It had been years since she’d been jostled around in a fight. Instinct kicked in. She snatched the man’s fingers that clutched her left shoulder and bent them back. His howls filled the air as Linda kneed him in the stomach and pulled him onto the ground before flipping him over her body. He landed with a hard thud against Smithie’s brick exterior.
Linda blinked, surveyed the man. His eyes were a dark brown, bloodshot. No weird glow.
A stream of patrons ran out of the restaurant, Monica in the lead. Several people took out their phones. Mrs. Bartlett pointed her pearled-out finger and screamed, “This beast attacked me!”
The stranger rose to his feet, groggy, and glared at the league of screens positioned his way. He shook his head, turned away from the crowd, and bolted, heading northwest.
Linda glanced at her (ex) client, the woman’s hair a florid mess around a beet-red face. “Mrs. Bartlett…” And then she stopped speaking because she was about to say,Serves you right.In her peripheral vision, she could still see the man as he sprinted down the street. “Fuck,” Linda mutteredas instinct took over once again. She pivoted from the others and ran after him.
Linda’s muscles tightened as she raced down the sidewalk, her eyes locked. She needed to keep the stranger in her line of sight in case he zigzagged into the street or a building. Traffic whizzed by. She heard sirens, faint, distant. Scores of pedestrians turned into a blur on Connecticut Avenue.
What in the hell are you doing?She was no longer a cop. Was under no obligation to apprehend a violent stranger. But he’d attacked someone whom she considered her responsibility, under her protection, even if that someone was particularly aggravating. It felt like her job to make sure he didn’t hurt someone else.
After chasing the man for three blocks, Linda had almost closed the distance between them. He was only a couple dozen feet ahead. The stranger was quick, had longer legs, yes, but Linda was faster. She reached out as the sirens grew louder. In a moment, she’d grab him.
Once again, she smelled something burning.
A police cruiser turned the corner of T and Connecticut. The man spun around, frightened. Linda tried to stop, the momentum too much. She crashed into his clavicle, the two entangled as they fell to the sidewalk. Pain erupted from her mouth. Her head spun as she tried to free herself from his limbs, his mustiness all up in her nose. His skin, molten, searing. She tasted blood. She’d busted her lip, no doubt about it.
The stranger pushed her away and looked toward the pair of officers who’d jumped from the car. Linda’s heart dropped. In a flash she saw what was on the horizon if they decided to draw their weapons. A bewildered Black man having just manhandled two women in public, one of them white? Death wish.
She sprang forth and raised her arms. “Don’t shoot!” she yelled. “I’m a PI, former NYPD. He’s not dangerous.” Which, in truth, she didn’t know.
The stranger stood still, spotted a garbage-strewn alleyway behind a coffee shop, and dashed away.
Linda took off after him, not caring at all about protocol now that cops were on the scene. She glanced backward briefly to see that the two officers were in pursuit right behind her, one a big, pudgy dude who was fast. The other, tattooed, more muscular with a man bun, several feet behind him.
Linda pushed herself, gritted her teeth, pushed herself some more. She surged forward, leapt low, and tackled the stranger’s legs.
“Don’t fuckin’ move!” she yelled as she got on top of the man and twisted his arms behind his back. “Don’t move, okay?”
The stranger whimpered as the two officers caught up to them. The larger officer helped her up. Man Bun placed cuffs on the guy, Miranda rights ready on his tongue. “You have the right to remain silent…”
“Miss, are you okay?” the bigger cop said. She quickly scanned his nameplate as she glanced over at his partner. The cop who was checking on her, an officer T. Murray. His face, concerned, kind. The other officer, tatted Man Bun, an S. Martinez.
Linda glanced down at herself. Drops of blood fell from her chin and speckled purple cotton. She looked like she’d been fucked up, like she couldn’t handle herself. A wave of shame lodged itself in her throat.
“Holy shit.” Martinez sprang back and held up his hands, a look of revulsion on his face. “Holy fuckin’ shit!”
Linda spun around and swore under her breath. Heavy, ragged breaths erupted from the stranger’s chest. His skin, peeling. His face, his neck, his hands… a reddish brown, as if he’d been scalded all over his body. But his eyes…Good Lord…
They glowed, a bright, unearthly crimson that lit up dirty concrete. The stranger struggled to raise his head with his hands restrained behind his back.
His eyes. She hadn’t been imagining things. And the burning smell, it was him. The stench of charred flesh.
“Oh my fuckin’ God,” Martinez whispered. “He’s… he’s some sort of ghost, some sort of demon, like from the Equinox. I fuckin’ touched him.” Martinez put his hands on his holster.
“Don’t!” Linda said. She rushed over and grabbed his forearm. “Don’t. We don’t know what’s happening. What… what he is.”
“Help me,” the stranger said. The roar that Linda remembered in his voice was gone, replaced by a whimper. “Please, I want what’s mine. It’s taking what’s mine.”
Murray took out his portable and started to report the scene. His hands shook as he held the device. A glazed look overtook his features. Shock, something Linda had seen plenty of times.
A few people gathered to gawk and take pictures with their phones. She wasn’t sure what to do and so peered at the man, to see if he might try to make a break for it again, especially as both officers were frightened to go near him. Any fight he still had left in his body seemed to have vanished.
“I want what’s mine,” he murmured once again.
In all of Linda’s eight years living in the district and working as an investigator, she’d mostly managed to avoid precincts. She had occasional interactions with law enforcement but was fastidious in refusing potential clients clearly connected to criminal activity. Steering clear of the penal system, top priority. Yet here she was, sitting in the Third District police station that serviced Dupont. A reminder of one of the stupidest decisions she’d ever made—an empath, deeply sensitive to the emotions of others, working as a beat cop in one of New York’s poorest, most underserved neighborhoods. All in the name of trying to follow her police officer father’s footsteps. She’dbarely survived that year, grateful that she’d managed not to kill anyone or herself in the process.
