The last watery remnants of a late October sun bled slowly from the sky, giving way to the only type of night she preferred: dark, so very dark—and quiet. Very, very quiet. There was something about autumn storms, she noticed, that seemed to force people to shelter much more quickly (and much more forcefully) than the playful rains of spring and summer. It was as if they were girding themselves against the inevitable onslaught of something colder, something dreariest, something more dangerous than just a mere downpour. She couldn’t say she blamed them, really…it was on evenings like this (born of storms like this) that creatures like *her* emerged.
Taking her time, savoring the smell of old, wet blacktop and old, wet leaves, she moved slowly beneath the streetlights. If anyone took notice, it didn’t register; she was in no danger, after all. There were few things left on earth more dangerous than she. On several occasions—in this very neighborhood—she’d proven that fact. On several more occasions, in places scattered throughout the city’s fringes, she’d hammered the point home. …No, she wasn’t worried. Not for herself, at least. Tonight she had several pressings things to attend to, and the first was Alan.
She was certain that, to outsiders, her care and concern for an all but nameless bum was strange. But people—humans—like Alan were HER people. At least they had been, centuries before. Now, they weren’t so much her “people” as they were her secret charges, souls to whom her heart was drawn and her power protected. The damaged, the down-and-out, the ones the world had cast away…those were the mortals to which she was drawn. And Alan had, without hesitation (or fear for his own well-being), protected her some ten years before in a moment that had since cemented their friendship.
Rounding the corner, her nostalgia-born smile died. Suddenly. Instead replaced with a snarl of rage that erupted from her chest, she stopped mid-step.
“You don’t have to fuck with me…” Alan’s voice faltered.
He sounded almost apologetic — and scared. The stranger in front of him, the one whose eerie stillness and shadow-cloaked face, forced another, louder, more savage growl from her. There was a power to the creature, palpable and alarming; it forced her to suddenly move before she realized it. Closing the distance between them suddenly, grey eyes flashing dangerously, she made to step between them. To shield Alan as he had shielded her, long ago.
Holding one arm out protectively to keep Alan back, she raked the fingers of the other through her short mess of black hair (now rain-matted) and stared fiercely at the thing threatening her friend.
“I think it would be best if you stepped off…”