Prospect Ave.
Cleveland, Ohio
2:03 a.m., Dec. 24
Dana settled into her usual long, loping stride, forcing herself not to turn around for what seemed like the fifteenth time. She was not being followed, she told herself. Merely suffering from melodrama, her mind racing faster than her legs could carry her.
She’d tried calling Lester again, but he hadn’t picked up. Probably just as well. If he’d arranged on the side to meet with this Finn, Lester had violated every freaking protocol they had. Dana felt hot anger crawl up her cheeks again, searing against the frigid cold outside. The old man had always acted as if he was some kind of retro Hollywood kingpin, rather than the CEO of a simple Cleveland-based engineering company. Especially since the recent attack, her uncle wasn’t even supposed to go to lunch without leaving Dana’s team a detailed schedule, let alone set up private midnight meetings with unsecured business contacts. She could only hope, wherever he’d snuck off to, that Lester had brought his own security guys with him, even if they were mostly night watchmen. What had he been thinking?
And who—or what—was this man he’d arranged to meet in the middle of the night? Assuming Finn’s story was even true.
Finn.
He’d dropped fifteen thousand dollars on her charity bail to get to Lester more quickly. He’d set off every instinctual alarm Dana possessed.
And he’d healed her with a touch.
Her leg wasn’t simply better. It was perfect. After she’d left the ballroom, she’d even hopped up and down on it in the stairwell for good measure. No pain. Not even a twinge.
His touch. He’d called it an energy transfer. She called it… What? A miracle? Sure, if you believed in such things. At this point, she didn’t know what she believed anymore.
So what exactly did Mr. Touch want with Lester?
She texted her uncle again, telling him to contact Max, that a very strange man she’d met wanted to meet him. That would get the old man’s interest, she knew, and then maybe she’d get answers.
That sent, Dana hurried down Prospect toward home, punching her hands deep into her jacket pockets. The street was brightly lit past Ontario, with both Flannery’s Pub and the Ultralounge going strong. Of the two, Flannery’s was more her scene, just as it had once been her father’s. She’d stop in for a minute, she thought, reconnect with her own people on Christmas Eve. There were no smartly dressed waiters bearing champagne flutes there, no glitter-wrapped guests wearing a year’s honest salary around their necks.
Instead, there were all-you-could-eat peanuts, fifteen different Irish beers on tap, and WWE Smackdown parties every Friday night, where the regulars could happily dissect the legends of Hacksaw Duggan and Gorgeous George, then deliberate for hours between Ric Flair or Rick Rude. Everything a girl could want. Even at this hour on Christmas Eve, the tavern’s homey warmth reached out to her as she neared, tattered holiday lights winking from the wrought iron fence, a familiar knot of smokers huddled in the door front. Christmas. It was her father’s favorite holiday, and the poinsettias in the window of the pub she knew had been placed there by its owner in homage to her dad. They still remembered him, after all these years.
The older men raised their voices in greeting as Dana ducked into the pub, suddenly feeling better than she had all night. Bob was working the bar, and he came right over as soon as he recognized her.
“Coffee?” he asked, already reaching for the pot.
“Only if you spike it with something good,” she said, taking a seat.
“Sure thing.” Bob grinned.
It was good to be back among people who knew her, Dana thought, and she felt more of the anxiety of the last two hours melt away. She gave the older men at the counter beside her a nod, absurdly happy when they nodded back, their faces ruddy beneath worn fedoras and faded snap-brim caps. For as long as Dana could remember, these same men had shared their stories and grins over gleaming bartops and half-empty mugs. Nearly two decades ago, her father had often joined them after hanging up his badge for the night. They were louder then, she recalled, their eyes more vibrant, their laughter booming. Now, they just shuffled to the pub each night with their little-old-man steps, every year a little slower, but never failing to show.
“On the house.” Bob set her drink in front of her. “We’ll charge it to your old man, same as the flowers. Merry Christmas, doll.”
“Thanks.” She inhaled the decadent aroma of Baileys and coffee and ran her finger over the top of her mug, glancing up at the bank of TVs rehashing the day’s bowl games. All those wannabe superheroes buried in padding, she thought. What was the point? Now, a gold lamé headband, designer leopard-print tights, and a giant steel cage? That was entertainment. A guilty pleasure her father had brought home from Flannery’s that the two had once and always shared.
Dana worked to chase away the bittersweet memory as Bob paused in front of her. “Someone was asking about you today,” he said, collecting half-emptied snack bowls from the bar.
Hope and new apprehension slivered through her. But how can he know…? “Was his name Finn?” she asked, keeping her voice light. “Well-dressed, big—European? Maybe a doctor?”
Bob shook his head. “He didn’t leave a name, but he didn’t strike me as European, no. And certainly not a doctor type. More of a thug, you ask me.” He shot her a worried look. “I told him I’d never heard of you before.”
Dana raised her mug to him. “Then here’s to friends you can’t remember.”
He nodded, his worried expression easing in the face of her dad’s favorite line. “And nights you can’t forget.”
Dana barked a short laugh. “Thanks for looking out for me.” She warmed her hands on her mug, as the old man closest to her caught her attention.
Willie, she thought as he leaned toward her a bit too quickly, jostling his drink. One of her father’s favorite bar mates, once upon a time.
Now Willie’s rheumy eyes were wide with concern as he turned to her. “You in trouble, kid?” he asked, his tone roughened by decades of whiskey and cigarettes. He swayed a bit more than usual, and Dana’s heart tightened.
“No, Willie,” she said, watching the foamy head of his Guinness spill over the side of his glass. “Just business.” She smiled easily, inviting confidences. “Why, have you seen this guy who asked Bob about me?”
The old man harrumphed. “I don’t see much of anything anymore.”
Dana bit her lip. “You see plenty,” she said, her heart twisting. “You always have.” They’re all so much older now. While her father had been caught in time, never changing in the precious focus of her memory, each of his friends faded a little more each year. “You having a good Christmas this year?”
Willie scowled, pointing a thin, knotty finger at her. “He’s watching you,” he said sternly. “He is, and you should never forget it. He told me he’d watch over you forever. He loved you that much, Dana. As much as his own flesh and blood.”
Dana looked at the old man worriedly. C’mon, Willie, snap out of it. Despite her wildest childhood assertions that she’d been adopted, stolen at birth, switched by fairies, maybe even genetically engineered…Dana was a Griffin. With Lester’s help, she’d unearthed her birth certificate back when her dad had died. She hadn’t known what she’d been expecting, exactly, but it didn’t matter. As oddly matched as they sometimes seemed to her, Walter, Lester, and Claire were her family.
“Well, I was sure proud to be his daughter,” she said. She patted Willie’s arm in reassurance, shocked at how frail the old man suddenly seemed beneath his heavy wool sweater.
Willie shook her off him, his eyes suddenly mirror bright. “He’s watching you,” he said again, hunching over his Guinness. “And he always will. A proud, proud papa.”
Dana exchanged a look with Bob, who gave her a “whaddya gonna do?” smile. Sighing, she returned to her Baileys and coffee, her hands shaking only slightly as she wrapped them around the mug.
I miss you so much, Dad.
The joy she’d reclaimed had faded again from the night, so Dana quickly finished her drink and wished them all a Merry Christmas, patting Willie on the back again. All she got was a grunt in response. She’d have to check in on him more frequently, she thought. Willie was an old friend of her father’s, and that made him family.
Margaret’s words came back to her. With a strong family, you can save the world.
Dana scowled. She didn’t need her family to save the world. She simply wanted it to be safe. Thoughts of her uncle assaulted her again, and frustration sprang up anew. If Lester would simply follow the security rules she’d laid out for him…
Tightening her coat, Dana stepped back into the night, heading for home. She leaned into the breeze that swirled along the street until she finally reached Ninth, turning left into a whole new burst of wind. The street ran straight as an arrow to the lake, and the gusts here always blew right through your bones. Head bent, shoulders hunched, Dana huffed out a breath, then suddenly felt a quick uneasiness pass through her. She slowed a half step before forcing herself to walk normally.
It was back again. The sensation of being watched.
“He’s watching you,” Willie had said.
But whatever was out there, it sure didn’t feel like her dad.
Keeping her head down, Dana scanned the street. Without the cheery light of the bars’ Christmas decorations to balance the night, the shadows seemed murkier here, more dangerous. Adding to the ominous atmosphere, the right side of the street was a construction site, the sidewalks torn away, the buildings half-shrouded in mismatched scaffolding, plywood, and ripped plastic sheeting. Only St. John’s Cathedral glowed in the distance ahead, a welcome beacon of safety. She wondered what Father Franks was doing right now, in the untracked early morning hours before the storm of Cleveland’s grandest Christmas Eve celebration. Probably sleeping, which she would be doing soon. Almost home, she thought, moving forward again.
She felt the prickling sensation deepen.
Dana swallowed, walking a hair faster, the muscles in her injured leg beginning to throb again—no longer in pain, but awareness. Something really felt wrong here.
She eased opened her jacket to provide easier access to her gun. She didn’t want to spook herself into doing something stupid, but she also hadn’t spent nearly two months in rehab only to get jumped by some street punk on her first night out.
The lit cathedral was only a little ways up the street, but home remained the technically closer refuge. Only one more block to go. She cut across Euclid at an angle, staying well away from the construction debris as she picked up her pace again and the deserted buildings’ plastic sheeting snapped and fluttered in the stiff wind. She passed an open section of the construction site, the graffitied plywood on the other side of the street suddenly giving way to eerie, complete blackness.
That’s it, she thought. There’s something in there, watching me.
She felt it as clearly as she felt the butt of her gun, even if she couldn’t yet see what lurked there in the darkness. Who lurked there, she corrected her rushing mind. Not what. She had to believe it was a who. Maybe she’d interrupted a vagrant rifling the construction site. Or maybe it was the thug who’d asked about her at Flannery’s.
“Okay, so we’ve got company,” Dana murmured to herself. “No problem.” She pressed the alert button on her phone to notify the on-call tech at Griffin Security. If she didn’t check in with another call in a mere two minutes, the tech would notify Max and the police with an urgent distress call, and one of Cleveland’s finest would be dispatched to her precise coordinates, sirens blaring.
A brand-new fail-safe measure at Griffin Security, instituted after the attack on Lester. She’d never actually imagined having to use it, though. Certainly not this soon.
Dana paused, unable to resist the urge, and stared straight into the absolute darkness across the street. If these were the same men from before, men with guns, her alert probably wouldn’t matter anyway. Either way, it was time to pound the pavement. To really test her newly healed leg.
But it was already too late.
Directly across from her, in the open black maw of the construction wall, the darkness erupted. Four figures burst from the opening, forgotten shadows springing to new life.
And the shadows were racing toward her.
Dana reared back as the night surrounding her literally screamed, all the half-remembered nightmares of the past two months rushing back into her brain with a paralyzing hailstorm of fear and terror.
She knew these men. These things. These were the same attackers who’d come after her eight weeks ago. And just as it had then, her world was suddenly going red, the landscape coated in an odd, shifting crimson haze. She recognized it; she understood it. There was nothing she could do to stop it.
And, most frightening of all, a part of her almost welcomed it.
“Get back!” she yelled, waving her gun, struggling to recapture reality, even as her legs somehow carried her several yards down the street, only to realize that some of her attackers had slipped past her, cutting her off.
Now they all came toward her, panting and snarling, and Dana opened her eyes even wider as she tried to make sense of what she was seeing. Their bodies were distorted, misshapen in odd angles. Too large in places, too twisted. Not normal men at all.
It was Halloween all over again, and Dana now understood why she’d blocked so much of that first attack out. As they had been that horrible night, these men’s faces were also swollen, broken, their eyes wild with lunacy, jaws gaping with hunger.
Not only Halloween either. There was something in these men she’d seen in the wolves too, from the other night. The wolves and…something else. Someone? She couldn’t remember.
Focus! Her confusion was a trick of the shadows, of her own panic and fear. What else could it be? This wasn’t a world of actual demons or monsters.
Whatever her attackers were, they’d completed the circle around her to block off any hope of escape. One of them laughed, a rough, urgent sound, and they pressed inward, snuffling with excitement. Fear shoved an icy spike into her chest, and—
And then it was suddenly gone.
Dana straightened as warmth flowed through her, a swift, unexpected support. As if she wasn’t alone. And she drew on that new strength, channeling it, as the circle closed around her and the men reached out to her with grasping, pulling fingers—
“Back. Off.” She aimed her gun and pulled the trigger.
A voice rang out beside her. “No! Get back—no!”
As her pistol fired and the closest man hurled himself forward, someone broke through the circle, knocking Dana’s arm up and shoving her back. The gunshot cracked like thunder between the empty buildings, exploding the silence.
Finn jumped in front of her. He slammed his right fist into the closest attacker’s face, and the creature plunged sideways to the street’s curb. Something dark sprayed across the sidewalk across Dana’s boots, and even beneath the echo of her gunshot, she distinctly heard the sound of several teeth clattering into the gutter.
Finn stood directly between her and the others, bending down toward the thing in the street. All she could see was his broad back and shoulders, but she knew it was him. This wasn’t a man she’d soon forget. Or a feeling. She’d sensed him, she realized. She’d simply known he was there.
Finn.
This was all…extremely familiar. Way too familiar.
Her head pounded in sudden pain as Finn yanked up the fallen assailant, then tossed him out at the others who’d already stopped dead in their tracks. Why was he here? And how—?
Finn braced himself, apparently preparing for another attack, and Dana briefly checked him for some evidence that he’d just taken a man out with a single swing. But Finn wasn’t even winded. He shouted in strange words she couldn’t understand, his voice filled with rage and warning. She wanted to believe the words were something European—Polish, maybe, or Czech?—but she didn’t think so. This was something else. Something ancient.
Beyond Finn’s imposing bulk, the other men had regrouped into a loose half circle, their comrade at their feet. Gibbering quietly between themselves, barking sounds similar to Finn’s back at him. Threats. Curses.
They were afraid of him, she realized. As if they knew why he was there, what he was capable of. As if they recognized him.
“How’d you find me?” she demanded, taking a quick step forward. “Who are these men?”
Finn turned and scowled at Dana, and in that smallest space of his hesitation, one of the men lurched out at them, his grapple-like hand punching past Finn and knocking Dana off her feet.
She crunched down hard on her newly restored right leg, a wall of white flashing across her vision, blinding her anew. Staggering, she collapsed face-first to the concrete.
And suddenly, she remembered even more. The pain first. A shrieking, shocking agony in her leg, and then the memory of men like these beneath her own fists, as she pummeled and ripped and tore at them with her own hands. Nausea and rage heaving up within her, violence singing in her veins.
She tasted the cold, briny pavement for a moment more, then rolled over to see Finn brutally knock away the man who’d touched her. As that man slumped in a pile at Finn’s feet, two more took his place—and the closer of the two wielded a glinting blade.
What happened next took only a second or two, Dana knew, but it played out in slow motion before her eyes. The long knife came low, aiming for Finn’s stomach, but he’d shifted downward with the attack, crossing his arms in an X to stop the man’s upward thrust, and shooting his hips back and away from the driving blade.
In the same fluid movement, Finn’s hand slid up the assailant’s arm to the elbow, twisting it awkwardly and forcing the man down, so that the frenzied attacker was hunched over with the knife pointed into his back. Finn moved to drive the blade in with his free hand. All he had to do was punch the hilt down, and Dana half closed her eyes, her blood jumping with expectation—
But he stopped. Instead, he snatched the blade away and twisted the man’s elbow up until there was an audible pop. The man fell forward, and Finn used his right knee to finish him off, then dragged his knife across the man’s throat. Snarling with anger, the attacker geysered with blood that was black as tar, and she flinched away as Finn turned for the other men. So many, she thought…
“Get up,” he ordered to another man on the ground. “You’re free. Stay that way.”
Dana scrambled upright as Finn used the knife to keep the men at arm’s length, then she watched as his face lifted, and he stared down the street. Suddenly, the sound of a car’s screeching tires tore through the street.
“Go,” Finn shouted at her, half pulling, half shoving her up Ninth.
Dana whipped her head around, staring at the oncoming car. Several things imprinted on her at once, with an immediacy she’d never experienced before and couldn’t doubt. Dark Lexus, Pennsylvania plates, license number 074332, speed. Danger! And with eyes that had gone hypersharp with fear and adrenaline, Dana saw the gun shoved out the window, the barrel aimed at Finn.
“Watch out!” she screamed, surging up with such force that Finn fell back.
A bullet ripped between them.
Dana felt her hair blow back as it passed, the heat of the bullet scorching her cheek. Faster than a speeding bullet, she thought, the words hysterical in her mind. She brought her gun around for another shot, fired once, twice, and the car swerved enough for her to turn again, to ready herself for flight. She couldn’t even feel her right leg anymore. She had to escape, had to get them inside, out of harm’s reach.
“This way,” Dana yelled as she started up Ninth toward Superior.
The cathedral.
She could go there; she could always go there. Her father had told her that endlessly and Father Franks had reminded her every year since her dad’s death. She even had a key to the building on her keychain, never before needed—or used. Tonight, that was going to change. She picked up her pace as Finn fell into step with her.
“Where?” he asked, and she felt his arm around her, protecting her, supporting her while urging her on. He wasn’t even winded, she realized, while she could barely form a sentence.
“Up there,” she managed, and then her breathless words were cut off as more bullets peppered the sidewalk beside them. Somewhere, a siren started, but it was too far off, and the wind began to scream again as Finn practically lifted her off her feet and they raced on, moving at a speed Dana wouldn’t have thought possible in light of her battered leg, whether it was recently healed or no.
They ran up Ninth and took a hard left at the cathedral’s grand entrance, Dana shoving her hand deep inside her jacket and wrenching her keys free. Behind them, the sedan bounced over the sidewalk and screeched to a halt, doors slamming just as they reached the rear door to the church.
“Get inside,” Finn growled. As the keys slipped in her hands, he cursed in the same strange, guttural language he’d leveled before at their attackers. Guiding her aside and away, he slammed his shoulder once into the thick wooden door.
It crashed inward, banging off the wall.
“Inside,” he barked again, and the sound of uneven footsteps in the street behind her jarred her, shouts coming closer. “I’ll stay out here. They’ll scatter once inside the church.”
“No,” she gritted out. “I won’t leave you.”
Another burst of gunfire shattered the night. Clutching at Finn wildly, she grabbed a fistful of his jacket before falling inside the doorway, and finally, he came with her. He’d no sooner pushed the heavy wooden door closed behind them, securing it with two heavy padlocks set high in the wall since the main lock was broken, than she heard the sound of a police siren cutting through the night. Dana staggered against the wall, then painfully lurched around until her shoulder blades rested against the cool, cream-painted walls of the cathedral’s side entryway.
This wasn’t even the church proper, merely a half-lit corridor between the main church and the administrative building. But given what they’d left behind on the other side of the door, she definitely felt like she was on holy ground.
She wiped the sweat from her forehead and glared at Finn, who now stood with his back against the door. The look of ashen resolve on his face deflated her anger.
“Hey,” she managed, not recognizing her own broken voice. “You okay?”
Finn straightened. “This…isn’t the church,” he said slowly, looking around in confusion.
“Not technically, no, it’s the admin building behind the church. But…” She stared at him, lost. What’s his problem? Had he endured the same military-grade nuns she’d had in grade school? “Finn, I don’t underst—”
“Dana! What’s happened?”
Finn silently withdrew into the shadows, pressing himself back into the alcove as the robust figure of Father Leo Franks burst into the hallway.
“Father, I’m all right, really.” Dana let the tall, stoop-shouldered priest take her by the arm, glad he was distracted from Finn, who still looked shell-shocked from his brush with Christendom. Father Franks leaned down to search her face with his worried brown eyes, the flush of his skin unlike anything she’d ever seen in the normally placid, contemplative old man.
“What did they do to you?” he asked. “Why were they here?” His gray hair hung wildly around his ears, and his hand shook on her shoulder. “Should you sit? Can you sit? Your leg…”
Dana breathed out her explanation in a rush, moving deeper into the hallway and away from Finn. “I’m fine, Father, I’m so sorry to wake you. There were men out there—thugs, lunatics. I was caught off guard, walking home, and I ran. I hate to burst in on you, but I—I had nowhere else to go.”
“Of course, of course,” Father Franks said, his mournful eyes searching hers. “You were right to come.” He smoothed his black priest’s shirt, clearly shaken. Concern knifed through her.
“Father, are you—” she began, just as the priest stiffened.
“You’re not alone, are you?” he said, the words more a statement than a question.
Before Dana could speak, Father Franks turned and looked straight back at Finn, who stepped forth from the doorway’s shadows into the half-light of the hall.
To her shock, the priest’s face blanched, his eyes going wide like those of a man seeing his own death.
“God in heaven protect us,” he breathed, his words barely a whisper. “Dana, what have you brought?”