BURNING COLD

                                             BURNING COLD

The flames are cold on my skin. Too cold. Flames should hurt. I should be burning. But I’m not. Opening my eyes, I see why. I’m wrapped in his arms… and his wings. His long, white wings. His brown hair is nicely cut from yesterday, and when I look into his emerald eyes I melt. I push into his firm chest. I need him. I need to be with him. He can’t let me go. I’d be nothing without him.

    “Don’t leave me,” I whisper, my voice hoarse from the fire in which we had nearly died in only five minutes ago.

    “I’d never leave you.” His breath caresses my hair, my scalp. It’s warm. It makes me want his lips.

     His wings are freezing me now.

    “I’m sorry. Here.” I hear a soft foosh and watch as his wings become ash-black. They’re warm. I nestle into them and smile. Mmm. “Sometimes I forget that they hurt you,” he says to me, looking angry at himself.

    “They don’t hurt. They’re just cold. And I know it’s easier for you to be in your angelic form.” I lean up and kiss him, seeing his blood-red face, emerald-green eyes, snakelike nose and pointed ears. This is what he looks like in his demonic form. “But you’re my angel no matter what you look like,” I say after our intimate kiss. It’s as if it sent jolts of love shooting through my body.

    “Will they find us now that somethings happened? They know that we’re in the area. Maybe we should leave,” I say. When I look down I can see our house still in flames. Our possessions… the past month of our lives.

     “Okay. But we need to be careful leaving. Maybe if we can get the news people to think we died in the fire then The Takers won’t come after us.” He knew as well as I did that they would know we’d left.

    “Hang on,” Lucien tells me.

    “I’ll never let go of you.”

    I wrap my arms around his neck as he takes off towards the ground, and my raven-coloured hair whips down my back, and his black wings flapping every so often. We’re there within thirty seconds and in the car within another minute. The soft seat is a relief after the ordeal we were just in. The mirror shows my ocean-blue eyes looking wild, and my slender figure is just as good as it was yesterday, give or take a few burn marks.

    “Where will we go? We’ve run out of places,” I say, thinking. We’ve been running for five years, and from what I can see, we’ve used up all the spots in which The Takers would never look. But something always happens—a fire, a flood, a storm. All natural occurrences. But they’re not. It’s always The Takers. Their assassin finally gains enough power, which he gets from killing humans, to cast the spell that washes us out.

    “Don’t worry, Lilliana, we’ll find somewhere.”

    “You know what? No. I’m sick out running.” I get out of the car and cast my arms to outwards. An enormous fireball appears before my chest, the size of myself. “I’m going to fight,” I say. “If I have to keep running then it’s not worth living.”

    “Would you not live for me?”

    “Not if I know you can be killed at any moment. If we do this, then we can live without fear. We can have a normal life… we could have a child.” That’s what we’ve always wanted and I know it will win him over. I’m right. His eyes light up at the word of a child, and he steps forward, his angelic white wings bursting from his back. He curls his fingers and small white orbs appear.

    “Are you sure you want to do this? Because I sense he’s close.” Lucien looks to me as I push the fireball forward a bit, to get away from the heat.

    “It’s either now or never.”

     “He’s here… to your left!”

     I curl my fingers, imagining that I’m sinking my fingers into a tennis ball, and the fling my hands to the left, letting go of my imaginary ball. The fireball follows my movement and shoots of to the left where it hits something which erupts in flames. A man in yelling, then I see clouds appear in the sky above and before I know it, it’s lashing rain. It’s hard to see with no sun, but a man is walking out of the wreckage of whatever erupted.

    His bald head had a scar running along it, going from his right eye, and I think it crosses over his head to his neck, but I can’t see. His eyes are pure black. I catch my breath at his beauty. No, I think to myself, you only feel like this for Lucien. This man has been hunting you for five years, waiting for your death.

    My arms extend and erupt in flames. Time for some one on one with the assassin. I turn my head and nod to Lucien. Orbs the size of soccer balls of pure angelic power appear in the air and shoot towards the assassin. He tries to black them only to find himself flipping in the air.

    I run at him and jump, my leg lighting up with fire, and kick him in the back, the fire giving me extra strength. He roars in pain before falling to the dirty mud below. I land alongside him in a crouch. Is he dead? Or merely unconscious? I go with the second choice but before I can even register what to do next he grabs me and pulls me down to him.

    “You’re beautiful, darlin’,” he says, his voice coming out in a southern drawl.

    “Shut up!” I yell, before forming a small fireball in my hand and shoving it in his face. He screams in agony at the pain before he kicks me off, the impact to my stomach. I collapse on the ground, not able to breathe. My eyes clothes, the last thing I see being the assassin standing above me. When they open, lightning flashes all around me and I’m able to breathe again.

    It takes me a moment to get my bearings, and when I do I see Lucien and the assassin battling with their powers. Lightning threatens to break Lucien’s angelic force field, but his orbs seem impervious to the assassin’s barrier of the strikes from the sky, standing around him like a cage. They hit him and he sprawls backwards, before getting up and attacking with more lightning.

    “Don’t hurt him,” I shout, clapping my hands just once. But it rings around the area, and the ground in front of it is torn up, heading straight at the assassin.

    “You’re dead, Darlos!” Lucien shouts at the assassin. Then he laughs, almost maniacally. But he’s lost his concentration and Darlos lets one last strike of lightning rip from the sky, and it pierces the force field, shooting through Lucien. His eyes are wide, his arms flopping to his sides, before he falls. Knees to the ground, then face first into the wet mud.

    “No!” I shout. The earth tears up and through Darlos. A spike of it goes right through his chest, ripping him apart. The blood is everywhere, some even over my clothes.

    “Lucien!” I rush to his side, then smile as he opens his eyes.

    “You know I’ll never die… well, I will, but not right now. My angelic self is dying, I’m going to be stuck with my demonic wings and powers. I won’t be good anymore, Lilli, I’ll be bad. I’ll be a pure demon. I won’t have any angel to stop me.”

    “Lucien, you’re an angel no matter what wings you have. You’re the nicest, most holiest person I know. You’ll never be bad. You’ll always be my guardian angel.”

    I smile as his black wings replace his white ones, and the feigning force field around us that withstands nothing now turn a devilish red. Lucien’s hair is turning black, and I watch as his open, emerald eyes, turn a black I’ve only ever seen once. In Darlos’s eyes.

    “Lucien?” I whisper. He doesn’t respond. “Lucien! Hello?” His eyes slowly turn to me, before his hand reached out and grips my throat, intending on breaking it… He is the new Darlos. 

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