we are here. Bowen gasps and presses harder against the postbox, eyes scrunched shut, like a kid playing hide-and-seek who thinks you can’t see him if his eyes are covered.
“Company, halt!” a smooth, deep voice calls, and somehow it is familiar, like a song you never forget once you hear the tune, even after a long time has passed. “At attention. Tasers before guns,” the voice orders in monotone.
Bowen opens his eyes, and his eyebrows pull together. Sweat gleams on his creased forehead. Slowly, millimeter by millimeter, he peers to the right, around the side of the postbox, and then eases back around, facing me.
“My brother’s out there,” he breathes. “That’s the Inner Guard.”
Feet shuffle to a messy halt on the left—the gang of men with torches—but even though they’ve stopped, something still shuffles in their midst. And growls. I try not to breathe, try not to blink, as I slowly peer around the side of the postbox. And then I try not to bolt. Or scream. Or pee my pants.
I gulp down the scream threatening to be my undoing, and an icy hand finds mine, squeezing an ounce of courage into me.
“What did you see?” Bowen whispers, eyes white-rimmed with fear.
“They have a beast!” I mouth, too terrified to whisper. “Bound with chains,” I add, and close my eyes, seeing it all over again. A sleek, glossy, masculine body, the kind that used to grace the cover of fitness magazines—ripped with fine muscle and zero body fat. Only the smooth, taut skin is speckled and slashed with dark flaws. I see the rusted chains, barely glinting in the torchlight, wrapped around the beast’s tethered arms, each ankle, and neck—the kind of chains you put on a dog. I see the four massive, muscle-heavy men giving the beast a wide berth while holding the chains. And burned into my memory are the eyes, looking straight into mine.
Chains rattle and a growl echoes off the building in front of me, and I force myself to take another look. The beast is yanking on its chains. Its muscles, marked with deep gashes that ooze blood, bulge in an effort to get at the postbox where Bowen and I huddle. I whip back around, too scared to take another look.
“It knows we’re here,” I whisper between gritted teeth. Bowen’s hand leaves mine and rests on something on his belt.
“We will not commence this business until you get your pet under control,” a calm, educated voice calls, a voice totally wrong for this dark, ruffian- and beast-filled alley. “Bowen, instruct your men to take aim at the beast. Guns, not Tasers.”
“Company, aim to kill the beast,” the familiar voice from earlier says. And all the pieces fall together, like suddenly hitting a perfect chord on the piano. Duncan Bowen, Dreyden Bowen’s brother, is the man out there commanding the Inner Guard. It is his voice that I recognize, so like his younger brother’s.
I stare straight ahead at the blank apartment-building front. It is like watching a movie, only, the actors are shadows. And none of it is make-believe. A shadow raises a torch and swings it downward into another shadow. Chains rattle. The second shadow falls to its knees and starts panting. The beast is down. Business can begin.
“That’s better,” the man says—the man who commands Duncan Bowen and the Inner Guard. A pair of clopping shoes, like dress shoes, echoes in the street, and a shadow moves forward, walks to the edge of the torch-bearing men, and stops.
Bowen—my Bowen—eases to the right, head barely around the post box, for a better look.
“Did you bring us the trade?” a man on my left, with a voice like cracked concrete, asks. I stare at the building in front of me, at the interplay of shadows. The shadow with the smooth voice is short and lean. The shadow with the gravel voice is beefy and towers over the other man.
The smaller shadow holds something up, but when the big shadow reaches for it, the first shadow yanks it away. Guns rattle and feet scuff.
“At ease, men,” Duncan Bowen orders.
“I will not,” the smooth voice purrs—the voice belonging to the smaller man, “part with this until you show me my payment.”
The big shadow holds out his arm. Someone steps behind him and places an unidentifiable shadow-object into the man’s hand.
The smaller shadow exhales a deep, satisfied breath of air and lunges toward the burly shadow, grabbing at whatever is in his hand. The objects are traded, and