Dread gathered like a storm swirling around me. I couldn’t look away.

Loud voices rang out from somewhere in the middle of the game row. Two men were arguing at a middle booth. The nosy demon was distracted from Kaidan and left to see what all the commotion was about. I circled back around, running past the children’s rides to the other side of the game alley. Kaidan had led the girl farther back, closer to where the bathrooms were around the side. I pushed my hearing out and watched, partially hidden behind a funnel cake stand.

“—didn’t realize what time it was,” Kaidan was telling her. “I need to be off.”

My vision was blocked by a group of people turning the corner toward them.

“There you are! Qué pasa? Dónde estabas?” An older girl gave the girl with the pink teddy bear a hard shove on her shoulder. She sounded annoyed, asking where the girl had been, then she sized up Kaidan.

“’Scuse me.” Kaidan attempted to move away from the group, but a big hand shot out and pressed against his chest. The guy looked back and forth from Kai to the teddy bear girl.

“Not so fast, gringo.”

My heart rate shot up as I took in his odds. There were five guys, and they looked to be in their early twenties. All with shaved heads and differing facial hair. Each had tattoos up his arms, and two of them had designs tattooed on their scalps. But it wasn’t their appearance that scared me. The thing that frightened me most was that underneath their severely darkened auras, they each wore something red on their bodies.

Gang members. And these guys were hard-core.

Please, I fervently prayed. Get him out of this!

“Jugar con mi chica?” The one with a hand on Kaidan asked if he was messing with his girl. Crap. He appeared to be the leader of this group, the way the others stepped back and let him take control. Hair lined his jaw, except at the scar across his chin, where no hair grew.

Before Kaidan could speak, the girl shook her head, stepping up to her boyfriend and insisting with a shaking voice that Kaidan was just a dumb boy. He was just being nice, that’s all. He had a girlfriend around there somewhere. She asked if they could leave now. The guy backhanded her across the cheek and I covered my mouth. Her pink bear dropped to the ground.

“You think I’m stupid?” he asked her in Spanish. “You think I’m blind?”

Kaidan stood a little taller and his face went hard. His hand slipped into his pocket, and so did the hands of the other five guys. An eerie smile grew across the leader’s scarred face.

This couldn’t go any further. I sprinted through the crowd, dodging people until I got closer. I happened a quick glance down the game alley and didn’t see the whisperer anywhere. Hopefully he was on his way to the summit now. Slowing, I cleared my throat and walked up behind the guys. Kaidan saw me and flicked his free hand in a tight motion, telling me to go away. I gave a defiant shake of my head and approached. His nostrils flared.

I squeezed through the group to stand next to Kai, and the gang guys regarded me with surprise. I didn’t want to swap words with these guys. I liked to give all people the benefit of the doubt, but menace rolled off them like thunderclouds.

Using my strong, willful voice, I said, “Do not take out your weapons. You will not try to harm us. You will let us leave right now.”

Their guardian angels used the opportunity to whisper to them, trying to calm them and make my words sink in.

All five of them stiffened as Kaidan and I stepped back, preparing to run. The scarred leader twitched. He so did not want to cooperate with peaceful orders. In what looked to be a great effort, he grunted a command to the guy next to him, who broke from his trance after a moment of hesitation and grasped my shoulder.

Without thought, fifteen months of drilled reactions kicked in. In two swift moves I grabbed the place where his shoulders met his neck, yanked him toward me, and drove my knee straight up into his groin. He crumpled in agony, and I didn’t stop to admire my handiwork.

I grabbed Kaidan’s arm and tugged. We’d taken two running steps when a clear, metallic click halted our feet. Kaidan squeezed my hand and we slowly turned. Dread crept up the back of my neck and I was breathing as if I’d run a marathon.

The leader had a gun pointed at us, trembling with the effort. “I ain’t takin’ no orders from a little bruja.” He glanced down at his writhing friend and said to me, “You gonna pay for that. And you—” He looked at Kai over the barrel. “Nobody touches my girl ’cept me.”

Kai slowly sidestepped to partially block me from him.

The guardian angels exchanged glances and stayed attentive, as if prepared to act, even though they weren’t allowed to do anything more than whisper. Adrenaline flooded my system, but I didn’t know what to do. I was too afraid to say anything else out loud, so I attempted to will a silent order: “Put the gun down.”

The leader wiped sweat from his forehead with his spare hand, and his forehead crinkled as if in pain, but he didn’t put the gun down. My hand began to sweat in Kaidan’s grip.

“Please,” I whispered.

“Shut your mouth!” the shortest guy shouted, breaking out of the original trance. He bounced his shoulders a little, working himself up. He whipped a switchblade from his pocket and moved toward me, but was stopped by a knife at his own neck, forcing him to look up at Kaidan. It all happened so fast. I never saw Kai pull his knife, and the events that followed went even faster. I had no time to be as terrified as the moment warranted.