My hand shot out and gripped her hip. Firm. Anchoring her in place before the rest of her could follow.
“I’ve got you.”
Her eyes locked onto mine: wide, rain-streaked, lips parted, breathing hard. But steady. An unspoken understanding passed between us, unrelated to the fire escape. She held my gaze a beat longer than necessary.
“Okay,” she breathed.
I didn’t let go until both her feet were solid on the platform.
Then I turned and started down.
Each step was deliberate. The ladder rattled and groaned under our combined weight, bolts straining in their housings, but the storm swallowed most of the sound. Rain poured down my face, into my eyes, streaming off my jaw in cold rivulets. My hands slipped twice on the descent, but I caught myself both times through sheer grip, fingers burning against the metal.
Halfway down—
A shriek tore through the alley below.
Not from the street, but directly beneath us.
Too close.
I froze, pressing myself flat against the ladder, every muscle still. Above me, Libby stopped moving the instant I did. I could hear her breathing through the rain: fast, shallow, controlled, keeping it quiet.
We listened.
Rain against metal. Thunder rolling in the distance. And then—underneath it all—a dragging sound. Below and to the left. Something moving through standing water in a slow, uneven shuffle, and beneath that, a clicking noise.
Lightning streaked across the sky.
In that single, frozen frame of white light, I saw it.
Directly below us. Twelve feet down. Maybe less.
It stood hunched. What remained of its clothes hung in tatters, exposing gray, mottled skin, split open along both forearms where muscle had swollen and pushed through in dark, ropy masses. It held something pressed against its face—a small, child’s shoe, still laced, its white rubber sole stained brown. It wasn’t eating it. It held the shoe cupped against its nose and jaw, working its mouth against the fabric, tasting the surrounding air, pulling at whatever trace of scent still lived in the fibers.
Then its head snapped upward.
Toward us.
My stomach dropped and my hands went still.
Its eyes caught the light for a fraction of a second—hemorrhaged, the left one bulging from the socket on a thin bridge of tissue. Its jaw hung dislocated, teeth dark, a sound building low in its throat.
It had heard something. Or caught movement. Either way, it had us.
“Don’t move,” I whispered.
Rain hammered against us both, running into my eyes, pooling cold in the collar of my jacket, soaking through every layer. My arms burned from holding position against the ladder.
The thing shuffled forward, one step, then two. Its head twitched and jerked in small, spasmodic arcs, probing the air for whatever had snagged its attention. The child’s shoe dropped from its hand, splashing into the standing water below, but it didn’t notice. It was already drifting closer to the base of the fire escape, closing the distance with a patient, grinding inevitability that stretched every second long and thin.
Three feet from the bottom rung.
My hand moved to my knife—slow, completely silent.
My boot scraped metal, the sound sharp in the rain. The thing’s head snapped up. Then thunder cracked directly overhead—a concussive blow that shook the ladder in its mounts. The thing spasmed, its whole body jerking violently toward the greater noise, and the sound that tore from its throat bounced hard off the alley walls.
It dragged itself around the corner and disappeared.
