Thanks for waiting! And Isabel thinks this guy can't fight. Support Paranatural on Patreon and Ko-fi PLEASE!! You're the best if you do! Thanks for reading!

Paranatural will be on break until the 24th, while I take a trip to see my family! A much needed vacation. More Chapter 9 when I get back!

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[Transcript]

        A lethal blur of silver streaked past Ángel. He didn’t flinch as its blade grazed his cheek—combat, like any contest, called for sacrifice. A pawn, a scratch, his placid poise... it all could be surrendered to secure a greater piece. Shred’s thrust had left her open. Krack, krack! A blow and then its backswing, and her blade was on the ground. 

        Before he could batter the book from her grip, claws streaked across his shoulder. This time, Ángel flinched. He’d leaned in too close to the barrier, and she’d punished him without a moment’s hesitation—her fingers couldn’t breach the forcefield, but her metal nails phased through.

        Ángel opened his eyes, as he reeled back, to discover Shred’s sharp boot upon her sword. He slammed his staff onto its blade to pin it down against the sand. She dragged it back; his staff went with it. He was stronger—he would win the tug-of-war. Before he could, however, as the staff slid to an angle, Shred’s boot hooked in the gap beneath its base, the few stray inches of bamboo that she’d dragged out beyond the barrier.

        Ángel was forced to follow her lead in the dance. Shred’s heel scraped the invisible wall of the bubble as it arced above her head, a flexible high kick that Ángel couldn’t help but envy as a yoga lover. His staff was launched up with it; if he didn’t want to be disarmed, Ángel had no choice but to use its new momentum. His whirling barrage, however, struck only trailing fabric. By the third time Shred had dodged, the motion smoothly trebucheted her weapon back into the air, a swirling spin kick that sent sand up in a spray towards Ángel’s face. She caught her weapon and attacked, a cocky “Heh,” her sole indulgence in the rad maneuver’s aftermath.

        Ángel had shut his eyes before the sand could. He fought blind, parrying each strike, for the next three beats of the battle’s lightspeed rhythm. Ktang! Tang! THWACK! His eyes shot open on the fourth: a slash that took aim at his wrist, where Cherub’s bell chimed with his every movement. Ángel drove the thrust aside with just two fingers, the artful sidestep of a bullfighter. He blocked the throwing star aimed at his lantern with less grace, ducked to dodge a snare launched from a gizmo in Shred’s sleeve, snorted with indignance when she shone a laser pointer in his eyes, then let out an angry snarl as she caught his staff while he was forced off-balance. Eightfold’s book fell with a wet thump to the sand—Shred’s assault had needed two free hands.

        A mighty thrust and whipping side-strike failed to shake Ángel’s swift foe; instead, the Cousinhood’s Knight Eagle flipped up and around his staff just like a gymnast. Stake-heeled boots braced Shred against the barrier as she landed on its surface like a spider, pinning Ángel to its forcefield with his own arms as the straightjacket. With one hand, he kept a vice grip on his staff; with the other, he held Shred’s blade at bay, tempering his energy to spare his skin its edge. Achieving poltergeist touch with his armor took all of Ángel’s focus. Shred’s mundane sword was quivering an inch away from the ribbon of his bell, its subtle tremor the sole evidence of their unresolved contest of strength.

        “Typical spectral! Far too attached to your TOYS,” Shred sneered through her grin’s gritted teeth. Ángel’s brazen fighting only gambled his own safety—he was pinned because he wouldn’t drop his weapons.

        “Says the woman with—a junkyard’s worth—of gadgets and—a grappling hook—!” growled Ángel as he strained to claim control. 

        “You’re SUPPOSED to be attached to a grappling hook,” scoffed Shred. “That’s how you use it, fool. Consider seeking wisdom from a source besides a fortune cookie.”

        “Ha! I must indeed—be fortune’s fool,” Ángel stammered through a grimace, “for I can’t help but call upon her—when my back is against the wall. I only ever seem to conjure—RECKLESS plans...!” He clutched his staff still tighter. “Polar Shift!”

        The black energy that was pouring from Ángel became pure white. His will, a cosmic force, crushed down upon the Ghost Ship in the lantern at his hip. There wasn’t time for any weaker bond than absolute authority.

        Your POWER! Ángel’s thoughts boomed. Give it to me! There was a rush like an oncoming train, like a ship looming out of the fog, as the spirit in the lantern was laid low by his command.

        Shred fell forward with a startled grunt as the barrier was warped aside. The lamp at Ángel’s hip flared with a ghostly, sea-green light.

        “HrraAAH!” Ángel slammed his opponent past his shoulder, to the ground. No sooner had the air been forced from her lungs by the collision than Ángel had seized her again, scraping sand up from the beach as she was whirled into the wide arc of a hammer throw. “RRAAUGH!!” He roared again as he released her, summoning uncanny strength with sinew stitched from alabaster energy.

        Shred smoothed her trajectory into a spiral as she sailed beyond the porthole where the barrier had been. She landed on all fours like the stunt double for a cat that starred in spy movies, scraping grooves that slowed her movement in the sand. Her sword spun to a splashing stop in a tidepool just beside her.

        “Tch! And you wonder why... we call freaks like you MONSTERS,” Shred coughed, slowly rising to her feet.
        
        Ángel ignored her. His pulse was pounding in his ears. Fighting down his anger took more effort than he ever liked to admit. What it had earned, though, would help soothe him: Ángel stepped beyond the barrier, knelt down, and picked up Isabel’s lost book. He dusted sand and seafoam from its cover, smiling softly.

        From within it, a small presence reached out, surprised that she was not alone—and by her unexpected compatibility with the energy of the familiar man who’d retrieved her. Ángel frowned. His white aura was a secret he had no intent to share. What an annoyingly avoidable mistake...

        “Polar Shift,” he said beneath his breath, swapping his spectral energy back to black. He stashed the soggy book inside his satchel, stood, and turned to leave.

        From behind him came the sound of rapid footsteps in the sand. The Cousinhood’s best hunter was relentless: Shred was bounding at a sprint back towards the barrier, back towards the opening he’d made in Bayview’s border. Ángel sighed and kept on walking.

        “Take it from a man with vision that you lack: for all you claim to know of Bayview, there is always more to see—”

        THUNK!

        “...than meets the eye.”

        The Cousinhood’s Knight Eagle had struck the barrier as Ángel stepped back inside it, colliding with its clear sheen like the bird that she was named after. The light of the Ghost Ship’s lantern flickered out as Shred staggered backwards in a daze. 

        “Mm,” she said. “Hmm. Ow. Ouch. Owie. Not my most dignified moment.”

        “A lesson learned is worth some light embarrassment, I think,” suggested Ángel with a sympathetic smile. He bowed to signal that their bout was at its end.

        “Heh. Indeed.” Shred pushed up her skewed sunglasses. “And I’ve learned much from this encounter, Ángel Guerra...”

        “...Whatever helps you sleep at night,” Ángel replied serenely. “Upon the beach, outside of Bayview’s barrier.”

        “A curious phenomenon, this obstacle,” smirked Shred. She placed a hand against the bubble she’d just struck, pretending that she wasn’t seeing double as she glowered at Ángel. “Not only have you shown you hold the means to pry it open... but you’ve helped me prove its filter has a rather esoteric specificity.”

        “Have I now?”

        A claw-tipped finger rose to point at him. 

        “The barrier repels you, and MYSELF, but not its other earthly residents and visitors. It fails to block my weapons... and YOURS, Ángel, though I’ve no doubt that your arsenal is HAUNTED by the DEAD.” Shred closed her hand into a fist. “It’s no broad blockade, no ward against the paranormal, but a selective SIEVE defined by its exclusions. Sector Zero’s firewall was PROGRAMMED... and it’s VERY sloppy code.”

        “...Yes, yes, lifehack the planet, or what have you,” Ángel sighed. He turned to walk away. “The Activity Consortium has made many poor decisions. On this we can agree. But I cannot see the error in a ward that keeps out members of your brutish band of manhunters.”

        “Oh,” scoffed Shred. “Is it that simple? Well, then...”

        Ángel stopped. He squinted back at her, suspicious.

        “...I hereby quit the Cousinhood of Man!”

        Two missiles, a throwing star and crossbow bolt, came streaking from the shadows of the treeline past the barrier.