Demon Night

so unbelievably fast.
    One second Charlie was stumbling away from the pale woman, crowding into the corner again, and calling herself an idiot for being startled. And the next second, the door was opening and the vampire who’d had an arrow lobotomy was coming through.
    Then crimson arced in a horizontal line across the booth panels beside Charlie, sprayed her face in a cool mist. The vampire’s head slid forward off his neck, his body slowly crumpling before it was yanked away from the open door like a marionette.
    Ethan. His maroon shirt black and wet, his skin dripping red. Charlie wiped at her face, stared at the blood on her fingers. They began to shake.
    “Easy, Charlie.” She heard the urgency in his voice but couldn’t make herself take the hand he offered her. “You’re all right.” He glanced down; the stains on his skin and clothes disappeared. The itchy slide over her cheeks was gone, her fingers clean again.
    The body at his feet vanished, then the head.
    Ethan swallowed hard. “Charlie, there’s something worse coming.”
    Worse? But it must be: Ethan stiffened and looked to the side; a female’s scream ripped through the air.
    Charlie leapt toward the door, and his arms circled her, brought her in tight. White flashed behind him, soft and bright and beautiful. His wings unfolded, and pressure made her head swim, her chest ache, her stomach drop, like driving down a hill too fast and realizing nothing was going to stop her until she got to the bottom. The edges of her vision blurred, but she looked down and back, the ground like a dark blank sky lit by the stars of streetlights and two glowing red eyes.

    Having to fly hadn’t helped Ethan heal any faster, but the gunshot wound had subsided to a dull ache by the time he was over their apartment building. The speed with which he’d launched himself into the air meant Charlie had lost consciousness, but Ethan reckoned it was shock that kept her out until he settled onto her balcony. He rid himself of the wings and held her lightly across his lap, her head on his shoulder.
    He made himself pat her cheek instead of stroking his fingers over her skin, murmuring her name over and over so that she wouldn’t startle so bad. That he’d brought her to a familiar location would help, but they couldn’t stay long.
    He’d vanished each of the dead vampires and their weapons into his cache before the demon had arrived, but the female hadn’t yet been dead when he’d gotten Charlie away. And there was blood to clean up, bullets to collect, evidence to destroy.
    The fifteen-second altercation had left far too much for humans to find and wonder about.
    Charlie stirred, her lips gently parting—and then she was sitting upright, her eyes wide. She looked around, and he felt the instant she recognized her surroundings, but her bolt toward the sliding door wasn’t out of fear.
    She didn’t make it, and he held his palm under her ribs, keeping her steady and off the floor as her knees collapsed and she bent, heaving into the corner. Nothing came up, though it clamped hard on her body.
    A normal reaction, he told himself. But he still worried as she straightened and tugged listlessly at the balcony door. She didn’t comment on how easily it opened, though she must have remembered locking it. He couldn’t sense much from her, but she wasn’t blocking; sliding into her emotions felt a little like touching the mind of the vampire whose brain he’d smashed.
    He followed her inside, past the tiny dining room table and the vase filled with blue marbles in the center of it. Her coat dropped to the floor.
    “Charlie.”
    She halted in the short hallway, but didn’t turn to look at him.
    “We can’t stay here. They’ve become aggressive enough; you wouldn’t be safe.”
    Her hands clenched convulsively at her sides. The rasp didn’t conceal the dullness in her voice. “Are my smokes still over at your place?”
    “No.” His jaw tightened, and he considered smashing the vase against the wall, scattering those goddamn marbles all over just to wake her up, but he pulled the pack in from his cache instead.
    Touching the mental space only pissed him off more; the vampires’ bodies felt like grotesque lumps in his mind, on his tongue.
    She took a cigarette from him, put it between her lips. Patted her pants pockets. “I need to get my luggage?”
    And he didn’t like that she formed it as a question—looking for guidance, having him tell her what to