meant Luci would be sleeping on the lumpy living room couch while the kids slept with her mom in her big double bed.
Of course, she could have asked her mom to bring the kids and stay at her place tonight, but her mother didn’t like to drive at night—it made her really nervous. Luci suspected she might be getting glaucoma but again, there was no way to tell since her mom didn’t have access to any medical care.
As she trudged down the sidewalk to her apartment building, she considered her options. If she couldn’t get the car fixed, she supposed she would have to move back in with her mom for a while, which felt like a real step backwards. And how would she ever scrape together enough cash for another down payment to move out again? How could she—
Suddenly there was a dark figure blocking her path.
Luci looked up, her heart suddenly beating in her throat. The figure was tall—professional basketball player tall—and immensely broad through the shoulders. There was no doubt he was male.
Also, he had glowing eyes.
The figure said something but his voice was a deep rumble and Luci’s heart was pounding so hard she couldn’t understand him. All she could think was that her bad day had suddenly gotten much, much worse. Forget about getting her car fixed or moving back in with her mom…
Now she was just hoping not to be killed.
Two
Luci looked frantically around for help—for anyone at all she could shout to. But the street was deserted. She was still about half a block from her apartment building in an area where two of the street lamps had burned out, leaving a dense patch of shadows. Of course on this end of town, the lights and the roads never got fixed, so the dangerous area was likely to stay that way for the foreseeable future.
Only right at that moment, Luci couldn’t see any future for herself—none at all.
The huge, shadowy figure with glowing eyes was looming over her in the blackness and she was sure that at any minute he was going to strike. She wanted to run but his legs were so much longer than hers, he was sure to catch her. As for fighting—she would try, but she had no illusions about how much stronger than her the man was.
Dios mio, she thought, feeling sick. I’m going to die tonight. Right here and now, I’m going to die!
Then he spoke again in that deep, rumbling voice. This time, somehow, Luci understood him.
“Please,” he said. “You work at a place for sick animals, don’t you? Please—help me.”
His words startled her so much that Luci uttered a little gasp and put a hand to her pounding heart.
“Wh-what?” she somehow managed to say. “Help you with what?”
“With these.”
The enormous man leaned forward and held out his hands—which looked as big as baseball mitts to Luci. Lying in his cupped palms were three tiny kittens. They were crying and mewing loudly and it occurred to Luci that she would have heard them before if she hadn’t been so horribly frightened.
“What…where did you find them?” she asked, her voice shaking only a little. Maybe the huge man wasn’t going to try and kill her after all. At any rate, it would be hard to attack someone with your hands full of kittens.
“Behind the building—under one of those big trash receptacles,” the man said. “I think you humans call them ‘dumbsters?’ or ‘dummers?’ Little things were crying so loud I could hear them from inside my domicile.”
“That’s dumpster,” Luci corrected him. “But what do you mean by ‘you humans?’”
“Forgive me.” He made a slight bow. “I’m a Kindred warrior. Should have introduced myself but these little things seem so helpless—I think maybe they’re hurt.” He nodded at the kittens in his hands which were still crying loudly and poking their little noses into the air, clearly seeking something they weren’t finding.
Luci felt something in her chest loosen. The Kindred were known to be good guys—some people even called them Feminists. They never hurt women and were actually known to punish human men who did, if they caught them at it. No matter how big the huge male was, the fact that he was Kindred made her feel instantly better.
“They’re probably just hungry,” she said gently. “And you might have taken them away from their mother. She probably hid them under the dumpster and went hunting for herself, but she’ll come back to them soon.”