Fusion by Nicole Williams Page B

blackness. Emma had to be one of them. As I stood there, scanning the area for a familiar shape, the panic had a chance to catch up with me. It was more raw than anything I’d ever felt before, more titanic than I’d felt when my own life was threatened. It was a hair from being debilitating.
    Finding no Emma shadows ghosting into the night, I made a logical guess and broke into a run in the direction of her dorm. A college student could head dozens of places late at night, after a long day of classes and studying, but Emma was nothing if not predictable when it came to her routine. I wouldn’t use the word predictable to describe her in any other way though.
    I was about halfway to her dorm when the hair-on-the-back-of-my-neck-rising feeling skittered up my spine. I lurched to a stop, letting my senses be my guide.
    It was a sound‌—‌a grass muffled footstep‌—‌so slight it would be imperceptible to the Mortal ear, that caught my attention first. Anyone who wasn’t worried about being detected didn’t walk that carefully.
    And then a shape came into view. A book bag slung over her shoulder, her body moved in a way I’d memorized long ago. Seeing her, awake and not behind a wall of glass with a prison phone pressed to her ear, smiling at something, froze me in place. Just long enough to get a taste of sweetness before another muffled footstep caught my attention. The panic overtook my moment of sweetness like a typhoon.
    Even if she looked my way, Emma couldn’t see me. A mist blurred me into nonexistence, and enough space separated us to make me hard to make out even without the fog cover.
    However, if she took a vacation from the thoughts bringing that euphoric smile to the surface and glanced over her shoulder like any woman walking on her own at night should every other stride, she would see the figures closing in behind her.
    Emma was being followed.
    No, she was being stalked.
    I reacted an instant before the shadow a stride behind her did.
    I charged ahead, with as much silence as speed, knowing I’d get to him before he got to her. I tackled him, sending the two of us cartwheeling one over the other in the opposite direction of Emma. I didn’t let out so much as a sharp breath, nor did the behemoth sized man I was mowing the Stanford lawn with, although there wasn’t enough rationality left for me to be grateful for our quiet so Emma could continue on her oblivious way.
    Rational was the last thing I felt when I pinned Gigantor to the ground and introduced his beefy face to the business end of my fist. I didn’t stop to ask questions, I didn’t pause to wonder if he and his pal’s intentions had been anything but dishonorable, I just took out a boyfriend’s right on creeper-in-the-night’s cheek bone.
    I was about to land my third hit when Gigantor numero deux rammed into me from the side. I flew across the lawn, my ass punching a crater into the ground when I landed.
    I didn’t need to survey the eyes; the fact I was just tossed like a Frisbee across the courtyard was all the evidence I needed to conclude I wasn’t dealing with a couple of anything-but-savvy intentioned Mortals.
    So why, in all the world’s insanity, was Emma being stalked at night by two mutant sized Immortals? I needed the answers as much as I didn’t want to arrive at them, but this was all beside the point anyways because the behemoth twins were marching my way with slanted smiles and gleaming eyes.
    My eyes trailed Emma’s direction, and relief flooded me for the shortest moment when I found her continuing on her way, totally unaware of the Immortal mono-e-duo taking place a few hundred yards behind her.
    Emma was safe and oblivious. Number one priority accounted for.
    And now, it was time to kick some ass.
    Popping up, I wagged my eyebrows at the advancing duo, tempting them forward. Sure, they might have me outnumbered, outweighed, and taken by surprise, but what I lacked in sheer size, I more than made up for in