“Where did she go?” one asked before the other gestured down the alleyway the girl had disappeared into.
The man’s voice bled into me, a plethora of images assaulting me. The man smiling around a table with others, him working a job on computers, him kicking a man on the ground who wore a band on his wrist identifying him as a shade. He threw out insult after insult, and even after the man on the ground had stopped moving, he didn’t stop the attack.
I blinked, building up my shields, stopping the wash of images, and my feet moved before I had to consider it. I only transposed the image of that young girl and what the man had done before, and I sure as hell wouldn’t letthathappen if I could stop it.
Brax getting angry, Knox and Wade lecturing me later, those things didn’t matter.
I rushed forward, dropping my bags at the opening of the alleyway.
Down farther, the two men approached the girl who cowered, her back to a fence that blocked her escape.
“Leave me alone,” she begged, her bright blue eyes red already, her long, dark brown hair tangled. That was when I noticed a black eye—clearly not new.
It seemed this was far from the first time she’d been in a dangerous situation. Her terror wasn’t the kind from surprise, but rather from someone who had experienced this before, who knew exactly what could and would happen.
“You aren’t welcome here,” the man at the front, the one I’d seen memories from, snapped. “You know the rules—you don’t come to this part of town.”
“My friend needed medicine,” the girl said, pressing herself as flat against the fence as she could. “This is the only pharmacy that has the medicine.”
“Don’t care. Guess you need a reminder of the rules.”
Oh, fuck that.
The man went forward, and I’d reached my limit. I snapped my fingers, then swiped that sound forward and to the side. Just as planned, the wave smacked both men back and shoved them against the wall of the building to our right.
The girl jerked her gaze past the men to me, her eyes wide as if she wasn’t sure who the bigger threat was.
Then again, I’d seen the darker side of shades as well, had witnessed what they were willing to do to each other when backed into a corner.
I moved to the side, giving the girl a wide berth to move past me.
She moved her gaze from the men to me, the back and forth as if deciding what to do. “Who are you?” she asked.
I lifted my chin to show her the scar at my throat, but I wasn’t sure if she was old enough to understand the meaning. She certainly wouldn’t come close enough for me to write her a message, given her hesitancy.
I gestured toward the end of the alleyway and jerked my head that way, trying to tell her to go.
And that battle in her eyes restored some of my faith in people. It was her not wanting to leave me to whatever would happen, not wanting to make me face the danger alone.
I offered her as kind a smile as I could and shook my head.
One of the men rose, using the wall as support. It was the one who had spoken before, the one whose memories I’d seen. He paid the girl no mind, focusing on me instead, fury in his dark blue eyes. “You bitch,” he spat, red trailing down his chin from a split lip.
The girl tried to dart past him, but it seemed he hadn’t fully forgotten about her, because he reached out to grab her.
He’d have gotten her, too, if I hadn’t moved so fast. It seemed using my power was becoming second nature to me, and I didn’t have to even think about it. Instead, I snapped and sent a wave right at him, using it to slam him against the wall and hold him there.
Kit would be so proud to see how fast I did that.
I focused on the man as I stepped between him and her. The other man hadn’t risen again, though he breathed which suggested I hadn’t killed him. He seemed less seriously injured and more unwilling to become a target by fighting anymore.
The man stared at me with so much hatred it nearly made me sick. He hated me for what I was, not giving a damn about who I really was. Men like this, people this twisted with hatred, couldn’t change. They didn’twantto change or learn.
“You’re making ahugemistake,” the man said, his voice all ignorance. The bulging of the muscles at his neck said he struggled, but I held him so tightly he couldn’t do a thing about it.
I gave him a cruel smile, feeling like a person holding a rattlesnake behind its head. It didn’t matter how he bared his fangs—he couldn’t do anything to me, not until I decided to release him.
“You think you saved her? Hardly. You shades think you’re so damned smart, so powerful, but the truth is that humans keep winning. We keep putting you in your place, and I don’t give a fuck who you think you are,whatyou think you are. You’ll end up on your knees like every other one of your kind.” Bottomless insanity swam in his eyes, so deep it reminded me of Kit, of that same black hole that could drag a person in.