Bam.
The metal wall behind him shuddered and echoed from the impact of his body being thrust against it. Each breath could be seen in the dark, frosty air, puffs of white contrasting against the night. Even the boy's soft whimpers were audible.
"Where is it, Albert?" A quiet voice cut across the tension, menacingly low.
"I-I don't have it…" he murmured, trembling.
The two hands clutching his white shirt collar slammed his back once again into the wall.
Bam.
"I'm gonna ask you again," the voice growled, through gritted teeth. "Where. Is. It?"
"I told you, I-I don't have it Kessie!"
"Don't you even dare to speak my name you piece of crap!"
Bam. Bam. Bam.
Albert gasped for breath, his body shuddering with fear. Her green eyes were so intense, so evil. Her grip was incredibly strong, knocking the wind out of the boy and rattling his bones with each ram to the wall. She was mad, and he knew it.
She could kill, and he knew it.
"K- please, I don't have it, I really don't," Albert stammered. His breathing grew shallow, all hope of getting out alive crumpling as Kessie's gaze narrowed.
She threw him to the ground, and kicked the boy's body onto his back. She placed a ratty converse sneaker one size too big on his chest, compressing his ribs. Albert's breaths grew from long and deep, to shallow and fearful. Kessie suppressed the urge to smile. She liked to scare her prey.
"Okay," she said promptly. Albert looked up, astonished. Even he knew that Kessie was not capable of forgiving.
A smile grew on the girl's lips. She kneeled down, a foot still on Albert's chest. She weighted herself on his ribs; she could feel the beating of his heart, the pressure of a rib about to break at any second. "I'm going to believe you." Her voice had returned to that icy tone.
Albert sighed, close to crying with relief.
"If."
She snatched away that relief.
"You bring it to me by the end of the week. If I don't have that two thousand bucks by the time I see your scrawny little ass next Sunday at midnight, then I'm gonna do worse than simply kill you."
And with that, she yanked the boy up by his unruly light brown hair and threw him down. She stepped off of his chest, and he wasted no time in escaping. Albert scrambled to his feet, scuffing up dirt and racing away.
Kessie released her clenched fist, letting a clump of short brown hairs to drift out onto the ground.
Russ, russ.
Crunch.
"So, K—Boss, you let 'im go?"
Kessie turned around to face the two tall boys appearing from behind some of the trees in the forest. They looked around 18 years of age, one of them slightly shorter and darker-skinned, the other freckled and gangly. They were both still well muscled, even though their cheeks were slightly hollow from slight famine.
She stared at them through her blonde fringe, two pale green eyes peeking through a curtain of wheat-colored hair.
"Yeah, whydju let 'him go? We could've pummeled him into de ground or something,'" the short one said, slamming his fist into his palm. The other nodded vigorously in agreement.
"Boys," Kessie began, voice silky. Her lips curled into a smile. "I didn't let him go. I never let them go."
The grin dropped from her face. Her gaze became steely as she bored into the eyes of her henchmen. Jerking her chin up to the sky, she brandished two white, brown speckled wings from behind two slits in her hoodie.
Fwip. Fwip. Fwip.
With a powerful thrust each, the bird-kids all propelled themselves into the sky. With a few flaps of their wings, they shot forward through the nighttime clouds, the moon their only source of illumination. It shone high and proud in the sky, though seemed to retreat behind a curtain of clouds as Kessie soared by.
Down below, the small running figure of a person stumbling through the still forest and around the abandoned factory could be seen. That smile of hers, that eerie, dangerous smile, began to appear once more. Her eyes took on a shade of wild yellow; the eyes of a hunter.
I never let them go.