Page 13 of Thane's Demon
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, trying to keep my voice light as I stepped aside.
“I didn’t see you there. I think I took a wrong turn. Do you know how to get to…” His hand clamped around my wrist, cutting off my words.
Everything inside me locked.
My breath froze, stuck somewhere between my lungs and my voice, and a sharp sting shot up my arm as his grip tightened.I tried to pull back, but my feet felt rooted to the ground. My body was trembling despite my desperate attempt to keep it still. I hated this feeling. Hated how familiar it was, this quiet internal pleading that rose whenever someone trapped me in a place I could not escape. I told myself not to cry, not to make a sound, not to break in front of him. My mother would not want me to crumble. She would want me to fight or at least hold my own long enough to breathe again. But despite all this, I still screamed as I tried to pull away the second the man leaned closer, his fingers digging deeper.
My heartbeat throbbed painfully in my ears. And then, out of nowhere, the world exploded.
A thunderous crack shattered the air as something heavy dropped from above, hitting the ground so hard the pavement shook beneath my feet. The man jerked away from me, stumbling backward as a dark silhouette rose from the shattered concrete. A man, tall and broad, and terrifyingly still. The neon lights from the street behind him cast a glow around his edges, bathing him in a harsh blue halo that made him look like he had stepped straight out of a nightmare.
He moved so fast I barely saw it, grabbing the man who had held me and slamming him into the brick wall with a force that shook dust loose from the mortar. The sound of bone hitting stone echoed through the alley, sharp and brutal. My breath caught in my throat as the attacker gasped and clawed weakly at the massive arm pinning him up, but the stranger holding him did not falter.
His grip tightened.
The man choked. His body jerked in the stranger’s hold before it then went limp.
I stood frozen, watching the corpse hit the ground with a heavy thud, unable to move, unable to speak, unable to understand what I had just witnessed. The stranger turnedslowly toward me, and when his eyes met mine, something inside me shifted so abruptly that I felt the world tilt.
He was terrifying.
His presence wrapped around the alley like a storm. He looked like danger shaped into flesh, like he was made from shadows and violence and anger so thick it clung to the air.
But strangely, I was not afraid.
My heart pounded, not from terror, but from something else, something warm and disorienting. Something that made the space around him feel strangely safe.
His eyes glowed faintly, blue sparks flickering in the darkness, and for a moment, I forgot how to breathe. He stared at me with a mixture of annoyance and something else I could not name. A flicker of confusion, maybe even irritation, as if I had somehow done something to inconvenience him.
He exhaled sharply, the sound almost like a growl.
“You are stupid,” he said, each word sliding out cold and sharp. I instantly stepped back, but his hand snapped up and gripped the top of my arm. It didn’t hurt, but it was enough of a warning to get me to stop trying to put distance between us. But then something strange happened. He raised his other hand and gently caressed the back of his fingers down my cheek. Something that contradicted what he said next.
“Walking alone at night. Smiling at strangers. Humming like you live in a fairy tale. You should have been dead before I got here.” His words cut, but not because he was cruel. They cut because they were true. I had been reckless coming this way, trying to cut time off my route home so I wouldn’t be late and have to deal with my father.
Still, a warmth rose inside my chest, trembling but sincere.
“I still want to thank you,”I whispered, my voice barely holding together, my hands shaking at my sides. His expressiontwisted, a strange flash of emotion crossing his face before he stepped back abruptly, as if being near me burned him.
“You should go,” he said, harsh and clipped.“Now.”
I nodded, too breathless to speak, too overwhelmed to do anything except obey. I backed away, my gaze never leaving him, my feet pulling me toward the safety of the streetlight behind me. I did not want to turn around. I wanted to stay in that strange blue glow a moment longer. I wanted to ask his name. I wanted to get a clearer view of the face in shadow. To try to understand why he felt like danger and safety wrapped in one impossible shape.
But when I finally turned away and walked toward the busier street, my heartbeat was so fast I pressed a hand to my chest to steady it. The night swallowed me again, but my thoughts stayed in the alley.
When I reached the corner, I glanced back.
He was gone.
Completely vanished, as if the shadows themselves had carried him away.
I swallowed hard, my voice trembling as I whispered into the empty night, unable to stop myself…
“Who are you?”
7
SHADOWS THAT FOLLOW
