Caress of Flame by Sherri L. King Page B

red-hot blades seemed to shoot forth from his hands, giving him claws. Then he flew straight into the air, coming down with all of his power. Though he was large and muscular he danced easily around his adversaries and landed several more blows, his movements unbelievably graceful. She could no longer see much of the three Daemons—if that was indeed what they were—as Flare’s bright flames grew ever more intense, but she could tell that he was deadly serious in his mission to protect her.
    He would not stop until the threat to her was finished. The Daemons didn’t stand a chance.
    A sound behind her startled her and she turned.
    Isis caught her breath painfully and swallowed a cry.
    3She was face-to-face with a seven-foot, three-hundred-pound monster. There was no other word for what this being was—Daemon, whatever, she didn’t care, it was a monster plain and simple. Its face was a mess of mangled parts, if it could be called a face. Its body was thick and black and it looked like it was covered in goo. It had overly long arms and spikes from shoulders to wrists. Its legs were shaped like a dog’s—they looked backward—and its feet were massive claws that dug grooves into the wood of her living room floor.
    “You are one ugly motherfucker,” she whispered, more to herself than to the beast overshadowing her. It grunted and said something in gibberish she couldn’t understand. The sound of its voice was like the sound someone would make if they raked their fingers across a rusty car door. She screamed despite herself, truly horrified by the monster’s voice, and darted around the hulking brute, racing deeper into her house, heading for the back door.
    The horrible, rending feel of her flesh being torn washed over her back. She actually felt the beast’s claws penetrate her flesh, one by one, like ten-inch nails, and she screamed uncontrollably as it ravaged her back with but one swipe of its hand. The pain was immediate and intense. She stumbled but forced herself to keep running despite the overwhelming, mind-blowing agony gouged into the skin of her back. Isis knew that if she let the monster get close again it would do far worse than claw her back.
    She nearly threw herself out the back door but she didn’t stop there. Isis sprinted full out, running as fast as she could, not heading in any specific direction, just away from the thing that dogged her heels.
    It was almost as if she could feel the breath of the beast on the back of her neck. She screamed again and ran harder, until her tortured flesh screamed in agony. Within seconds she made it to the border of trees. She ran into the forest, not even bothering to avoid the branches that smacked her in the face and tore at her hair and clothing.
    Nothing mattered now, no pain, no fear, no weariness. The only thing that mattered was getting away from this monster.
    Isis ran deep into the forest. She ran until her sides felt like they were sliced open with razors and her lungs ached as if she weren’t breathing oxygen, but smoke. Hot, thickly cloying smoke that choked her painfully. Her mouth was dry and her face hurt from all the branches she was running into, and the blood was pounding heavily in her head. She heard a rumbling behind her, then a shrieking roar like the sound of a thousand dying souls. The sound terrified her even more than the sight of the thing, turning her overheated blood to ice in her fiercely pumping veins as she flew blindly through the trees.
    Her foot caught painfully on an exposed root and she fell, hitting her chin hard on a stone and scraping her palms on the ground so that they stung and bled. She glanced back and shrieked as the monster came for her, claws outstretched.
    Something snapped inside her. She had only felt such a strange sensation one other time in her life. It was as if something dark and deadly had reared its head inside of her 3mind and heart. Isis felt swollen with a sudden and fierce rage and there was no