Guided by the white line centered on the asphalt, Mel soared down the street. Before taking to the sky, he heard the squawk of the ferrel crow from miles off while he slept in a tree in Annebél's yard by the tool shed.
Sachmilli had ordered Mel to keep watch over the shed. So the nightwing made perch above it. Mel's hearing was such that sleep barely lessened his diligence.
Still, as he embraced the nether, up the main course going east from Annebél's home, there came an abrupt shriek of 'cahs!' that brought him back to full alert. The staccato delivery was intended for him.
Mel snapped to attention and relayed a call to Sachmilli to inform him of the warning. No answer returned. Mel tried to relay a message to his latest contact, Demona. Still no answer.
This was distressing. The last time he was cut off from his sources for a significant period of time, the razor wingéd flechettes ambushed him with the intent to hunt him down.
Mel kept his eyes in surveil and his ears perked for the distinctive chime that the wings of the flechettes made.
Large cats spread out in the streets below as Mel swooped by them; they were on the prowl. Mel could only fathom to guess for whom.
The phase-beast were only sent out to hunt humans. Whomever that person was hid expertly well.
Mel could see even the reflections of titmice in the moonlit glassware framed in the surrounding store fronts as the rodents scampered on the shop floors inside.
He could see geckos at rest on brick walls. Their slithering bodies revealed to him by the puddles of water spread below, but anything of size, worthy of a big cat's game, remained well hidden from him.
Just ahead, the ferrel crow watched on as below its stoop one human leaned over another. A long-leggéd male worked at the console of a medical device connected by several wires and tubes to the woman he recognized as Sachmilli's friend, Tasìa.
Mel hovered above to better assess Tasìa's condition. Her shirt and bra lay to the side drenched red in blood. Ample bosom lay crest and up against her arms with an octagonal grasper-patch covering the chest cage between her breast.
The patch continually constricted and released as if to both clamp over her wound and to keep her heart stimulated.
Mel examined her properly.
Her lips were quite pale but even within the seconds that the nightwing observed, their flesh tone, in a step-by-step fashion, darkened in hue.
The pulse in her neck beat slow but steady. Beneath the sheen of her epidermis crawled a complex netting works that the nightwing witnessed in very few humans. Her friend Annebél possessed a similar subdermal mesh, as well.
Waves of energy emerged from Tasìa's naval and flowed through the netting works with great efficiency.
Mel could not see the flesh beneath the grasper patch, but the greater part of that energy flow was being directed to repair Tasìa's right lung.
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Now satisfied the little thief was doing better than what could be expected from what Mel surmised was a gun shot wound to the upper chest, the nightwing circled back around, and landed beside the ferrel crow.
He assessed his new companion who somehow knew of his presence in the city well enough to beckon him to her.
Indeed, though he was the one trained and neurologically enhanced to be a Watcher, in this detection the ferrel beauty had the better eye.
Quite comely, and by the tone of her utterances, also very much the gracious one in her manner. In spite of her linguistic limitations, Mel learned much from their conversation.
It was not the first time the little human female found herself being stalked on this particular route. Like Mel, the ferrel crow saw the netting works symmetry that flowed beneath the skin of the Little One.
So radiant was this one on her first sight of Tasìa, the lady crow decided to align the woman's interest with her own. On both occasions that they met, the crow warned the Little One of a predator.
On the first occasion, a creepy male human with an infolded brassy metal plate embedded in his skull followed the little thief, Tasìa confronted him, and made quick work of the man in a verbal spat between the two.
The lady crow pointed to a corpse beside a truck parked in the street. The dead beast that lay there caught Mel by surprise. He had previously took no notice of the phase-beast whose head was nearly decapitated.
He was sorely tempted to dine on the loose strands of exposed muscle tendons, but social custom prevented him from doing so while humans were present.
His companion rattled on how the beast originally stalked another woman, tall, skin tone of lustrous tapioca, hair of golden wool. When the woman approached the garden supply store she sprayed the air on the street curb that lead into the complex with a can of misty aerosol before she retreated into the shop.
The phase-beast soon skulked by and found itself within the residual mist where it cried out and violently shook and seized up. Its senses were utterly confounded.
The beast came to from its fever when it heard Tasìa running towards it from up the road. It phased out of the visible spectrum and lay in wait for her.
The lady crow touched on the confrontation between Tasìa and the phase-beast when the male human peeked up at the two crows.
Apparently, the sweetly sounding vibrant racket of Lady Crow's vocals caught the man's attention. As he gazed to appraise Mel, the man took out his PA and pinged the nightwing.
"As I suspected, you belong to Sachmilli Cuervo. I know him a little, an acquaintance. You are having trouble communicating with him, correct?"
The man glanced down to his device to see Mel's answer.
- Affirmative.
"This is not good at all, nightwing. That signal distortion is deliberate. From what I know of their operational history, this likely means that one mean and infamous troupe of bounty hunters are soon to drop in for a visit, rescue that three times treacherous bitch Alisha, and collect on Tasìa.
"I need to get her out of here, but if you could do me a favor -."
- Your name?
"Oh, Fodor. I'm with the Americans.
- You want me to find this Alisha?
"That's correct."
Lady Crow let out a swift staccato of chirps to let him know that Alisha was the one who shot Tasìa.
- I'll do it.
"I'll key you into the phase-beast pride. Once you find Alisha, signal the coordinates, they'll take care of the rest."
Mel dwelled on this for a moment. Perhaps this Fodor was not aware of Alisha's highly effective counter measure against the phase-beasts.
And uniquely dangerous as it evidently redirected the beast's programmed aggression.
He turned to warn Fodor about the spray when a familiar sharp sounding crescendo caused Mel to bristle. The flachettes were near.
A loud roar came from down the road, just pass the coffee shop. A cat snapped back into visible reality. It stretched its back long as it writhed in tortured agony.
The beast's entrails flailed from its center mass and curled out in the air.
Three flachettes burst out the other side of the beast as ribboned dissipate.
"Oh, fuck me!"
So did a gravely, feminine voice, call out from below Mel. Tasìa now leaned up on her arms and watched the phase-beast get destroyed.
She shook her head as she completed her train of thought.
"Those fuckers are like suicide dive bombers."