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Every failure, all the pain, everything which adds another scar to my heart is the motivation I need to try harder. Even if sometimes I can feel the darkness leaking into me like ink, spreading through me and threatening to infect me with the hopelessness that’s draped over so many people.
“Annie,” I whisper, and her eyes widened further, only enhancing the look of innocence and fear on her features—deep brown eyes framed by dark lashes and even darker hair that fell around her face and ended neatly on her shoulders. “Let someone help you. If not me, then your friends here.”
“How do you know so much about me?” The terror was evident in the tremble in her voice, the whisper waivered into almost nothing as she finished her question. I must be frightening to her, my frame big enough to be intimidating and tall enough she had to look up at me.
“Think of me as a guardian angel,” I said.
She almost laughed. The twitch of her lip vanished when I didn’t smile in return.
“Please, just leave me alone.”
I released her but took a half step forward, closing the gap between us so she had to crane her neck to look at my face.
“Leave him, or I’ll make him leave you.”
It wasn’t a threat.
Not one directed at her anyway.
Annie didn’t listen, and I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised.
When she got home, the man she lived with, Wade, wasn’t there. She had the chance to leave after she picked up her son from her neighbor. I waited on the rooftop of the building across from hers for her to come out, flee to the club, and into the arms of people who were willing to help her.
There was still much about this place I had to learn, and not everyone here is the sort of person you might judge them to be. The people working in the bars and clubs, the dancing girls and sex workers, and even some of the men who looked after them, were as often as not, good people doing the best they could in a poor situation. I had thrown a blanket of presumption over the entire area, and there were so many holes in that vision now, it was a needlepoint of awareness. The most unassuming people could contain the darkest souls, the deepest secrets, and the sickest desires. The tattooed six foot four, ex-con bouncer at the third-largest strip club in the city actually had three children and a wife he loved and cared for with a gentle demeanor that didn’t fit his physical appearance.
Yeah, I had a lot to learn.
Apparently, so did Annie because, for whatever reason, she stayed with Wade.
I tried not to judge. It was easy to look at these people and wonder why they didn’t simplydo better.But it wasn’t always that simple—it wasrarelythat simple. Annie felt she had no choice. Wade had gotten into her mind so much she felt tolerating the beatings was the best situation she could hope for.
No more.
I had stood by long enough and had pushed her as hard as I could. Tonight wasn’t the first night she had seen me and only the first time I had made her aware I was there. I had encouraged her neighbors to talk to her, posing as a long-lost brother who she didn’t want to see anymore. I had even gone as far as leaving anonymous notes advising I knew what was going on, and I could help her leave, hoping she’d take solace in a stranger reaching out.
I couldn’t do what the demons could, and I didn’t want to, but perhaps I could find a halfway point to get the good work done.
When Wade got home, he saw her red lipstick. It was difficult to remove and had stained her lips. He knew Annie had been out, and she was going to pay for it. People in other apartments surely could hear what was going on, but what could they do? Interfering could mean getting hurt themselves, and the police? How long would they take to get there? They’d lock him up for the night, he’d be back on the street tomorrow, and Annie would pay for it with blood and teeth.
I watched as Annie ran from him, grabbing her young son and locking him in a closet as he cried and screamed. She fled across the apartment and darted by the windows of the living room to hide in the bathroom. Wade followed at a relaxed pace. He knew she had nowhere to go. The combination of his fists clenched at his sides and his casual stride sent anger pulsing through my veins. He enjoyed this.
But he didn’t count on me.
When I heard the door slam and knew Annie was in the bathroom, I swooped in. In one quick motion, I leaped from the roof and unfurled my wings, then crossed the street in a split second and tucked my wings around my body as I crashed through the window into their apartment.
Wade covered his face with his arms as glass went flying across the carpet. When he looked up, the insults were on the tip of his tongue. He wanted to yell at me, threatening me for the damage and breaking and entering.
But beyond the strange man he now saw standing in his home was the impressive span of my wings, dappled steel, ash, and gunmetal grays casting a shadow across the room as they almost touched the walls on either side of me. His eyes grew wide, and his jaw dropped as he tried several times to speak, too stunned to move as I crossed the room and snatched at the front of his hoodie.
“Hey, Wade,” I growled. “Why don’t you pick on someone your own size?”
I tried not to think about how Frank could’ve come up with a better line.
Wade screamed, more high-pitched than I’m sure he’d like to acknowledge, as I yanked him from the apartment and out the window I had entered. His fingers clawed at my wrist as I hovered above the street, taking him higher than the apartment building.
Eight stories up, the chances of him surviving a fall from this height was around ten percent.
I told him as much as I sneered.
