hands out. “What do I do?”
“Concentrate on how they felt, what they looked like when they first
emerged. Channel the experience,” Jaxson suggested.
That was when Casey’s friends had taunted me. I remembered the
burning sensation in my fingertips. I pushed with my mind, trying to make
them come out. When nothing happened, I tried flexing all the muscles in my
fingers. Frustration began to choke me. “It doesn’t work!”
Jaxson’s eyes burned into me. “Often, we start to shift because of an
emotion. Anger. Think about what happened that made them emerge the first
time.”
I groaned inwardly but closed my eyes and tried to recall the faces of the
two pricks at the bonfire. I replayed their taunts and derision and inuendo.
Rage crept across my neck and shoulders, and my muscles tensed, but no
claws emerged.
That wasn’t the first time, the voice in my head said.
It was.
But then I thought of the twisted horror that had called me from my house
in the night—the noctith demon. Had I clawed it?
Not that. Look deeper.
No.
Deeper, the voice insisted.
I fought with all my will, but the thing inside of me forced an image of
Billy into my mind. His face was frozen in horror and disbelief. Blood poured
from his chest and across my clawed hands.
My eyes flew wide as pain erupted through my fingertips. My claws
ripped free, and I stumbled back and cried out in surprise. Drops of blood
trickled down my hands where my new talons had emerged, but the skin
around them had already healed.
Blood-covered claws.
Stomach churning and near to vomiting, I bent over and tried to think of