Phoenix Reborn by Carina Wilder Page B

again, and again it sounded as though a foot was breaking through a dry twig.
    “Who’s there?” she asked, recalling the strange man who changed voices with such seeming ease.
    “It’s me,” the voice said. Hawke? That wasn’t his voice, nor was it Ranach’s. But it was a man’s, without question.
    Into the light stepped the same man she’d seen in front of the bar; the one who had tried to attack her. But this time Hawke wouldn’t be around to help her.
    “You,” she said, noticing for the first time that he grasped a long, pointed knife in his left hand. She wondered if she could find a way to melt it, as she’d done with silver so many times. “Why are you here?”
    “To find you,” he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. “You were foolish to come here alone, but you know that, don’t you? A young woman, out in the woods like this.”
    “I’m not alone,” she lied. “My boyfriend just went to get some more wood.”
    The man laughed. His yellowed, crooked teeth seemed eerily apt for such a creature. “You think I’m stupid,” he said. “That’s fine. It’s a fair tactic, that. But no, your boyfriend is nowhere to be found, because he doesn’t exist. You are alone and vulnerable. It’s almost as though you want to die, coming here unprotected as you did.”
    “I don’t,” she said. “Not at all.” She tried in vain to hide the fear in her voice as she spoke.
    “Well then I’m sorry for what’s about to happen. But if I let you live, you will destroy us. What we are, how we live. I can’t allow that to happen. If I don’t kill you, someone else will.”
    Ashling backed up as the man advanced towards her, the knife glinting in the firelight.
    She continued to retreat, her hands out, grasping at air and unsure what to do with themselves.
    “I can manipulate fire,” she said, once again attempting to sound brave.
    “Good for you,” the man replied. “But I don’t much care. I’ve known about you for some time, Ashling. Oh, it took me a while to figure out how to find you, but I did. To be clear, I’d hoped that you would never learn what you were, but that old man had to go and tell you, didn’t he? And now you are more dangerous than you know.”
    “It’s not his fault,” she said. “It’s nobody’s fault, what I am. If I had my way, I would be a normal human.”
    “No, of course. It’s nobody’s fault. But you are what you are: a fire lord, a demon of sorts. We can’t have you in this world. You don’t belong. You have never belonged.”
    She knew it, of course. The words never needed speaking. But he used them now as a weapon, as an excuse. Once again, he was going to attack her. And this time no one was around to protect her.
    In her mind she summoned the fire. For once it would be her ally, her sole defense against this lunatic.
    And then the balls hovered once again over her palms. She could do him some serious harm, she knew, using the missiles that she held in her power. But instead she shot them at the earth between her would-be attacker and herself, constructing a thick semi-circle of flame. It spread as though shot through a gun’s barrel in both directions, encircling her and rising up towards the sky.
    On the other side of the flames she could see the man standing, poised. Contemplative. Would he leap through to her side?
    And then, as though taking into account that possibility, the fire thickened, encircling Ashling, a wall of flame building, rising tall in a cylinder that seemed to reach for the sky, protecting her.
    As the flames shifted about, she saw the dark form still frozen on the other side. Her enemy had seemed so determined to come at her when she’d been down by the creek, but now seemed daunted by her power, reluctant to cross her line of defense.
    Ashling knew that she had only seconds to act, to do something other than hope that her prison-bars of flame would keep her opponent out. And for no reason that she could