Chapter 3 Avery

Avery

The commotion outside dies as quickly as it came.

For a beat, the diner holds its breath—forks paused halfway to mouths, conversations tripping over themselves—then the noise settles back into its usual hum, like nothing happened at all. I glance toward the windows again, but the street looks normal. No smoke, no flashing lights, no twisted metal. Just headlights sliding past and the dim glow of the streetlamps.

Probably a car hopping a curb. Or construction, even though it’s past six and the city usually pretends it has rules about that sort of thing. Either way, I’m too tired to care. If the world is ending, it can at least wait until I clock out.

I shrug it off and head toward the corner booth where the two men are sitting.

Up close, I slow without meaning to.

Then I stop completely.

A small, embarrassing gasp slips out of me before I can swallow it down.

They’re both… beautiful. Not in the “nice jawline, good haircut” way. In the wrong way. Like they don’t belong under fluorescent diner lights with sticky menus and ketchup bottles that never quite come clean. Like someone took a myth and pressed it into human shape.

The one on the left has dark hair that falls in loose waves over his forehead, the kind that looks like it’s never seen gel in its life and still behaves perfectly. His eyes are so dark they don’t look brown—they look like onyx, bottomless and unreadable. He’s built like he spends his free time lifting things that shouldn’t be lifted, his chest and arms filling out a fitted black shirt like it’s trying its best and still losing.

The other man is his opposite, and somehow that makes him worse. His hair is silvery white, cut shorter, sharp at the edges like he keeps everything controlled and trimmed back. His eyes are pale too, an icy shade that makes me think of winter sky and the inside of a blade. His jaw is cut hard, clean lines and arrogance, and he’s just as muscular—broad shoulders, thick forearms, the kind of body that looks like it’s been forged for violence.

Both of them have tanned skin, but the pale-haired one is covered in tattoos—every inch of visible skin inked down to the tips of his fingers, up his hands, over his wrists and neck. Symbols. Animals. Relics. Shapes that look ancient and deliberate. I don’t recognize them, but something in me does the unpleasant little stutter of I shouldn’t be seeing this.

I swallow hard and force my brain back into waitress mode. Smile. Pad. Pen. Pretend I didn’t just stop breathing.

“Hi,” I manage, voice coming out a little too light. “What can I get you guys to eat?”

The dark-haired man studies me with mild curiosity, like he’s deciding whether I’m real. He lowers his menu slowly, opens his mouth to answer—

A crash detonates outside.

This one isn’t distant. It isn’t a bump or a bang. It’s a hit, a violent impact that slams into the building like a fist. The entire diner shudders. Tables jump. Glass clinks and rattles. For a second the floor feels like it tilts under my feet.

I stumble.

Before I can fall, a hand closes around my arm—firm, steady, too strong to be casual. The dark-haired man catches me like he expected it, like he’d already decided I wasn’t going to hit the ground.

I suck in a sharp breath and jerk my gaze up to him, heart pounding.

He isn’t looking at me.

His head is turned toward the front door, eyes narrowed, expression gone flat and cold. Alert. Predatory.

The pale-haired man shifts too, shoulders tightening, attention snapping to the windows like he’s listening to something I can’t hear.

I twist around, following their line of sight—and my stomach drops.

Ricky is already moving.

He’s sprinting toward the entrance, shoving through the door like an idiot, like he thinks he can fix whatever’s happening outside with his lanky limbs and a good attitude.

“Ricky—!” I start, but my voice is swallowed by the sudden chaos.

People on the street are screaming.

Not one scream. Dozens. A rolling wave of terror that spills through the glass. Shadows race past the windows—people running in every direction, tripping over each other, faces twisted in panic.

I stand there frozen, my arm still in that stranger’s grip, my brain scrambling to find the normal explanation that will make this make sense.

Car accident. Gas leak. Fight. Anything.

The dark-haired man releases me like he’s done with being gentle. His voice cuts through the rising noise, low and rough and absolute.

“Go hide.”

I blink at him, stunned. “What—why?”

He doesn’t answer. He’s already moving. He rises to his full height in one fluid motion, and the pale-haired man stands with him, pushing out of the booth like they’re stepping into a role they’ve played a thousand times.

I’m still staring, still too confused to do anything, when another crash hits—harder.

This time there’s nothing to hold on to.

The world lurches and my feet slide out from under me. I go down on my back with a breath knocked clean out of my lungs, the ceiling lights blurring as the diner erupts into screaming. Chairs scrape. Someone knocks over a table. Plates shatter. People surge toward the back like animals in a cage.

A sound tears through it all.

A shriek.

High and unnatural. Too loud. Too sharp. Like a bird—no, like something trying to imitate a bird with the wrong throat. Like a dying animal. Like a creature.

My skin goes cold.

What in the world is happening?

I scramble, palms slipping on the tile as I crawl, trying to get behind the counter where it feels smaller, safer. My heart is hammering so hard I can taste it. The din around me is chaos—cries, curses, the horrible scraping of furniture, the wail of terror rising higher and higher.

Then the front door explodes.

Not opens. Not breaks.

Explodes—a burst of glass shards and twisted metal spraying into the diner like shrapnel.

I don’t have time to duck fully before something hot and sharp bites into my leg. Pain flashes white, immediate and sickening. I scream, the sound ripped out of me, and my hands slap over the wound instinctively even as more glass rains down.

I drag myself the last few feet and collapse behind the counter, back pressed to the cabinets, breath coming in ragged little gasps.

The shriek comes again.

Closer.

So close it feels like it’s inside my skull.

My vision tunnels. My hands shake. I clamp a palm over my mouth to keep from sobbing out loud, to keep from making a sound that might draw attention, because suddenly I know—with the raw certainty of fear—that whatever made that noise is not just outside anymore.

It’s here.

In the diner.

And the pain in my leg pulses with every heartbeat as panic swallows me whole.