Super

27 - My First Thought? Throw Soap At It

I stared at Ciaran with wide eyes.

"Bet you forgot about that little superpower, didn't you?" He smirked and I nodded, gulping. How could I have forgotten? It was only the way he used to kill one of my stalkers the night we met. Those poor goons never saw it coming. The Invisible Hand basically incinerated one of them from the inside-out, and now he'd done the same to poor old Rufus.

I opened my eyes to sass his cockiness, when I was caught off guard by a thud in my left shoulder. Ciaran shouted my name, but I was already down in the snow, a fifty pound wolf weighing on my shoulders. His muzzle reeked of rotting animal flesh as his hot breath fanned across my face and I decided to call this wolf Axel.

"Woah there Axel," I said softly, "it's okay. You don't want to do this."

I snuck a glance at Ciaran, but he was frozen, just staring at me with wide, annoyed eyes.

"Don't just stand there..." I muttered at him, but he only shook his head.

"You... you named it..."

"Well... I name spiders. Why not wolves?"

"You name... Spiders..."

"Yep," I said, popping the 'p', but regretting it when Axel blew a hot breath in my face. "Why not?"

"Oh I don't know, maybe for the same reason you don't name a wolf who's about to bite your head off," Ciaran scowled.

"He won't bite my head off if you do something about it!" I nearly shouted. Frankly, I was surprised Axel hadn't already bitten my head off. He was probably wary of Ciaran's boiling abilities.

"I'm trying," Ciaran said through gritted teeth and it was then that I noticed he was swaying on his feet. If he could only clone himself in a radius of twenty feet, I couldn't imagine how much energy teleporting thousands of miles across an ocean would sap out of him and now he just boiled a wolf from the inside-out while he was still recovering. I suddenly felt very guilty.

Meanwhile, there were about three or four more wolves lurking in the darkness and I noticed one get dangerously close to Ciaran. Without even looking, he swung an arm back and hit it straight in the muzzle. It whimpered and teetered a little, but didn't back up. Ciaran teleported to my side, stumbling a little, but still trying to pry the wolf off of me. It snapped at him, but Ciaran was too fast. Then everything started to speed up again.

Axel began snapping at Ciaran more rapidly, but he dodged every blow like a pro. He cloned himself twice - as were his limits - so three Ciarans now circled the unintimidated Axel. He - Axel, that is - turned to growl at one of the Ciarans, but it was just a clone. The clone kicked the wolf's underbelly. Axel, in turn, let out a howl and lunged at the clone, but another clone was already there, intercepting Axel's leap and tossing him to the ground. He got up easily.

I scrambled to my feet, determined to help, but even with three Ciarans and me, we were still outnumbered by agility, claws, and razor sharp teeth.

"I'm sorry Ciaran," I muttered.

"What for?" He asked, turning away from the wolves, suddenly shocked. Another one - Bert - lunged at Ciaran and I screamed. He turned just in time to duck and burn the wolf's leg with his whole incineration-vision thing, but he wasn't strong enough. Bert limped away, but was only replaced by Dave, another wolf. "We're outnumbered," Ciaran whispered in a defeated sigh.

"For getting us in this mess," I ignored him, "if I hadn't been such a demanding asshole-"

"Shut up, Annabelle," Ciaran rolled his eyes.

"But–"

"Annie, I kind of need to concentrate."

My mouth snapped shut. Leave it to Ciaran to be an asshole while he saved both our lives.