It started to rain, the light pitter-patter on the ground oddly comforting on a dark night in a strange place. But then I heard a different patter, mixed in with the rain, and coming up behind me.
Footsteps.
I quickened my pace, mentally calculating the distance to the next subway.
If I was lucky, then it was Leon rolling up behind me. I tried to stay in shape and took half a dozen different self-defense classes. If it was Leon, he was going down.
Hard.
"Hey! Wait up, bitch!"
Hank.
Shit.
I could hold my own in a fight, but Hank was built like a bus. He probably wasn't quick, but if he laid a hand on me then...
Then all I could do was hope that he would take the money and leave me relatively unharmed.
"I said, wait up!"
I should have listened to Remi. Well, I was going to take some of my foster brother's advice now. Remi’s favorite mantra was, 'If you can't beat 'em, run'.
I broke into a sprint, tearing ass down the street. I might not have been as strong as Hank, but surely I was quicker?
On an impulse, I turned down an alleyway, hoping to lose him. At the far end was a chain-link fence. That wouldn't have happened in Brooklyn. I'd have known where I was going. On the other hand, I could climb chain-link like a monkey and I was betting that Hank couldn't. He might plow through it like a rhinoceros, but it would at least slow the bastard down a bit.
"You better stop or else…”
Or else what? I might get away from him?
What an idiotic thing to say. Unless...
I glanced back and saw Hank reaching into his jacket. It occurred to me that he hadn't taken that jacket off all night, even in the sweaty heat of the bar.
Holy shit, did he have a gun?
From nowhere I found a new turn of speed, racing for the fence. I was only a foot or two away when something hit me in the back of the head and down I went. He shot me. He fucking shot me! In the panic of the moment I hadn't even heard the gunshot. Maybe that was what it was like when you were shot. There wasn't much pain but that wasn't much relief.
It wasn't fair. It wasn't fucking fair. All I did was cheat him out of a bit of money - not really all that much. I'd misled him, sure, but I hadn't actually stolen anything. Plus, he had behaved like a total sleaze, didn't I deserve some payback for pussy jokes and groping hands?
It wasn't grifted money, exactly. It was more like a tax on guys who behave disrespectfully towards women. And even if none of that was true, I still didn't deserve to die for it.
Remi was going to be so pissed.
And yet, under all that, under the panic and the fear and the will to fight and survive like I'd been doing my whole damned life, as I closed my eyes to a welcoming darkness of oblivion, I felt an odd sense of relief.
At least now I could stop running.
Chapter Two
A few moments later I heard a nearby 'ribbit'. I opened my eyes and found a frog staring back at me. On a list of things that one associates with Heaven, frogs very seldom feature. Which did make sense - I probably hadn’t made the cut on the guest list into Heaven. No surprise there. On the other hand, what on earth did a frog have to do to get itself condemned to Hell? I wouldn't have thought they'd last long in the heat…
Somewhere alongside my musings on the presence of amphibians in the afterlife came the realizations that; a) I probably wasn't actually dead; b) the presence of a frog in an alley in Queens was almost as unlikely as one in Heaven or Hell; and c) the footsteps coming up from behind me had stopped.
I sat up, touching the back of my head as I did so. My hair was wet where I’d been hit, but when I looked at my fingers there was no blood. So, definitely not dead, probably not shot, and with damp hair. I had been hit in the head with something wet. What the fuck was going on?
I tipped my head up to find Hank staring at me in confusion a few yards away.
"Did you just throw a frog at me?" I demanded incredulously.
Hank, who was holding a mobile phone in his hand which was presumably what he had been reaching into his pocket for, wore a stunned expression that was actually not that dissimilar to that of the frog’s.
"What? No. I was..." He gestured with his phone, still dazed and clearly taken aback. "I was going to call the police."
That made more sense. I had taken his money under false pretenses and calling the police was a more appropriate response than hurling amphibians, but that didn’t explain the frog.
"I was calling the police and then..."
He paused, scratching his stubble. “Something did hit you in the head. I think - I think it was..." His eyes seemed to be drawn inexorably to the frog, still sitting inoffensively on the ground beside me. Hank looked to be teetering on the edge of sanity, and I didn't much like how close I was behind him. "But I didn't throw it."
The frog began to hop away, presumably in search of a nice pond to rest up in after a traumatic experience.
"Then who did?" I argued. We were alone in the alley, a fact that should’ve been more concerning to me considering our history but had dropped off my danger radar after I’d been pelted with in the cranium a frog.
"It... It just dropped from the sky."
He was starting to develop a twitch over his left eye that had me fearing he might stroke out or something.
"You're seeing things," I said dismissively, waving my hand in hopes of calming us both the fuck down. "Frogs do not just drop from the sky. If I was hit by a frog then someone threw it. And since there's only you and me here..."
“Look, I didn't throw it! Why would I even be carrying a frog?” he demanded gruffly, still holding his phone as if unsure what to do with it now.
That was a reasonable point and I was about to counter it as best I could when a frog fell from the sky and landed a few feet away from me with a splat. Without the benefit of something slightly more forgiving to land on such as my head, this one did not survive the landing.
“Guh!” Hank blanched, shuddering with disgust. "What the-”
"There's a perfectly rational explanation for this," I cut in, clinging onto my sanity by a thread.
Hank was less successful with that endeavor as another frog went careening by him at warp speed before exploding a few feet away from his left shoe.
He screamed at a pitch usually reserved for bats and five-year-old girls, then yelled at me. “You’re sick. Taking my money wasn't enough? You gotta scare the shit out of me, too! Not cool, man. Not cool!"
And with that, he took to his heels with a speed I wouldn't have credited to a man of his size.
While I managed not to scream or run away, I was least as freaked out as Hank was. I'd heard urban legends about rains of frogs, but they weren't actually true, were they? Rain comes from clouds - you can't have a cloud of frogs. A crack of thunder rent the air and I looked up just in time to catch a face full of frog.
This time I screamed because its cold little foot actually went into my mouth. I hurled the offending creature from me in as ladylike a way as possible then took to my heels running.
As I was feeling a bit shaken, as well as achy and scraped from my fall, I decided to spring for a cab back to Brooklyn, even though money was tight. The cabbie gave me a pleasant smile as I got in and rattled off the address.
"You alright?" he asked, seeming like he might actually care.
"Yeah. Sure," I muttered. "I... Can I ask; have you seen anything weird tonight?"
The cabbie nodded fervently. "Hell yeah. I'm a cabbie in New York. You want weird? You've come to the right place."
"I meant; weirder than normal," I pressed.
"I don't know about that," the cabbie shrugged. "I had a hooker with a broken heel - her actual heel, not her shoe. There was a guy with a teddy bear tied to his head - apparently it was an art thing. Don't get art these days. Oh, and some jackass made me call him ‘Sir’ the whole ride and requested that I come up to his apartment and gi
ve him a taint massage for a fifty percent tip.”
"Not really what I had in mind," I said, interrupting to stop him before he said something I couldn’t un-hear. "I meant weird for New York."
"Weird for New York?" The cabbie blew a long whistle. "No. I can't even imagine what that would look like. That's a pretty damn high level of weird shit, you know?"
As he continued to muse on what might constitute weird for NYC, I leaned my head out the window, enjoying the faint dusting of rain on my face, and staring skywards in search of any other falling frogs. I saw none. Had I imagined the whole thing? But, of course, it hadn't just been me who'd seen it. Something had scared Hank off.
My train of thought slowed. It had scared Hank off, hadn't it? I had been thinking about this in a very negative way - something that had scared me, weirded me out and set me questioning my own sanity. But it had also been something that had potentially saved me from... well, the worst-case scenario didn't bear thinking about.
Not that it wasn't still weird and scary.
Reaching my apartment block, I paid the cabbie, thanked him for his help, and then raced up three flights, eager to be back once again in the safety of my home.
Remi looked up from a Thai take-away as I barreled in.
"What's wrong? You look like you just saw a ghost.”
I suppose that most people would think it weird for a twenty-eight-year-old woman to be living with her brother, but Remi and I were more than siblings. Also, less - we were both fostered by the same family. But although there was no blood between us, we had always been full siblings in each other's eyes, and we had both always felt that we had been destined to end up together. Whatever bad circumstances had landed us in the foster system, all that badness had been, to some degree at least, mitigated the day we met. Remi was my best friend in the world and my partner in crime. He was every bit as good at manipulating marks as I was, using his blonde-haired good looks and trim, fit body to his advantage. It was a perfect partnership, and because we had grown up as brother and sister, and had never seen each other as anything else, it was a partnership unencumbered with the awkwardness of a relationship that torpedoed many a husband and wife grifting team.
I flopped down on the couch and looked across at Remi. "Did you get me anything?"
"Pad Thai. What's wrong?” he asked again, not missing a trick.
"You rock,” I said with a happy sigh as I scooped up the white carton.
"Obviously, but tell me what's wrong."
He fetched me a beer and, as I ate, I told him about the events of the evening. He stopped and held up a staying hand right where I expected him to.
"A frog?"
"A frog,” I repeated.
"You're sure?"
I rolled my eyes. "You think I don't know what a frog looks like? You think maybe I mistook it for something else?"
"Probably not."
"You believe me?"
"Of course I believe you."
I shook my head. "There's no 'of course' about it. I just told you I was snipered by a falling sky frog. I wouldn't believe me. Hell, I’m not even sure I do believe me."
Remi edged closer, suddenly concerned. "What do you mean?"
I focused my gaze on my noodles. "What if... You know."
"What?"
"You know,” I hedged.
"I don't know. That's why I'm asking."
"What if it's all in my mind?"
Remi shook his head firmly. "You said there was this guy there."
"What if I imagined him, too?"
He could hear the fear in my voice and he knew what I was thinking without me having to say it. This was how it had started for my mother. Hallucinations, memories of things that had never happened. It had all seemed innocent enough at first - to a child it had just seemed like a game we played. But the happy images had become voices, steps on a path that had led to the mental institution in which she remained, drifting in and out of lucidity.
"You know what probably happened?" Remi tried to bring me back from the dark thoughts into which I was sinking. "The guy threw something at you - a rock or something, or a bag or something - it knocked you out, and the rest was a concussion hallucination. Just an after-effect of a bang on the head."
I nodded, without really thinking it might be true.
"There's a protocol."
"A what now?"
"A concussion protocol," Remi explained. "Like tests you've got to do after you've got whanged on the head, to make sure you've not done any permanent damage. How many fingers am I holding up?"
He extended his middle finger at me and I laughed, returning the gesture. "I'm not sure that's one of the steps."
"I'll Google it."
I watched as he got his phone out, trying not to think about strait jackets, padded rooms and electro-shock therapy. I should visit Mom more often, but that place…
I barely repressed a shudder.
Desperate to think about something else while Remi wondered out loud how one spelled “concussion”, I tried to isolate a niggling feeling at the back of my head that I had read about rains of frogs somewhere.
"Google raining frogs," I said.
"I think we should do the protocol first," Remi replied.
"I'm fine. I'll get some ice for the bump. Just Google it."
Remi shrugged and did so while I got an ice pack for my head and band aids for my skinned knees.
It would be too much to say that we regularly get physically hurt but there are risks to the job. Getting beaten up is always a possibility and we've had some close calls, but minor injuries sustained while running are more common. There's a reason that Remi and I are both gym bunnies - we keep super fit, and it's not to look good. You need to have a turn of speed in this profession, you need to be able to climb or jump obstacles. From time to time, in headlong flight from an angry man with a much lighter wallet than he had minutes ago, you are going to trip up and fall down. I've always thought Remi has it easier because he can wear pretty much whatever, while my standard grifting uniform required me to show some skin. It’s great for distracting men, who are looking at my boobs when they really should be looking at what my hands are doing, but is terrible for running away and worse for falling down. Skinned knees are an occupational hazard.
When I got back, Remi passed me his phone, somewhat reluctantly. "You shouldn't read anything into this. There's shit all over the internet that isn’t true."
I looked at the screen and gasped as I finally digested what was on the screen in front of me.
Raining frogs is a sign from God.
The word “apocalypse” shimmered and waved before my bleary eyes as I sat back with a gasp.
“Holy shit.”
Get the rest of Her Immortal Harem now!
Other Books by Savannah Skye
Her Demon Harem 1 (Succubus Chronicles)
Her Demon Harem 2
A Witch’s Harem
Kidnapped by the Dragon Harem
Her Howling Harem 1
Her Howling Harem 2
Her Vampire Harem
Her Immortal Harem 1
Her Immortal Harem 2
Her Deadly Harem
Axe to Grind
Breaking Colt
Better to Eat You
Hard Lesson
Hard Sell
Bad Boy Next Door
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