“No.”
The word slips out before my brain can stop my mouth, stupid and reckless, but the electric bill is sitting on my counter at home with a three-day shut-off notice, and if they take my car I lose the only way I make money, which means I lose the apartment, which means I lose everything. The last thread snaps and there’s nothing left to hold together.
The short one steps toward me and my body moves before my brain gives permission. The pepper spray comes out and I hit him square in the face. He screams, palms clapping over his eyes, stumbling backward into the pump.
“Fucking bitch!”
I spin to spray the big one but he’s already ahead of me, the pistol clearing the holster before I can aim. I freeze with the canister still raised, my finger still pressing the trigger even though it doesn’t matter anymore.
“Put that shit down.”
My arm drops. He shakes his head, almost disappointed.
“You dumb bitch. You got insurance. Just give up the car and walk away.”
“Please.” I look at my Lexus, then at the barrel pointed at my chest. “You take my car and I’m gonna end up homeless. This is all I got.”
“Bitch, I don’t give a shit about none of that. Give me the fucking keys or I’m gonna blow your fucking head off.”
I should hand them over. A car is not worth dying for. But I am so tired of being broke, of scraping and grinding andwatching every single thing I build fall apart on me. The word comes out flat, hollow, emptied of everything except the truth of it.
“No.”
He racks the slide. The sound punches through the wind, metal on metal, close enough that I can feel the vibration.
“No? Bitch, are you stupid or something?”
“No.” I meet his eyes and find nothing in them. “I’m desperate.”
He starts toward me. I back up, keeping the gas pump between us, but he knocks it aside with one hand and it clatters across the concrete, fuel trickling out in a dark line. I step over his partner, moaning and clawing at his face, and put my palm on the car, feeling for the passenger door without breaking eye contact with the gun.
“Give me the fucking keys.” He’s close now.”Don’t make me do this.”
I raise the pepper spray one more time. One last bluff that we both know is empty.
“Fuck it.” He lifts the pistol and points it at my head. “I tried. You’re just too stupid to want to live.”
I close my eyes. The shot doesn’t come. I’m standing, breathing, bracing for a bullet that never arrives.
When I open my eyes, the gun is on the pavement and the man is in the air. His feet kick at nothing, his hands claw at whatever has him by the back of his neck. Someone is holding him up with one arm like he’s made of paper.
I bend down and grab the pistol. I’ve never held a gun before and have no idea if the safety is on, but I’m not leaving it on the ground. My gaze follows the arm up to bare feet, human feet planted in the snow on concrete that would give a normal person frostbite in minutes.
Then I hear it. Low at first, building from somewhere deep, a sound that rattles my teeth and hums through my ribcage like bass from a speaker turned past what the housing can handle. A cackle. Not human, not anything close to human. It reminds me of the hyenas on those National Geographic documentaries I watch when sleep won’t come, except louder and deeper and wrong enough to lock every muscle in my body before I can tell it to run.
The man in the air goes rigid. His mouth opens and nothing comes out. His body jerks once and then goes limp, and the stranger drops him. He hits the ground still breathing but frozen, blank eyes aimed at the sky.
His partner is the same. Flat on his back, mouth slack, motionless. I nudge him with my boot and get nothing. No blink, no flinch. Whatever that sound was, it shut both of them down like a switch got flipped.
I look up at the man who did it, and the sight of him stops me where I stand.
He’s massive. Six-five, maybe six-six, with shoulders that block out the streetlight behind him. He’s wearing a sleeveless shirt in the middle of a blizzard, gray fabric stretched across a chest and arms covered in tattoos and heavy muscle. Snow lands on his dark skin and melts on contact, steam curling off him into the night air like his body runs on a furnace the weather can’t touch.
His eyes are glowing. Amber, bright enough to throw light on the snowflakes falling. He’s locked on me, and I can’t make myself look away.
My brain is telling me to scream, to run, that this man is more dangerous than the two laid out on the pavement by a factor I can’t calculate. But my feet won’t move away from him. My body wants to step closer, and I don’t have a single explanation for why.
He walks toward me and steps over the man he dropped. I hear a croak as his weight presses into the guy’s chest. I should be backing away. But I can’t bring myself to move.
