Heavy Metal Heart by Nico Rosso Page B

none. What appeared to be a real connection turned out to be the trick of a madman. Then she hallucinated the typical rock star as some kind of satyr. But if the monster wasn’t real, why was she still running?
    The terror that had first hit her when she saw him still cut sharp through her spine. Her heart pounded and her hands tingled with adrenaline. Fear wouldn’t let her stop running. Let it be irrational. Just get home safe.
    Her heels tapped a steady quick beat down the alley where she’d first met Trevor face-to-face. The strange connection she’d first felt in the club continued in that fog. He was a hell of a performer, making her think it was all real. Even the kiss. All through the sex.
    “Fucker,” she spat out under her breath. Rounding the front of the club, she kept hurrying to the parking lot where her car waited to take her back to the normal world. Why the fuck did he have to pretend there was something more? She might’ve slept with him anyway, shaken hands at the end of it all, and they could be on their way. Instead he built up a fantasy. And she helped reinforce it. Then he turned it into a nightmare.
    She was on the sidewalk, almost at the parking lot, when a laughing voice barked out at her. “Walk of shame?”
    An idiot guy and his buddy were on the other side of the desolate street. They used the parking meters as crutches for their drunk legs. The guy laughed again and waved her toward them.
    “If you’d spent the night with me, you wouldn’t have to run home. I make a great breakfast.”
    His friend chuckled, fumbling with his phone. Ordinary bullshit from asshole men. It happened every night. But what she’d just gone through was far from ordinary. Usually she ignored the idiots, just kept moving. Tonight was different.
    “Fuck you.” Her keys were spikes between her fingers. She didn’t wait to see his reaction, but kept walking for the parking lot.
    His voice chased her. “What? What the hell...?” Footsteps off the sidewalk.
    The buddy moved with him. “Chill, bro.”
    A glance over her shoulder showed the two of them standing, unstable, in the middle of the street. She continued quickly into the parking lot. Nighttime wasn’t safe. It never was, but the shadows now hid greater threats. Anything could descend from the darkness. Like angry satyrs. Impossible.
    Her car was nearly the last one in the lot. The sketchy attendant with a choppy Mohawk sat in his kiosk, watching her fumble out her keys. His face was ghoulishly green in the bare fluorescent light. But he was still human. The only thing she’d seen change was Trevor.
    With the car door open, she half sat in the driver’s seat and changed into her trail runners. Just a little more armor. Once they were laced tight, she slammed the door, locked it and started the engine.
    Trevor’s voice sang at her. Cold sweat ran across her back as she punched at the CD player on the dash. The music stopped abruptly. Could she just stop the memories of this night, too?
    The parking lot attendant didn’t even wave as she tore out the driveway into the street. And screeched to a stop in the middle of the street. The idiot and his bro were still there. Just a few yards away. Sneering hate distorted the guy’s face as he pointed at her.
    “You can’t tell me to fuck off—”
    “I can do whatever the hell I want.” She lurched the car forward and the guy scrambled to get out of the way. He knocked into his friend and the two of them tangled in an awkward dance to the curb. Her tires spun on the pavement for a second before catching and bolting her car forward. That threat was behind her, soon to be forgotten like all the other dicks who thought they owned the street because they were men. But the car couldn’t go fast enough, or far enough, for her to erase the memory of what happened with Trevor.
    She thought about calling Kim to tell her everything, but tossed the thought out the window with the other trash on Hollywood