Free One Late Night by Ashley Shayne Page A

then spun on my heels and ran for it.
    I ran three straight blocks before my lungs forced me to
stop to pant and recover myself. I leaned against a wall and tried not to pant
too audibly. Large, solid, empty buildings rose around me, and there was no
movement in sight. A thin fog had rolled in and I could only see for a block or
so down the road. It was incredibly eerie, and as I looked around me I realized
I didn’t know where I was. I’d run in a different direction than the one I
normally took when I walked home and I hadn’t read a single corner street sign,
paid no attention to where I was going. Great. Not only had I freaked out
because I’d heard what had to have been a dog, now I was lost in a bad part of
town late at night.
    Suddenly, as I panted and sagged against the wall, I heard a
skittering noise. It sounded as if someone had kicked a rock down the pavement.
I flattened myself against the wall and tried to breathe as quietly as
possible. In the silence, I heard the snuffling sound again. Pure terror
gripped me as I watched a shape slowly grow in the fog. It looked like
something impossibly large was coming down the road toward me.
    I sank into a ball against the wall and stared in shock as the
shape entered the street behind me. It was huge and shaggy and moved oddly, in
a shuffling, disjointed sort of way. As though its legs and arms didn’t work
like a normal person’s would. They swung out at odd angles as it moved, and the
whuffling noise came again as it waved its head over the ground. The thing
looked as if it was sniffing the ground…tracking something. Trying not to
entirely freak out, I told myself that whatever it was tracking was probably
not me. It had to be something else, someone or something that meant something
to that beast. Not just some random human. I tried desperately to ignore the
small, fatalistic voice in the back of my head that was screaming that it might
just be hungry, and I hoped it would ignore me.
    It snuffled again and its head swung toward me. Tears
started running down my cheeks as it approached. I thought about trying to run
again but something told me it was futile. Even if I managed to sneak past the
thing, it had shown up incredibly quickly after I’d run three blocks away from where
I’d first heard it. Either there were more of these creatures around or this
one was fast enough to follow me with no effort. Either way, I was probably
doomed.
    I thought about my mom and my little brother and wished I’d
called them before I left for work today. I thought about Alex and decided our
relationship was over if I lived through this. Then I just squeezed my eyes
shut and waited to die.
    Through my catchy, uneven breathing, I heard the creature
shuffle closer to me and then a gust of wind blew against my face and my eyes
flew open as a tremendous crash echoed through the street. What I saw
astonished me. The creature was lying in a heap across the road and it didn’t
seem to be moving at all. A tall, dark man was standing over it, looking down
and seeming somehow thoughtful.
    I stared at him in shock and tried not to move or draw
attention to myself. Suddenly the figure started laughing, a deep, wholehearted
chuckle that was so surprising to me in my present state that I gasped. He
turned casually at the sound and glanced over his shoulder at me.
    He was gorgeous. If my eyes could have gotten wider, they
would have. He had jet-black hair cut in a short, messy style that fell over
his forehead, and a straight, perfect nose. His lips, wide and sensuous, were
curled in an amused smile and his bright-blue eyes seemed to look into my soul.
He must have been six feet tall and was lean and muscular under his tight black
tank top and jeans. At any other time and place, I would have been too
intimidated by his beauty to even look at him for long, but right now I was too
shaken to do more than feel a momentary breathlessness at his godlike
attractiveness before the fear took over