Tevun-Krus #10 - TKX: Best of 2014

Beauty is the Beast: Superhuman

Beauty is the Beast
A superhuman short by @jewel1307. 

She wasn’t their intended target. At first, he thought his human host’s attraction to the female had overridden his control. But once he lifted her from the street, he knew she was one of them. The same, yet there was something different that set her apart.  

He hesitated, hand hovering a centimetre above skin the colour of rich crème marred with blueberry and raspberry hues of developing bruises. Wisps of her hair brushed across his knuckles as she moved fitfully in her sleep. He let a delicate wave fall through his fingertips, mesmerised by the alternating tones of platinum and gold shifting across the strands in the fading light.

Questions sped through his thoughts; too many for any, except the last, to reach his tongue in a breathless whisper. “What am I to do with you?”

“Let me go?” Annabel rasped, her throat and lips parchment dry.

Shocked into sudden movement, he snatched his hand back and stood, moving out of her strike range.

“You’re injured,” he said, hastily, his voice quivering in fear of the females of his species. Having never encountered a female before, the only knowledge came from his father’s dying thoughts. “I brought you here to recover.”

Mindful of the tenderness across her abdomen, Annabel rolled over so she faced him. “Sure you did. Most people’s first thought would be a hospital, yet you brought me to …?”

His faced flushed. “My home, but…”

Pushing herself upright sent waves of pain across her chest, making her pant with shallow breaths until it subsided enough to ask, “But what?” 

“You’re hungry. I have what you need here,” he reassured her, retreating from the room. He paused at the threshold to add, “I’ll be right back.”

Realising she wouldn’t get very far in the condition she was in, Annabel took the opportunity his absence supplied to look around. A shelf full of dolls in various state of undress, combined with pastel pink curtains and matching bed linens were a dead giveaway that the room belonged to a young girl. The partially open door revealed another bedroom on the other side of a narrow hall. At the foot of the bed in the other room, lay a tan and black dress, much like a coffee shop uniform.

Leaning forward to see out the window, Annabel managed to spot the tops of several white-dusted fir trees. She frowned, thinking, Snow in October? And, cradling her ribs as she rose, hobbled closer for a better look. Drifting snowflakes brushed gently against the glass, almost obscuring a child’s swing set in the frozen garden. There was little else she could make out beyond the falling snow and high treeline, but she could clearly see they weren’t in the city anymore.  Any reassurance she may have felt at being in a family home, dissipated as quickly as the flakes on the breath-warmed pane.

Her rescuer reappeared with a blue beaker in his hand and held it out at arm’s length for Annabel to take. “This should help take the edge off until I can get more.”

She eyed it warily. “What is it?”

“You already know what it is. You can sense it.” He smiled and pushed the beaker into her outstretched hand.

One whiff as she opened the lid of the beaker identified the contents as the real thing rather than the synthetic stuff Shafira had given her before the last mission. Thought of the last mission stopped the beaker’s ascent to her lips.

“Who the hell are you? What happened at the restaurant?” she demanded.

“Drink first, and then I’ll explain everything, I swear.”