Chapter Two

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A few minutes later . . .

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'God, I'm late again!' Jane thought as she hurried through the streets. 'Mr. Smith is going to be so mad!' She decided to take a shortcut through some back alleys that she would normally rather avoid. Sometimes she hated living in an urban jungle. As she made her way past piles of trash, she thought of her home in the country . . . where she had lived until her father had died and before her stepfather had entered the picture. She thought of wooden fences, round bails of hay, the garden next to the house, and that old beat-up tractor that her father had taken her for rides on. That was the last time she remembered being happy.

Suddenly, she heard a series of whimpers, thumps, and yelps coming from another alley nearby. It sounded like a dog in pain, being beaten by something heavy. She took a step in the other direction. She couldn't be late for work. She couldn't afford to lose her job . . . it was none of her business anyway. Then she thought of some poor animal, getting kicked around by some mean man or hoodlum or some crazy homeless person. It wouldn't understand why, but it WOULD understand being in pain. For a moment, she remembered her stepfather's hand busting her lip open after she had made too much noise coming home late one night. She hadn't understood it at the time. She had just wanted her real father back because she knew he would've protected her. Jane turned around and crept back towards the sounds.

'Maybe if I make a noise, whatever is attacking that dog will get scared and run.' She stopped. She had just peaked her head around the corner and saw not one but two . . . men?. . standing at the other end of a dead-end alley and overlooking a very large, furry pile of animals that seemed to be twitching. The two entities were wearing immaculate business suits, had shaven heads, and we're wearing sunglasses . . . in the dark . . . in an alley. They also wore leather gloves, which were mostly frightening because they seemed to grip the cold metal of knives.

Normally, Jane would have been filled with terror at that moment, but terror was normally reserved for those with something to lose. There was a part of Jane, however, that still clung to the charade that was her life. Her hands began to tremble and her lungs released a scarcely audible gasp. Then the two standing figures turned and faced the end of the alley where Jane was hiding.

"I'm going to call the police!" she shouted, lacking anything better to say.

One of the figures shook his head and smiled. All his teeth seemed to be far too pointy. "That would be a very . . . terrible . . . mistake," he hissed, his words escaping his mouth like dead air from a pharaoh's tomb. And then both of them headed towards her at an inhuman pace.

"No," one of them rasped. "Finish it. I'll get the girl." The other one stopped and snarled some kind of response.

Jane was running blindly, but she knew that the man behind her would easily catch her. So she ducked behind a dumpster, reached down, and grabbed a board from an abandoned shipping crate, raising it to shoulder level. She barely heard the footsteps, but she stepped out and swung with all her might at head level. The board impacted the man's . . . the thing's head, smashing its sunglasses and causing him to drop his knife. Then Jane saw those glowing red eyes, and she felt terror, unlike anything she had ever experienced.

"Foolish mortal," the thing said. It punched her in the midsection, sending Jane flying fifteen feet through the air to crash into a wall. She fell to the ground like a crumpled wad of paper . . . like trash.

Jane couldn't remember being in that much pain before. She knew her ribs were broken, and she could almost feel herself bleeding internally. Her face was cut in several places from her crash and her shoulder was dislocated. She was going to die. And strangely, she was almost tempted to thank her attacker. It would all be over soon.

Then, as her vision began to fade, she heard some horrible growling from all around her . . . from the back towards the alley and from the direction of the street. She saw her attacker . . . saw him staring first in one direction and then another. He snarled and tried to locate his dropped weapon. Then a . . . dog . . . jumped on him from out of nowhere, but it was bigger than any dog Jane had ever seen. And it seemed strange. . . bipedal. Then a second such animal impacted Jane's attacker, and she heard the man in the suit begin to scream. She saw two more such animals rush past her and head towards the alley. She hoped they got to that other dog in time. Jane's thought was that maybe . . . just maybe . . . her life had made a difference in the end. As her eyes began to close, she saw a hairy, monstrous face staring down at her. No . . . wait . . . it was human after all. It was a very handsome young man.

This new man looked at someone or something off to one side. "We need to get her back to the Den," he said shortly. Then Jane and the conscious world became strangers to each other.