Page 9 of Cold-Blooded Creatures

It’s all going to be okay. We’ll be okay,I’d promised Alora.

The lie I’d told her rippled through me, and I screamed. I screamed at the promise I’d made to her, to us, to our futures.

Sitting up, I grasped fistfuls of grass. My fury grew at the slick dew harboring it from my rage. I ripped it out with another scream, and another, and another, until my fists escaped my will and flexed with a painful contortion.

I screamed again and again, at everything. At my own actions, at Alora’s fate, at Ilasall, at the life waiting for me. At the world.

But my outburst didn’t bring me the escape I desired. I cursed the night sky with another scream at those stars, those gods mocking me by withholding any flicker of tranquility.

Suddenly, a familiar sensation prickled my back.

My neck twisted toward it so fast my nerves shrieked. I yanked on the familiar tether, as invisible as it was, but thefeeling was sufficient to spothimleaning against a trunk of a tree on the border of the clearing, his arms folded over his chest covered by a black t-shirt and a matching jacket. Pants and boots were black too, the outfit blending him with the night.

He stood thirty yards away, yet concern oozed from him, slithering down the ground toward me, weaving between the blades of grass, joining the probing gusts of wind.

I didn’t want his worry anywhere near me.

But here he was, pretending to be able to wield the night and manipulate nature into placating me.

I knew this wasn’t real, that my senses had gone haywire. But whenever I saw him, my stupid head couldn’t cease summoning visuals of the gloom swirling around him. Perhaps it was the way he held himself, how he owned the space, and how it carried a certain heaviness, as far from light as possible.

I couldn’t ignore the shadows trailing over his shoulders, even if they were only a figment of my rampant imagination.

But if he thought what I needed was an embrace, I could show him a glimpse of the vicious hail, the bellowing storm inside me.

Seething with all my existence, I leaped up and stomped toward him. Fear hadn’t found its home in me, not like in the gods twinkling in the sky, their light halting before him as they refused to cast their silvery shimmers on him.

“Who are you?” I snarled, my nostrils flaring. My nails poked my palms, and I imagined my fists transforming into a set of claws. “Why are you here?” I shouted.

He didn’t say anything, didn’t move an inch.

I lunged and threw my fist right toward his sharp jaw to wipe that amusement off. He spun to my left, affecting my aim, and my punch landed on his chest.

Not the faintest flinch rocked through him.

An offer. An invitation.

I barreled hits into his chest with booming thumps, yelling, “What do you want?”

His rigid body absorbed my strikes without a stumble, and he moved to my left again, coaxing me along.

“Why do you keep following me, watching me?”

His lack of reaction inspired my fist to target that damned jaw again. He grabbed my wrist mid-air, and I momentarily lost my balance as my imaginary claws retracted back into my flesh and my hands became mine once more.

My pulse thrummed so feverishly he probably felt it, but I lifted my chin higher in search of the answer to my own challenge.

I couldn’t find it.

Darkness clouded his face. He had slowly turned his back to the clearing while I was beating him. Starlight glowed around the edges of his body, his front plunged into the night.

“Let. Me. Go,” I said blandly, and to emphasize my demand, I harshly yanked my wrist.

He released me, and I staggered from the surprise, hissing as I collided with a tree. My thin cotton t-shirt did nothing to alleviate the rough tree bark abrading my back from the impact.

I hadn’t expected him to do what I’d asked. No one ever did.

His fist thumping on the trunk above my head wrenched a gasp out of me. My feet rooted themselves to the forest floor, and a tiny, withered twig crunched under my sneakers.