Girl In Disguise

Chapter 3: Downtown

Okay. I swear I don't know how it happened. It just did. But shit hit the fan big time.

After I had tried to persuade Aries I didn't have any attraction toward her, she finally had understood that I was being serious somehow. She got pissed and ran out of the motel and I couldn't find her. I shouldn't have been so harsh to her. I hadn't meant to make her cry, but what the hell am I supposed to say? I mean come on I'm a girl even if Aries doesn't know that and I am not a lesbian. I have nothing against them either. I just don't go that way. Hell, I've never even dated a guy except for Ethan, one of the guys Abe hired as a security guard for the monitoring room in the winery building somewhere west of Abe's property; though it was just a damn crush and he thought I was gay so I gave up. That and he fell in love with an other woman and left Manhattan. And I certainally couldn't tell anyone that I was a woman. I'd lose my job. 

But that shit doesn't matter, my highest priority is to protect Aries and her family like I promised.

Yet I made her feel dejected and she’s run off to who knows where.

I feel my heart drum to an unknown rhythm as I begin panicking, looking around the suffocating crowded streets of Vegas. Abe is totally going to hate me if I don't find her. And God knows what Aries may walk into in this city. Fuck.

I inhale. I've just got to improvise. Damn it. I really didn't think I'd have to use one of my abilities I've hid from the world since five. I hate using them. Last time I used them one of my foster families had believed I was a demon from hell and tried to kill me. They both ended up, sad to say, in an insane asylum and I haven't heard what happen after that because I was long gone and that's how I became a street rat and dug through trash cans for food and hunted small animals in the woods until Abe found me and gave me a job as Aries' bodyguard.

I owe Abe for giving me a better life. That's why I've got to find Aries. Damn everything all to hell!

Erasing all panic and emotion from my mind to concentrate, I use an ability I haven't used for years. I try linking my mind to Aries' own to try seeing through her eyes and utilize her senses as if they were my own.

I've heard that people call such an ability: sensory manipulation, but even if I have this ability I'm not the expert. I guess that's what I've got...shit, I could care less about what it's called.

Five minutes later, I finally catch onto Aries' senses and link my mind with hers. I find a deserted alley to stand in, dark shadows clouding my figure from sight as my thoughts become clouded by a white fog of nothingness.

Suddenly, an inferno of invisible flames burns its way inside the interiors of my body like a blazing fire, caressing my skin painfully. It always feels as if my skin's about to tear apart at any moment when I use a mind link. Her thoughts and sensations become overwhelming, an excruciating pain that seems to paralyze my own senses for a moment.

Images flash before my mind at lightning speed.

Distant voices. Dark allies. A group of guys watching like hungry strays. Dimly lit rundown houses with broken glass windows and padded up doors. The sound of a gunshot in the distance. The smell of tobacco, mildew, and cigarettes. Trash and beer bottles littering the roads and grounds...

Before I can even get more insight as to where she's located, darkness swarms my thoughts and I'm back in my own mind. Shit, I'm thinking to myself as I process her thoughts.

Panting heavily from exhaustion, a feeling of dread fills my stomach as it's hard to breath. Panic sets in once again. Horrified by the images and sounds she was sensing I stumble out of the alley like a drunkard, eyes wide like saucers and my head thrumming like loud bells.