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“Wait!” I shouted, the glow of light disappearing once again. “I see you, just wait!”
I sliced out a hand, reaching for the grounding element of earth. The hedge split in two, parting enough for me to slip through.
It was a risk, using my power. But the blanket of darkness grew heavier. I could hardly see a hand before my face, let alone someone else see me use my power.
I ran. And so did the person I chased after. I was on the stone path now, evident from the loud patter of my footfalls as I took up chase. There was a faint stinging from the cuts I had gifted myself on the soles of my feet. Yet I pushed on. “Please… just wait!”
As if the blossoming night responded, a noise filled the darkening gardens. It seemed to echo from all around me.
I slowed for a moment, searching for the origin of the sound. In the shadows around me my eyes played tricks. I was certain I saw shapes speeding through the dark.
Then the noise occurred again, this time louder, clearer.
A howl.
I picked up my pace, this time urged on by a sudden, piercing fear that tried so desperately to overcome me. Burned wilder by yet another howl that sounded in response to the first.
The nightshirt blew up around my bare legs. I almost tripped on a cracked slab on the path beneath me, but steadied myself as yet another howl pierced through the settling night.
My prey turned a corner, signalled by the sudden change in course the bobbing flame took.
I followed, boots slapping on the ground.
Closing in, I started to see the person. The girl.
Long black hair flowed behind her, caught in the wind she left in her wake. She wore a dress made from dark materials that seemed to blend into the very shadows we ran through.
And her head, like mine, snapped across the darkness surrounding the path as other noises joined in on our chase.
All I heard, above my own heavy breathing, was the snapping of teeth. The shifting of a shape which ran beside me flickered in my peripheral. I risked a look and saw two pools of red glaring back at me.
It happened too fast.
I slammed into something hard, tumbling in an entanglement of limbs, across the ground.
It was not my cry of sudden surprise that rattled across my skull, it came from the girl I had run straight into.
I felt the wet grass around me. Not the hard stone path.
“I am so sorr—”
“Shut up, you fool!” she snapped, pushing herself from the ground with wide, unblinking eyes. Her focus was not on me, but something in the dark before us. I followed her panicked stare to see what captured her attention.
From the shadows stepped a large hound. No, a wolf. Fur made from melted shadows, so dark I could not see where it started and the night around it began. The beast prowled, large paws padding across the ground slowly as it moved for her.
I shifted my arms, trying to get myself from the floor before the creature attacked, its intentions clear as its maw dripped and its lip curled. But it stopped me from moving with a warning snap of its jaws. I could almost feel the stabbing of its red glare as it stared right through me.
“You took us off the path,” she muttered, voice laced with fear. “You’ve doomed us both.”
7
The wolf threw itself towards the girl, body melting in wisps of shadows made solid as it blurred through the air. In the brief moment I had fully glanced at her, she must have been no more than thirteen. A small, wiry frame but a face of determined fire.
There was no time for her to scream. That or she did not fear the unbelievable creature that attacked her.
In moments she was devoured in shadows as the wolf landed above her. Only then did she make a noise as her body hit the ground with a hefty crack. The wolf hardly flinched as her shriek split the sky.
Help her.The words were so clear in my mind. An urgent plea. I was frozen to the spot, watching as the wolf lowered its bared teeth, huffing its deathly stench across her face.
