It’s a pleasure reading prose that knows what it’s doing and where it’s going. You have some good things here and your writing is strong and mature. From the start you give the reader a comforting sense that they’re in good hands.

The problem with such prose is that any problems that might exist aren’t going to be immediately apparent. One doesn’t have easy shots at their disposal, such as, “Many of your sentences seem to be missing verbs,” or “You forgot the story part.”

So I’ve read this a couple of times to make certain that I could articulate why it leaves me less than satisfied. I’ve determined that it all comes down to your protagonist—Nadia/Medusa.

Carter is clearly your main character; it is through his point of view that we gain access to the emotional/psychological aspects of the story. His narrative is well defined and makes sense.

Nadia, however, is the driving force behind all that happens. Carter’s defining action took place long before the story begins. After that, Nadia has presented him with a series of conditions to which he can only react.

This gives your structure a classic inner story/outer story duality, with the inner story driven by the main character and the outer story concerned with the protagonist’s arc.

There’s nothing incorrect in the way you’ve set up these dual arcs, but you’ve missed the opportunity they present for mounting tension and conflict. That’s what will spin your story into a third act. At some point the conflict between the inner and outer stories forces a reaction, a reveal, a redefining of parameters, that will charge your story through to its conclusion.

You’ve missed this moment of truth because from the outset, we pretty much see what’s coming. Truth is, when Carter felt the violent thud on the roof of his car, then discovered deep claw marks, I immediately thought winged creature with claws of doom, and from that point it was just a matter of matter of waiting to see how you would pull it off.

And, as I said, there’s nothing incorrect in how you did it. But think about how you would react when encountering an intrusion of the supernatural into your ownsecular reality. There’s a kind of template that governs the progression one would go through. Dismissal, to begin with. I must be imagining things. Rationalization next. I must need more sleep. There would be resistance as cognitive dissonance kicks in. Then anger. Leave me the f*** alone. There could be additional steps along the way, or different steps. But the point is, there needs to be an incremental coming to terms with the situation before that moment when the blood runs cold and the confrontation with truth cannot be denied.

While you’ve given Carter something of this progression, your reader needs the chance to go through the same steps. I’m not going to suggest how you might revise this—you’re certainly up to the task. But right now, the reader never gets that white-knuckle moment. When truth is revealed, we think, “Ok, I get it. Cool.” What you want us to slug us in the gut.

One thing you need to avoid is letting your narrator intrude to provide information not available to your main character, as you do when you describe the retreating winged creature that Carter fails to notice. You do this at another point too, and it confuses the focus. This is a third-person restricted POV, which means there is essentially no distinction between the narrative voice and what Carter experiences.

Don’t be in such a hurry to lay all your cards on the table. Make your reader work for it. In a story like this, your character’s destination is important. But what will make your story memorable is the journey they take to get there.