The Binder's Daughter

By Matt Hofferth

They say curiosity killed the cat. In Michael Allen’s case, the saying proved incomplete. All it got him was a vampire bite.

Twenty years later, Michael has crafted a comfortable life for himself in a small town in the Midwest, removed from as many human interactions as possible. He’s even gone so far as to forgo human blood, instead making use of artificial plasma. Unable to forgive himself for inadvertently becoming an agent of death and feeling responsible for the events that led to his father’s demise, Michael is content to just drift through the ages alone.

That is, until he hears the voice:

No!

Just one word. Yet it blossoms in his mind with such heartfelt intensity that he feels compelled to seek out the identity of its owner. In doing so, Michael lets a different cat out of the bag and rediscovers some very human emotions that he thought had died twenty years earlier. Along the way Michael gets caught up in an ancient power struggle involving shapeshifters and samurai. Only by reconciling himself with his past can he salvage a chance at saving the woman he has grown to love and the power she was born to protect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt Hofferth
• Release date: Jul 14, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465879004

Matt Hofferth

Electrical engineer by day. Aspiring author by night. Matt Hofferth hopes to one day realize his dream of becoming a full time writer, but until then, he still plays the part of mild-mannered professional as he must. His hobbies, apart from writing on his lunch break or whenever time finds him, include helping out as an assistant football coach at local Westfield High and being an avid video gamer. He lives in Noblesville, Indiana.

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The Binder's Daughter

Book One of

The Spirit Binder Series

by

Matt Hofferth

Published by Matthew Hofferth at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Matthew Hofferth

Notes

All rights are reserved. Please contact the author if you'd like to do anything other than simply read and share it with others. Which brings me to my next point on this legal journey: feel FREE to SHARE! Don't usually find that here, do you? Still, that's what books are all about right? If you like it, love it, share it! Just, please consider supporting the author by purchasing, and encourage the folks you share it with to do the same. We would love to devote more time to this endeavor, and that hinges on succeeding with you, the reader. Also, please send feedback! Love it or hate it, I'd love to improve and the best way to do that is to hear from you. You can find all of my contact information (including facebook and twitter) at:

www.hofferthbooks.com

Thank You!

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously. The author acknowledges that any trademarks are used without permission and wishes to express that any such items are used without association or sponsorship from the trademark owners. In the event that this is a problem, please contact the author for revision opportunities. Any eerie similarity to non-legalized reality is purely coincidence and you'll just have to deal with it.

Acknowledgments

I won't keep you from the book too long, but I need to thank several people for their hard work in making this dream a reality for me. My wife, Ashley, for her support as my partner in business and life. My good friend and first alpha reader, Andy Betts, for believing in this story and not letting me allow it to just fade away. All the folks who have helped me with editing along the way, including Molly Joll, Julie Talley, and, of course, my mother, Karin Hinton. To Stephanie Samardzija for help with the cover design. And, finally, to you the reader, for helping me to share this story. Thank you all for all you do.

And miles to go before we sleep...

This book is dedicated to my father. Were he still with us, I have no doubt that he would have read this book and not understood a lick of it. After all, vampires aren't real, right? I'd have his full support, nonetheless.

Prologue: Twenty Years Ago

Why are you always working? my mother screamed in the other room. As usual, she couldn’t keep her voice down when she was upset. I heard a low rumbling response that would be my father trying to calm her. He had just received a phone call, ostensibly work-related, and was going to leave regardless of what she said. It had always been this way for as long as I could remember, ever since I was a little kid. My father was obsessed with his work; he was never home when we needed him. Normally, it wasn’t this intense, but tonight was Christmas Eve. Who worked on Christmas Eve?

Besides, my father wasn’t even wearing his work clothes, I noticed as he walked out of the kitchen, slamming the door behind him. He had on the same long, black trench coat he wore every time he left on these late night runs to the office. It certainly wasn’t his normal university professor attire.

Ever since I was old enough to understand about such things, I had suspected my father was having an affair. There could be no other explanation for it: the long hours, the late nights. He spent so much time away from home, presumably working. On one occasion, I had taken it upon myself to check both his private office in the city and his office at the university. He had been at neither.

Well, tonight would be the last of that; I would confront him about it. It wasn’t fair what he was doing to my mother, to our family. It was beyond my understanding why my mother never suspected an affair, or why she trusted my father so completely. Normally, when he left, she wouldn’t say a word and would try her best to hide her sadness. She only lost her composure on important nights like tonight, when he broke family plans and left us in the dust. But seeing the world through rose-colored glasses made her unperceptive. I saw through both her and my father’s facades, and tonight would be the end of it. I would catch him in the act, snap a few Polaroids, and bust his charade wide open. My mother deserved better, and so did I. We would force him to change.

A few moments later, my father stalked out the front door, his face a mask of deception, and I quietly snuck out the back of the house. I tried to ignore my mother’s choked sobs as I rounded the corner of the house. My pride and joy sat to one side of the driveway where there was a paved niche that kept it out of my parents’ path. Fortunately, that put the old rust-bucket nearer to me. She wasn’t much to look at, but had taken me two years to restore, sweating out the cost of the parts at the local hamburger joint each summer. I was quite proud of the automobile, my first.

The garage door rumbled up and my father ducked into the garage. Sensing an opening, I darted to the driver’s side door and eased the door open. Thank God I never got around to fixing the dome light, I mused, sliding into the ripped leather seat in the dark. My father pulled out of the garage in his nice, new sedan and passed by my car without as much as a sideways glance. I waited until he had driven a bit away before pulling the door completely closed and shoving the key into the ignition. A few more prayers escaped my lips as my baby struggled to turn over now in the cold night air. Come on, I urged it, tapping lightly on the steering wheel.

Finally, the engine gurgled to life and I backed quickly out of the driveway. Far down the street, my father turned right at the nearest stop sign. As I passed the house in pursuit, I saw my mother staring out the front window at me with tear-streaked eyes, obviously surprised at my sudden, rash response. It was so unlike me. Normally I kept my mouth shut and my head down. Tonight that would change, though. I was nineteen years old, and it was time they both started respecting me as an adult. This is for Mom, I reminded myself as I kept my eyes focused on the road ahead of me.

A quick right turn showed my father’s car a couple of blocks ahead of me. Traffic was light at this hour. The only cars on the road would be those dedicated few attending a midnight mass, so it was easy enough to follow his route. I tried to stay far enough back that he wouldn’t notice me, yet close enough that I wouldn’t lose him. The streets of my youth were fairly well known to me, but we began to get further away from the part of the Chicago suburbs where I’d grown up, heading even farther out of the city. Here, the houses were larger and trees encroached on the roadway, extending their large, naked boughs in a canopy that nearly blocked out the moonlit night sky.

Snow was piled high along both sides of the street from a recent storm, but the pavement was thankfully dry. The road began to meander a bit as we left the straight roadways of the city and entered the surrounding countryside. I fell a bit farther back as the frequency of turnoffs decreased and the houses spread out even more, with large yards and long driveways. After a few more minutes of winding through a neighborhood I did not recognize, my father flicked off his lights and slowed down. I immediately copied the action. He must be getting ready to park, I surmised, and pulled my car over a couple blocks back in anticipation of exiting the vehicle.

Sure enough, the car settled to a stop, and he got out of the car. He walked around to the back of the vehicle and pulled out a black satchel. Probably presents for his mistress, I guessed, anger blurring my vision at the thought. I turned to the passenger seat to grab my camera and exited the vehicle. My head cleared the car just in time to catch him slinking around the side of a nearby house, bag in hand.

He was being sneaky, which made sense as she was probably also married, and that, of course, necessitated delicacy. She was probably the one who had phoned him and arranged this rendezvous when the opportunity for discretion had presented itself.

I stalked up the sidewalk, not being very sneaky in my anger and wanting to finish this part of my covert-op. How I was going to get a picture baffled me. I’d hoped that perhaps I would be able to see them through a window, or maybe catch them in the requisite ’til-next-time kiss. On nights like these, my father was never gone for too long, so I imagined his little soirées must be purposefully quick.

When I arrived at the house, I was surprised to find all the windows dark as if no one was home. Then again, that would make sense with the need for secrecy. Perhaps the rest of her family had gone off to church, while she had snuck away, feigning the need to prepare the roast or something. Who knows what excuses one made when being unfaithful.

Now in front of the house, I surveyed the structure. Compared to our small house in the suburbs, this was a mansion. Two large, expansive stories filled out the building before my eyes reached the steep, peaked roof. Large, old oak trees dwarfed me and dotted the yard, casting skinny shadows like skeleton fingers across the lawn in imitation of a morbid caress. The siding was faded but clean, with white trim set against a darker paint. The shrubbery that concealed the corners of the house would probably have been well-groomed too, had they not been devoid of their leaves. In fact, if it weren’t for the darkened windows, barren foliage, and eerie shadows, the house might have been welcoming. I could imagine a scene from an old black and white movie: fire ablaze in the hearth, Jimmy Stewart surrounded by friends and family singing Christmas carols. As it stood, however, the house reminded me more of something from Poltergeist than It’s a Wonderful Life.

I crept carefully up the front walk and approached the entryway of the mansion. Thick drapery stymied my attempts to peer through the large windows. Pressing my ear to the window, I heard no tell-tale signs of movement within. Moving to another window, a small gap offered up a view of the room inside. It looked to be filled with a long wooden table and other antique pieces of furniture. The workmanship of the chairs was particularly fine. They were stained a deep burgundy with an intricate, intertwining, serpent-like pattern carved into each back. The room was eerily lit with candles in red votives, yet appeared to be empty. My dad was apparently taking his time around back. That, or perhaps they were locked in a lustful embrace, a gleeful celebration of their clever deception. I swallowed hard at the image and figured I should poke my head around the corner to see.

The shrubbery continued along the side of the house, just as naked as the bushes out front. I tried to stay stealthy, as best I could, and approached the corner. One knee hit the hard ground, camera at the ready, as I prepared to survey the unfolding lusty scene. The viewfinder rose to my eye, flash charged and at the ready, my legs tensed to run after completing my mission. I didn’t want to give my dad the chance to destroy the picture or even to necessarily know it was me who took it. What mattered was the evidence, not where it came from. This deception wasn’t going to get the chance to fester further.

I leaned away from the corner, allowing my eyes to take in more of the backyard. As more and more of the yard slowly came into view, I started to worry that I had missed them, and that they had already gone inside. If that was the case, I’d have to wait in the cold until another opportunity presented itself. A shiver ran along spine as I remembered my heavy jacket left at home. Appropriate attire had been sacrificed in my haste to leave.

Just as I was beginning to despair of the long wait in my future, movement in the bushes near the far corner of the house caught my eye. I tried to focus and make sense of what I was seeing. It was difficult to make out the dark shape across the length of the large building, but I was pretty sure I saw my father, similarly crouched in his dark attire.

That doesn’t make any sense, though, I thought. I understood being sneaky, but wasn’t he taking this a bit too far? He looked like he was going to rob the place. As I watched, he opened the satchel he was carrying, removing a small object with a faint, red glow and what appeared to be a handgun. He was going to rob the place. My god, my father is a thief!

My mind raced as I struggled to switch gears with this new information. How could I have been so completely off? Guilt for having followed him swelled inside of me. I should have trusted him more; I should have listened to my mother. Still, stealing stuff wasn’t exactly good behavior, either. The camera shook slightly in my hands, indecision paralyzing my thoughts.

My fingers didn’t want to snap the picture that would send my father to prison. Solving a family problem amongst us was one thing, but getting my dad put in the slammer was quite another. Maybe I would just go stop him from doing this, try to help him see the error of his ways. If we needed the money, I could always pick up more hours at the burger joint. I’m sure Mom would find a way to pitch in, too. Maybe the university had severely cut back on his salary, and he didn’t want to admit it to us. My father was a very proud man, so that made some sense. Still, to resort to this?

It quickly became clear that I needed to stop him. Whatever his reasons, stealing was wrong. He had taught me that, and I wasn’t going to let him forget his own lesson so easily. Rising to my feet, I stepped out from the corner, intending to quietly jog over and urge him to leave with me. Interrupting that first step, however, was a sharp pain that shot up the back of my head, accompanied by a multitude of stars bursting in my field of vision. As I began to lose my balance, I realized quickly that I had just been hit on the head.

Oh no! Dad!

The ground sped toward my face, and it dawned on me that I was still holding the camera near my head and was going to crush it. Reflexively, I tried to move the device away from my face, but in doing so the button was triggered. The result was a brilliant photograph of the snow as it rushed up to kiss me. The bulb flashed brightly, illuminating the scene, and I smacked the ground as darkness reclaimed the night.

| * * * |

When I came to, the first thing I noticed were the restraints. Cold, hard bars wrapped across my chest and neck, pinning my arms to my sides and preventing me from moving. My body was propped in a standing position, supported by the bars halfway up a long, curving stairway that ran down to a big set of double doors which were thrown wide open, revealing the candle-lit room I’d glimpsed earlier. Standing directly in the middle of those doors was my father. He was still wearing his black trench coat and holding the gun in front of him, pointing it just over my right shoulder.

A bright blue light shone from the gun and illuminated the scene in a flickering light. With a start, I realized that the top of the gun was actually on fire. What was that all about? The blue flame was reflected menacingly in the wild eyes of my father as he stared past me at something just over my shoulder. I struggled to turn and see the source of his ire, but was restrained by the strong bars.

Who puts a cage on a stairway? I thought, as I tried in vain to get a better view of the situation. Through the fog in my head, I clearly remembered seeing my father preparing to rob a house, but after that the memory was swallowed by the haze. I vaguely remembered that I’d been hit in the head, and a deep throbbing in my skull seemed to testify to this. It was easy enough to deduce that I had been taken inside, and that somehow my father had found where they were keeping me. If I had to guess, I’d say that I had only been out a few minutes.

Dad… I started, but was cut off by a deep, menacing laugh emanating from the space above my right shoulder.

Oh. How cute. A father and son team, a disembodied voice cooed from the vicinity of my shoulder, grating and deep.

Leave him out of this, my father demanded, fear in his voice. He doesn’t know what he’s gotten into. He doesn’t know what you really are.

The laugh sounded again, sending a chill up my spine. You think you are in a position to make demands? the voice asked. I think it is you who do not fully understand what you have gotten into. You come here, to my house, to what? End me? the voice laughed again, as if it found the situation particularly humorous.

As the voice was quivering with menacing laughter, the restraints that held me seemed to shake in sympathy to each sound. I glanced down for the first time, wondering what kind of bars responded to mirth. Shock widened my eyes when I found that the bars were not bars at all, but two ice-cold, iron-strong arms that restrained me. The voice behind me was not disembodied, but belonged to a man, the same man who held me now in his unrelenting grasp. What in the holy hell? Full-blown panic threatened to overwhelm my thoughts as I tried to make sense of what was going on.

You think you know what it’s like. You think you truly know what I am, the man behind me continued with a newfound edge. You have no idea of the thirst. Who are you to judge me?

You’ve got it all wrong, my father stammered, I wasn’t coming here to kill you. He held up his other hand to display a syringe filled with a fluid that glowed a faint red, the other object I had seen him remove from his satchel, as if in explanation. Perhaps I could help you. Perhaps we could help each other.

Apparently you don’t understand my kind like you think you do. How could you ever help me? the crazy man hissed with barely concealed anger, then abruptly quieted.

A pensive silence fell over the room. It was a standoff. My father kept his burning gun pointed directly at my captor, who, in turn, kept me held forward as a human shield. I was helpless, and I hated it. I had royally messed this up; it was entirely my fault. If I hadn’t been so damned curious, I wouldn’t have shown up tonight and put myself in this position. My intentions had only been to fix things, to make them better. Instead, I was bait. For what or why wasn’t completely understood, but the situation was clear. The fear in my father’s eyes for my safety was real.

I wallowed in my guilt, trying to let it numb the dull throbbing in my head. I was so dumb, thinking I knew better, thinking I had it all figured out, thinking I could change things. What was I thinking?

Still, the man continued, taking in a deep breath, perhaps there is a way for you to really understand…

I heard my dad cry out, No! Then a sharp pain pierced my neck on the right side. He just stabbed me!

As my brain was processing this, my dad fired his gun. Instead of the expected explosion of a bullet though, a soft pfft was all I heard as the fire leapt off the gun and flew at my neck. I tried to move away, leaning to the left against my captor and pushing with all my strength. As the object approached my neck, I could see that the fire was actually being sustained on a small, dark metal bolt that was sharpened on one end like a spike. The projectile passed just by the right side of my jaw and struck my captor with a wet thud.

Immediately the restraint loosened, and my body fell forward under its own weight, hitting the stairs hard and rolling a bit down the risers before eventually finding the bottom. One hand flew up to my neck to try to stem the flow of blood from where I’d been stabbed. The two puncture wounds were wet to the touch and I spread my hand flat over them. It didn’t seem that I was bleeding too badly, so maybe he hadn’t cut very deeply.

I was still in a daze as I struggled to look back and catch a glimpse of the man that had tried to use me as leverage. I lay watching in a transfixed stupor as flames spread quickly over his body from the wound in his head, curiously seeming to follow trails of blood as the fire raced across his flesh and ignited his clothing. Even in my muddled state, something about the speed with which the fire had embraced the man struck me as odd. As if to deepen my confusion, the man did not yell or cry out in pain, like I would have expected. The bolt from the gun was sticking grotesquely out of his temple, blood oozing steadily from the wound. He must have died instantly. However, I could have sworn that I saw a smile break out across his face as he burned to death in front of me, because of me.

My father rushed over and knelt down next to me, apparently unconcerned with the burning corpse nearby, and looked at me with concern in his eyes. I was about to reassure him that I was okay when the pain in my neck flared up sharply. My hand was still pressed to the wound, but it felt like the wound itself was burning. Perhaps the flaming arrow had grazed me, spreading the fire to me and using my own blood as an accelerant. My thoughts were still slow as my brain struggled to catch up with the events unfolding before me. Whatever was happening, I could certainly feel the fire growing, spreading.

Wait! I’m on fire! The thought seared through the haze. Whatever that projectile was coated with to keep it in flame must have been quite potent to spread so quickly and easily. I started slapping at my neck, trying to put out the flames with my hands and rolled around the floor, just like I was taught as a child. Stop, drop, and roll.

I tried to yell out to my father to help me put out the flames, but only unintelligible moans escaped my lips as the fire spread in seconds up to my jaw and face. As I rolled and slapped frantically, I caught a glimpse of my father just leaning over me, sadness in his eyes. Why wasn’t he helping me put out the flames?

It felt like my skin was literally melting away as the fire ate into my muscles and spread through my torso. I tried to look at my arms as the burning feeling spread there, hoping to figure out why I couldn’t put out the fire. My head swung around in a panic, trying to catch glimpses of what it was that consumed me, but there were no tongues of flame, no telltale signs of combustion. There was no glow from a fire either, only darkness creeping on the edge of my vision.

I must be hallucinating from the trauma, I reasoned, that’s why I can’t see the flames. It was a curiously rational thought for the amount of pain that gripped me. I continued to roll in agony as the fire burned deeper. It seemed the whole right side of my face must be slag by now from the feel of it. It was so hot! Why didn’t my father go get some water or a blanket or something? The darkness was beginning to block out all vision, threatening to consume me.

I’m so sorry, son, my dad said, emotion thickening his voice.

Oh no, I’m dying. Whatever was on that projectile must not be extinguishable, and I was burning to death from it just like my captor. My dad must blame himself as the shooter. No! I wanted to tell him. If I hadn’t gotten into this mess in the first place, there wouldn’t have been a need to shoot. It’s my fault, not yours. However, words failed to rise to my lips as the fire consumed my body. I could feel my strength start to ebb as pieces of me melted away in the blaze. It wouldn’t be long now. It felt as if the fire were reaching down into the very depths of my heart as skin and muscle were burnt to charred bone. My flailing ceased as I lost control of muscles that no longer existed.

I felt my body rise in the air and start to float away as my vision continued to dim. At first I thought it was my father lifting me, but that didn’t make sense since I was still on fire. It must be my spirit; I must be leaving my body now, preparing for the journey to heaven.

Odd, I thought, isn’t there supposed to be a bright light? Wasn’t that how it was supposed to go? Where was the light, and why did I still feel this awful pain?

The darkness flooded my consciousness and overwhelmed my senses as I burned, and for the first time in my life, I worried about where my soul was destined to go.

Where’s the light? But there was only darkness.

| * * * |

"Drink, young one. Drink your fill and have your revenge, a gentle voice called through the darkness. Realize your true power."

A rubber tube slid into my mouth and a warm liquid began to flow through my parched lips, soothing my scorched throat. My eyes struggled to focus as the haze began to clear. I tried to remember how I’d gotten here. I tried to remember anything before the darkness.

With some effort, I recalled being bitten by a strange man in an old mansion. A shudder coursed through my body as I remembered the fire that had consumed me from the inside out. I could vaguely see my father carrying me out of the house as the man burned brightly behind me. After that, there was only darkness and pain. I had been in and out the haze ever since, only catching vague glimpses of meaningless light as time and consciousness deserted me. I thought for sure I must have been dead, waiting for some type of judgment to send me where I belonged.

The warm liquid quenched the fire in my throat as I sucked greedily from the hose in my mouth. I could feel the strength start to return to my body as it absorbed what must have been a medicinal fluid. As vision returned to me, the person standing over me was not at all whom I expected. A beautiful blonde woman smiled down with a mischievous glint in her vivid red eyes.

Yes, drink, she cooed.

Father? I called out uncertainly.

The woman’s crimson eyes widened at that. Father? she turned and looked at something out of field of view. "So this… boy is not merely a test subject as you told me."

I struggled to turn my head and follow her gaze. What I saw shocked and bewildered me. My father was seated calmly in a wheelchair just a few feet away from me. He looked extremely pale and weak, with blood running down his face and an IV line running from his arm to somewhere out of my sight. He looked awful, but there was something else too. He smelled… delicious. What was that about?

The woman retreated from my side and began pacing the room, Well, this changes everything.

As she mumbled to herself, I felt strength rapidly return to my body, and I let the tube slip from my mouth. My mind struggled to make sense of the situation as the woman walked over to the back of the room and began fumbling around with something. I glanced down at the heavy restraints binding me to the bed and tried to figure out a way to slip out of them. Deep cuts in my wrists indicated that I may have already tried with no success.

A flickering light caught my attention as the blonde woman returned from the other side of the room carrying a sharpened stick that was lit on fire only at the business end. It looked very much like the one I remembered protruding from the eye of the man in the mansion, only without being completely covered by fire yet. She stepped up to the side of the bed and glared down at me, her eyes broadcasting her intentions clearly. She was going to kill me the same way the burning man had died.

An eye for an eye, she said chuckling as she raised the stake high over her head.

I closed my eyes, bracing for what was sure to be a very painful death, remembering what it felt like to burn the last time, and figured this was probably going to be worse. A surprised grunt made my eyes snap open in time to see the woman stumble in surprise, dropping the flaming stake which fell, tip down, toward my face. There seemed to be nothing I could do as the flames rushed to meet my face.

Then, a strange thing happened. The stake stopped just inches from my panicked eyes. It stopped and just floated there. Looking to my left, I saw that the woman was glaring angrily down at the floor, apparently fixated on whatever had caused her to drop the stake. She had no idea what was going on, having momentarily lost interest in her restrained prey. She bent over, and I struggled to raise my head to see what had made her stumble, carefully avoiding the flaming, floating stake.

To my surprise, I saw that my father had fallen out of the wheelchair and dragged himself over to grab one of her legs in an attempt to trip her. He was apparently too weak to be much more than a distraction, as she had not budged much and was even now reaching down to remove him from her leg. I was surprised when she effortlessly peeled him away from her leg and tossed him across the room like a rag doll into the cabinets in the back. The sharp sound of splintering wood filled the room.

Anger flooded me at her brutal treatment of my father, and I felt a renewed vitality surge through my limbs. Pulling against my bindings, I was too furious to be surprised when they ripped as if made of paper in response to my newfound strength. The snapping sound caused the blonde woman to return her attention back to me, whipping her head around in a swirl of hair, rage contorting what would normally have been strikingly beautiful features.

Staring into her cold, red eyes, it was clear that it was either her or me. Her fiery gaze bored into me and resonated with my own emotions. I embraced the anger as it flowed like liquid fire through my veins, preparing myself to fight the abnormally strong woman in front of me. She began to reach out toward me, hands headed for my throat as I lay still on the bed. It seemed to me that she was moving in slow motion as she leaned in for the kill. My mind was frozen, unsure of what to do to defend myself against her awesome strength. Even as the anger bolstered my body, it paralyzed my mind by preventing rational thought from taking hold. Operating on pure reflex, my arms rose in an attempt to intercept hers.

Hands meeting hands, I was surprised when she did not immediately overpower me. Stoking the flames of my fury, I urged more strength into my limbs, redoubling my efforts. Staring deep into her burning red eyes, I saw something I did not expect to find there: fear. It was the fear of a predator that had never before been challenged. It was the fear of someone who thought mistakenly that they’d never have to face death, but even now teetered on the brink of nonexistence.

In her fear, she made one fleeting mistake. She glanced away from my face and over my right shoulder, drawing my attention back to the floating arrow, now fully engulfed in flame. The object reminded me of her attack on my father, of her attack on me. It brought my rage to a full inferno, and I overcame her strength, propelling her backward, away from the bed and off balance. Almost immediately, she cried out and burst into flames.

Looking around me, I realized quickly that the arrow was no longer floating beside me,