Nile watched them leave just as the trio went back up on stage and started their next song. Ash caught him through the window, already bobbing his head to the rhythm, utterly oblivious to the fact that his girlfriend and sister were off to hunt a possibly mythical creature that may have orphaned him. Just another Tuesday in the life of Ash the Awakened, she thought wryly.
"Aww now wasn't that sweet. You two look adorable together by the way," Kylie remarked with the precision of someone aiming a verbal sniper rifle.
Kylie was driving rather conservatively in her rental car -a beige sedan so aggressively forgettable that it practically screamed "undercover vehicle." Ash took it as an indicator that their previous conversation was not yet over. In her experience, cautious driving and interrogations went together like peanut butter and existential dread.
She guessed right, as a few minutes into the drive Kylie began asking questions again, right on cosmic schedule.
"So, you never answered my question."
"What question? Oh, right, why am I here and what am I doing with your brother? Well to answer your first question, I'm on assignment." Ash settled into the passenger seat like it was an interrogation chair, familiar territory despite the lack of bright lights and one-way mirrors.
"I gathered as much. And I'm to believe that my brother is your target?" Kylie's question hung in the air between them, a conversational grenade with the pin halfway out.
"No, he and I… well, let's just say that he was an unforeseen complication." Ash's voice softened on "complication," transforming the word from clinical assessment to something bordering on affection. Like calling a hurricane a "weather event" -technically accurate but missing the emotional magnitude.
"Wait, you mean you and he -you're for real?" Kylie's surprise was almost comical, as if she'd just discovered her brother was dating a particularly articulate cryptid.
Ash nodded her head and let a glimmer of what she felt for Nile twinkle in her eyes -a moment of genuine transparency in a life built on strategic opacity. Kylie rocked back as she gave a low whistle, the universal sound of "well, this just got interesting."
"Wow, he sure knows how to pick 'em. So does he know?" The question carried the weight of familial concern beneath its casual delivery.
"No, otherwise I wouldn't feel the need to have this little conversation with you. He's very important to me, and to the fulfillment of my assignment. And I don't need my cover blown by his overprotective big sister." Ash kept her tone light, but the warning beneath it was as subtle as a tactical missile.
"You're using him." It wasn't a question but an accusation, delivered with the precision of someone who'd been hurt before and recognized the pattern.
Kylie turned and glared at Ash. Ash met her gaze levelly, the seriousness in her eyes clearly saying, don't mess with me. It was the look that could make hardened operatives reconsider their life choices and possibly their last will and testament.
"I'm doing what I have to do. Don't worry. He's well protected." The statement was true, though Ash deliberately left out the part where she might be the most significant threat to his well-being -emotionally speaking. Physical threats she could handle with ruthless efficiency; feelings were the real landmines.
"Yeah well you better not let him get hurt." The threat was clear -harm my brother and face supernatural consequences. In any other context, Ash might have found the protectiveness admirable. Currently, it ranked somewhere between "inconvenient" and "potentially mission-compromising."
After some miles had passed, the silence between them stretching like a psychological rubber band about to snap, Ash decided it was her turn to control the narrative.
"Now it's my turn to ask some questions," Ash said, shifting in her seat to face Kylie more directly.
"Shoot," Kylie said, the irony of the expression not lost on either of them.
Kylie kept her eyes to the dark road as they got closer to their quarry. She could practically smell the metallic musk of him on the cool canyon air. Ash caught the shift in her posture -the subtle tensing that signaled they were entering hostile territory, literally and conversationally.
"Ok. So you're obviously not sanctioned to be here. So what's the deal? Is this really just about your brother and the Bug Man, or is there something else?" The question was a fishing expedition with industrial-grade equipment. Ash's naturally suspicious mind was on full alert, cycling through possibilities with algorithmic precision.
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Running into another awakened in this town, this one Nile's sister no less, was just too much of a coincidence. And in Ash's world, coincidences were usually cover stories for something far more sinister.
Kylie refused to meet her eyes as she drove. She used the darkness as her excuse, but they both knew that something else was going on and Kylie knew that if she didn't tell Ash the truth, then Kylie was in for some rough times ahead. The tension between them hummed like a high-voltage wire -dangerous, electric, and liable to cause serious damage if mishandled.
"Let's just say that I'm on a break. More of a vacation actually," Kylie said, her attempt at nonchalance as convincing as a penguin claiming to be a tropical bird.
"The curriculum get to be too much for you? No, no, I get it. It can be pretty tough." Ash's tone was carefully calibrated -just enough understanding to encourage confession, just enough skepticism to demand honesty. It was Interrogation 101, and Ash had aced that course with honors.
Kylie sighed and shook her head in negation. She glanced over at Ash and shrugged, the gesture containing multitudes of unspoken complexity.
"It wasn't that really. It's just that they expect you to cut ties with everything and jump into their world. Which I did wholeheartedly. I mean who wouldn't, you know? One moment you're ordinary, and the next thing you know, you're extraordinary. It's not every day that a person wakes up to discover that they're a direct descendant of a supernatural being. And that once their powers fully manifest that they will become supernatural themselves. I mean seriously, I'm a freaking angel. What the eff, right?" The words tumbled out like they'd been waiting behind a dam of propriety that had finally cracked.
"Right, that must have been hard. Leaving everyone you knew behind," Ash said, her sympathy genuine despite the calculation behind it. Not that Ash really knew what Kylie was going through, as she had been raised in the awakened world. Born into the supernatural equivalent of old money, Ash had never experienced the disorientation of discovering another reality layered beneath the mundane. She'd always known the universe's secret handshakes.
"Yeah, but I couldn't tell anyone, you know? Like I had to just pack my bags and blow town. I mean I made up some story about going to a big time university on the East Coast, which my parents loved by the way, their little girl being accepted into the Ivy Leagues. And the University did a great job helping to make my story real. I even walked onto campus and signed up for my classes. And then I was whisked off to a whole new world," Kylie said, her eyes on the night ahead, seeing past the darkness to memories that clearly still had sharp edges.
"It was crazy," Kylie continued, words flowing like she'd uncorked something essential. "I tried to keep in touch, but I wasn't allowed much communication and after sending them a postcard or two I just couldn't bring myself to lie to them anymore. So I stopped communicating altogether. I knew that if I kept in touch, that I'd eventually wind up spilling the beans and I was afraid that I would get kicked out of school. So instead I abandoned them." The final words carried the weight of years of accumulated guilt.
"You didn't abandon them. You did what you had to do. You knew that you couldn't bring them over into our world. They weren't awakened. It would have put you and them in danger. You did the right thing," Ash said, her reassurance flowing from some wellspring of empathy she hadn't realized she possessed. Her thoughts drifted to Nile as she spoke, knowing full well that she would have to abandon him once her mission was complete. The irony of comforting someone for a pain she was about to inflict on another wasn't lost on her. Add that to the cosmic karma tab, she thought grimly.
But a flicker of hope had ignited in her heart at Kylie’s words. If she’s awakened, then maybe… she left the thought unfinished in her mind, not willing to give life to what would likely only end up in disappointment.
"Yeah well, I got homesick. I had to find a reason to come back. I just wasn't ready for that reason to be my parent's death at the hands of some monster," Kylie said defensively, the words charged with grief transmuted into purpose.
Kylie pulled the car off the side of the road and turned off the engine. The steady thrum of insect chatter was strangely absent, as if nature itself had taken a collective breath and held it. The sounds of a cooling engine were the only noises to be heard -a mechanical heartbeat slowly fading into the ominous silence.
"This is it. From here we walk," Kylie said, her posture shifting from casual driver to hunter in the space between heartbeats.
Oh great, at least I brought my boots, Ash thought, mentally thanking her past self for prioritizing function over fashion for once. Tonight wasn't the night for the cute ankle booties that had been tempting her from the closet.
"I'd suggest we move quietly. He could be watching us," Kylie's voice had dropped to just above a whisper, the words carried on a thread of tension.
"You mean this could be a trap?" Ash asked, her mind already calculating escape routes, defensive positions, and the optimal trajectory for an emergency extraction. Standard operating procedure when walking into what might generously be called a "tactically suboptimal situation."
"Yeah, though how he could have known we were coming I have no idea." Kylie's doubt seemed genuine, which either meant she was an excellent actress or genuinely perplexed. Ash filed away both possibilities.
"Well nothing for it but to take our chances. Lead on." Ash gestured forward with a confidence she didn't entirely feel. This was the moment where heroes in movies said something profound or made a quip about danger. All Ash could think was that if a mythical Bug Man killed her tonight, she'd never get to tell Nile the truth -about anything. And somehow, that seemed like the biggest failure of all.
As they stepped away from the car and into the darkness, Ash couldn't shake the feeling that they were walking into something far bigger than a hunt for a local monster. The universe had too many moving pieces converging on this moment for it to be simple. And in Ash's experience, when the cosmos got complicated, someone usually ended up paying a price higher than they'd bargained for.
She just hoped it wouldn't be Nile.
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