Before Beasts, There Was Sound--Book 1

Tiger in the Street

The coffee shop two blocks from Kenny's house was a relatively popular place at nine in the morning. College students and late riser business men sipped cups of coffee while reading the newspaper or debating to each other over their cell phones or articles in the Economist. Occasional the owners daughter, a pretty, curvy thing in her mid-twenties, came through to deliver bagels or other specialty items. It was no secret that Kenny took advantage of the coffee shop for their meeting place not just because it was close to his house, but because he loved to watch her behind the screen of his laptop.

Today, however, his mind was far from the pretty waitress.

"Why do things keep happening right after I leave? Why did I let you guys talk me into that? This is so unfair!"

"You think that's unfair?" said Hilary with a grimace as she poured extra cream into her coffee, which had already come out a light caramel color and was growing paler. "I finally wheedled Tyson into taking me to the movies and he goes into a coma. How's that for fair?"

"Woah, hang on," Ray dropped his Chai tea with a smile. "Did you just say you two were going on a date?"

She flushed, but made her usual show of hiding it by pushing on a cool, disinterested smile. "Hardly. But I guess to you lot that would be. Are you sure you're not gay? Not that there's anything wrong with that."

Kai and Ray gave her mirroring glares of annoyance, while Kenny urged her to lower her voice. He wasn't completely oblivious to the presence of his crush, after all. He didn't need homosexuality on top of his already long resume of updateable qualities to deter any chance with her.

She rolled her eyes. "Don't give me that. You guys have fangirls rolling out of your ears but in all the time I've known you only Max and Tyson have ever bothered to have a girlfriend, if you could call them that. Tyson's was more of a fan club and Max's was..." she sighed. "Let's not talk about that."

"You're the one who brought it up," said Kenny.

"Besides, shouldn't we be talking about something else? This isn't exactly the time to talk about our love lives," said Ray, leaning over his Chai rather broodingly.

Hillary eyed his change of position and took a sip of her coffee-flavored-cream. "There's a whole story right there, but I won't push it. You're right. We should be figuring out how to get out of this mess. Well, what do we have? I got the whole vibrations spiel from Kenny, but how do you plan on getting around that?"

"They're going to attack her!" said Kenny, hands tight about his hot cocoa. "They were practicing on this drawing of a person all last night and everything, you have to stop them!"

Hillary dropped her coffee with a loud clack of cardboard. "Excuse me?"

Kai sighed and pushed away his empty cup. He didn't have the energy to deal with their stupidity today. If they wanted to live in their PG rated world, fine. He wasn't even entirely sure why he had agreed to meet up with Kenny and Hilary here in the first place. Probably because Ray had been going. But when had he become such a lemming? Ray could take care of himself on his own, right?

Hillary stood with him. "Don't you dare walk away from me, Kai, explain yourself!"

"I don't have to." Kai dropped some change on the table for a tip. "There's two guys in the hospital that are all but dead to do that for me."

But even with that said, when he stepped out of the shop and into the sunlight he didn't head off in some random direction. Rather, he looped back and around the store, scaled a fence, caught onto a terrace, and shimmied his way up to the roof. There, he found himself a shady spot behind a transformer unit and kept his ears peeled for the sound of the others leaving the shop below. Like he would be stupid enough to leave behind his last teammate in times like this.