Levi wove through the throng of humans, aware of their emotions in passing. Here, a mother’s love for a child, there, anxiousness for a job. His ears were attuned to the subtlety of feeling and caught each wayward thought as he brushed past the owner. Then, a whiff of something, something that turned his stomach to a ball of ice. He almost stopped mid-stride. His fingers twitched as an electric current of panic rushed through him, and, disregarding the people around him, he exploded in a cloud of white feathers. 

For a long moment a stunned ring of people stood where he had been, then they applauded nervously. They figured he was a street magician. 

Almost three hundred feet above their puzzled heads, Levi was already jetting off towards the trouble, his heartbeat thudding alongside the woman’s. He knew instinctively it was a woman, and that she was young, and that she was in danger, but more than that he couldn’t say. He murmured a hurried message to her—nothing she would be able to understand, but something to quell the worst of her panic. [i]It’s alright. Don’t be scared. You’re not alone. I’m coming.[/i]

An apartment complex loomed in the distance, a great brick affair gummed over with twenty years of grime and poverty. Levi swooped down toward it. Even in the dark, the woman’s fear called to him, showed him exactly where she was. It also showed him her attacker. 

The man wrestling with her was wearing a black jogging suit and some kind of knit cap. He was obviously strong and probably weighed at least two hundred pounds, all of it muscle. Levi was about one-seventy, himself, but he had rage on his side. Just as the woman sprayed something in the attacker’s face, Levi crashed into him from above like a thunderbolt. As she shoved away, the man fell back, howling in pain as Levi drilled his fist repeatedly into his paint-stung face. The man was screaming now, yelling obscenities as he tried, blindly, to defend himself. Levi silently thanked the woman and commended her for her quick thinking— she had saved him some injuries. 

With a final, brutal punch that snapped the attacker’s head backwards, Levi let out the breath he had been holding. At the same moment, he realized two key things: the woman hadn’t fled, as he thought she had, and his camouflage had faded. She could see him. Thankfully, his wings were tucked safely away, and he looked somewhat normal. With any luck, she was too shaken to wonder where he had come from. 

Levi also noticed how pretty she was, her blonde hair glowing like a halo in the murky shadows. Her eyes were blue, late evening sky blue. Undoubtedly a pretty woman. He smiled at her almost before he told himself to. “You okay?” 

The plan was simple: tell a bogus story about seeing the attack and trying to help, get the woman inside, call the cops, and take off. His heart stuttered inside him. She was still frightened, which wasn’t good for him. He got off the guy he’d just beaten up and walked to her, careful to move slowly so he didn’t alarm her. Once he was close enough, he crouched beside her. “You got a cell phone? You should call the cops.”