Page 8 of Breathe Like Hell

“On your⁠—”

“Mason you need to hurry,” I cut him off, my mouth dry and my eyes wide, tears gliding silently down my face in the dark.

The footsteps stopped and my heart started pounding even harder.

I flinched as something fell past the window. Large and fast, a black smear against the backdrop of night. I heard it hit the ground outside my trailer with a thud. Mason was saying something else, but I couldn’t hear him over the rush of blood in my ears, over the sheer, primal fear overtaking my entire body.

Two glowing eyes were staring in my window through the crack in the blinds.

Not reflective, not like an animal. But glowing.

Gold.

I shrank back further under my bed, barely holding my terrified sobs inside, my exhales coming out choppy and uneven. They were the same eyes I’d seen in the woods on my walk, the same ones that I’d run away from earlier because of the unnatural feeling they’d given me. Standing at human height and piercing the darkness.

Micah’s words echoed in my brain.

He hunts demons, Dakota.

They were words I’d never thought much about until this moment, cowering under my bed, gripping my small knife like it would save me. If angels were real, and I knew two of them…

What else is real?

The eyes shifted to the side, the demon tilting its head to see better through the gap at the side of my blinds. I couldn’t tell if it was looking at me because the eyes didn’t have pupils. Two golden orbs, tilted to be stacked vertically, peering into the darkness of my bedroom, looking for me.

I glanced down at my phone, seeing that Mason hadn’t hung up despite the fact that I’d been ignoring the past twenty things he’d said.

The demon shifted its head again, like it was really looking, trying to figure out if I was in the bedroom. Silently, I turned my phone off and laid it face down on the ground, eliminating the dim light from the screen, eliminating any sound from Mason’s voice through the speakers.

My fingers were twitching.

In an instant, the glowing eyes disappeared, replaced by blackness.

Only a moment later, I heard my front door opening.

My back teeth clenched tight together and I shoved myself all the way to the wall, not breathing. Footsteps were fast down the hall towards my bedroom and the door flung open.

“Dakota?”

At the sound of Mason’s voice, a terrified sob burst out of me and fresh tears flooded my face. He crouched down and looked under the bed, concern all over his features.

“What are you doing under your bed?” He reached an arm under, grabbing my hand and helping pull me out from under the frame. I was shaking so badly I could hardly get my words out. Mason brushed some dust off my sleeve, holding me in front of him. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, making me think he’d just flown here.

“There were glowing eyes,” I whispered, then pointed to the window. “Golden⁠—”

“Call Micah,” he cut me off before I could say another word, his voice urgent. His grip tightened on my upper arms, fingers digging in. “Call Micah right now.”

“What’s going on?” I asked as he sat me on my bed. Mason turned and went to the window, yanking the blinds up so he could see out while I navigated to Micah’s contact. I hesitated for a second, knowing he was mad at me, but then my thumb pressed the screen to call him.

He answered right away.

“I’m almost there.”

“To my place?” I questioned, confused, sitting up straighter in my bed.

“Yes. Tell Mason he can go.”

I had no idea what the fuck was going on, how they both seemed to understand the entire situation in so few words. I drew my knees up to my chest, staring at the huge scars on Mason’s back, still clutching my knife in my shaking grip. His fingers flexed, tightened into fists. My tangled hair was hanging all the way down to my comforter, almost long enough to sit on as I kept the phone pressed to my cheek. But Micah hung up without saying anything else, so I dropped my phone on the mattress.