CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Motorcycle Helmet

Pricina’s idea of flying was a helicopter with no parts inside. It was a shell. There were no instruments to say how fast we were going or how high we were. She knew all that stuff without being told. There was no compass. In preparation for her learning to control a magnetic pole, she had learned how to sense true north. Granted, it didn’t work very well when the north pole was constantly on the move, but she informed me curtly, that a compass wouldn’t work any better than she would. To complete the emptiness, there was no engine under the hood and she controlled the chopper blades herself.

I was very impressed. But perhaps the coolest thing she was able to do was silence the sound of the chopping blades above us. Inside the helicopter, on comfortable seats, she leaned back, controlled the movement without touching any instruments, and we watched the world go by under us.

“Can I talk to you while you’re doing that?” I asked her.

“Yes. I know this looks quite fancy on the outside, but it’s quite simple on the inside. I make the blades go and when we fly straight there are no other instructions. Just fly. I don’t have to give the same instructions over and over. It’s harder to make the cockpit quiet, but it’s well worth the effort.”

Before we left, we made our plans with Brandon and Axel, though we didn’t plan to bring either of them with us. Brandon helped with our flight plan and made a few phone calls on our behalf.

Since there had been so few immortals going back and forth from the village in recent years, they hadn’t had the right outfits for me and Pricina to wear, so we planned a stop at a motorcycle outfitter in Alberta. Brandon had a credit card we could use, so he gave us that, a phone, kissed Pricina goodbye, and sent us on our way.

Back in the cockpit, I sat next to Pricina as we went up in the air. We surfaced in the Yukon and flew over mountains and forests on our way to Fort McMurray to get the clothes we needed. Then on to Ottawa.

“Are we going to stop for lunch?” I asked her.

“Lunch?” she repeated. “When Christian is in such danger?”

I nodded. “We should go for lunch.”

She responded with a painful swallow. “What for?”

“So we can be better friends and so we can eat.”

“We’re going to become better friends over lunch?” she muttered, completely unconvinced. It had obviously skipped her notice that that was where women bonded.

“Human beings have forged friendships by breaking bread for thousands of years,” I replied.

“You can’t seriously suggest this to me. I am not human and the idea of even doing one thing that a human does scares me. I have to shun human behavior at all costs.”

“So you haven’t eaten anything in hundreds of years?” I asked.

“Maybe not hundreds of years, but definitely one hundred.”

“Your body never needs new matter?”

She didn’t reply. That got her.

“It will be fun,” I said encouragingly. “Think of it as being especially nice to your new best friend.”

She snorted.

“How are we going to land in town with a chopper?” I wondered out loud.

“The people who live around here are very interested in aviation. Over a hundred private planes are housed in an airfield complete with a runway. Brandon already purchased me a place to park the helicopter and gave the club a heads up that we would be arriving. We’ll have to take a taxi to town. He said you would know how to get us a taxi to the outfitters.”

I got the phone Brandon had given us. I called for a cab before we landed, and it was waiting outside the chain-link fence by the landing zone when we touched down.

We ran across the tarmac to the taxi and went directly to the motorcycle outfitter.

It had been a long time since Pricina had been to the surface. Everything she saw interested her from the other aircraft to the taxi to the chain-link fence. There was even an electrical box on the street that she stopped to examine. I had to haul her along by the crook of her elbow.

At the clothing store, she stared at everything with wide eyes and wandered between the racks having no idea what to buy, what to try on, or what to look at.

“These are not like the clothes Brandon brings me.”

“This shouldn’t be that weird,” I said, strolling behind her with my hands in my pockets. “You wear modern clothes back in the village.”

“Because Brandon brings them to me after he’s been on the surface supervising Christian. These clothes look like armor.”

“Fair comparison. Some of them are. Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll be your girl!”

“What does that mean?” she balked. “You’ll be my girl?”

“It means, I’ll help you choose your clothes.” I went around picking things and stacking them on her.

When I was finished pawing around, I pushed her into a change room. When she emerged, she wore a khaki tank top under a black and green motorcycle suit. I planned to make us wear motorcycle gear to hide the fact that we were not going to be wearing sophisticated body armor. At least, the suits would give our figures sensational lines and look like they might protect us from bullets… even though they probably wouldn’t.

I grabbed her a pair of thick boots and aviator sunglasses. “You should have a pair of these anyway, you adorable little helicopter pilot.”

I turned to the shopkeeper. “She needs a helmet.”

“What kind of bikes do you women ride?” he asked, leading us to the wall of helmets.

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I glanced over at Pricina and saw our reflections in a cluster of mirrors. We did not look normal. She looked like Cleopatra and I looked like Eleanor of Aquitaine… or if not that badass, at least we resembled Victoria's Secret angels. We were going to end up causing a riot if we stayed much longer.

“It’s for our Instagram,” I lied.

He bought that for nothing and showed Pricina a helmet so beautiful it would make any biker do a double-take.

I sped up my operations, picking out my clothes double time. I had already scoped the store and done my shopping in my head, so I was quick when piling up my choices. I chose gear that matched hers but was black and blue instead of black and green.

I picked the boots with the heaviest tread and shouted for Pricina to get me a helmet while I tried on the outfit.

I tore off my clothes and resisted the urge to get sentimental. Changerooms did things to me. I tried to remind myself that I had done lots of things with Christian when we had been together, not just played in boutiques. Suddenly, there was a new meaning to him waiting on the other side of the curtain while I transformed into something else. What was he waiting for me to become?

I shook those thoughts out of my head. I had to hurry and find him.

Clunking our purchases on the checkout table, I drummed my fingers impatiently while the man rang us up.

“Are you girls models?”

“She’s discontinued and I’m out of stock,” I replied with a wicked grin, but the man smiled.

“What are the helmets for?” Pricina asked loudly.

“In case I get shot in the face again,” I said nonchalantly. Then I turned to the cashier. “You know the family motto, right?”

“Not the face,” the cashier and I said together as he handed me our bags. I didn’t know what he thought of us, but he was cool enough not to cause a fuss.

Pricina kept talking as we made our way to the door. “You don’t have to get shot in the face if you don’t want to. Just make it look like you dodged.”

I shrugged. “It’s not like I’d be dodging a freaking arrow. I can’t catch it. Normal people don’t catch bullets or dodge them. Helmets are a good idea. They will also cover our faces should we be caught on camera.”

“You could mess those up too.”

“And if anyone saw me? Recognized me?”

“Then put a different face on.”

I cocked my head angrily and prepared to tell her off. “Can you do all those things at once?”

“No,” she said, biting her lips together. “But I hoped you’d be able to.”

Outside, it had begun snowing. Pricina didn’t notice, standing in the wind and snow with white flakes dusting her dark hair.

“I should have made the taxi wait,” I said, half-annoyed. It wasn’t like I couldn’t pay him to be our slave until we were finished with our errands.

I spotted a pub down the block. I grabbed Pricina’s arm. “That’ll do.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to eat anything.”

“Well, I do. I want to eat something big and sloppy.”

I dragged her down the block, shoved her inside, and I got us a table in the pub.

The server was a good-looking man who looked at us like he’d never had a lucky day in his life before today. “What can I get you?” he asked cheerfully.

“What’s the best thing on your menu?”

“The blue cheeseburger is a favorite,” he said, preparing to list a bunch of other things.

“Get us two of those with fries. Do you have garlic dip for the fries?”

He nodded.

“Do you have shakes? Smoothies?”

“Shakes,” he replied.

“Cool. Get us two strawberry shakes. Whip cream on top if you’ve got it.”

The guy laughed because he’d never seen two women who looked like us order food like that.

Pricina leaned toward me and with tight lips murmured, “I am not eating any of that.”

I rolled my right shoulder like I was preparing to wind up and hit her. “The Christian who rules my Red Forest told me that I should eat whenever I have the opportunity. Even if you don’t need it, I’m positive it won’t do you any harm.”

Pricina fumed. “You’re being…”

I put up a finger. “Seriously, you don’t believe what the crowned King of the Red Forest says? You’re refusing training from him because it’s secondhand?” I waited for her answer.

She exhaled and relented. “Fine. Does he tell you other things?”

“What is the color of your Red Forest?”

She glared at me strangely. “It’s red.”

“It’s not supposed to be. You’re supposed to have accepted new cell formations and they’re not red. Your Red Forest is eventually supposed to be a White Forest. If you’re still red on the inside, you could probably use this food.”

Pricina covered her mouth in horror. Was that a secret Christian had kept from them? She said that Christian wouldn’t train the immortals in the village. Was this tidbit part of that?

At that moment, the food arrived.

I tore the paper off the straw and plunged it into one of the shakes. “It’s okay if you can’t drink the whole thing.” I handed it to her.

She set it down.

I tore off my straw and took a sip from it.

She looked at me funny. “That’s what you’re supposed to do with the tube?”

I nodded.

Instantly, it became more interesting to her.

“Surely, you’re not so out of the loop that you don’t know what a straw is? You can pilot a helicopter, but a drinking straw is weird?”

She sipped her drink and swallowed slowly because she was internally talking herself through the process of eating one step at a time. Finally, she said, “When I come to the surface, I fly. I don’t investigate whatever trends humans are adopting. My dream was to fly, not to drink sweet pink liquids through tubes.”

“How’s it taste?” I inquired.

“It’s weird.”

I dipped a fry in the garlic sauce, just to show her how to do it, then asked her, “Have you ever flown without a chopper?”

She nodded. “It used to be easy to do that sort of thing. Brandon stops me from flying free now. He’s the one who got me the chopper, though this is only my third time using it, and I’ve had it for twenty years.”

“When was the first time?”

“When Brandon told me I couldn’t fly anymore.”

“When was the second?”

“When we kidnapped you,” she replied without the slightest hint of shame. She was watching me eat the fries most carefully. She clearly hadn’t decided whether or not she wanted one.

“They’re good,” I assured her. “Maybe try one without sauce to start with.”

That convinced her. She never tried the sauce, but she ate all the fries.

Soon we were in another taxi heading back to the airfield.

“Do you think anyone would have tried to refuel your chopper?” I half-whispered to Pricina.

She smirked. “They wouldn’t have been able to get either of the gas caps off. They’re welded shut.”

Standing outside the chopper on a blustery March afternoon, Pricina stripped down to her undergarments and put on the clothes I had bought her. It was an unusual thing to do, but as I glanced around, there was no one around to notice.

I looked down at my hands. I should have been colder, but I wasn’t. I felt the way she did, impervious. The cold didn’t matter, so I stripped too.

When we were finished, she put her gloved hand out to me to help me get on board the chopper. We weren’t close friends yet, but I took her hand and thanked her for going to lunch with me. I handed her her helmet and she put it under her arm while I scrambled to collect our empty shopping bags before they blew away.

On the long flight to Ottawa, I thought about what I was going to do. Rhuk was secure in my earlobe like an earring, but it hadn’t said much since we took off. Previously, it had told me all about the building where Christian was being held and which room was his cell. My internet access was spotty as we flew, but I managed to find a picture of the prison on the phone Brandon had given us. A rope with a grappling hook lay in a disheveled heap at my feet.

As we flew, Pricina chuckled a little under her breath. “Would you care for a little advice about how I’d go about doing this?”

I inclined my head. After all, I had nothing better to do, so I listened to her ideas.