Two heavy steps and it was almost upon her. Her feet were glued to the floor. She couldn’t even move, not even to curl up into a ball like her brain screamed at her to do. She tasted something metallic in her mouth. She’d bitten straight through her lip.
A claw-tipped hand reached for her. Fear clogged her lungs and she jerked the skillet out from behind her back and swung haphazardly at its head. Luck alone landed the wild blow.
Its roar of rage drowned out the sickening sound of the iron connecting with its skull. The impact made her arms vibrate and she nearly dropped the pan.
Eyes on fire and mouth gaping, the beast shook itself, then backhanded her across the cheek. Pain exploded in her head as she whirled from the force of the blow. As agony seared her skull, a rage like she’d never known engulfed her, so strong it felt like a living thing. Gasping, and as terrified of the unfamiliar anger as she was of her attacker, she felt it wash over her.
The rational part of her mind faded to the background as instinct and something otherworldly took over her body. The pain in her head forgotten, Diana lithely jumped to her feet.
Hurt it. Kill it. She turned on her attacker and leapt on it, throwing its spindly form to the ground with her weight. She raised the skillet. Its weight felt natural in her palm, as though she was meant to do some damage with it. Somehow she knew exactly how to kill this creature, but she wanted to hurt it first. How dare it try to beat her? No one did that to her. Never again.
Through her rage, she barely recognized the thoughts. She’d never been beaten before, and she rarely got angry, but now she was inflamed. She swung the frying pan hard at its head, beating it as if to drive her own demons away. The thud of the metal against its skull was a joy to hear and fueled the raging beast within her.
Though an otherworldly power sang through her veins, the creature was stronger. With a great heave, it threw her off and the pan flew from her hand. She was on her feet in seconds.
“Come on,” she said, beckoning it to her. She barely recognized her voice. She should be running, but some part of her wanted it to try something. So she could kill it.
The creature obliged, coming toward her with murder in its eyes. Snarling, she ran at it, ducking beneath its outstretched arms with a grace that felt entirely unfamiliar. She spotted a knife strapped to its calf and nimbly plucked it from its sheath. With deadly precision, she sank it into its back, punching through the skin and then sinking into the muscle. She twisted right where its heart should be and was rewarded with its howl. The creature clawed at its back, attempting to reach the knife, but within seconds its strength had leached away and it tumbled to the floor. It shuddered, then lay still.
With the threat gone, the fog of rage that had overtaken Diana’s mind evaporated. She stumbled away from the woman—the creature—the thing—sprawled on her kitchen floor. Tripping over her own feet, she collapsed in the corner, a sob rising in her throat. The floor was hard beneath her as she started to rock back and forth, weak with exhaustion and fear.
What did I just do?
She hadn’t recognized herself, not even a little bit. Where had those instincts come from? She was losing her mind. She was losing herself. The self that she didn’t even know.
Panicked, remembering the body in her house, she looked up. It was still lying there, with the knife protruding grotesquely from its back. Diana tried to take deep, calming breaths, but the air had gone thick and worthless, heavy with the coppery and sinister scent of blood.
The back of her wrist began to burn again, as if fire ants were crawling over her skin in a pattern. She rubbed it and looked down, temporarily distracted from the corpse in her kitchen.
Her mouth fell open when her wrist began to turn red in a thinly lined pattern. Fine black lines replaced the red, as if she were being tattooed from the inside.
This could not be happening.
She squinted at it, scrubbing panicked tears from her face as she tried to make out the design. It looked like...a mountain range? No, not a mountain range, but close. Scrawled across her wrist where it met the back of her hand was a beautifully embellished depiction of a craggy hill.
She rubbed it more fiercely, desperate to make the image disappear. To make all of this just go away. All she wanted was to go back to her normal life and continue on her nice, safe, sane path.
A sizzling sound distracted her from her assault on her wrist and she looked up at the creature lying on her floor, its black blood creeping across her lovely limestone tiles. Strike that—it had been lying on her floor.