He slammed into my body, driving me back into a tree trunk hard enough that I saw stars. His hands fastened on my arms, and something sharp sank into my flesh.
Pain lanced through me. As I cried out, my brave dog lunged to bury her teeth in his wrist.
The sound that emanated from him was more animal than human. He ripped his hand free from me to fling Trix, sending her sailing through the air to hit the next tree over.
Her shriek of pain pierced the air—and my heart.
NO.My frozen-brain terror vanished beneath a tsunami of rage. Instead of pulling away from my attacker, I catapulted into him. My free hand reached for his throat, my fingers digging into his windpipe. With a strength I didn’t know I had, I lifted his struggling form into the air. Six-foot something lifted by little five-seven me.
His eyes flared brighter. His lips pulled back from teeth that seemed to grow longer and sharper. His claw-like fingernails, long and razor sharp, tore at my wrists, digging gouges in my flesh. And were his shouldersgrowing?
The blood ran down my arms, but I was consumed by a red haze that permeated everything. It focused on my hand at his throat and the fingers that sank deep.
The world dissolved around me, shrinking down to a pinpoint. I sensed his madness as though it were a living thing, and I plunged into it. A door within me opened wide and sucked it all in. His madness, his savage desire, a twisted mix of lust and viciousness. I drank it as though it were an elixir of life, and as I did so, the power of it coursed through me.
His snarl morphed to a high, thin scream, and his now-long mouth stretched around impossibly sharp teeth. I kept him pinned to the tree without effort as the glow faded from his eyes.
Trix whimpered from where she lay, and a fresh surge of rage had me reaching deep, through the shrinking flesh and blood, to the very thing that pulsed and gave him life.
I gathered all that power to me—and shredded his heart into a million tiny pieces.
My nose twitched at the sharp smell of urine, and he collapsed around my hand. Only then did I realize he was naked beneath his long, ragged cloak. Naked, and hairy.
I dropped him like the garbage he was and bolted to Trix.
She shook all over as she sat up and tried to wag her tail. I ran my panicked hands over her—one leg looked slightly off-kilter, and I thought it might be broken. But as I gently prodded it with my fingers, it grew hot to the touch. Trix sniffed me as I gently stroked it, and then she stood up and wiggled.
She seemed okay, only scared. I breathed a sigh of relief, but internal injuries could be tricky things—I needed to get her to the vet.
Trix licked my blood-covered arms.Eww!I didn’t know if she was concerned or hungry, but it wasn’t helpful. I nudged her away as memory flashed through me—claws slicing at them. But that couldn’t be true? My mind pushed the last few minutes into a far corner of my brain and slapped theoveractive imaginationlabel onto them.
I rubbed at the blood. It couldn’t have all been a wild fabrication—had he sharpened his fingernails? How deep were the cuts? I grimaced and moved to the lake, where I washed the blood off, searching for the raw, torn wounds.
Instead, my shaking fingers followed the faint ridge of half-healed scars.
Scars that had never been there before. Some had the scabs still on them, but as I rubbed, most fell away.
My mind slipped its gears, trying to make sense of it all. Like I’d blink, and it would all be gone, and I’d be sitting on the bench with a bunny accosting my runners.
Would that really be more normal?
Glancing back at the still form lying on the path, I wished desperately that ithadbeen my overactive imagination. But my attacker was very real, and very dead.
I stared down at the marks on my arms, and started to shiver. The commando-style body throw was disconcerting enough. Where had I learned how to do that? But what had followed was surreal.
I’d killed him.
He’d hurt Trix. In that instant, I’d wanted him dead. Now I felt like I was going to throw up. I’d killed him, hadn’t I? But no one could destroy someone with only a thought.
Could they?
That strange energy flowed into me, giving me strength I should never have possessed. I’d sensed the blood coursing through his body. Followed it to his heart. And then—I’d visualized shredding it into a million pieces.
And he’ddied.
It had to be my imagination. Maybe he’d had a heart attack, and I hadn’t really killed him...
I shivered again, and my stomach cramped. No way I’d killed that guy. I was the type that lifted caterpillars off the sidewalk so they wouldn’t get squished. But I doubted I could even lift Trix right now, and my legs trembled so badly that walking home, let alone running, seemed impossible.
