Feathered Friend

Chapter 7

~ Teardrop – Massive Attack

The bird left me to my own devices as it went off to find our next target. The rain had finally stopped and I was left with nothing to do besides wait for my feathered friend.

The apartment was no longer somewhere I wanted to be. It was simply a painful memory of what had been. I'd taken what I needed anyway. My faux-life... death... undeath? Whatever this was had no ties to the living anymore. Not even the friends we once had. They were no more than memories to me. Scott was all that mattered. Finding the bastards that had killed him and sending them to hell.

So I went to the Cemetery again to be near him once more.

When I got to his grave, there was someone else there.

The figure was clad all in black and was holding a single white rose. At first I thought it was a fan, but then she turned at my approach and I saw it was Kirstin. She took in a sharp breath at the sight of me and dropped the flower. Her face went through a myriad of emotions including shock, puzzlement, disbelief and finally hope. It was hard to watch and equally hard to crush. But she knew I was dead. I just had to explain why I was walking around again.

"M-Mitch?" She asked hesitantly. "What's with the makeup? Wait... how are you? Are you... real?" She took a step forwards as I waited and then she touched my garishly made up face.

The flash of her memories was unexpected and disorienting. I saw her horror and grief when she was told about our murders. I saw the visit to the morgue when she'd held Dad's hand while they identified my body. I saw her crying at the funeral and I saw the words she'd poured out on her blog at our loss. The flashes of emotion and the raw sensation that slammed into me as I viewed things from her point of view was totally overwhelming. It was all I could do to take in a breath and remain standing as her finger lingered in connection with my skin.

"Oh my God... you're alive?" She asked searchingly, trying to understand the look on my face.

I shook my head to clear my reaction and to negate her sudden hope. "No Kit Kat. I'm not alive. I'm only back to take care of things then I'm gone again." I told her and the tears that had been threatening to fall began streaming down her face.

"Is Scott...?" She got out...

"No Love. He's where he was always meant to be." I said and pointed towards the lightening sky as the sun began turning the angry cloud covered sky from black to grey.

She looked up for a second and then back to me. "How?"

"I don't really know. All I know is I'm here to meet justice for what happened to us and then I'll be allowed to rest." I told her.

She simply looked at me with her huge tear filled eyes and I knew then that she hadn't moved on. I braced myself for more flashbacks and just pulled her towards me.

She flung herself in my arms and clung as she sobbed.

This time there were no searing images burning themselves into my brain it was just me holding my best friend as she finally let out the remaining grief she'd been holding onto since our deaths. I stood there holding her upright as she cried for the loss of her friends, her confidants, her cheer squad and the people who had meant as much to her as family. I stroked her hair and then held up her face with my palms and kissed her still closed eyelids before she opened them again.

"You need to move on now Kirstin." I said confidently. "I'm sorry I never got to say goodbye. You're going to have to forgive me and Scott for never getting that chance. But what I said that last night at the wedding was real, it was the best memory I could ever hope for. And your beautiful words meant so much." I assured her.

She smiled hesitantly and then in true Kirstin fashion frowned as she smiled at my face and asked why without using any words. I grinned out of the side of my face as she flipped my wet bangs to the side and cocked her head to the side, taking in the whole death mask.

"I know. It's part shock value, part how I feel, part... I want them to be afraid when they see me coming for them." I said softly.

"It works." She assured me and hugged me one last time. "Will I see you again?" She asked carefully.

I shrugged. "I don't know. I hope so." Was all I could say.

I watched her walk away in silence, lifting my arm once to wave as she went to get back to her life. I knew our meeting would help her to move on. To say yes to that man she'd been letting hang for so long and to finally take the leap into a solo career.

One piece of my past lifted like a weight from around my neck and floated away.

Then I sank to my knees in front of Scott's grave stone and stared blankly at the words on his epitaph. The sun found me like that. A still shadow, resisting the light as I sat motionless, looking back into my memories of the last night Scott and I had had together before it all went to hell.

That's how the bird found me. Only it wasn't there with me in the cemetery, it was perched on the roof of a building looking through a dirt smudged window. But I could see what it saw and I knew it had found my next link in the chain that led to Arkadi.

"Time to hunt Shiv." It said to me as I saw through its eyes, one of the men who had taken my last breath.

It wasn't the leader, it wasn't even the scariest man who had been in the room. But my teeth snapped together as if I could taste his flesh between them and I suddenly felt the need to tear out his throat. I didn't care if I was channelling the bird or I was turning into a real zombie. All I knew was that my first victim had a name, and a location.

I rose to my feet and began running in the direction the bird was calling me.

It was time to go get some revenge... justice...whatever.