Animal in the Best Sense of the Word

The thought echoed in her her head. He knew.

With absolutely no grace she scrambled to her feet ignoring the lightning bolts of pain that speared the bite in her side. Blay rose with her and she realized he was at least a head taller than her and half again her width. He moved like an animal in the best sense of the word; all leashed power and fluid motion. If he chose he could be on her in an instant.

That is, if he liked third degree burns.

With a snap she called to life a tear-shaped ball of flame. It was a last resort, something she never used unless a situation was truly dire. There were never any witnesses because her fire could burn through everything, even magic. She didn’t want to use it now - and wouldn’t have in a normal situation - but he knew. She should kill him. It was the smart thing to do.

The fire, the same electric blue as his eyes, hovered above her hand and she held it ready at her side.

It would be so easy. Some elves had magic just as some humans did but even that wouldn’t stop her fire from consuming the handsome elf-boy if set free. His speed. His strength. His weapons - if he had any. Nothing would stop him from being reduced to a crispy husk and it would only take a thought. Or a slip. But she’d gotten better at controlling those. The dark thing that lurked at the back of her mind told her to do it. Burn him, it hissed. Do it.

But she knew what that thing was and would never let it control her. Never. Besides, she didn’t want him to burn. Blay had helped her. He’d patched her up even though he’d seen what she was. It wasn’t enough for her to trust him but it put her in his debt. A life for a life.

Stories might spread but she wasn’t a child anymore. She knew how to disappear.

“Stay back.” Decision made, she edged her way to her coat. “I’m leaving.”

He cocked his head to the side, snow-colored hair flopping over his forehead. It made him look like a little boy. With the tone of someone finding out the boogeyman was real and living in their closet he said, “So you are a half demon… Come on, don’t do that. Wait. I’m not going to do anything." His voice held a note of exasperation but Tayla noticed he wasn’t coming any closer.

She managed to get her one arm through a sleeve even though bending down felt like subjecting herself to a hot poker between the ribs. “Not a chance, buddy.” She tossed the fire to her opposite hand and got her second arm through. Without turning her back to him she felt her way to the door.

He rolled his eyes like she was being melodramatic but the truth was her kind - half demons - were scorned and hunted by the supernatural world at large. Something about hordes of half demons raining down hell on behalf of their Sheol-bound sires. Not that Tayla had ever met her immortal daddy. He could rot for all she cared. She had no intention of raining down anything on anybody. Well, unless they got her first. In that case, all bets were off.

“I mean you no harm.” Slowly, as if she were a wild animal he hoped to tame, he stretched a hand toward her. With adrenaline pumping through her system, her eyes caught everything, every blink, every flinch. She saw that his nails were cut short and square with little white half moons at the bases. Practical if not manicure-perfect. She’d never been a fan of perfect.

“Like I haven’t heard that one before,” she muttered, her empty hand searching for the door knob. She found it, twisted and ducked out. The cold hit her like a hammer blow and she slammed the door shut before moving as fast as she could toward the tree line. Every step seemed to tear her wound open farther, the pain making her vision darken and her lungs compress. It didn’t help that her parka weighed approximately twenty pounds.

The cabin Blay had brought her to was obviously off the grid. It sat, as far as she could tell, deep in a forest - there was no way to tell if it was the one where she’d been attacked - in a small clearing. Glancing back over her shoulder she decided that it was actually very…quaint. When the door didn’t open and Blay didn’t come after her she closed her fist around her handful of demon-fire, extinguishing it. When she curled open her hand it was unmarked, completely unaffected by the tiny inferno. Her mouth formed a grim line as she trudged onward.

Tayla made it a hundred steps into the trees before she had to stop. She leaned her shoulder against a bare-limbed birch and shivered. She didn’t dare sit because if she did she wasn’t sure she would have been able to force herself to get up again. Sweat dripped in her eyes. Chest heaving, she put a hand to her forehead. She was burning up. Even with cold hands she could tell she had a major fever.

Her head swam and her stomach churned. Infection or impending Change? She wasn’t sure but the survival rate of both was slim. She had to get out of this forest.

She fished around inside her coat. It was a maze of inner pockets but she easily found what she was looking for by touch. She withdrew a tiny vial of silver powder. Psamathe. She gave it a little shake and eyeballed the contents. There was enough left for maybe three more jumps.

Unhitching herself from the tree she uncorked the vial with a reluctant sigh. Kneeling almost made her pass out but she managed to get low to the ground. She cleared away the light dusting of snow and tilted the clear container, drawing a line of powder as thin as she could. When it was long enough to accommodate her width she recorked it and withdrew a tiny dagger from the depths of her parka. Holding the ornate handle she pricked her thumb, a bead of crimson welling up. She didn't know why she bothered; her wound was surely leaking enough blood through the bandages around her waist already.

“Hey, stop!”

She cursed. Her head whipped up to see Blay crouched on one of the high limbs of the birch tree she’d rested against. His white hair was whipping around in the wind and his cheeks were ruddy with cold. How the hell did he get up there?

A branch snapped close by. Her ears tracked the sound back in the direction of the cabin. Great. Elf-boy had backup.

Without wasting another second she pressed her thumb to the end of the silver line. Like a lit fuse, a bright spark raced across the powder leaving nothing in its wake. A beat passed. Suddenly a curtain of rippling light erupted from the ground so bright it left imprints on Tayla’s retinas. She heard Blay echo her curse as she stepped through.

Focusing on a destination even as the world became an infinite and dazzling white, she felt herself being propelled forward. When she’d first jumped with psamathe she’d been so disoriented she’d forgotten to hold a target in mind and wound up almost killing herself. Gateways, she’d found, did not want to be used. She’d ended up six feet underwater with no sense of up or down. That in itself was bad but add a frozen river somewhere in northern Russia and you had yourself the potential for a watery grave. If not for her half demon heritage she would have drown.

Despite the lesson learned through that experience, Tayla almost lost it when something hard slammed into her back. Pain ripped up her side. Her lungs caught on a scream. Arms wound their way around her waist and warm breath tickled the back of her neck. She threw her elbow back and it connected with a hard body.

“Umph,” Blay’s voice said in her ear.

Before she could send him another hit they were suddenly tumbling head over heels in a tangle of limbs. Tayla’s head cracked against something hard and her sight dimmed as she skidded on her back. She came to stop, the air being crushed out of her chest. She pawed weakly at the heavy male torso squashing her. Blay propped himself up on his elbows and shook his snowy-white head. She pinched him. He jumped and glanced at her over his shoulder. Electric eyes widened and he scrambled to get off. What a gentleman.

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