*****
Lionel stalked through the chilly woods. The light had gone, presumably after the others, except for the silver blue of the moon outlining the black trees all around. All his life he’d been hunting alien beings, ghosts, psychic powers, but he’d never gotten close. Unverifiable accounts, fuzzy photos, the odd artefact that even he knew could have come from anywhere. But tonight he had seen monsters and powers that were definitely real, and he wasn’t going to let them get away.
Fallen twigs and leaves crunched under his heels, but then he froze. There were times when even people without psychic powers could feel there were eyes on them. In this case, a very dark pair of eyes that perfectly mirrored the night around them. He looked up to see Tenley above, stood up on the tip of a branch.
“Why are you following me?” She asked.
“Following you?” Lionel answered, raising an eyebrow incredulously. “I have no idea what you mean… I was simply running from…”
“You are lying.”
She had him there, he thought. “Well… perhaps there’s no point in trying to deceive you,” Lionel said, resting himself on a fallen tree trunk. “You’re… not entirely human, are you?”
Tenley grimaced, a little pain and confusion momentarily on her face before she answered, “I don’t know what that means. I’m just a kid you know.”
“Right,” he supposed philosophers over the years had somewhat muddied what it actually meant to be human. “Let me put it like this; When I was a young journalist, just starting out, I met a girl in India about your age. One of the youngest people ever to achieve a black belt. But, she couldn’t do half the things you can do I’d wager.”
Ten shrugged, “probably not.”
“So, exactly how strong are you?”
“I don’t know, exactly,” she shrugged again. “Strong enough, I guess.”
A light shaft suddenly pierced the canopy, striking Lionel’s eyes. As they adjusted he saw that the branch on which Tenley had stood was now vacant.
“Little girl?” He said quietly, standing and scanning around. “Little girl, where did you go?” He continued to circle, the white light orbiting somewhere overhead as he pulled down and wrung his cap. “She’s been taken,” he thought, eyes looking to the light above. “By them… dammit!” He threw the cap at the ground. “Why do they never take me!”
“I’m here,” Tenley said from the side, causing Lionel to jump. The light started moving away as she peered and tilted her head curiously. “Are you feeling okay?”
Lionel tripped over a fallen branch as he backed away, but nevertheless tried to maintain his composure. “Yes… I-I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
“You just seem kind of jittery.”
“Well it’s been a very stressful night…”
The girl silently stepped closer, her dark eyes shimmering and bright somehow as she lowered her head and said in a low voice, “You really need to stay still. Very, very still.”
“You wouldn’t…” he stammered, but as he looked into her eyes he saw that she wasn’t looking back at him. “The creature?” He gasped, and she very slightly nodded. “It’s behind me, isn’t it? Oh god…”
He tightly shut his eyes, as if he thought doing so would end the dream and when opened them again he’d be back home in his armchair and a glass of whiskey. Instead when they opened he was still exactly where he was and Tenley had yet again vanished. In a moment of panic, he turned, straight into the bulbous head of the beast as it lurched out of the shadows. Or so it seemed; he still had at least a few seconds before it reached him. Time to think about his life, the mistakes he’d made, the good times, bad, the legacy he would leave behind… or actually forget all of that. As the creature began to charge, it’s head turned as a missile rammed into the monster’s side.
It tumbled several times, coming to rest on its feet and raising its mouth only to be knocked back by a piston like blow from Tenley’s left hand. It lashed out its tongue which the girl just avoided, but the creature bought itself time to rear itself and attempt to swipe with its claws. She avoided those as well, ducking underneath and shoulder charging the beast, forcing it back against a thick trunk whereupon she drew back her other hand as far as she could and launched it forward and through to its heart.