He didn’t slow down so she charged into the brush after him.

“Please! ‘Lus, I’m really sorry!”

“Go home Gretchen,” his angry growl coincided with her foot getting caught in a root sending her sprawling across the damp leaf litter.

“Ow! Nggggggh!” she rolled onto her back clutching her ankle and trying not to cry.

“Gretchen?!”

His long strides made crisp crunching through the fresh autumn fall as he hurried back to her side. Dropping to kneel beside her, his fingers peeled hers away from her ankle. He felt along her leg bones then flexed her foot as she hissed with pain and tried to slap him away.

“Stop already would you, that hurts!”

“It is not broken, but you appear to have sprained it badly.”

“What the hell is the point of immortality if you still have to suffer this bullshit?”

“Immortal, not invulnerable, you need to be more careful Gretchen.”

“Yeah, yeah, so sue me, I’m a clutz, now shut up and help me up!”

“I think not,” he scooped her up into his arms, lifting her bridal style like she weighed nothing. She lifted a fist to hit his chest and demand he put her down again but the look on his face stopped her.

“Ok, why so angry? I said sorry, I was just joking around, you’re always so damned serious!”

“You never take anything seriously until it is too late, you open your mouth before you think, and you charge in without looking, you are reckless, immature and a danger to yourself and others, you are not, I stress, not, impervious to harm!”

She opened her mouth to reply, and then shut it again, looking away from him guiltily.

“So you really think something has happened to Charles?”

“Tch, changing the subject again.”

“I’m stupid and clumsy and I don’t think, I get it, now can we drop it, it’s getting old!”

“No, we cannot drop it Gretchen. We are supposed to be partners, working together, I cannot work with you if you keep running into the nearest danger as if you were bullet-proof.”

She huffed out a breath, squirming, hating that he was right, and how guilty it made her feel, and how that guilt so quickly turned into righteous anger around him.

“So get another partner if I’m so useless!”

His grip on her tightened slightly and his jaw hardened.

“I don’t want another partner Gretchen, I want you to stop trying to get yourself killed. I’m responsible for you, but I can’t keep you safe if you won’t listen to anything I say!”

“Maybe I don’t want to be kept safe!”

He hissed and put her down on the path, his arm under her shoulder still, supporting her as she wobbled on one leg.

“This is exactly my point, I try to be reasonable, and you, for some gods knows reason put it upon yourself to be as contrary as possible. Do you do this to everyone or is this just some special hell you have reserved for me?”

“If you weren’t such an uptight asshole I wouldn’t end up acting like this!”

“So it is my fault is it?” He was glowering at her and she had to look away again

“No.. I.. I don’t know why I do it, I.. “

“Hmph!” He whistled three times sharply and Valiant came thundering through the forest towards them, spraying Gretchen with slobbery spittle as he fawned over her.

“Ow, gerrof Val, your breath stinks!”

“Valiant, behave, she’s hurt,” Angelus tone was as sharp as his whistle had been and Valiant settled down to walk sedately beside Gretchen, letting her use him as a crutch.

They walked in silence for a while. Gretchen, suspended between Angelus arm under her and Valiant on the other side, concentrating on not jarring her ankle, Angelus looking at his cellphone, scowling while he scrolled through messages.

“His last text was two weeks and three days ago, and it was in reply to a question I ask him. There is no indication here that he would be out of communication at any stage.”

“Uh, my cell is in my jacket, can you grab it?”

He hesitated for a moment then reached across and plucked her phone from her jackets top pocket.

“Do you want me to look through it as well?”

“Sure, the lockcode is-”

“I know what your passcode is,” he was already scrolling through her messages, his forehead creased with a frown.

“How the hell do-” he cut her off with a wave of his hand.

“Who is this Philip you have exchanged so many messages with?”

“What, Hey! That’s private! Just look up Charles messages and leave my personal life outa this!”

“You are not supposed to have a personal life with a mortal, you know the rules and why we have them Gretchen.”

“Well it’s not like I’m spoiled for choice is it, Charles is gay, and you’re.. You.. And I’ve only met five others and they were antiques, a girl has needs, and y’all ain’t leaving me any options.”

“I suppose I am supposed to be flattered you didn’t lump me in with the antiques?”

“Oh shut up! Is there anything there from Charles that’s useful?”

“No, his last message to you was two days before his last message to me, and it was merely a reminder for you to not be late to our meeting.”

“So, you’ve tried ringing him, you’ve been to all the places he usually goes, and you’ve checked he’s not just sick in bed right?”

“Of course, I have been doing this job for a few hundred years longer than you have, I only enquired of you as a last resort.”

“Nice to know I’m needed, Grandad.”

“Your constant jibes are not helpful; do you have any idea where Charles might have gone or why?”

“Not a clue.”

They rounded the end of the path as it opened out into a clearing with a tarmacked parking lot, mostly empty at this hour, just the odd jogger or dog walker moving purposefully towards their vehicles. Valiant slipped out from under her arm and bounded across to her car, leaving her leaning against Angelus.

“You’re gonna have to drive me home.”

“You live on the third story and the lifts in your building do not work. You are coming home with me; your car should be fine here for a few days.”

“You really need to learn to drive ‘Lus.”

“I can drive, I just dislike it.”

“Mhm.. By learn to drive I mean, in modern traffic, in a modern car.”

“I can,” he was starting to sound annoyed.

“Good, then drive me and my car back to your place, I’m not leaving it here to get stolen or stripped.”

He sighed heavily, and leaned over to slip her phone back in her pocket.

“Believe it or not, it will be safer here than at my place.”

“What are you talking about, your place is nice!”

“I shifted.”

She shook her head and let him half carry her down the sidewalk away from the park and towards the main road that bisected the bustling township. The evening lamp-lights were just starting to flicker on and a chill wind was skidding down the street, flicking leaves and rubbish into the air and tugging its way into their clothing.

Gretchen shivered and leaned in closer to the warmth that always radiated off Angelus. Val gambolled happily beside them, snapping at the detritus the wind was tossing around, his leash dragging on the ground behind him. The buildings down this side of the sidewalk were just on the edge between stately and decrepit, tall and imposing with high front porches and long sloping lawns, the gloaming hiding the peeling paint and straggling gardens.

Nobody wanted to live beside a highway, and the houses had slowly lost their grandeur as people moved away. Angelus had been living in one of them, a nice single-story colonial affair, but now he kept her walking past these and down a side road which quickly turned industrial.

“What, you’re living in a warehouse now?”

“Something like that, yes.”

“But why?”

“I have my reasons.”

“Does being infuriatingly cryptic come naturally to you, or do you have to work at it?”

“You talk too much.”

“Because you never tell me what’s going on, I have to pry every last-”

He cut her off by clamping a hand over her mouth and hissing in her ear

“We are being followed, now shut up so I can listen.”

He removed his hand and she glared at him, then concentrated on the noises behind them, there was nothing for a long moment beyond the distant roar of cars out on the highway and the faraway thud of industrial machinery.

Then she heard it, the skitter of gravel, and the soft pad of a footfall that made her tense and grip the back of Angelus’s jacket tighter.

“Relax,” he murmured, “we don’t want to tip them off we know until we find out why they are following us.”

She concentrated on trying to behave normally, but fear quickened her breath and made her clumsier, so she tripped and Angelus scooped her up in his arms again, giving her an annoyed look.

“You are quite terrible at this you know.”

She chewed her bottom lip and shivered, not just from the cold, but from fear that was settling deep in her gut.

“Something bad is gonna happen ‘Lus, I can feel it,” she whispered it at him and his jaw clenched.

“I know.”

“I think something bad happened to Charles.”

“So do I.”

“What do we do?”

“Right now, we keep walking, pretend like we don’t know they are there.”

Valiant had come back to circle them, whining, his eyes glowing in the street lights, his hackles raised.

More noises came from behind them, and to the sides, shuffling, and clicking, and the repetitive thud of something hard tapping on soft flesh. Val growled, a deep blood chilling sound, and a low susurrus of mocking laughter bubbled up around them.

Angelus tightened his grip on her, his face slipping into a hard mask.

“I am going to put you down, whatever you do, don’t try and run.”

“Why? Who are they?”

“Really bad news, please, for the love of god, listen to me this time or we will both wish we had died here.”

“N.. No need to sugar coat it on my behalf.”

He turned around to face whoever was following them, and slid her down so she was standing on her good foot.

“Valiant, guard!”

The dog slid under her arm, alert, his whole body quivering with suppressed rage and Angelus took a step forward, putting himself between her and whatever was out there.

“What do you want?”

The mocking laughter rebounded off the buildings, “what do we want, as if he didn’t know.”

“You cannot have her, she has signed the accords.”

“You think we care anything for your worthless pieces of paper? We take what we want, and we want her.”

“Have you forgotten who I am?”

Low hostile murmurings and a sound like fingernails being drawn across a blackboard echoed out of the gloom, “you are nobody now, worthless, you cannot stop us.”

“Are you willing to bet your life on that.”

A collective angry hiss preceded a figure sliding out of the darkness to stand a few meters away from Angelus.

His clothing was unremarkable, jeans, tee shirt and sneakers, but totally inappropriate for the chill of the night and they fitted oddly, like the person wearing them wasn’t quite human. His joints didn’t hang quite right, and his face was long and narrow, pale, the eyes dark and sunken.

Ordinarily Gretchen might have mistaken him for a junkie, but there was an unnaturalness to him that raised the hairs all over her body, leaving her with goose-bumps and an uneasy weight in her stomach.

“You will give the girl to us.”

Angelus planted his feet and spread his hands as the air around him became a shimmering heat mirage, expanding to envelop Gretchen and Valiant.

“Come and take her, if you dare,” Angelus’s voice was a dangerous growl that Val echoed.

Gretchen shivered, the shimmer set her teeth on edge, a high-pitched buzz that vibrated right to the centre of her bones.

The figure took a shambling step forward, as if it wasn’t used to standing upright, and stopped just outside the edge of the scintillating orb that surrounded them.

“Petty magics won’t stop us.”

Gretchen found herself holding her breath as the whine of the sphere mounted, making her head buzz, building like water against a dam, the pressure growing with each beat of her heart.

The figure reached out a hand towards the shimmer as it swirled like a soap bubble, translucent and delicate. It laughed mockingly and flicked a finger at the surface of it. Time slowed down for Gretchen, the figures finger hit the plane of the bubble at the same time as Angelus spun on his heel.

Grabbing her he threw her over his shoulder yelling, “now we run!”

Then the bubble burst with the sound of a thousand church bells tolling one deep note and a detonation of air that pushed them down the street and away from the scene of carnage behind them.