~~Young~~

Chapter Thirteen

   He ran back out into the cool night, swinging around the corner of the bar just to come to a skidding halt. It was an alley, but there was no door and no exit. Not with the other building butting up against the end of the alley sealing it off. He ran to the other side, but that wasn’t any better. It was so narrow he doubted even Sera could slip through it never mind open a door wide enough to expel someone from the property.

   Fuck it!

   He bent into a crouch then pushed off the ground as he began pounding his wings, launching himself straight up into the night sky. He hit the roof with a little more force then was necessary he was sure when he landed, but assuming the big guy downstairs was the one living above his own bar he didn’t think anyone would notice. He took off at a run across the gravel and tar surface for the back of the building, Sera’s arguing with the man carrying through the night.

   So then they were already outside…

   “He tried to grab me!” she shouted.

   “Not my problem if he cheated you, next time get him to pay up front for the goods.”

   “I’m not a hooker asshole.”

   Really? He thought she was trying to sell herself? In that? Maybe if she had kept those slacks on from earlier, but Gage couldn’t find anything appealing about what she had changed into. The woman beneath the clothes on the other hand…

   “Says you,” he heard the man snort and then a door that slammed shut.

   “Asshole!” Sera screamed, followed by the sound of bursting glass.

   She must have been throwing empties at the place.

   He skidded to a halt in the pea gravel and looked down for a good way to approach Sera without completely startling her. In the mood she was in now he didn’t doubt she’d take a swing at him and with a fight already burning in his veins he didn’t want to take the chance that he would swing back. Not to mention it would probably be a good idea if he tucked his wings away first…maybe he shouldn’t have ditched that shirt so quickly…

   As he was running this all through his head he watched as Sera threw a hand through her hair and paced.  

   Something was wrong…

   She was frustrated obviously, maybe contemplating how she could get back in the bar and meet whoever she was waiting for?

   No…whatever was bothering her it seemed…serious?

   A sniffle echoed up to him and he saw her wipe a hand over her face, now she was crying?

   He shook his head and made his way towards the fire escape clinging to the back side of the building with its rusty bolts, at a loss to what had upset her so. She had come here herself after all, must have known on some level to expect what had happened so then why be upset? He was about to swing his leg over the wrought iron ladder when some movement caught his eye.

   Was he surprised that it was Twitchy and his friends, not really when he considered that maybe they had orchestrated the whole thing. That this was exactly the outcome they had hoped for. Lone woman in an empty alley, no one to see what they were going to do, no one who could hear scream through the thick brick wall even if the hockey game wasn’t blaring inside. And no way of escape. There was only one exit out of the alley that wasn’t through the bar, and the three men had spread out to close the gap.

   They would die for this, for the mere thoughts in their vile minds.

   He leapt down to the first landing, glad he had yet to begin folding his wings back in and he spread them wide, ready to swoop down on them-