Heir of Dust and Wind

Chapter 6 - The Change

For the blink of a moment, Ava felt as if she was levitating, lost in time and space, surrounded only by blackness. 

Then her feet hit the ground abruptly.

Before she could get a sense of her surroundings, she was shoved to the floor by the collapsing stranger from the shop whose shoulder she was still holding onto. She belatedly started a feeble attempt to catch him, but he was physically too much her superior for her to stand a chance.

She hit the ground bottom first and groaned at the painful impact, the stranger falling unto her and trapping her legs with his body weight.

Pushing her upper body into as much of a sitting position as possible, she gasped.

The black dagger had found another target. It was now protruding from the stranger's chest. As if that wasn't bad enough, the blade seemed to disintegrate into the wound, blackness spreading from its margins. With trembling fingers, she started feeling for a pulse and exhaled in relief when she found it beating steady beneath her fingertips.

For the first time since she hit the ground, she looked up to take in the place she had tumbled into.

The shimmering green pool had indeed been a portal, she thought. Gone was the bookshop with its familiar shelves. She now found herself in an enormous office, it seemed. It stood in stark contrast to the old-fashioned cosiness of her workplace.

This room was all about clean lines, sharp angles, glass, and steel. The visible steel girders at the ceiling made her think that they might be in a former industrial building that had been converted into an office complex.

A large windowfront to her right looked out at an unfamiliar skyline. The other walls were painted in variations of light grey. Together with the abstract paintings hung on the wall opposite of the windows, the colours underlined the overall frostiness of the place, which had no doubt been meticulously arranged by a very costly interior designer.

At least the polished concrete floor wouldn't stain from the stranger's blood, Ava thought, glancing back anxiously at her companion and lifesaver.

"My, my, look what the cat dragged in," someone sneered above her.

Ava looked up, investigating the origin of the voice.

Behind a glass desk at the far end of the room sat a man in a light grey three-piece suit. Together with his white-blonde hair, he blended so neatly into his surroundings that she must have overlooked him. 

Probably a sign of shock, she thought. After all, it was the second time in two weeks she watched someone fighting for his life.

The man's eyes were piercingly grey, matching the handkerchief in his pocket. The iron stare that he fixed on her fit the concept of the room perfectly. It made her squirm uncomfortably because of its intensity. His pupils were ordinarily round and while this fact should have reassured her, she didn't feel the slightest bit consoled because of his presence.

He was leaning back in his chair, had one leg crossed over the other, and did not seem the least bit worried about the dagger being buried in her companion's chest, let alone his devastating state in general.

"Help, he needs help!" she rasped, her mouth dry. "Please," she added. "There was an attack, he ... he saved me and told me to get into the pool and now... It was a mistake ..." she babbled on.

The man behind the desk didn't seem impressed. He let out an exasperating sigh and pushed a button on the phone on the desk before him.

"Sadly, my dear, you being here is the mistake," he said with an arrogant finality of somebody who was clearly in charge and used to getting his way.