She could track the woman like an animal.
She smiled at the idea, at the sudden rush of excitement that it generated, and her teeth gleamed. She might actually do better that way. She was mostly animal herself by now, able to go down on all fours, to sniff out the scent of her quarry, to see the impression of her prints. She was lean and quick and much, much stronger than the creature she hunted. How much difference would not having the use of the ATV make to her efforts to catch up to the other? Not that much, she thought. Not that much at all.
She stripped off her clothing and stood naked in the moonlight, all scales and claws and muscle. Exhilarated, she wanted to howl like a wolf. But no, not yet. Not until she was close enough for the female to know she was coming. Not until the sound of it would make clear that there was no escape.
She stretched and preened. Then she went down on all fours and began to run.
“ANGEL! WAKE UP!”
The words surfaced through a deep fog of sleep and dreams, vague and disembodied. She tried to make sense of them and failed. Her consciousness lifted momentarily, and then fell back again, adrift.
“Angel, please! You have to wake up!”
A child’s voice. A little girl’s. She blinked this time, the dreams and sleep fading. Her eyes opened. It was dark still, but the sunrise was a silvery brightening of the eastern sky. She remembered where she was. She had crossed out of the woods and reached another paved road sometime after midnight, then followed it to an old roadside shelter. She had hidden the ATV
in the trees, left Ailie— who apparently didn’t need sleep—on watch, and gone right to sleep.
“Angel, say something!”
Ailie. The tatterdemalion was bent over her, practically shouting in her ear.
“What is it?” she murmured, sleep-fogged and vaguely irritated.
“It’s found us! The demon!”
She sat up quickly then, shock galvanizing lethargic muscles and numbed responses into action. She rolled quickly into a sitting position, reaching for the black staff, her eyes sweeping the darkness of the surrounding woods. She listened to the silence. No distant roar of an ATV. No sounds of any kind at all.
“I don’t hear anything,” she whispered.
“It’s not coming that way!” Ailie’s face was back in front of her own, blue hair wild, eyes bright with fear. “It’s coming on foot!”
On foot? Angel rose quickly, grasping the staff in both hands now, taking a defensive position, her body reacting automatically, out of habit, even though her thinking remained clouded and sluggish. On foot? The words didn’t make any sense. Even a demon couldn’t have caught them on foot, and besides why would it...
A blur of white and blue flashed in front of her as Ailie rushed past, sweeping aside deliberation and confusion in a moment’s time. “Angel, it’s here!”
In the next instant something big and dark burst from the forest, bounding into the clearing in a terrifying rush, down on all fours and grunting and huffing like some monstrous wild animal. Angel barely had time to bring up the staff, the magic surging through it in response to her needs, quicker than thought. She went down on one knee, one end of the staff pointed out like a lance, catching her attacker in the chest as it leapt for her, pinning it in midair. The force of the attack threw her backward, and the staff vaulted the demon right over her head and sent it tumbling away.
She came back to her feet, fully awake now. The demon was already turning, a huge, sleek gray shape in the mix of shadows and half-light, its limbs impossibly long and disjointed, its head hunched down between its massive shoulders like a wolf’s. She searched for a hint of the features that had identified the demon as female only days before, but everything recognizable was gone. No spiky blond hair, no human face or body, no skin, nothing. This creature was covered with scales, its fingers and toes were claws, its face was a muzzle split wide to reveal gleaming teeth, and its eyes were yellow lanterns.
Yet it was her nevertheless, Angel knew. It was the demon from the compound, come to finish her off.
“Diablo!” Angel muttered as she braced herself for the next attack.
The demon screamed suddenly, a bone-jarring, high-pitched sound that tore through the woods and froze Angel where she stood.
Then the monster rushed her, so swift it was on top of her almost before she could respond. But respond she did, sending the white fire of the staff surging into her attacker in a rippling, jagged-edged strike that burned the other’s scaly hide despite its obvious toughness, knocking the demon backward and aside. It screamed again, as if the sound gave it special strength, and renewed its assault. Again it charged Angel and again she used the fire to throw it back.