I've backed halfway out of the alley, one foot on broken asphalt, the other still technically in enemy territory. The bottle's slick in my grip, my shoulder's on fire and the lungs can't decide if they want air or just to give up entirely.
The body is still just lying there.
I don't trust it.
I plant my back against the brick and scan my body, doing inventory. Wrist bruised and starting to swell. Shoulder's definitely fucked. I pull up the hem of my coat and there's blood smeared across my side, some of it his, some of it mine, all of it inconvenient. I press my hand there anyway, it won't help but it feels like doing something.
My head's still spinning.
That thing… it bled wrong. A car leaking transmission fluid, not a person bleeding out. What type of blood is thick, black, and burns the ground. Not to mention my precious nose hair. I've still got a chemical taste in the back of my throat like I'd chewed on wires.
What the hell was that?
I've seen junkies, dealers, men with nothing left to lose. I've seen monsters, too, but the human kind. The kind with fists and knives and reasons.
That wasn't one of them.
I tighten my grip on the bottle. The bastard's still slumped there, head down, body twitching every so often, a twisted glitching video feed. If he jumps back up, I'm so ready. Or at least I'll pretend to be, I've got anywhere else to go tonight.
Why does it feel like he's waiting for something? Why does that thought make me want to puke?
A slow buzz starts at the back of my neck. Not in a dramatic, thunderclap, heavens-open kind of way. No lightning, or soundtrack. Just this slow, quiet hum that rolls through the alley and tickles under the skin. My body knows something's coming before my brain catches up.
Fight or flight kicks in.
But I've already done both tonight, and I'm still here, bleeding onto the street and clutching my broken glass lucky charm.
The hum turns into pressure. It crawls over me, clenching the muscles in my jaw. Every part of me goes still.
Then I feel it. Not the thing in the alley, not him. Someone else.
Steps echo from the far end of the alley. He steps into view a second later.
And I swear, he looks like he got dropped here by accident. The universe meant to put him in a penthouse but someone fat-fingered the coordinates.
He's tall, so tall and absolutely stacked. Wearing a black suit that had to cost more than my entire life. Shirt crisp, tie straight, shoes somehow untouched by the grime of the Ring. This is the kind of man who should be yelling at someone over facetime, not walking into my murder alley at midnight on the way to pick up dry cleaning.
My brain does a full pause. Because yeah, he's gorgeous. Granted, there isn't a thing approachable about him. He's beautiful the way knives are, the way fire is. Something meant to be admired from a distance, preferably while behind bulletproof glass.
Everything about him feels… wrong. Not the same as the thing that attacked me.
This one's contained.
And that's way more dangerous.
There's not even a flicker of acknowledgment in my direction. I'm part of the scenery. Never mind me still bleeding into my jeans and holding a deadly weapon.
His eyes are on the thing in the alley. A heat-seeking missile that's already picked its target and isn't interested in detours.
The creature senses it too. Whatever it is, it shifts, just barely. Tilts its head trying to make sense of this new variable. Its mouth opens, lips twitching trying to speak. Or snarl. Or beg. Hard to tell to be honest.
Doesn't matter. Because Mr Beautiful moves.
A single step forward and a lift of his hand. The fingers don't even curl into a fist, they just hover for a breath, then come down. Touching the thing's forehead, a priest delivering last rites.
The result is immediate.
The body seizes once, and dissolves. Black sludge leaks out from under it, spreading across the ground. The edges of the body start to fray, curling in on themselves. Disintegrating, piece by piece.
Whatever that thing was, whatever monster just tried to kill me, whatever nightmare just oozed its way into this alley, he ended it with a touch.
A shitting touch!
Oh he's done that before, he'll do it again.
Time for me to bolt. But I'm pinned in place by my own survival instinct.
Just as I've built the courage, and strength to finally shift. Now he decides to notice me.
Beautiful, CEO man angles his head toward me and our eyes meet.
Ok, I finally understand what people mean when they say "looked through me." Because that's what he does. I'm transparent to his purple eyes. Everything I am, everything I've been, everything I'm trying so damn hard to hold together is right there in front of him, and it's just not that interesting.
I hate how still he is.
People aren't still like that. Not in the Ring, stillness is a luxury here. It means you're not afraid of what's coming around the corner, you're the thing coming.
His deep and buttery soft when it finally comes. Somehow louder than it should be.
"That shouldn't have touched you."
I blink. "It didn't."
Technically a lie. But I'll be damned before I let him think I needed saving.
He takes a single step forward, apparently trying his hardest to just be really creepy.
Just before I can tell him to go to hell, he sure shocks the hell out of me.
"You're not human."