The Knightstick Chronicles, Rough Justice

Ch 16, Knightshift

I ran back to my car so fast, I almost flew. Skidding to a halt as I reached it, I yanked open the driver's side door, jumped in, slammed the key in the ignition, and peeled out of the sleepy neighborhood street like a bat out of hell. 

She was alive... My insides were buzzing. All my personal fears and self doubts vanished in the face of one pervasive fact; I needed to find Annabell. Now.

The problem was, try though I might, I wasn't seeing an Aether trail. I couldn't track her.

With no bearing in mind, I headed towards downtown out of instinct. I held her pony drawing against the steering wheel as I drove, shifting my eyes between it and the road, willing it to give me a clue to her whereabouts. 

“Leo, where the hell is she?” I barked at the back seat, presuming he was there. 

“If I could tell you that, I wouldn’t need a Vessel now would I?” He retorted. “Slow down and park somewhere, you need to calm yourself.”

I slammed my palm on the wheel, “She prayed dammit! I heard her! Isn’t that how this works?” 

I’d come to the edge of downtown, driving through the dense city’s narrow, grid pattern roads. In the backseat, Leo watched as I swerved through lanes of traffic at nerve racking speeds.

“You're too worked up, pull over.” Leo repeated.

I turned around in my seat, “Show me the girl!” I screamed.

“John!”

Whipping around to face the road, I slammed on my breaks, stopping inches before the bumper of another car. Blood was pounding in my ears and I was breathing fast. 

“You can’t help her this way,” Leo said calmly. “Pull over, and wait.”

I gnashed my teeth, but did as Leo asked, and pulled off to a small side street. 

“Remember to breathe,” Leo coaxed, “You're angry, and scared for her. Put it aside, what does she feel?”   

 Closing my eyes, I tried to focus on her, my chest warming under the hum of the talisman. I still felt her pain, but it was nothing new, nothing that helped me find her. 

Shifting restlessly in my seat, I reached out into the Aether, sifting through the worlds’ ocean of emotions. I found pain, fear, excitement... but not her’s. They were the feelings of other strangers. 

From a nearby bus stop, a homeless man's despair washed over me like a tidal wave. It passed, followed by the manic high of an intoxicated amphetamine addict under the bridge near the freeway. Again it shifted, now I felt the sexual arousal of a couple on a tinder date four blocks over.

My psychic senses were dialed to eleven, and the sensory input was too high. I felt everyone, but not Annabell.

“Dammit!” I Punched the dash, and jumped out of the car, pacing anxiously in the alley.  “It’s too damn loud! I need space.”

I lifted my gaze skyward trying to slow my breathing when the outline of a towering glass building caught my eye. About five blocks from me was the Emerald tower, the tallest structure in the city.

Peering back down the roads, the evening traffic was already congesting. No time for that... I Inhaled deeply, and took off at a sprint down the street.

I blew past cars, bikes and pedestrians at an alarming rate, my limbs coursing with Aether charged lightning. I wove through people, lamp posts, and garbage cans like water rushing through rocks. In no time I stood at the base of the Emerald tower, looking straight up its thirty stories.