Софи Джордан - Firelight

I close my eyes, focus and concentrate like never before.

No! It’s even harder than the other times.

The bones of my face pull, hone to sharply cut lines and angles. My breathing quickens as my nose shifts, ridges pushing forth with a slight crackling of bone and cartilage. It hurts a little. Like my body doesn’t like it. Fights it. Doesn’t want it to happen.

Gradually, my limbs loosen, lengthen. My human skin melts away, replaced with thicker skin—tight, contracting draki flesh.

A hot tear slides down my cheek. A moan spits from my lips, pushing me over the edge.

My flesh blurs, glimmers gold and red. Deep, purring vibrations well up from my chest.

At last, my wings push free, unfurl, the gossamer width of each one snapping open behind me, circulating the loose air. I push off immediately and want to weep at the struggle of it, the impossibility of it all.

My muscles burn, scream in protest. Behind me, my wings work, snapping savagely to lift me up on air. Air with no density. No substance. My wings fight for purchase, for something to grasp, struggling to climb higher. So. Hard. So hard!

I lift up, breathless from the effort. Frustrated tears prick my eyes, blur my vision.

Moisture I don’t need to lose.

Green swells far beneath me. I blink, scan wide, focus on the red-tiled rooftops stretching into the horizon. In the far distance, the lights of cars on a highway look small. Farther still, mountains spill like a splash of liquid against the night.

I hover, suspended in ink, the smack of my wings on the air jarring slaps.

My body doesn’t feel right. Even my lungs feel oddly…small. Powerless and ordinary.

The coldly functioning human Jacinda feels more natural than this. And that makes me want to scream. Grieve.

Still, I force it, fly over the green course, struggle to gain speed, too wary to fly beyond in case I can’t hold the manifest. I drink air, forcing it down my throat in gulps. Only it doesn’t help. Doesn’t fill me. Doesn’t expand my shriveling lungs.

I persist, exerting myself until my ragged breath is the only sound ripping through my head. At last I give up, stop, descend in an unwinding circle. Like the fluttering of a dying moth.

With a sobbing breath, I touch down, return to the copse of trees. Demanifest. There, I bow at the waist, clutch my stomach, my body punishing me for what it’s no longer willing to do. Spasms rack me as I dry-heave. The wretching sounds are ugly. The agony endless.

I grab a tree with one hand, dig my fingers into the bark. Feel a nail split from the pressure.

At last, it ends. With shaking hands, I dress myself, and then fall weakly onto my back, arms wide at my sides, palms open. Limp. The beat of my heart fades to a dull fearful thud perceptible only at the wrists.

The ground beneath me is quiet. I sense no gems. No energy. Below the carpet of grass there is only hard, dead earth.

I knot my hand into a fist and beat the ground once. Hard. It doesn’t give. Beneath the thin cushion of grass, the earth sleeps without a heart.

I stare up at the black night through the latticework of branches. For a moment, I can kid myself. Pretend that my body does not hurt. Pretend that I’m home again, staring up at the night through a thick growth of pine branches. That nurturing forest presses around me. Shielding and covering with a loving hand.

Az is near me. Together we stare up at the sky, talking, laughing, unworried for tomorrow. I delude myself awhile longer. Smile like a fool in the dark as I enjoy this game of pretend, remembering when everything was simple and I had only Cassian’s dark-eyed stare to endure.

In hindsight, it seems such a small nuisance. Before this hell.

Eventually, I rise and head for home. Home. The word lacks any comfort.

It’s slow going. My body aches, feels beaten and heavy with every stride. The night is still. No cars drive through the quiet neighborhood at this late hour. My soles scrape the pavement. I follow the meandering sidewalk, watching my shoes fall one after the other on sun-bleached concrete. I turn the corner of my street.

Close now to Mrs. Hennessey’s, I look up.

Headlights round the opposite corner, growing larger. I edge the sidewalk, distancing myself from the street. The vehicle is nearly even with Mrs. Hennessey’s house, its engine a heavy purr.

It slows. So do I.

I don’t need anyone spotting me out this late. Don’t need a friend of Mrs. Hennessey or another neighbor mentioning it to my mother.

By now, I can tell it’s not a car. A truck? The windshield glints like a mirror as it rolls closer to the curb. My skin shivers and my pulse jackknifes against the flesh at my neck.

I’ve seen enough crime television to feel instant apprehension. And I know enough to trust my instincts.

I brace myself, slowing down so that I’m barely walking. I wait, watch, assess with a quick darting of my eyes. I grab hold of my apprehension before it explodes into fullscale fear and I manifest…assuming I can.

Then I see it. There’s a light bar on top, unlit. Like it’s in stealth mode. I see that and I understand.

They’re here. Where I live. Stalking me. Somehow they figured it out. Figured out the truth about me. Maybe Will recognized me at last and is here to revoke his act of mercy from that day in the mountains.

They see me then. The Land Rover guns forward, straight for me.

Turning, I run.

Adrenaline pumps through me and overrides my sick weariness of moments ago. I’m being hunted all over again. Except this time I’m in a strange city. In a body I no longer know.

Before, this afraid, I would have instantly manifested. It’s an instinct a draki is powerless to resist. That I’m still clinging to my human form can only mean I’m dying, weakening.

My sneakers pound against the sidewalk, the loud slaps filling my head, mingling with the rush of blood in my ears…the accelerating roar of the Land Rover’s engine behind me. Like a great monster come to life.

The street stretches ahead of me. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to lose myself as long as I follow its open path.

I risk it, launch across the street and cut a hard right into a yard. Tires screech, burn on asphalt. I move, not looking back as I attack a fence, the soles of my shoes stomping upward, shuddering over the wood. I grab the top. The pointy tips of the pickets cut into my palms.

I haul myself over the fence and through a yard of rock and cacti. Scale another fence and find myself in someone’s front yard.

My flesh tightens, ripples with heat. The bridge of my nose pushes out, ridges rising. My lungs start to burn and smolder, chest vibrating. My draki at last. I suppose I should take comfort in this. Joy that I can feel myself responding. That I’m not completely dead inside.

A screech of brakes attacks my ears. Headlights swing wildly in the night. I turn and hit a fence again.

“Jacinda! Stop! Wait!”

I can’t help it. The voice instantly reaches me, pulls me back like an invisible hand.

Dangling from the fence, I look over my shoulder.

He stands beneath a streetlight, his brown hair gleaming gold where the light strikes. His eyes seem gold, too. Glittery and burning as they stare at me, the Land Rover purring only a few feet from him. He holds out a hand, as if to pacify some wild creature he intends to tame.

“Will.” The name escapes me, too soft for him to hear.

I blink long and hard, let the fear fade…and with it my draki. Opening my eyes, I drop down from the fence.

My gaze scans the street, looking for others. Unless someone’s hiding in the car, he’s alone. I release a shaky breath.

That hand still stretches toward me.