Chapter 3 Kimberly #2
At first my brain refuses to process it. It files the shape under “falling debris” or “hallucination” or “my concussion is doing a really weird thing right now.”
Then an enforcer goes airborne.
Not stumbles.
Not gets shoved.
He lifts clean off the floor like an invisible truck just hit him in the chest and slams into the far wall hard enough to crack tile and shower plaster down in choking white dust.
“What—” I breathe.
Another one turns.
He doesn’t even finish pivoting before something bone-white flashes through the smoke and hits him from the side.
There is a wet, concussive sound.
His body folds around the impact in a way bodies are not supposed to fold, and he flies backward into the stainless prep table, which dents inward with a scream of tortured metal.
I blink hard, convinced my brain just invented all of that.
Then I see it.
Him.
It.
I don’t have language for it.
The thing tearing into my kitchen is huge, taller than any man I’ve ever seen up close, broad enough in the shoulders that it nearly scrapes both sides of the service corridor as it moves.
Bone-white spurs arc out of its forearms and spine like some prehistoric nightmare decided to evolve into a war crime.
Its skin is dark, metallic, wrong, catching the strobe light in flashes that make it look carved out of bronze and shadow.
It moves like physics are optional.
It crosses the distance between two enforcers in a single blink of red-white strobe, and then there is screaming and the sound of bone breaking and a gun clattering uselessly across the floor.
My mouth opens.
Nothing comes out.
It isn’t human.
It isn’t anything I have words for.
The last enforcer raises his weapon, hands shaking so hard the barrel wobbles.
“Holy shit—” he gasps.
The thing turns its head.
And I swear to God the room goes quiet for half a second, like the building itself flinches.
It launches.
The enforcer fires.
The plasma bolt goes wide and punches a smoking hole through the freezer door.
The thing hits him mid-scream and drives him into the wall with a sound like a car crash compressed into one heartbeat.
Then there is nothing left moving in my kitchen except fire, smoke, and whatever the hell that is standing in the middle of the carnage with blood steaming off its bone spurs.
My knees give out.
Not metaphorically.
Literally.
My legs just… stop cooperating.
I stagger forward one useless step and then fold, my body tipping sideways like a bad stack of plates.
“No,” I whisper.
Not because I think it’s going to kill me.
Because my brain has finally decided this is real, and I am absolutely not equipped to be conscious for whatever comes next.
The heat climbs.
The fire behind the grill roars higher, licking up the wall and curling across the ceiling tiles, which are now sagging and cracking with ominous, splintering sounds.
The ceiling groans.
Deep.
Structural.
My ears ring again, harder this time, and the smoke gets so thick my eyes burn like someone rubbed chili oil into them.
I drag in a breath that feels like knives and stagger forward again, arms out in front of me like I’m trying to swim through air.
The thing turns.
It looks at me.
I don’t know how I know it’s looking at me.
I just know.
The bone spurs retract slightly, the way a cat’s claws do when it’s deciding whether you’re prey or not.
Our eyes meet through the smoke and strobe.
Its eyes glow.
Not brightly.
Not dramatically.
Just a faint, wrong light, like reflections that don’t belong there.
My heart does something stupid and traitorous inside my chest.
It lurches.
Hard.
My knees buckle completely.
“Oh,” I whisper, stupidly.
The world tilts.
My side explodes with pain as I fall forward again, this time face-first, and my cheek hits tile still warm from the blast.
I taste blood.
My own heartbeat is deafening now, thudding in my ears like a drum being played badly and too loud.
The thing is moving again.
Toward me.
Slow this time.
Deliberate.
Heavy footsteps through broken glass and debris.
I try to crawl.
I get maybe six inches.
My fingers slide uselessly in blood and condensation.
“No, no, no,” I mumble, my words slurring together. “I don’t… I don’t consent to this part of the apocalypse.”
The thing stops right in front of me.
Smoke swirls around its legs.
The heat is unbearable this close.
I squeeze my eyes shut and wait for claws or teeth or whatever the hell it’s about to use to finish me off.
Nothing happens.
A shadow falls over me.
Then something enormous and warm slides under my shoulders and knees at the same time.
I yelp in surprise as my body lifts clean off the floor.
“Oh my God,” I wheeze. “Okay, listen, I don’t know what your deal is, but I am extremely not on the menu today—”
The words die in my throat.
Because the arms holding me are shaking.
Not violently.
Not out of control.
But like someone is gripping a live wire and refusing to let go.
They are careful.
Impossibly careful.
My back presses against a chest that feels like solid stone wrapped in heat.
My head lolls sideways, and my forehead bumps against something hard and smooth and curved.
Bone.
A spur.
My brain short-circuits.
“Hi,” I whisper weakly to nobody in particular.
The thing makes a sound.
Not a roar.
Not a growl.
It’s a sharp, broken inhale, like it just took a breath it didn’t know it was allowed to take.
The fire crackles louder behind us.
The ceiling groans again, deeper, angrier.
I should be terrified.
I am, technically.
But something else is happening too, something I absolutely do not have a framework for.
There is a pressure building inside my chest.
Low.
Dense.
Directional.
The same place my heart lives.
It feels like something inside me is waking up and stretching and turning toward the thing holding me like it recognizes it.
My breath hitches.
“What the fuck,” I whisper.
The pressure answers.
It pulses once.
Hard.
The thing stiffens.
Its arms tighten around me just a fraction, not crushing, not painful, just… anchoring.
Our eyes meet again.
Up close now.
Too close.
The glow in his eyes brightens a hair, like a dimmer switch being nudged upward by an invisible hand.
His jaw locks.
Hard.
Every muscle in his body goes rigid like he’s bracing against something internal and violent.
“Oh,” I whisper again, because my vocabulary has officially left the building.
He swallows.
I hear it.
It’s loud.
Human.
Wrong, somehow, in a body like this.
“No,” he breathes.
The word is wrecked.
Ripped out of him like it hurts to say it.
The ceiling cracks.
A long, splintering sound rips through the room as a support beam finally gives up on life.
Debris rains down in a choking cloud of dust and sparks.
He turns without dropping me and starts moving, fast, toward the blown-out kitchen doorway.
“Hey,” I croak weakly, because apparently I am now the kind of person who talks to monsters in the middle of a firebombing. “I don’t know if you noticed, but my restaurant is actively dying back there.”
He doesn’t answer.
He just moves.
Smoke whips past my face.
Heat roars against my back.
My vision is collapsing inward again, dark creeping in from the edges like someone is closing curtains around my consciousness.
The pressure in my chest pulses harder, matching his heartbeat, and the sensation is so intimate and invasive and wrong that a sob rips out of my throat without permission.
“Stop,” I whisper. “Please… stop… whatever that is.”
He flinches.
Actually flinches.
“I’m trying,” he grits out, his voice low and rough and way too human to belong to the thing carrying me through a burning building. “I’m trying, I’m trying, I’m trying—”
The ceiling gives way behind us.
The roar of the fire swallows his words.
The world shakes.
I feel myself being lifted higher against his chest as he shields my body with his own without thinking about it.
Something deep inside me answers that gesture like it has been waiting its entire life for it.
The pressure in my chest blooms.
Blinding.
Overwhelming.
Not pain.
Recognition.
My body goes slack.
The last thing I register before the darkness finally takes me is the sensation of being held tighter, impossibly gentle, and the echo of something inside my chest answering a presence I have never felt before.
And the world goes out.