Silence

over my skin. The man wasn’t going to help. He was going to leave me out here with Gabe.

Gabe mimicked me, knocking obnoxiously on the man’s window. “Help me!” he cried in a shrill voice. “Gabe and his friends are robbing the 7-Eleven. Oh, mister, you have to help me stop them!” When he finished, he flung his head back, choking on his own laughter.

Almost robotically, the man in the truck looked over at us. His eyes were slightly crossed and unblinking.

“What’s the matter with you!” I said, rattling the truck’s door handle. I smacked the window again. “Call the police!”

The man stepped on the gas. The truck accelerated slowly, and I jogged beside it, still clinging to the hope that I could open the door. He fed the truck more gas, and I tripped over my feet to keep up. Suddenly he took off like a shot, and I was flung off into the road.

I whirled to Gabe. “What did you do to him?”

This.

I flinched, hearing the word echo inside my head like a phantom presence. Gabe’s eyes blackened into hollows. His hair started visibly growing, first on top of his head, and then everywhere. It tufted out from his arms, down to the tips of his fingers, until he was covered in fur. Matted, reeking brown fur. He lumbered toward me on his hind legs, gaining height until he towered over me. He swiped his arm, and I saw a flash of claws. Then he crashed down on all fours, put his wet black nose in my face, and roared — an angry, reverberating sound. He had transformed into a grizzly bear.

In my terror, I tripped backward and went down. I scuttled backward, blindly sweeping the roadside for a rock. Catching one in my hand, I hurled it at the bear. It hit him in the shoulder and bounced aside. I grabbed another rock, aiming for his head. The rock flew into his snout, and he snapped his head to the side, saliva trailing from his mouth. He roared again, then came at me faster than I could scramble backward.

Using his paw, he flattened me against the pavement. He was pushing too hard; my ribs creaked in pain.

“Stop!” I tried to shove his paw off, but he was much too strong. I didn’t know if he could hear me. Or understand. I didn’t know if any part of Gabe was left inside the bear. Never before in my life had I witnessed anything so inexplicably horrifying.

The wind picked up, tangling my hair across my face. Through it, I watched the wind carry off the bear’s fur. Little tufts of it drifted up into the night. When I looked again, it was Gabe leaning over me. His sadistic grin implied, You’re my puppet. And don’t you forget it.

I wasn’t sure which terrified me more: Gabe or the bear.

“Up you go,” he said, hoisting me to my feet.

He propelled me back along the road until the lights of 7-Eleven came into view. My mind staggered. Had he — hypnotized me? Made me believe he’d turned himself into a bear? Was there any other explanation? I knew I had to get out of here and call for help, but I hadn’t come up with the how yet.

We rounded the building to the alley, where the others were congregated.

Two were dressed in street clothes, similar to Gabe’s. The third was wearing a lime-green polo with 7- ELEVEN and the name B.J. embroidered on the pocket.

B.J. was on his knees, clutching his ribs, moaning inconsolably. His eyes were squeezed shut, and saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth. One of Gabe’s friends — he wore an oversize gray hoodie — stood over B.J. with a tire iron, raised and ready to swing, presumably again.

My mouth went dry, and my legs seemed to be made of straw. I couldn’t unglue my eyes from the dark red stain seeping through the midsection of B.J.’s shirt.

“You’re hurting him,” I said, aghast.

Gabe held his hand out for the tire iron, and it was readily given to him.

“You mean this?” Gabe asked with mock sincerity.

He swung the tire iron down square against B.J.’s back, and I heard a grotesque crunch. B.J. screamed, collapsed onto his side, and writhed in pain.

Gabe stretched the tire iron across the back of his shoulders, hanging his arms over it like it was a baseball bat. “Home run!” he hollered.

The other two laughed. I was dizzy with the need to be sick.

“Just take the money!” I said, my voice rising toward a shout. Clearly this was a robbery, but they were taking it five steps too far. “You’re going to kill him if you keep hitting him!”

A snicker moved through the group, as if they knew something I did not.

“Kill him? Unlikely,” Gabe said.

“He’s already bleeding heavily!”

Gabe raised an uncaring shoulder. And that’s when I knew he wasn’t just cruel, but insane. “He’ll heal.”

“Not if he doesn’t get to a hospital soon.”

Gabe used his shoe to nudge B.J., who had rolled over and planted his forehead on the cement apron spreading out from the back entrance. His whole body trembled, and I thought it looked like he was going into shock.

“Did you hear her?” Gabe yelled down at B.J. “You need to get to a hospital. I’ll drive you there myself and dump you in front of the ER. But first you got to say it. Swear the oath.”

With great effort, B.J. lifted his head to fix a withering stare on Gabe. He opened his mouth, and I thought he was going to say whatever it was they all wanted him to, but instead he spat, hitting Gabe in the leg. “You can’t kill me,” he sneered, but his teeth chattered and his eyes rolled back to whites, clearly showing he was on the brink of fainting. “The — Black — Hand — told — me.”

“Wrong answer,” Gabe said, tossing the tire iron up and catching it like a baton. When the trick ended, he swooped the tire iron down in a violent arc. The metal smashed over B.J.’s spine, causing him to jerk rod-straight and cry out in a hair-raising yowl.

I drew both hands over my mouth, transfixed by horror. Horror from both the gruesome picture in front of me, and from a word screaming inside my head. It was as though the word had snapped free from deep in my subconscious and smacked me head-on.

Nephilim.

That’s what B.J. is, I thought, even though the word meant nothing to me. And they’re trying to force him to swear an oath of fealty.

It was a frightening revelation, because I didn’t know what any of it meant. Where was I getting this from? How could I know anything about what was happening, when I’d never seen anything like it before?

I was torn from any further thought on the matter when a white SUV swung into the alley ahead, the beam of its headlights causing all of us to freeze. Gabe discreetly lowered the tire iron, hiding it behind his leg. I prayed that whoever was behind the wheel would reverse out of the alley and call the police. If the driver came much closer, well, I’d already seen what Gabe could do to convince people not to help.

I began drafting ideas in my mind of how to drag B.J. from the scene while Gabe and the others were distracted, when one of the guys — the one in the gray hoodie — asked Gabe, “Do you think they’re Nephilim?”

Nephilim. That word. Again. Spoken out loud this time.

Instead of comforting me, the word only ratcheted up my terror another few notches. I knew the word, and now it seemed Gabe and his friends did too. How could we possibly have it in common? How could we have anything in common?

Gabe shook his head. “They’d bring more than one car. The Black Hand wouldn’t go up against us with less than twenty of his guys.”

“Police, then? Could be an unmarked car. I can go convince them they’ve made a wrong turn.”

The way he said it made me wonder if Gabe wasn’t the only one capable of his powerful brand of hypnotism. Maybe his two friends were as well.

The guy in the gray hoodie started forward, when Gabe put his arm out, catching him in the chest. “Wait.”

The SUV rumbled closer, gravel popping under its wheels. My legs hummed with nervous adrenaline. If a fight broke out, Gabe and the others might get so wrapped up in it, I could grab B.J. under his armpits and haul him out of the alley. A slim chance, but a chance nonetheless.