Sleepless In the City

The night was full and damp after the fresh brine that whisked itself across the city skyline. Damian stood hands burrowed deep within the folds of his father’s old black coat. He traced the small circular hole where the bullet had penetrated the ashy fabric. It was sometime before the fire, but after his Aunt Daisy went missing. Such a small hole tore the scab off such a large wound. Damian’s stomach began to turn as he watched the grey clouds pass from the safety of the covered bus stop. No bus was coming, and he knew that, but that wasn’t at all why Damian’s legs crossed and uncrossed. Then a man almost scraping his head on the metal and plexiglass covering strode into the short emptiness of the bench’s cold metal with his sweeping brown trench coat. They both exchanged a nod.

“Grim isn’t it?” The stranger mused.

“What is?” Damian didn’t look the man’s way. His eyes stayed narrowed toward the far end of the empty street.

The stranger laughed. “The night of course. No one likes the rain in this town.”

Damian shrugged.

His eyes took a moment to glance at the dark sky. The rain had stopped. Damian didn’t notice. He furrowed a brow and let his eyes fall back onto the dark wet asphalt that stretched towards the brightly lit city in the distance. A deep vibration shook the folds of his coat and Damian reached inside the pocket lining and pulled out his cellphone. The name “Gwen” ran its way across the screen for a moment before he tapped the red button to silence it.

“You should answer that,” the stranger says with a throaty laugh as he pulls a pack of smokes from his own breast pocket, “could be important?”

“She’ll be alright.’

The man snaps the pocket closed and fishes in another pulling out a fancy black lighter. He lights the cigarette, takes a long drag, and exhales slowly before responding.

“So, it’s a young woman that must have you like that.” He points to Damian’s tensely crossed arms.

It was Damian’s turn to laugh. It was a deep, but hollow sound, that fed a smile that never reached his eyes. It was a young woman, but not the one calling him. No, Gwen was trying to bring him back into the fold. Make sure he stayed connected, but to what? None of them could understand what he’d lost or what it meant for him.

“Something like that,” Damian murmured more to himself than to the man taking another drag next to him.

A lone car passes, and its opaque yellow headlights catch the eerily pale face of the man as his lips pursed against the black paper tightly wound around his tobacco. The man’s eyes were dark, almost black in the light. This, Damian noticed out of the corner of his eye. He finally investigated the man slouched and flicking ashes down a dark storm drain. The man looked almost sick. Unconsciously, Damian stepped further way.

“Well if you are trying to go see her, the buses aren’t running,” the smoking man followed, his own eyes darting around the dark street.

“Then why are you here?”

“The same reason you are I’m guessing.”

Damian’s body tensed. He could feel the sparks in his body become a strong current of raw electrical power. He tucked his hands in his pockets and averted his eyes, feeling the energy coursing through them. He was on edge and needed to calm down. Unaware, the man in the brown coat stretched to his full height abandoning his solitary seat on the bench to pace ack and forth on the pavement before them.

“I’ve been here longer than I cared to.” He takes the last pull of his cigarette and tosses the butt down the same drain. “Wearing this no less.’”

“It’s a nice coat,” Damian responds absently.

“Yeah the coat is nice,” the stranger pauses. “You sure you don’t want to make that call?”

Damian pulled up the collar of the ashy black coat and turned to face the stranger fully. His eyes followed the sharp features of the man’s pale face until they met those cold, dark, and distant eyes of the man.

“Just tell me where she is,” Damian spoke as cold as the passing breeze.

The stranger stopped pacing. “So, no more waiting? Right to the chase?”

Damian pulled his hands from his pockets and grabbed the man around the collar of his nice brown coat and slammed him into the unyielding plexiglass causing the light overhead to flicker. The energy he held back now on full display in a current of bright electricity rolling over his hands and a similar crackle engulfing his deep brown eyes that looked at the man with contempt. Damian tried to hold back, but the neck of the brown coat began to burn and blacken under his tight grasp. The man’s face broke into a wide grin.

“I thought I smelled something with feathers and malice. You’re one of them, the new ones they sent me to kill?”

“Answer me, now!”

In that moment of Damian’s anger, the stranger slipped under his grasp and shoved Damian into the ceiling above shattering the light and encasing the street into darkness, save for the lone streetlight flickering opposite them. Damian slammed to the ground with a thud gasping for air. He shook the fogginess from his head as he rolled onto his back, but the stranger was no where in sight. He groaned and clamored to his feet, the world still spinning around him. Damian’s eyes began to burn with hot fresh tears as his one lead vanished into the night.

“You are too anxious, boy. I’ve waited far longer in the shadows to slay a creature of your pedigree than you have spent looking for that half breed of yours,” the man wheezed a laugh. “And to think I almost passed you by. Good thing I was more hungry than cautious.”

A solid blow to Damian’s back sent him flying into the middle of the cold street and before he could stand again, the man with his tobacco laden breath was on top of him, hands around his throat and squeezing. The world spun, then blurred, then faded to black as consciousness slipped away from him.

“We are going to have so much fun tonight boy!”

The last Thing Damian remembered was that sinister laugh and gnarled yellowed fangs.