The Demon Girl by Penelope Fletcher (each kindness read aloud TXT) 📕

He swallowed loudly then slowly, deliberately kissed my wildly jumping pulse, and leaned away.

We locked eyes again. I figured the look of shock and confusion must have been mirrored on my face. I so had no expected that. The biting, sure, that was bound to happen some time or another, but a kiss that flooded every vein in my body with fire? When did that become a possibility? Oh gods, what have I done?

“That was-”

“Different,” I said and swallowed.

“This is not normal, Rae. My kind and your kind do not mix.” His eyes travelled over my wings. He did not look repulsed but intrigued.

“I didn’t expect I mean, I’m sorry if I have upset you.” He reached out and stroked my wingtip. I felt the caress down to my toes. “Oh,” I breathed.

He nuzzled me and whispered in my ear, “I am not upset.”

“I’m glad because I…” I blushed. “I liked it.”

“You feel good to me too, but what shall we do now?” My legs were still around his waist, and the wall supported my back leaving his and my hands free. His wandered to the edge of my jumper, then swiftly pulled it over my head.

My face felt hot. Never had I been kissed like that before. Or treated like this. Breandan had been my first kiss and it had felt wonderful. But my second from this vampire had felt oh, it hadn’t felt as nice as what his hands where doing now. “That feels-” I sucked in a breath and my eyes fell to the body of the Lady Cleric. All the blood left my face and my eyes twitched back to his.

“Good?” he finished for me and raised an eyebrow.

He raised his head to kiss my neck and I couldn’t help it, I arced myself into him.

There was a gush of air as the door crashed open. Splinters of woods flew like daggers and embedded into the wall around us. Breandan thundered into the room and launched himself at Tomas, knocking me to the side as he did so. They smashed through the wall and were lost to my sight.

I was curled into a small ball and reality was suspended. I found it hard to breathe right, my chest still felt too tight from the emotions that had overwhelmed me during Tomas’s embrace. I waited but the hole in the wall remained, letting me see the night sky. I was feeling overwhelmed but it helped centre me. It was all so much it made me step outside myself and take control. The snarling, growling noises where getting louder. I rolled up, darted forward and looked down, carefully leaning on a patch of wall that looked solid.

Tomas and Breandan rolled around in the grass like two fools, but two fools with dangerous weapons. Breandan straddled Tomas, a shard of wood in his hand. The tendons on his arm and neck were bulging, and the deadly point of the wood was a mere jerk away from spearing Tomas in the chest. My vampire-boy was on red alert. He looked menacing with his fangs fully on display and his eyes glazed black; nostril’s flared. Snarling up a storm his mouth snapped for Breandan’s neck.

I grabbed my jumper off the floor and dropped through the hole. As I landed my already abused ankle twisted, and I dropped like a stone. Why it had not healed?

My emotions were wide open, and wildness seeped from Breandan’s nature to mine. It rubbed me up the wrong way, and I found myself unable to stop the fight, because I was battling the more carnal of my urges. It was telling me a threat, a vampire was close and to attack. The conflicting feelings of hate and lust I felt for Tomas had my stomach in knots.

“Calm down,” I said through my teeth, and staggered up. “Breandan, look at me.”

He didn’t look, but his ears twitched and I knew he was listening. First I was going to try and talk him out of trying to stake my vampire then I was going to tear him apart.

I could hear voices around the corner. The noise of them busting through a brick wall had been loud and messy. We had woken the building up and it was only a matter of time before confusion made way for ruthless order. Three floors up there was a ragged hole in the side of my building leading into my room. There was no way I’d even be able to hide it. It had demon stamped all over it. The Clerics were going to piece it all together, and that would be it for me. The Clerics would come and find us. In fact, Lord Cleric Tu was probably up there with the body of his dead partner. He would know it was me in the forest. He would know somehow I had gotten demons past the Wall, and into the Temple. All of this passed through my mind in less than the time it took me to glance up at the hole then glare at Breandan, since he was still on Tomas like white on rice.

He turned his head to look at me, and his expression was wary. Damn right it should be. I was beyond pissed.

“I should have known,” he said to me. “I smelt him on you, but I thought I was wrong.” I was going to have to start taking many more showers if it was that easy to figure out who’d I’d been with by a lingering smell. His eyes roamed the space, for he could hear the voices too then came back to Tomas. “You are mine, not a dead things snack,” he hissed.

He hadn’t seen the kiss. He thought Tomas was about to bite me. Well, I didn’t know if I should tell him he had it all wrong, or to leave it alone. Correcting him would bring up questions as to why I was pressed up against the wall with the vampire-boy all in my space with his fangs out.

Tomas didn’t say anything. He watched me. His gaze felt heavy and as I looked into his eyes I whispered, “I want him alive.” Breandan made a short noise of impatience and I raised my voice. “Get off him. Now.”

“I do not know what he has done to make you feel like you have to help him, but you must see he is-”

“You killed her!”

I spun round at the anguished yell.

Cleric Tu was red in the face and it looked like he had been crying. He clutched a metal rod in his hand. I remembered the drained body of the Lady Cleric and wondered how close they had been. Had Tomas killed his love?

Breandan slid off Tomas and hauled him up with one arm, moving so fast they both blurred. Tomas and Breandan stared at each other, not a foot away. Tomas looked pointedly at Tu and Breandan shook his head.

“We have no choice,” Tomas said curtly. “He’s seen her.”

My head swung between them, trying to figure it out what they were discussing. What choice was there to make?

Cleric Tu lunged at Breandan. Tomas was suddenly beside me, snarling. Eyes pitch black and fanged face scary as death, but he wasn’t the reason fear gripped me hard and had the breath whooshing from my lungs. Breandan was losing. How such a thing was possible was beyond my comprehension, but his movement was slow and his reactions sluggish. Each time the pole came near him he shied away. Tu lunged forward again, thrusting with the rod at Breandan’s torso. Instead of a thump to the stomach the pole kept going, slicing through flesh, and burying itself in Breandan’s stomach. Silence. Tu let go of the pole and staggered back, face slack with shock.

Staring at the metal protruding from his body, Breandan went pale and said, “Oh no.” Then he crumpled.

Tomas snarled, and stepped forward menacingly toward the Cleric, who jumped then legged it back round the building.

I scrambled over to Breandan, and fell to my knees beside him. He was unconscious. I took a deep breath and let my eyes roam down to collide with the stubby length of metal sticking out of his abdomen. There was so much blood. Body propped off the ground, the shard of metal had punched straight through him.

“Rae, we must leave.” Disorientated by intense dread, Tomas’s freaky silent vampire movement made me jump.

“Say-so,” I said. “We leave, but I have to help him first.”

“He is finished, I smell the iron.” He went to place a hand on my shoulder, but I ducked from beneath his touch.

“No,” I said and bared my teeth at him in a snarl. He snarled back and it was a much more impressive showing than mine. It shocked me out of it. I fixed my face, and pleaded for understanding with my eyes instead. “I’m staying because, I can’t I can’t do this, Tomas. I cannot leave or watch him-” My head swung from side to side jerkily. “We heal but it has to come out.”

Placing my hand on the metal rod the instant sting made me hiss. I snatched my hand back. Opening my palm the flesh sizzled where glass had cut me open. Huh?

A cool hand landed on my shoulder. “Listen to reason. I know you feel-”

“You don’t know shit,” I screeched. “Help me. Help me, or get out my way.”

Gripping the pole again all my strength zapped away. What? I just didn’t get it. Was there an enchantment on it? The metal stung my hands until I had no choice but to release it. Breandan’s hot blood trickled from his body, seeped onto the ground in a growing puddle. Pooling around knees, it soaked my jeans.

Tomas’s shoulder shunted me to the side. “Give me room.”

Face grim, his fingers flitted over Breandan and his nostrils flared. His inch long fangs were fully extended and dangerous looking, telling me he was still hyped up; bloodlusty, but his eyes had cleared to deep brown. A nasty gash he’d gotten across his forehead when he’d crashed through the wall had closed up to leave nothing but a smear of blood on his ashen skin. “He needs healing. Heal him.”

“I don’t know how.”

I pressed my hand onto Breandan’s arm, needing to feel connected. His skin was cold. I squeezed, but there was no response to comfort. How could he do this, leave me now I needed him? I didn’t know what to do. I had been too self-absorbed, and wrapped in my own problems to ask what I should do if a situation like this ever occurred. What was I going to do without him? A fire built in my belly. He had released all this power within me and now he was going to leave me?

“You will not die,” I said fiercely, not sure why I reached to the Source as I said the words, simply that I did.

It flowed into me like molten lava and wrapped around my heart. Hot pain shot up my arm from Breandan into my stomach. Wavering on my knees, my head took flight as magic ran riot through my body. With nowhere to channel it I locked it inside me. One hand clutched at my abdomen the other kept its death grip on Breandan’s arm; no way was I ever letting go of him.

“Are you hurt?” Tomas ran his eyes over my body.

“We need to get away from here.”

“If you insist on saving this worthless fairy’s life, I will have to carry him.”

I sank my teeth into my lip, thinking. Breandan would not be happy with this. “But where do