Dance with the Devil

Chapter 2

Julia stood in the small creek that trickled through the forest behind her school. It was a slow-moving creek and as she felt it swirl around her calves, she glanced up at the sky, at the sun now shrouded in clouds. A slight chill filled the air and she found herself grateful for her resistance to the cold. The mud of the riverbank squelched between her toes and the wind in the trees stirred the forest to life. The clouds slid past the sun and she felt its warmth on her shoulders.

She felt the stirring in her blood as the power begged for her touch but just as she had for so many years, she ignored it. The memory of her mum's teachers a painful echo to her soul. She could admit though, that she wanted to. Wanted to use the power, wanted to let it loose. She would have had that crash not happened.

Regardless, the pain of ignoring the power was insignificant to the tranquility the elements gave her. After dealing with the ongoing monotonous tone of her history teacher, it was needed.

Mr Toranki was a middle-aged man. He was short, stout, not blessed with good and was balding prematurely. The only thing he genuinely liked about his life was his job and the cat that would occasionally wander into his yard for the sole purpose of receiving food. In short, he was a pitiful, disgusting, little man, and one not worth anyone's time.

For, you see, he only liked his job because of the girls who, much to Julia's disgust never complained about his leering gazes and inappropriate touches. Some even encouraged him to receive better grades in his class. Julia, on the other hand, had reported him the first time his hand touched her without permission, and every time after that.

After a while, the school began to doubt her claims since no others came forward. So, the next time he touched her without permission, thinking he was invincible, she punched him in the nose. It broke and she was gifted with 1 month with a substitute taking over the class and 1 full weeks' suspension over assaulting a faculty member.

Now, he never touched her and even became more discrete about the other girls. There were times though, like today that his obvious dislike affected Julia. Made the anger boil and she if she wasn't careful enough, the power would spill over the edge and just like when she was six and started a fire.

So, she really didn't care about his yelling and screaming as she left the classroom and even saluted him with a single finger on her way out. She'd rather deal with the 30-minute detention he'd screamed she now had than accidentally burn him and half the school.

"So, this is where you hide out." A voice asked from the trees.

"What's it to you, stalker-boy?" she responded, unsurprised. She'd known he was there for a while now. His presence, or aura as her mum once called it, was larger than most of the others she'd seen and whilst she could tell he did his best to mask it, he was still a novice.

"Simple curiosity is all. I'd seen you wander down here a fair few times now and this time, curiosity won out." His answer was simple enough and had he been a normal human, she'd have been satisfied. But he wasn't and, she wasn't. For a moment, she pondered the best way to broach the subject and after swift and careful consideration, she opted for the blunt and to the point approach.

"Why are you masking your aura?" his widened eyes told her enough. Told her that he knew what he was doing, that he knew what he was.

"You could tell?"

"Yes. But you already suspected I could. Didn't you?" his gaze became wary, partly predatory. She thought it was cute. That he thought he was a predator here was adorable because, despite her size, this scene was a lion cub looking up at the matriarch of the pack and not knowing what he was looking at.