Page 63 of Chase Me

She was doing the right thing for both of them. She had to believe that.

Jakob would awaken in a few hours and be mad at her for leaving but would probably be on his merry way to his mission of finding the relic soon after.

She shoved the food into her pockets and walked out into the open air. She decided against going toward the town she had found last time. There were woods not far from the other side of the garden. Any other time in her life she would have been nervous about going into a dark forest by herself, but her new abilities, especially the earth element, comforted her. She could call upon the trees and flowers to befriend and protect her.

She imagined an angry apple orchard hurling fruit at any enemies like the ones in the Wizard of Oz.

The only obstacle between her and escape was a pond that contained a very large blue sleeping dragon smack dab in the center of it. She hurried past Ky as quietly and quickly as she could while asking the water to gently rock him.

She was sure she'd been caught when he snorted and snuffled behind her and she broke into a run. Nothing followed her as she dove into the dark forest.

Or had something? She glanced back aware of the feeling of eyes on her and ducked behind a tree.

Ky hadn't moved.

She must have imagined the rustling. Simply because she could now call on the elements didn't mean there wasn't something else out here with her besides earth, wind, water, and fire. The sooner she could get through the woods and find civilization, the better.

Something resembling a path opened up before her. She thanked Mother Nature for showing her a way forward.

Some moonlight shone through the treetops, but there were more dark places than she cared to acknowledge. She had seen the beasts Jakob called the demon dragons appear out of those kinds of shadows.

The sound of twigs breaking behind her sent her running again along the path. She heard nothing else. In fact, the forest had gone too quiet.

Someone or something was definitely in here with her.

She swallowed down the sour taste of fear in the back of her throat and concentrated on the path. A flash of black whipped across the trail in front of her too fast for her eyes to track.

Then she felt a burst of wind when something ran behind her a moment later.

Oh God, she was being hunted.

Hopefully, demon dragons were not as smart as velociraptors.

She heard a screech off to the left and something black andwinged fell from the tree above her. There was more than one.

She was running faster now than she ever had in her entire life. But that wasn't saying much. She was no track star. Working out had never exactly been high on her priority list.

If she survived the night, she was counting this as all the exercise she needed for a month or more. Her heart and lungs were pretty damn mad at her at the moment.

A black, clawed arm reached for her and she threw up a wall of dirt to block it.

Duh. She needed to use her powers. She couldn’t afford to stop and close her eyes to concentrate so she hoped she wouldn't screw this up and create more of a barrier for herself.

This next part was going to hurt.

Ciara made herself remember being held in Jakob's arms. The burn of emotion from that memory stretched out all around her and she called upon the ground and trees to form a BBW-sized tunnel she could run through protected.

The forest bent to her will and dirt and branches fused together forming an archway a few feet wide that surrounded her as she ran.

The creatures outside scratched and scrambled at her shield and too many of their claws managed to poke through.

In minutes she was covered in scratches and she wasn’t sure how much longer she could keep running this way. She pressed a hand under her ribs and did her best to breathe through the pain of the stitch forming there.

If she didn’t find help or shelter soon, she’d be done for.

The rasps of her heavy breathing made it hard to hear much else, but the whistle of a train somewhere ahead wasloud enough to break through. She listened hard but didn't hear the chugga-chugga of the train moving along the tracks. That had to mean there was a station ahead.

If she could only get to that train, maybe she could escape the demon dragons. Or maybe they would attack all of the people on the train. She had to risk it.

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