Don't Go Out in the Woods Tonight...

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The stranger just won't DIE! Why? There is blood and the smell of human, but no death. The stranger just won't die!

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Stupid Half-mutt. Thinking he could take me. This is so ridiculous. To think that a half-wolf could take on an angel, Fallen or otherwise. This... gah. Stupid mutt.

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I could hear the noise from the two fighters slow down and the breathing become heavier. I manage to look over a Ghost. He was lying on his side looking over at the door.

He looks fine, just a little out of it. The bleeding has stopped and only a small stain remains. Suddenly Ghost hops up and trots over to the bed.

His head rests on my hand and his great brown eyes gaze up at me. Measuring me. I wonder for a moment what I'm being judged for, but I think I already know.

Crash

A plaster wall downstairs shatters under the weight of someone...or something. Then there is silence. A heavy silence, then an ice chilled laugh. That laugh rings throughout the house and freezes me to the core.

Ghost leaves my side and walks to the door. He stands there, his ear picking up the sounds of the house. The air thaws out as the silence stretches.

Suddenly the dog barks and starts to wag his tail, the most dog-like, un-wolf thing I've seen it do. He hops into the corridor, leaving the room. And me.

The curtain flutters around the broken window, like a butterfly with broken wings. I look at it and the shards of glass that cover the floor and the glass that still sticks in the window.

It has started to rain lightly. Because of the rain the woods look a little darker than normal, but they aren't frightening.

Then the woods are blocked from my view. By big black wings, that I've seen before. Or wings i thought I had seen before, out of the corner of my eye. They were something I could remember at the drop of a hat, but tried to forget, had forgotten up until now.

They are half black silken feathers. They shine with all the black purple glow of a raven. Under that beautiful plumage, is black bat leather. The skin pulls taunt, showing tendons and muscles stretching and pulling on one another.

The wings curl at the end into four talons. The talons aren't razor sharp or long sabers; they are there, a metallic gray, like nails at the end of fingers. Those talons and feathers, those great black wings could only belong to one person...if you would call him that.

"Lyris," As I regard him, a shiver rips down my spine.

"My little Katherine." His voice still holds frost. "You are mine. I told you that. Why must you resist what you know is truth?"

With that his hand extends to me, palm up. He wants me to go with him. After what his done? Is he...crazy? His eyes pleaded with me, like a parent would with a stubborn child.

At that moment, a rumble tore through air, rocking my body. It was like every noise of anger and pain and hate rolled into one roar. My eyes shifted to the door frame just as this thing bursts in.

It moves too fast across the floor, almost gliding without touching the ground. The great arms thrust forward, and the sharp claws rip into the hand and shove against Lyris, hurling him from the window and into the wet sky.

For a moment I think it wants to follow him, leaping from the window. But it pulls away from the glass and continues to growl into the rain.

The head swings around, and body shifts, as though it has decided to leave the room. Instead it sees me.

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Crap

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I am not scared. Just... shocked. This is new . . . and strange. Lyris has wings and looks like something threw him out of a high place, maybe like he'd fallen from some cloud, so maybe I had known that humans aren't the only things on earth. But this...this thing is so different.

My eyes start at the floor, scanning up slowing over the creature as it stands and ... Is it measuring me? or simply watching? I don't know but nevertheless I trail my eyes over ...him.

He stands on a stone grey square of the checkerboard floor. I see that the claws push far into the soft carpet. They are black claws, covered by black fur. The feet are like any other dog's foot. Only they stretch out further and the toes are farther apart, making the foot expand off the carpet and pull the tendons tight under the short fur.

All the fur is short, giving the legs more definition and revealing the dew claw that resides on the leg, right under the joint on the inside of the back leg. Sensing that my eyes are on the dew claws, they flex and relax. The shift in muscle pulls the black fur along the curves of the leg. My eyes travel up and away from the feet.

The back legs curve elegantly under the body. They are a mass of lean muscle and the black fur starts to be specked with white. At the top of the leg sprouts a tuft of a tail. It swings gracefully and has a small kink at the tip. It twitches slightly and the movement makes me smile, somehow I've stopped being shocked. My smile seems to make it twitch again.

My eyes lift again, landing on the chest and the broad shoulders. The chest, from the top of the legs up is a steel grey and it is mixed with black. The shoulders flow down into the arms, or the front legs.

These are hard to describe. They are most definitely the front legs. However they are too long, they are too much like hands. The toes of the front legs look too much like the fingers on hands. It is strange to look at but it makes it so intriguing.

The entire torso is intriguing. It is upright, like a man's, but he leans forwards, shifting his weight more to his front; he could stand on all fours. The torso is lean and shaped like that of a wolf.

. . .

Then the last thing my eyes go to... the face.

Since the fur has been fading from black to gray to white the tips of the ears are a pure white. The nose and mouth are stretched forward, creating the muzzle. In fact everything is stretched a little. It's as though a limited amount of skin is trying to cover a limitless amount of power.

The overall size of ...him is over six feet. If he stands up straight, at the moment he is crouched over, almost trying to hide himself from view, he would most certainly be over seven feet tall.

My eyes go to his eyes.

The eyes. I know those eyes. Each one is a pool of molten silver, the traces of gold swirling around like a never ending torrent of water. Everything, everything curls together in my mind.

"Troy?" My voice seems small against the mass that he takes up in the room.

There is a silence, filled only by the rain that is picking up and coming into the broken window. I sit up a little, looking at him. I'm sure that it is, in fact, Troy.

He nods. Once.

Then he leaves the room, stopping at the doorframe to look at me once more. He eyes. . . I know them so well, but they hide so many mysteries.

Slowly, I get off the bed and follow him downstairs. When Troy leads me to a different room, where the window is intact and the rain isn't coming in. All four of the Irish wolfhounds watch us.

They've known all along.

It is unreal and surreal to watch him in this form. It strains my mind and my body. But I handle it, even as the waves of exhaustion wash over me.

My eyes flutter and don't see the details of the room. I only see a bed and then the events of the day collapse on top of me. A small moan is released from my lungs as I sink towards the floor.

The last thing I remember is fur. . . And warmth all around me.