Phoenix Reborn (Woodland Creek)(34)

Stopping for a moment, she threw a fireball at a fallen tree trunk, which erupted in a sea of flame. With her mind Ashling doused it quickly, putting it out as instantly as it had started. So, I’m able to extinguish fire as well as create it, she thought. I’m not the destroyer that I’d always supposed.

The hike to her makeshift campsite seemed to take forever; longer, even than the first time, when she’d been escaping town and running away from Hawke. This time, she walked towards a possible ambush and possible death. Fate, leading her closer to a confrontation which would test her new skills, her strength and her resolve.

And with her, the two men she cared about most in the world. If anything happened to them, she would be devastated. But she knew also that she should focus on herself for now — the man had no beef with Hawke or Ranach. Only with her, and at last she was beginning to understand why. She wondered how many others out there wanted her taken down, stripped of life.

As she neared her campsite among the old house’s ruins, she felt herself tense, shoulders tightening, eyes and ears alert. Deep, nerve-wracking anticipation. But something else ate at her as well. As though another sense were kicking in; an instinct had lain dormant before she’d come fully into her powers.

She could smell him on the air, feel him near, that man who wanted her gone. The shifter who couldn’t hunt her so well — no doubt he would be better at it if she were made of rotting flesh. His interest was only in the dead and those he could destroy.

He didn’t belong in Woodland Creek as she did.

As she did. She belonged.

For once, she had a home, and it all made sense. The magic of the place, its strange forces which had worked at her all her life. The powers that Ranach had concealed from her. Hawke. And others, whom she would one day learn to recognize as her own kind. Somehow it was a relief. Though she might be walking into a trap willingly, though this man might snuff her life out, she finally understood who she was. There were no doubt others in her home town who’d known all her life, who’d watched her protectively. Who’d sympathized with her plight.

If only I shifted into a ground squirrel, she thought. No one would feel a need to snuff me out.

At last she saw the ruins, surrounded here and there by the odd flash of colour: her camping gear, lying about on the ground, the tent still erect, pegged into the soil. She walked slowly, attempting not to step on dry twigs or mounds of fallen leaves, to conceal her steps. But she wasn’t so graceful as a cat or as her flying form, and proceeding in silence felt like an impossibility.

The good news was that she didn’t see him: maybe he was gone, having seen what she could do, and knowing that the Golden Eagle was protecting her. Maybe the Vulture had left for good.

But again it came to her: a warning; instinct, telling her that he was nearby, that he wished her harm. That he awaited her. In an instant she knew.

Of course. He was in the tent. Hiding, waiting for her to return, knowing that she would likely come for her gear. She wished that she could somehow transmit the message to Hawke: I know where he is. But then, with his eyes, maybe he could see it already, even from the sky.

Ashling stood on one side of the crumbling stone wall, waiting for a sign of movement inside the nylon structure, but saw nothing. As she focused, though, she could hear her enemy breathing, her ears even managing to pick up the sound of his heart beating percussively in his chest. And she knew that she had only one option, with or without Hawke and Ranach’s blessing.

Positioning herself beyond the broken-down frame of an old window, she summoned another fireball, the size of a tennis ball, to her right hand, and watched it rotate slowly over her palm. This would be her only chance to surprise him, and the seconds that followed would determine whether she won the coming battle or lost it.

Rapidly she spun around, throwing the ball of flame towards the tent with all her might. She twisted again, pressing her back to the crumbling wall as she peered around, seeing the flames engulfing the flimsy structure. Within seconds, only the metal frame stood, the nylon disappeared, turned to black ash which sifted through the air. And inside, the greasy-haired man, easing out, his body hunched as he attempted to avoid the raining embers that surrounded him.

“Show yourself,” he muttered. “Let me see you, now that you’ve come into your skills.”

“I’m no fool,” Ashling replied, her voice raised. “I’m not going to make myself a target for you.”

“So, what? Did you come here to kill me then, Fire Girl?”

The man sounded pathetic now, and Ashling’s heart was torn in spite of herself. She’d never hurt anyone deliberately, and memories of the experience from her youth came surging back, reminding her what it had felt like to do someone harm. No part of her wanted to destroy him, regardless of his own malice.

“I only want you to leave me alone,” she said. “I haven’t done anything to you or anyone else.”

“You will. Your kind always does.”

With a deep inhale she stepped out from behind the wall, revealing herself. He stood before her, this time without a knife. There was no gun, even; just a man. Defenceless, injured, his arm in a home-made sling.

“What do you know of my kind?” she asked.

“I was there, when your father hurt people. I know what he did.”

“You knew him?”

“Only a little. He had a temper on him. As you do.”