Chapter 24 #2
So I began walking. I wanted to find his cave and there was a path through the woods. I began to follow. But nothing looked familiar in the daylight, which was ironic. Somehow the darkness was safer.
Cleaner.
More freeing.
Eventually I gave up and turned around, aware I had walked further than anticipated.
But as I walked, I heard voices up ahead.
Male voices.
Shit.
Speak of the devil and the devil appears, Beth used to say.
There, up ahead stretching as if they had just gone for a run, were Ollie, Rod and Vic.
They were laughing about something – I didn’t even care. But their auras swirled. Murky and unpleasant. These were not good people.
I had to get out of here.
“Whoa shit, lookie who it is?” Ollie whooped suddenly, running out to intercept me.
I tried to duck around him but he moved.
“Get out of my way.”
“No.”
“Please,” I seethed.
“Make me.” He sneered.
His friends laughed and started to surround me like I was prey.
“You know you aren’t as ugly as I first thought. I bet under all those baggy clothes there is a banging body,” Ollie said.
“Can we see it?”
Vic laughed.
“Yeah, show us, null, Show us just what we’re dealing with. It’s what you threatened right?”
“That’s right. You humiliated me in counselling. You thought you were so fucking fierce but you had Dev behind you. Whose with you now Null?” Ollie jeered.
I watched them carefully, weighing my options. “I just had an interesting conversation with the warden about you guys.” I said calmly.
They laughed. “Yeah? And what did that bitch say.”
“She wants us to get along. You and me.”
“You can get along my dick.” Rod smirked, touching my shoulder.
They were getting too close. I had to fight my panic reflex.
I forced a smile. “Yeah? You want that?” I asked him carefully.
His look faltered for a moment. “Go on then. Show us your tits.”
I tugged on the edge of my jumper, watching each of them in turn.
Ollie followed my fingers hungrily. “You are a hungry little bitch huh.” He moved in closer, running his hand down my hip. “I’d do ya.”
“Would you.”
“Then you can do me.” Vic leered. Rod just licked his lip like that excited him.
“Come on then,” I said, drawing him closer.
As soon as he got in range I kicked Ollie as hard as I could in the balls and I ran.
I charged through the woods like I was on fire, completely off path. I shot through the gaps in the trees, hoping I was going the right direction.
I heard them yelling at me as I charged over roots and burrows. Trees whipped my face, bushes scraped my clothes, snagging on the fabric.
But I kept going.
Someone landed on my back, throwing me down to the ground. I was yanked on to my back and punched hard in the face.
Victor Lightwood, the son of one of my mother’s friends straddled me and punched me hard in the jaw. I screamed out, trying to push him away.
Under my skin, something split open.
A gaping maw.
A hunger.
The thing I never let myself think about—
the thing I pretended wasn’t real.
But it was real.
And it wanted power.
I could release it.
I could let go.
I could empty Vic in seconds. I knew that.
And I would, if I didn’t stop myself.
His aura flickered—a murky, sick blue.
Water-born.
Soft inside. Easy.
I felt the vacuum rise before I even summoned it—
a pull deep inside my ribs,
like gravity bending inward.
Every punch he threw at me,
I took a little.
Then a little more.
A slow siphon—instinctive, horrible, automatic.
Vic faltered.
He looked down at his hands like they’d betrayed him.
Like he couldn’t understand the trembling.
I didn’t wait.
I kicked upward, hard—
rolled to the side, dirt grinding under my palms—
But something else moved first.
A blur cut the air.
A force so fast it didn’t make sound.
Vic was ripped off me as if he weighed nothing—
lifted and hurled back into the trunk of a tree with a crack
that echoed through the clearing.
I crawled backward, every nerve screaming, as a shadow swept past me—
not human-shaped,
not natural,
a whisper of something massive moving with impossible grace.
Rod screamed as he was thrown down to the ground. Ollie jumped up and raised his hands.
Branches snapped off trees and charged at the figure like spears.
But oh, he was fast.
He dodged and ducked like it was nothing. And soon Ollie went flying too.
All three tried to get up. They tried to charge him again.
I looked up, still stunned—
and saw my stranger from the lake.
And yet… it wasn’t.
His eyes had narrowed to serpentine slits, gold swallowing black.
His jaw had elongated, the bones shifting beneath his skin.
Smoke curled from his nose in two soft, lethal puffs—
not enough to be a threat,
just enough to say I could be.
Ollie’s aura went dead white with terror.
His hands dropped.
His bowels probably did too.
He paled so fast I thought he might faint.
The others didn’t wait.
They scrambled upright—tripping over roots, tripping over each other—
and ran.
Not with bravado.
Not with curses.
With the sound prey makes when the predator steps into the clearing.
And just like that—
it was only him and me.
He stood with his back to me.
Broad shoulders rising and falling with slow, controlled breaths.
I recognised the jacket.
The boots.
The black hair that always caught the faintest shimmer of silver.
But his aura—
Gods.
His aura shone like black diamonds.
Brutal.
Ancient.
Powerful.
A shape I’d seen in dreams and in darkness and in a cave where a dragon bowed his head.
But he didn’t turn.
Not yet.
Not until I decided whether to run from him…
or toward him.
I scrambled upright, legs shaking, one hand gripping the tree trunk to keep myself from collapsing.
“It’s you,” I breathed.
The fight drained out of him instantly.
His shoulders dropped—just a fraction, but enough that the air around us shifted, tension dissolving like mist.
I stepped away from the tree, wincing.
My fingers brushed my cheek. It burned. Swollen. Wet with blood.
Fuck. If Ash sees me like this…
He turned toward me slightly, and for the first time I saw his face clearly—
the same face that had stood beside me at the lake, the one that had watched me with quiet intensity in the dark.
Human now.
Mostly.
The dragon was gone.
For now.