Chapter 10: CHAPTER TEN - Chasing Her

She was gone.

I rushed out of the building which looked like it could fall with a little push of wind and drive off, sending signals across town for her to be found immediately.

“She was seen in the Cobble hill earlier today,” Octavio reported, his voice tense.

“What is she doing there?” She lived like a poor church rat so what could she be doing somewhere so different and affluent? Did she have a boyfriend?

My mind worked harder than it had ever had to, running through scenarios as everyone worked hard to find her

Where could she have disappeared to that a horde of demons couldn't locate her?

“I found her!” I pulled to the side of the road immediately and input the location Octavio pointed out for me.

“Um, I think she's on her way out of town,” he informed me and my heart beat faster.

I drove at neck-breaking speed, chasing a bus that had long gone.

My car was fast, but it couldn't catch up so I switched up to demon form.

I packed my car to the curb and controlled the winds so they could carry me to her without wasting any more time.

I couldn't go as I wanted, my strength depleted but I knew I'd catch up.

When I got close enough, my disguise perfectly in place, I finally saw her. She was sitting on the window side of the train, her head on the glass.

She was crying and she looked to be in pain but not the physical type. Someone had hurt her and I saw red.

“Get me a file on her, ASAP,” I commanded my right hand man and then set to stop a moving train.

My power reserve was low but I knew letting her go would make my life miserable. The thought of never seeing her again, losing her to the void gripped something inside of me and squeezed hard.

So I began manipulating the wind again. This time, I wanted to stop the bus.

I could have flipped it but there was no guarantee that she would have survived it.

I decided to drag the bus with my reserved powers, hoping the interruption would make the driver stop so I could go there, dressed as a police officer and order her to come down.

But the moment I put pressure on the bus, my powers jerked to a stop and I lost control of the bus, making it flip off the road into the near-by woods.

And then I blacked out.

***

ARIA’S POV

I was finally leaving this town with its dreadful memories and heading to where my father will never be able to find him.

His adorable daughter, Jennifer can go ahead and marry that hateful man since she's so obsessed. I will never give anyone the chance to treat me like trash just because I'm a little low on luck. I run into cupboards, hit my leg on chairs and get my hair caught in gum but that doesn't make me any less of a human being so no one would be given the chance to treat me like crap.

But as I got onto that bus with almost all the money I had spent on the ticket, along with the two bags that contained my whole life, all I could think about was why I was hated by the people who were supposed to love me.

I didn't deserve any of this, I'd never hurt anyone or anything. In fact, my sister was a bully in school and yet her life was glamorous.

There was no justification for the horrors that I faced and to top it off, my family wanted to marry me off to a horrible person.

I couldn't control the tears that poured out of my eyes, my entire life seeming like a big joke.

I placed my head on the window and watched with relief as the bus crossed the landmark that demarcated Brooklyn and New Jersey. I took out my phone and for the first time, I opened the camera, confident enough to take a picture of myself this time.

I did and then looked at it, I looked sad and confused but upon closer inspection, I noticed something in the picture.

It was a shadow of someone right outside the window but there was nobody there.

“Great, I'm going crazy,” I muttered and put the phone back into my pocket.

I couldn't afford a flight ticket so this was my only option even though it was going to take me a couple of days to get there.

I just wanted to be as far away as possible from my wacko family.

I settled in and was about to finally sleep off as night approached when our bus lurched suddenly , the impact of whatever that was sending us careening into the forest by the side and amidst the screams of everyone in the bus, all I could do was cry harder.

Whatever luck I'd gotten back was only going to work in Brooklyn and nowhere else.

“Ahhhhh,” I screamed out in frustration as the bus came to a stop.

“Shit,” the woman next to me muttered and I looked at her.

Her leg had gotten caught in the iron in the next seat and she was bleeding heavily.

My guilt increased. All of this was my fault, if I had simply stayed back in my house and taken what I was given, this woman wouldn't be bleeding out in the middle of the road at night. I felt terrible and struggled to stop the sobs pouring out of me because it was beginning to get weird.

“Is everyone alright?” the driver shouted from the front and before people could respond, I screamed in his direction.

“No, someone is bleeding heavily back here, she needs urgent help,”

“Damn, I'm calling for an ambulance right away. I doubt there'd be any doctors in here,” he muttered the last part.

I got out of my seat and cut my shirt from the back and slowly came out on the other side.

Gradually, I pulled her leg out of the place it had gotten stuck in and I quickly began to tie the cloth to prevent further bleeding just like I'd learnt to do for myself.

Gradually, we all came down from the bus as an ambulance arrived.

We were all checked for external and internal bleeding and set aside.

The crowd was a bit too much for my racing thoughts so I took a small walk away from

the crowd down the road.

Then I saw the body of a man lying beside a tree.

And I ran to him hastily.