made a slight bow before he took his
seat on Maria’s bed again and asked, “Any other questions?”

“Oh, I have about a bazillion,” I answered.
“What happened to your wings and
katana
when the cops showed
up last week? Did you poof them away or something?”

“No poofing. I just changed their vibration
frequency,” he answered, which was really no answer at all.

“Explain please.”

“Everything, and I mean everything, has it’s
own vibration frequency. Think of it like the electrical energy
that fish and other living things give off that sharks can detect
with special sensors, but that your normal, every day person can’t
pick up no matter how close they get to the fish. The only
difference between that and what I’m talking about is that even
things that are considered ‘dead’ or ‘inanimate’, like furniture,
all put out their own vibration. This particular frequency is tuned
into the physical plane that we currently occupy, which is why
they’re solid and you can touch and interact with them and
everything else here.”

“Um, is this like the whole ‘the cake is an
illusion’ thing?” I asked and screwed up my nose.

“Yeah, kinda,” Akira said with a laugh at my
expression, “Only it’s a little more complicated than that. Because
things have this vibration frequency, those who know how can
actually tap into that energy and manipulate it. Energy is energy,
no matter what form it takes. In order to hide my wings and my
katana, all I do is tap into that energy and raise the vibration
frequency until their energy vibrates at a level higher than what
is on the physical plane. This makes them both invisible and
intangible, so that I don’t have to worry about my wings slamming
into things or people as I move about. In order to have them
appear, I simply lower their vibration and they become visible and
tangible again.”

As he said this, large, dark shapes appeared
on his back. At first they were wispy and resembled smoke more than
wings, but as I watched they became more and more solid until his
back was graced with a very large pair of glossy, feathery black
wings. I hadn’t gotten a good view of them the last time I had seen
them, so I got to my feet and walked over to get a closer look.
Mesmerized, I reached out and gently stroked the large feathers
that glistened with blue highlights and saw that Maria had leaned
forward to do the same with the wing closest to her. Akira flexed
them slightly, and they shifted and settled with a soft rustle.

“What happened here?” I asked when I saw a
small bald patch.

“That’s where you ripped out my feathers,” he
said calmly and peered at the damaged area with interest.

I closed my eyes against a rush of shame and
faint nausea as memories of my breakdown skated through my mind.
That looked like it had hurt
.

“Oh, it did,” Akira said and I covered my
face with my hands when I realized that I had spoken my thought out
loud. “The feathers will grow back, so don’t worry.”

I mumbled an apology as I sat back down in my
chair. He watched me for a second, his eyes contemplative, and then
his wings started to shiver. As we watched they slowly lost their
solid appearance until they were completely gone and Akira once
again stood before us looking every inch a normal, if slightly
taller that average, Japanese boy in jeans and a sweater. He sat
back down on Maria’s bed and let his hands rest on his thighs.

“What about your claws?” Maria asked, and I
blinked. I had forgotten about those.

“They’re a little different,” he said and
held his hands up. As we watched his nails suddenly lengthened and
sharpened into talons while his fingers took on a thicker, more
curved appearance. They returned to normal as quickly as they
changed, and Akira flexed them, wincing slightly as a couple of his
joints popped. “Unlike my wings, my fingers actually physically
change into claws. As you saw, the structure switches back and
forth.”

“That’s kind of like Dellar’s fangs,” Maria
said with a thoughtful look. “There are times that I see them, and
times that I don’t.”

“Speaking of,” I said. “Where is Dellar?”

“He should be here any minute,” Maria said,
and as if her words had summoned him the pale man walked in through
the bedroom door. I startled so badly when I saw him come in that I
over tipped my chair and fell out with a rather painful thump.

“Ow,” I muttered as I sat up and rubbed my
elbow where I had smacked it. I had to concentrate on not flinching
when my eyes met his, for time and shock had dulled the truth of
his existence in my memories, and now that I faced him in the harsh
light of day I could take in the full impact of his rather
grotesque appearance. He was pale, so pale that I could see the
blue of his veins as they pulsed beneath the surface of his skin,
something that I hadn’t been able to see in the dark. His hair
appeared even wispier than I remembered, and stuck out in odd
clumps and straggles, the entirety of his scalp visible. His lips
were mere pencil slashes and were a shade lighter than the paleness
of his skin. His nose was a crooked mess, his fingers with their
extra joint were just wrong, but it was still his eyes that sent
horrified shivers down my spine. While I could see that light
reflected from them, they were still a uniform, milky white color
that made him appear dead when it was obvious he was anything
but.