Dark Enchantment by Janine Ashbless Page B

I’m
prey
.
    He turns his head slightly, watching me, neon glinting on his shades.
    There’s no one in sight, though there are plenty of cars here. I leave my lane and duck away between two 4 × 4s, hearing the bike engine rev behind me as soon as I change direction. I don’t run; I haven’t got the strength to, just yet. My heart’s hammering. I zigzag down the aisles of cars, heading for a different corner of the car park. Every time I look around the bike is there, moving smoothly, tracking me. This isn’t my imagination.
    The whole car park is a roughly levelled rectangle, the roads on each side sloping more markedly. I hope the set of concrete bollards with looped chains will thwart him and I clatter down the steps beyond to street level. The bike engine roars as he spots what I’ve done and changes direction, heading for the exit. As soon as I’m on tarmac I break into a trot, hurrying past the beetling face of a Chinese supermarket. My heels aren’t made for this and sound agonisingly loud to me.
    The road dips towards an underpass and the desultory traffic on the city freeway overhead drowns the buzz of his engine. It’s unlit down there; dark enough to mask me for a moment. I stumble swiftly into the shadow of the tunnel, keeping close to the tiled wall. Somewhere there’s a double
thunk
as wheels pass over a manhole. Just as I reach the far side of the underpass I hear the distant drone of an engine deepen to a growl behind me, and I realise that I’m perfectly silhouetted against the lit street beyond. I corner left, hustling along but not running: I can’t run in these heels. This road, tucked into the shadowed curve of the flyover, is full of tiny shops with steel shutters drawn down over the windows and doors; most look like the shutters never get raised. It goes on and on in a great shallow curve, and I know there’s no chance of me outrunning the bike in plain view. There’s no chance of me outrunning him at all and he must know that; I think he’s deliberately holding back. There’s a gap between a Halal butcher’s and a hairdresser’s called Cutting Crew and I break across the width of the road, not daring to look back. If I look, or if I really run, I’ll panic.
    The side road turns out to be no more than an alley, without streetlights. Steel skips and overfilled bins line either side, alternating with doors that look like they’re armoured to hold back police raids. There are more streetlights at the far end though, and I stumble onwards, panting. It stinks of damp and garbage down here. My painted toes splash though a cold puddle. The ground is uneven, the tarmac rotted and cracked. The bike engine flares, sounding like it’s directly behind me, then it sinks and dies to nothing.
    I stop and turn. He’s there at the entrance to the alley, setting his bike onto its kickstand. My mouth has gone dry. I retreat a few steps, my legs wobbling. His face is shadowed but I can tell from the tilt of his head he’s smiling to himself. I whirl and see for the first time that between me and the lights, the width of the street is blocked by a chain-link fence.
    For a moment I despair.
    It’s the sound of his feet that breaks me from my trance: big biker boots crunching on the grit, heavy and unhurried. With a whimper I plunge to the fence, splaying my hands across the cold metal net. With the faint hope of finding a gap I hurry from one wall to the other, but the mesh is unvandalised, meeting galvanised poles at either end. Just my luck. There’s nothing else for it: I kick off my strappy shoes and try to get a purchase on the fence. I’ve never climbed chain-link in my life, though it looks easy in the movies. It hurts like hell on my toes as I heave myself up one arm’s length.
    It’s too late. He reaches up and snags me off the fence, catching me briefly before he slaps me face first into a brick wall, not hard enough to really hurt but hard enough to knock the breath out of me. In the