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There weren’t many thoughts in Mensha’s head as he followed in her wake. On the contrary, little more than motion and violence rippled across his mind’s surface.

he pulled one overdense muscle group in time with a twisting hip, to let a punch fly past him as he sunk his knife into their throat. Then retreat behind the aegis of Summer’s back. Hampered though he was by his arms torn fiber, he restrained his lethal attention to a laser precision on those that sought to strike his light’s vulnerabilities.

The moment consumed yet despite his scattered attention, where all was reduced to strikes of opportunity and reprisals as their shed blood joined the hollow scent of a place abandoned and the unseen strangers’ perfume.

She was stunning, cuts drew lines on her burnished bronze arms. Her glare stuck hesitation into dark faces before a swing or punch, ended them. The few attacks that slipped threw her violent guard and his cautious blade were caught by muscle. Her radiant heat warmed the cold city, where she stood his sole comfort.

It felt personal, intimate despite constant attempts on their life.

Seconds dragged to slow minutes and bodies piled as waves of shades struck, to be beaten and charged after a moment’s reprieve. Mensha danced atop the growing mess of bodies buoyed by unconscious musings. Summer stomped through dark flesh to find stable ground with determined steps.

He stepped back and surveyed the scene, in a beat between waves. The foremost shades edged back, dread evident in their antsy steps, as the dozens of jostling figures forward. Blind or uncaring of their likely death.

He breathed deeply, their target’s location remained unclear. With careful thought, he deemed the centipede distant. Despite the new stab in his outer thigh, things were going well. It would take seconds for Summer to see them scale the building behind them. Failing that they could force fighting retreat and abscond through an alley.

However, he couldn’t maintain this level of activity for long, enhanced muscles needed a level of stamina he lacked. In a few minutes, they’d have to be gone. Lest he start making mistakes, that led to more than an extra stab. Something to consider later.

Insistence overcame the leading shade and the shades charged.

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“Let us find you!” Summer’s crisp voice echoed against the silence and unclear scents resolved into certainty. The faint edge of preternatural anxiety and the centipedes joined it, from the same direction. That complicated things.

They could run, that was the reasonable thing, Summer might even agree as the second option risked leading the monster straight to its next kill. Could they make dozens of meters through the street’s middle? Before the distant clink grew to a deep rattle. He supposed they’d find out.

“I’ve got them Forward!” She burned brighter and the wave broke against her, the metaphorical wake grew literal, in a soundless clash.

They grabbed and struck, yet she plowed forward feet never stopping lest they drown her. Fear cleared her trail for moments as shades beheld their broken brethren. That small became his life clung to it as grasping hands and harrying blades followed him.

Then they were through the thick and into the thin. Something caught his cloak and his escape stuttered and his mind jumped. In a second he’d be on the ground in the next likely dead. He stared at that glowing back and thought faded to action.

His knife slipped beneath his cloak and the assemblage of thread and pins that held into together. He pushed with his legs and hands, curled with fiber in his body, as the blades flat and point dug into flesh.

Cloth tore free and jolted forward another brush with death on his tally. He smothered the flare of panic and closed the distance opened in that moment, as she bashed a stunned shade.

“Brace,” he said between increasingly uneven breaths and jumped on her back. She didn’t even lurch and instead let his weight carry her into a sprint through the thinning crowd.

“Where, am I going!” she commanded and Mensha struggled to pinpoint the small. He found a clear trial and the suggestion of distance but exacts escaped him.

“I’ll tell you when we’re there,” it was his best, “Hurry the centipedes in the same direction.” He hoped it was enough.

She hissed and her next step almost threw him. He poured from her and bled into the black blood coating her. Yet energy remained to heat his hand through her cloak. As his arm and legs wrapped around her.

Her eyes swept the distant buildings, his ears perked for the faintest click. They stormed forward, tramping a shade for everyone they dodged. As summer doused them in the cooling black fluid.

Seconds passed and Mensha caught the targets. In the third building to the right. He pointed for Summer and in seconds they were through the door, and in before the group of survivors huddled around a flashlight. Pointed like a gun by a young woman whose eyes darted about them.

He descended and spared a glance for the shades that froze in fear as he closed the door. He turned to the group, “Are you going to hide us?” he asked conversationally.

They jolted and stared at the small seven maybe eight-year-old in their midst. He hoped they were worth the effort. A glance at Summers’s giddy smile convinced him. As long as they survived the next minutes