Heart of Briar. Laura Anne Gilman

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СКАЧАТЬ more a muzzle than a nose, and his eyes—they were dark, but they looked almost red under the bus lights. Was he wearing contacts? A mask? It wasn’t anywhere near Halloween yet, but—

      “Woman, you must listen,” he insisted, and she started to get pissed off.

      “I don’t have to do anything, buddy. Back off.” She should have started carrying mace, or a whistle, or something. Not that she’d ever have the nerve to use it—she was more likely to apologize to a mugger than fight back. But still, this guy was giving her all the creeps.

      “I told you that was the wrong approach,” another voice said, even as someone sat down heavily in the seat on the other side of her.

      Jan swiveled around, feeling her body shrink in on itself as the frozen sensation of fear intensified. She might not have been city-raised, but she knew better than to let two strangers bracket her like that, so close.

      The second stranger put his hand on her arm, gently. “It’s okay.”

      What? She almost laughed. None of this was okay, not at all. Jan stared at the hand, not sure why she hadn’t knocked it off, gotten up, and found somewhere else to sit. It was a normal hand, skin smooth and scattered with fine brown hairs, the nails painted black but well-groomed, and when she looked up, his face was just as ordinary, wide-set brown eyes in a long, sort of blocky face. Easier to look at him than the other man, with his odd face and disconcerting eyes, even if it was a mask, and why was he wearing a mask?

      Her heart was racing, but her brain felt like sludge, unable to understand what it was seeing, unable to react the way she knew she should, to make them leave her alone.

      “Please,” the second stranger said, his voice smooth and soothing. “We want to help Tyler, too.”

      They knew Tyler’s name. They knew Tyler. Somehow. She clutched at that thought. Had they followed her from his apartment? They thought something had happened to him, too. Had that bitch...

      “Who are you?”

      She had almost asked “what are you” but had resisted at the last instant; if she looked, she’d stare, if she stared, she’d have to acknowledge that it wasn’t a mask probably, and it wasn’t polite to stare at people with disabilities, anyway.

      “Friends. If you’ll have us.”

      Something about the smooth guy’s words was too smooth. Jan’s instincts jangled again, the anger and panic mixing with her natural caution, almost overwhelming her desire to not make a fuss. She slid her arm out from under his hold, thankful he didn’t resist. “I’m choosy about my friends,” she said.

      “Huh. She’s smarter than she looks,” the first one said.

      She turned to glare at him, and he grinned at her, that nose, yes, it looked like a muzzle, and the jaw hung open showing sharp teeth and a red tongue visible. Not a mask. She shuddered and looked away—then looked back and stared at him, politeness be damned, this once.

      They locked gazes as her heart went thump-thump thump-thump a dozen times, and the bus swerved around corners, hitting one of the inevitable potholes and making everyone bounce in their plastic seats, but she refused to let herself look away from that awful red gaze until he blinked and looked away first.

      “Satisfied?” The guy with the black nails wasn’t talking to her, but to his companion.

      Hoodie-guy shook his head. “No. But it’s not like we’ve got any choice, is there?”

      The squabble, a clear continuation of some longer debate, didn’t make Jan feel better—especially since the suggestion had been made that she somehow might not have been acceptable. Bad enough she’d just been cheated on by the love of her life. Now this crap?

      She could make a bolt for it—they didn’t seem to be violent, but you couldn’t always tell, right? Only they were both bigger than she was and looked as if they were in shape; two against one, there was no way she could get away if they tried to hold her. Jan looked toward the front of the bus, to see if anyone was sitting nearby who might be willing to help her get away if things got ugly. An old man with a shopping bag on his lap looked at her uncomprehendingly, and two girls sitting farther down were too busy giggling with each other. The others were too far away; they didn’t notice anything was wrong.

      The black-nailed man put his hand on her sleeve again, and she shivered a little under his intent gaze. Having a guy look at you like that, as if he wanted to carry you away somewhere... Her skin prickled in warning. Black Nails might look more normal than his companion, but he gave off seriously weird vibes, too.

      No. She was not going to fall for any creepy stalker maybe-rapists, maybe-cannibal tricks or mind games. “Look, I don’t know what the hell game you’re playing, or what this has to do with Tyler, who by the way is a bastard and you can tell him that next time you see his skanky ass, but—”

      Black Nails interrupted her. “Is there somewhere we can go, somewhere, private, to talk?”

      “Are you kidding me? I’m not going off anywhere private with you two,” she said, her voice rising enough that people might have taken notice, if they weren’t all carefully not paying attention.

      “Oh, for the love of Pete...” Hoodie-guy slapped his hands on his knees, the noise making her jump slightly. “Listen, we don’t have time for this. There’s no way we weren’t noticed, following you, and—”

      The bus went over a particularly bad pothole and jolted them out of their seats. Something scraped along the bottom of the bus, making both guys flinch. Jan tried to use the distraction to get up, get away, but Black Nails grabbed her again, hauling her back, pulling her toward the back exit.

      “We have to go now,” he said.

      “What?” She tried to free herself, but his grip was painfully strong. Should she scream? Would the bus driver help her? There were reports of drivers who didn’t do anything, even when someone screamed, but those had to be urban legends, right? Stuff that only happened in big cities, not here, not—

      “Off the bus, now!” Black Nails sounded worried suddenly, and that scared her all over again, although she couldn’t have said why. The bogeyman of my enemy is still a bogeyman?

      The one with the messed-up face had already pulled the yellow cord that called for a stop, and the bus driver was jockeying through traffic to pull to the side at the end of the next block, even as she was being yanked toward the exit.

      “What are you— No!” She finally pulled away, drawing breath to scream, when Hoodie-guy glanced at the back of the bus and swore. Jan couldn’t help herself; she looked, too. The bus jolted again, there was another shrieking noise underneath, as if the bus had run over something sharp and metallic. Then the metal floor buckled once, twisting weirdly, as if it was melting. The old man stared at it, then looked away, and Jan wondered if she were hallucinating...except the guys hauling her out kept looking back, worried, too, hands flat against the door, waiting for the bus to stop so they could get out.

      “What is—” she started to ask, about to pull herself loose from their grip and tell the bus driver something was wrong, when the floor buckled one last time, and something shoved its way through, a long arm with small fingers, skin the gray-white of old bread streaked with mold, stretching as though to grab at whatever rested above.

      Right where she would have been СКАЧАТЬ