Demon Night

safe.
    The lights from the Heritage penetrated the gray haze of fear clouding her vision. It was only a twenty-foot drop or so. Better to risk broken legs and go over at the front of the building than wait around here for…
    Her mind shut off before she could contemplate that .
    Blindly, she sprinted away from the wall and slammed into another. Pain exploded over her cheek. The impact spun her around, she almost fell, but something wrapped around her chest and pulled her back up tight against a surface as hard as the brick, but warm.
    What—?
    Not a wall. One of them had gotten upstairs.
    It was no use, but she tried to yell, kicking her heels against his shins, elbowing his stomach and chest. Her struggles were as ineffectual as her screams, and she hated the desperate whistling noises she made almost as much as she hated this thing for scaring her.
    “Easy, Charlie. Easy.” A male voice. A soft rumble in her ear. “I’ll take care of them.”
    It cut through her panic, and she had a heartbeat’s time to see the arm extended over her shoulder, and the crossbow in a large, capable hand. A heartbeat’s time to see the dark form launch onto the roof and the shock on his pale face before the bolt thunked into his forehead and he tumbled back over the side.
    The female shrieked, a piercing note of surprise and terror. One of the males—probably not the one with an arrow through his brain, Charlie realized—cried a name like a warning. Gideon? And then running footsteps, boots against pavement, echoing in the alley…so fast. Prestissimo agitato, and the tempo of her heart not much slower.
    “Can you stand, Charlie?”
    She didn’t know. She couldn’t think of her legs when her entire existence narrowed down to a stranger’s arm and his weapon. The rain beaded on his sleeve, then soaked into the rough weave. There weren’t many dark spots on the material, as if he’d donned the coat in the past minute or two.
    “Charlie?”
    She blinked. “Yes,” she rasped, and then he was setting her feet down and running silently past her, a tall form in a long brown duster, the split coattails flaring out behind him. A round-brimmed hat shadowed the side of his face as he jumped atop the wall and went over.
    Her stomach quaking, Charlie raced to the edge, looked down.
    All of them, gone.
    Vertigo struck. The world swam dizzily, and Charlie shook her head. Not real. Not real.
    She was trying to convince herself of that as Old Matthew and Vin burst through the kitchen door. A shotgun glinted dully in Old Matthew’s grip. They rounded the Dumpster.
    “Charlie?” Shock hoarsened the older man’s voice and twisted his face when he saw the gate. He lifted the weapon to his shoulder, turned in a long sweep of the alley.
    It took her two attempts to moisten her tongue enough to reply, to stop the chattering of her teeth. “Up here.” It was little more than a whisper, so she added a wave.
    She looked into the barrel of the shotgun for half a second, then Old Matthew lowered it. “You all right?”
    The weak nod of her head didn’t seem sufficient, but she couldn’t yet move and didn’t want to walk, however briefly, into the darkness. “I’m okay,” she said. “I just really have to pee.”
    “You’d better come down first.” Old Matthew’s tone was the same he used with weepy drunks.
    Not weepy, not drunk—just numb.
    Belatedly, she realized her phone was still open. She clicked it shut. Twenty-one seconds.
    She forced herself to move slowly away from the safety the sight of Old Matthew’s and Vin’s familiar faces provided. She wouldn’t be dependent on it. She wouldn’t—
    What in the hell was that ?
    Her legs weakened, and she had to brace her palm against the stairwell wall to steady herself. She shook her head, looked again.
    A long white feather lay on the black rooftop, only a yard from where she’d barreled into him. So clean and bright that it appeared to glow, though lit only by dim Christmas tree bulbs and the vapor-scattered streetlight.
    “Come on, Charlie girl.” Worry had crept into Old Matthew’s voice; she must have been out of his view for too long.
    She swept up the feather with shaking hands and ran down the stairs, through the dark. And it was crazy, stupid—but once the idea occurred to her, she couldn’t let it go.
    Perhaps the male hadn’t yelled a name, but a word.
    Guardian.

CHAPTER 2
    When it rained, Charlie preferred the night. Liquid sunshine, gray