The Werewolf [COMPLETE]

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            The phone number you have tried to reach is unavailable for— Please leave a message after the— Message recorded.

            He dropped his hand from his ear, brought his fist in front of him and opened his fingers. He stared at the blank screen in his palm, lighting the night, lighting the the treehouse and the forest, lighting his face. The light was so bright. He stared for as long as he could, for as long as it would shine, as long as it would flash and flicker, but he knew how it would happen. The light would first weaken, the glow would dull, the white would become grey and the grey would become black. Then the light would nap, it would wait to be needed and used, turned on and off, and again turned on and off. Until the light would finally die, it would sleep, it would slumber, and never be awoken again, and he couldn't let that happen.

            The light was still bright when he powered off his phone. After the screen had turned black, he didn't smash the phone against the wall, he didn't throw the phone out of the window, he let it slip from his fingers and he let it fall to the wooden boards. He absently felt the crash of the object on the floor, his body sensed it, his ears and his eyes and his touch sensed it, but he did not.

            His mind was already someplace else. He was following the steps of a girl in the snow, he was in the woods behind her, soundless, sightless, absent. He was waiting. He was waiting for her.

            She was holding the flame in her hands, roaming and prowling between the trees, tracking a scent, hunting a prey. Her skin was burning brighter than the orange sun under the radiance of the candle. Her body was striped in long black streaks by the shadows of the trunks and the branches. And the flame. The flame was licking the glass, it was licking its chops, its claws and its paws, just about to pounce.

            She stopped. She stopped in front of a tree. She let the glass fall, it crashed, it blasted and it burst into thousands of pieces, freeing its captive. The fire skimmed the roots, stroke the trunk, embraced the branches and the leaves; and the entire tree blazed up in the night, burning red, orange, and yellow, sparking and sparkling. The flames were climbing, climbing higher and always higher. The smoke was rising to the sky, to the clouds and to the treehouse.

            He watched the fire dash up the trunk, devouring and destroying everything. The fire wanting more, the fire getting more. The fire coming to him, running, racing, coursing up to him. He didn't falter, he didn't stagger or stumble back.

            He looked down, he looked at the light, the bright light, only the bright light.

            And he closed his eyes.

            The Defender was dead.