I stilled. Blinked. Tried to remember how to breathe.
The demon I’d driven backward was on the run, scampering like a frightened puppy into the wilderness. The other two were more bold, apparently, but they were still keeping their distance.
My blood, my skin, even my bones vibrated with more power than I knew what to do with. I held out my hands and stared in shock as I balled them into fists and opened them again. They still looked human, mostly, if you ignored the fact that my skin was glowing a bright amber. The same color Hook’s eyes turned when his power rose to the surface.
“Okay, this is kind of cool,” I whispered. The pain in my back was a distant memory, so I shifted my gaze to the two demons. They were staring at me like they had no fucking clue what to do with me. I glared back. “Boo.”
They both flinched, another one took off running, and a ripple of excitement lit me up inside. Was I actually having fun with this?
Maybe a little.
Don’t get cocky.
I still didn’t really know how to wield my power. A scene from the first Ghostbusters movie popped into my head. The one where Spengler, Venkman, and Stantz were all riding the elevator up to catch a ghost, but they’d never had a successful test of their proton packs.
I might not be sporting an unlicensed nuclear accelerator on my back, but I had something that was putting the fear of god into the demons.
Wow.I felt like an idiot for taking that long to put it together.
Of course I was putting the fear of god into them. Only it was more like the fear of one particularly broody god.
The last demon standing dropped to all fours and prowled back and forth in front of me.
“What are you waiting for?” I’d barely asked the question when, in the distance, a chorus of demonic battle cries rose. Every hair on my arms rose with them.
The demon in front of me tipped his head to the sky and let out a howl that could only mean one thing: I’d miscalculated. The other two demons hadn’t scampered off in fear. They’d gone to rally the troops. Now, backup was coming, and this asshole was telling them all exactly where to find me.
“Sonofawhore,” I muttered under my breath. The primal urge to battle it out with the creature in front of me was a force of its own, and I might have given in to the swelling need to inflict violence, if I hadn’t turned my head and spotted the tiny army barreling toward me.
I wasn’t a total dummy. They were only tiny because they were still a good distance away. And I had just enough common sense left in me to run.
Barely.
I sailed through the trees faster than I’d ever been able tomove before, but every step only seemed to enrage the wild animal caged inside me. She was fucking feral—clawing, scraping, and biting at the bars to get out.
Honestly, it was kind of terrifying.
She was some deep, repressed part of me. I could tell that much. I just didn’t know where she’d been hiding all these years.
What would happen if I let her out to play?
I toyed with the idea as I ran. How many of the charging demons could she take down? Confidence and challenge swelled inside me, filling me to the brim.
This crazy bitch was convinced she could take them all on. And while I was loving the “fuck around and find out” vibe she was putting off, I knew it would be a waste of time and energy when my real goal was to get the hell out of this place.
I dared a glance over my shoulder. The last of my welcoming party was in hot pursuit, but he was falling behind fast. If I could lose him?—
“Shit!” I hauled to a stop when I saw another group of demons closing in from a different direction. There were dozens of them, all moving in a synchronized herd like a flock of ground bound starlings.
Okay. New plan.At a dead run, I thought of my world. I pictured Matty, with his blue eyes and boyish smirk. Then I pictured the park near our apartment. I’d never tried to flash while I was running, and I had a feeling if I tried to think of our actual apartment, I would end up crashing through a wall.
Of course, that was assuming I succeeded.
“Come on,” I gasped. My speed might be incredible, but I was running out of air fast. I gathered all the power I could find inside myself, crammed it into an imaginary ball, thought of home again, and wished on a goddamn star.
For a second, nothing happened. Then in a blink it felt like I was being torn in half. The light winked out, painripped through me, and the next thing I knew, I was careening through a sea of dead brush. The sturdy ground beneath my boots turned to slick mud, and I only made it a few more steps before my ankle twisted and I went down hard.
I tucked as best I could as I tumbled, trying to protect the more sensitive parts of myself. Healing might go a lot faster these days, but avoiding pain in the first place was still my driving instinct.
