(MxM) Tales of a Shifter (P4)- The Blood

Chapter 53 - Warding

Chapter 53

Like a fire fed pure gasoline, the energy inside, the heat, a burning power, flooded his system. The bite of it was nearly painful...and the hunger was a ragging beast that lit up his skin with white strange light.

But with his arms and hands glowing an unholy white and tingling with voracious power Brandon brought up his leg and slammed it back into Jacobs's right knee.

Brandon felt Jacobs's bones crumple, and as Jacob stumbled to the side, put off balance and no doubt in agony, Brandon spun counter-clockwise, and brought a jaw shattering elbow to rest at Jacobs face. Meat and something soft at Jacobs's temple moved and with a roar Jacobs face screwed up in pain and shock.

Brandon didn't feel anything in those moments....but pure energy.

It burned. IT healed. IT took his breath away. It hurt as it always did to feel the bottomless chasm of fire crackling throughout his system. Wild, hungry, and Greedy. Yet as unhurried as a drop of rain across glass. Every part of him surrendered to it, because in that moment he couldn't fight it. He couldn't loathe it. He couldn't lock it down.

In that moment it was all he had....and perhaps he was all it wanted. Energy bound through his veins and fingertips, so much that he felt he was floating, small discharges of bright whte light crawled across his fingers and down his body like little electrical worms running out into the world then dissipating into the atmosphere around him.

Every essence around him Brandon became aware of all at once. Jacob and Hovel and the Ghoul, Erin and Drin and the baby. Brandon even felt the dwindling life that still stuck to the dried out flowers resting out in the hallways by the front door more then ten feet away.

In seconds he knew so much. Too much. It was overwhelming. It was terrifying. It was everything. It was the flame. It was the flames every feeling and want. It was the flames insatiable hunger turned outwards for the second time...in years. And Brandon could only pray that it remained locked within his flesh, dancing at his fingertips.

Firmly beneath his flesh....and that the flame didn't rush out and burn the entire house alive. Because just as he knew exactly where Hovel was without looking and he heard Erin's heart beat in the back of his head.

Brandon knew that he also wanted to eat all of them alive. He would enjoy nothing more. He could taste the energy burning at the tips of his awareness.

A feast surrounded him.

But beyond the hunger that called to him, was the anger and the hatred and the pure joy of feeling flesh and bone breaking. Jacobs bones breaking.

Brandon didn't know how he did what he did, or how the energy inside of him worked, but he used it as he had before. To make him faster and stronger. And on pure instinct, instinct that had kept him alive, he took apart his friend with a surgical precession that left little to mercy.

Brandon slammed a second and third fist into Jacobs face and body, bearing down on him, with a power and speed that Brandon never should have possessed. In those seconds everything boiled down to putting Jacob out of commission.

But like the seasoned fighter that he was, Jacob took each of the crippling blows in stride, only stumbling back further, but not falling to the ground. Instead Brandon could sense Jacobs's body tightening, his fists beginning to close, as he prepared to attack.

Jacob stepped into the next blow that would have crumpled a lesser Shifters lungs, and he geared up to strike. In a few moves he would subdue Brandon. Brandon may have been energized by the Flame....perhaps he was stronger and faster with it boiling in his veins like a parasitic poison, but....Brandon was still only a mortal man. The strength of a beast would almost always be more then he could handle in a straight hand to hand battle.