My head was swimming. My stomach roiled, threatening to empty its contents. In a blink of an eye, my surroundings had morphed from a blood soaked battleground to a dimly lit, hot and dingy room.

Sweat dripped down my neck and back, and my entire body felt as though it had been through the rack. I faintly realized I'd lost consciousness at some point, though I couldn't recollect when or how.

I was hanging from the ceiling.

The thought pierced the haze in my mind. A tug on my wrists confirmed it. My wrists were burning, as if the manacles were made of silver. That was not good. Why would the manacles be silver? But it was so difficult to stay alert. All I wanted to do was close my eyes and go to sleep. My head lolled to the side.

No!

With gritted teeth, I forced my eyes open and tried to focus on my surroundings again. Old stone walls with fire torches hung along them. The flames' shadows danced on the ground. It was so damn hot. Too hot. The heat was not helping me get my shit together.

Focus, damn it.

Despite the dizziness, I looked around. The only door was a metallic one behind me, and it was closed. My ankles were also bound to the ground, the shackles stinging my skin upon contact.

Great, just great. Why would the killer use silver chains? Either he knew I wasn't really human, or he did it as a force of habit.

I thought of the other crime scenes. It took me a few seconds to get my head clear enough to remember that he'd only used rope to bind his other victims. Which meant he suspected I was not human. Fantastic.

With this much silver in direct contact with my skin, I couldn't actively use my magic. It had retreated deep within me, into my heart, where it was safe.

The longer I was exposed to silver, the more tired and weak I would get. I needed to act now. Think, Elle, think.

I was alone in the room. Another glance at the door revealed it had a small opening with bars I could see nothing beyond.

I looked at the shackles. They were embedded in the ceiling and the floor. Only the manacles looked silver, though. The chains were steel. Not that it helped.

Further pulling and tugging on them only got me more burns. My skin turned a lovely shade of dark purple.

My weapons were gone. I was in the t-shirt I had under my sweater and my pants, my feet bare. Well, at least they let me keep my clothes. Being butt naked while hanging from the ceiling was not a very enjoyable thought.

I always strapped a small steel knife on my bare thigh under my pants. It was still there. Good, at least one thing went right.

Obviously, I couldn't get out of this little cell on my own. And I had no idea what awaited me outside. I certainly hoped Arthur and the others were looking for me.

Hope was a dangerous thing. The lone girl who grew up in the woods, and then later spent a life as an outsider with humans, shied away from the idea of embracing that hope.

I had always been alone, I had been brought up to count on myself, never lean on anyone else. The thought that there was someone out there, right now, looking for me was so foreign as to be an illusion.

Whatever the case, I had to act on the supposition that there would be no help from anyone.

Staying put while my wrists and ankles rubbed against the silver would only make me weaker, and I didn't know when my captor would drop by for a visit. It was better to get him out now while I was still relatively strong.

"Hello!" I was parched, my throat dry and scratchy, but I found a way to call out loud. "Anyone?! Hello!"

I already felt faint. I groaned, throwing my head back, "you know, it's rude to leave your guests hanging off walls." and if you just take away the damn silver, I'll burn you to a crisp.

A few seconds later, the door behind me clanged open. I looked over my shoulder and the person who walked in was not what I expected.

A human.

The male was around thirty years old, lanky, his skin so awfully pale. After what I'd seen in the anchor, I suspected it was the loss of blood that caused his excessive pallor.

His nondescript white shirt hung off his frame, all sharp bones. He held a bottle of water in his hand. Stopping in front of me, he unscrewed the bottle and wordlessly lifted it to my lips.

Despite the purple bruises under his brown eyes, his gaze had a zealot glint that sent shivers down my spine.

"How did you get here?" I asked instead of taking a sip like he wanted me to, "are you alright?"

He frowned, looking at me like I was crazy, "Of course I'm alright. Drink."

I was thirsty, but I didn't know if that water was tampered with. A dose of silver in my bloodstream, even a small one, would make it very difficult to use my magic. If I even managed to get rid of the shackles.

"How did you get here?"

His expression turned into one of impatience, "I chose to serve my lady out of my own volition," he said, his eyes fanatic. "You are honored to even be in her presence. Now drink!"

He gripped my face in one hand and forced the bottle to my lips. I struggled, but given my limited motion range, he still succeeded in getting most of the water in my mouth. Some of it slipped down my throat, burning its way down and settling like fire in my stomach. I was right. It was laced with silver.

He splashed the rest of the water on my face. I dodged, but it still touched my cheek and neck. As soon as the man left, locking the door behind him, I dry heaved in an attempt to get the silvered water out. It burned on its way back up, leaving my mouth and throat sore and raw. But I heaved again and again until I was out of breath, until every last drop of it was out of my stomach.

Still, traces of it burned my insides and my skin. My face, neck and chest felt like someone was dragging nails over them.

More scars to add to my collection. Lovely.

The encounter with the man told me two things. One, he was here of his own free will, and two, my kind host was a "lady". So the demon was female. This was unexpected since female demons were rare.

To tell the truth, the thought that the killer could be female hadn't even crossed our minds. I wondered if Arthur suspected it.

I was breathing heavily, exhaustion taking over me again. Fortunately, I didn't have to wait long to meet the esteemed "lady". About fifteen minutes after the man left, the door squeaked open.

I knew it wasn't a human before I glanced over my shoulder. The same aura of powerful malice that kidnapped me, and this time with a hint of the energy I'd sensed at the anchor. The seven feet tall creature walked with unhurried steps, coming to a halt in front of me. The cloak was gone, her entire body plain for me to see.

The human man had told the truth. It was, indeed, a she. The female anatomy visible in the curve of her breasts and the dip between her thighs. Her skin was a rough looking bluish gray, covered with tiny scales that were only visible up close. She was butt naked. I felt uncomfortable looking anywhere other than her face. And what a face that was.

The light gray spiral horns sprouting from her forehead looked impressive, like those of an antelope. Her bulging eyes put me in mind of a snake, with no whites, the pupils oblong shaped, black slits in the center of bright yellow irises. Her nose was mere slits, flat on her terrifying face.

Ed, the Order's demonology expert, was right about her jaws. The entire lower part of her face was strong and large. And she had more than four canines. When she smiled, at least I thought she was smiling, her teeth were close to those of a shark. Pointed and yellowish. Disgusting. The canines were so long that the lower ones protruded from her thin mouth when it closed.

I wasn't used to judging people by their appearances, but this one was so damn ugly it was almost impossible to look at her without wincing.

I met her eerie eyes. Crap. Did her eyes just nictitate? Well that wasn't creepy at all.

Her height meant I had to crane my neck to meet her gaze. Not comfortable. But considering the position I was in, comfort was my last concern.

The only thing remotely beautiful about her was her hair. A silky curtain of pure silver that brushed the curve of her waist.

Her head tilted to the side as she muttered something in a foreign tongue, the words a hissing sound.

"You know," I said, my voice raspy from my harsh vomiting, "this is a very rude way to welcome a guest."

Head tilting to the other side, she replied in english, though the words were choppy, "curious, curious. Human and not human. What are you?"

The girl who wants to gauge your eyes out. "Why am I here?"

She stepped closer. I tried moving my head out of the way, but she got a good grip on my jaw anyway. Her long, black claws dug into my cheeks, drawing blood. She leaned down, sniffed at the pulse in my neck.

"Mhm, delicious," Her voice was scratchy and high, very unpleasant.

"Um, actually I'm pretty sure I taste horrible. Believe me, I would know."

She licked the blood on my cheek, her putrid breath making me gag. She hissed, letting go of my face roughly and spit to the side. Thank goodness, my blood wasn't to her taste.

"Silver," she hissed, then grinned at me, her teeth a monstrosity, "no matter. You are delicious."

My relief was short lived, it was only the silver that put her off. Damn it. This was not part of the plan. I was counting on the killer treating me as a human. There should've been no silver involved, nothing to hinder my magic. I was screwed.

"Where are we?" I asked her, "is this an anchor?"

She threw her head back and laughed, the sound reminding me of a hyena cackle, "anchor. I tricked the High Lord's progeny. Tut, tut." she shook her head.

"So where are we?"

Her smile still intact, she stroked her nails on the column of my throat, "no matter to you. You will be gone very soon."

Then she took hold of my suspended arm and closed her jaws around my bicep.

I screamed.

The pain was unbelievable. It wasn't just the force of the bite. Her saliva felt like molten lava pouring on my flesh. It burned like hell.

After what felt like hours but was only minutes in truth, the demon pulled back. Her jaw glimmered a pure red, the yellow of her eyes suffused with red. She laughed.

"Oh! What a surprise!" her eyes twinkled with wonder and curiosity, "how can you be? Your blood should not be."

Well, since my secret was out. "How did you know I wasn't human?" I asked, barely able to get the words past my lips. The blood trickling down my arm was warm against my sweat chilled skin.

"I saw you through my vassal." I assumed she referred to the demon we'd captured. She continued, "you were very, very... not human, yet not immortal. Now I know. Curious, so curious."

This time when she bit my other arm, I braced for it. I fought the haze of the pain through gritted teeth. I needed to keep my head clear if I were to have a chance of survival.

She was breaking the skin, sucking blood from the wound then biting off chunks of my flesh. The sound of her loud chewing had bile rising in my throat. I closed my eyes, unwilling to see the damage. Blood was running freely from both my arms when she finished an eternity later. I could heal fast, but wounds like these would take a long time, and my body was already struggling to deal with the silver.

"Mhm...very, very good." the demon said in obvious delight, I opened my eyes, vision blurry and unfocused, "I never thought of trying the flesh of a fae, maybe I should... then again, maybe it's only your flesh. You're a very special fae after all, are you not?"

She laughed, the sound rubbing against my senses like sandpaper. My magic was a coiling energy in my chest, lashing out only to find silver and curl back in again. Without the silver, it would've flared into life without my conscious control.

"Magic does not like being caged. Eventually, it will break out in a fury you cannot control."

Arthur's words flashed through my mind. And the room spun and spun until it wasn't there anymore. I passed out.

***

I came to with a gasp, the knowledge that danger was coming a heavy weight in my guts. The demon appeared in my distorted field of vision a second later, the only feature I could make out was her hair, and the bright red streaked yellow of her eyes. She said something, her voice sounding as if underwater.

I couldn't even keep my head up anymore, my throat was parched. It was so hot, but I was shivering from the cold. A distant, still rational part of my brain realized the blood loss must be worse than I thought. I could no longer feel my wrists and ankles, the silver having no doubt burnt through the layers of skin and flesh.

Water. I would kill for a drop of water. The demon's frame disappeared from my view, and I felt a burst of pain in my right thigh. Pain. So much pain.

A silent scream from my lips, gurgled words and curses that made no sense to my hazed mind. A disgusting sound of wet chomping. Warm blood running down my legs.

My magic, whining, wailing. For the first time in my life, I could almost feel it shivering in my heart. I could feel every drop of its wild energy struggling to break free, heating up my blood in an abnormal way.

Cold. Hot. Cold. Hot. My head swam. Before I lost all thought, I felt another burst of pain on my left thigh. But there was so much pain that I could no longer feel.

***

"Come on, lass. There's nothing else you can do for it."

I looked up at uncle Robert, my arms holding the dead squirrel I had nursed through an injury. Except all my fussing was in vain. The small creature had died after a long grueling week of suffering. Uncle Robert had been adamant we should put it out of its misery when I first brought it home, but I hadn't let him do it.

"You were right," I said through my tears, an eight year old coming face to face with the cruelty of life, "we should've put it down, I only made it suffer more."

Uncle Robert hunkered down next to me with a deep sigh, the lines on his face the same ever since I could remember. He was turned into a vampire when he was in his late forties, and had kept the deep grooves on his cheeks and in the corners of his eyes after the transformation.

His dark brown eyes, warm and caring, held mine for a long minute. He brushed my cheeks clean with his fingers. "There was a chance it would survive. As long as there's life, there's hope. And you saw that. It is sad that the poor thing couldn't make it, but you gave it a chance to fight. That's what you should remember."

"Even if it suffered?" I said, my voice watery and fat tears falling off my eyes. Uncle Robert brushed them off again with the gentle hands of a father and smiled at me.

"Even if it suffered. I'm sure it would appreciate your efforts."

Uncle Robert helped me dig a hole under a tree, put the squirrel's small body in it, and held me while I bawled my eyes out.

As long as there's life, there's hope.

***

I lost count of how many times I'd lost consciousness. I lost count of how many times I woke up to the pain of my flesh being torn apart. I lost count how many times I woke up to the feeling of being choked up with silver-laced water.

My vision was blurry, edged with darkness, and all my senses were fogged up. Blood ran freely, forming a puddle on the ground beneath me. I was not healing.

My body was shutting down.

I was going to die alone in this shithole. I would have laughed if I had the strength to. How fitting. Alone even in death.

I didn't know how much time had passed since I was taken. Hours? Days? More? But in my sporadic moments of wakefulness when the pain got too bad, I remembered the last days before I was brought to this hell.

I wondered what Wes was doing? I would've loved to spend more time with that beautiful, loving soul. A gentle heart in a giant body. The kind dog would have people who cared for him to his last days.

And Irene. At least I would die knowing someone would think of me once in a while. I died after knowing what having a friend, a real friend, felt like.

I wished I had the chance to see Arthur without his cloak, I thought in my hazy mind. He must be breathtaking. How powerful was he, truly? I would never know.

A heavy throbbing in my chest. A different kind of pain than the one currently in my calf. Warmth that spread from my heart and reached out.

Through blurry vision, I saw the demon leave my calf, stand up and step back. Then she barked orders, her voice muddied up to my ears.

"...more silver...powers..."

The sound of my labored breathing was louder than anything else. I couldn't take any more silver. My insides already felt like they went through a shredder.

"No..." I moaned. No more silver. The throbbing in my chest intensified, the heat tried spreading farther.

Claws on my face, holding my head up. Yellow and scarlet eyes staring at mine. This time her words reached me.

"It's a shame, but you're too much of a risk to keep alive. And I'm tiring of your flesh," she licked her lips, " Human flesh. Yes. That is much better. More pure."

"No..." I squeaked out again. Not another human. She couldn't take another innocent life. She couldn't put another woman through this hell.

A flame in my chest, my heart burning up from the inside. I faintly felt my magic. A pulsing heat, growing bigger.

The demon's eyes glanced down at my chest, widening slightly before she barked something in a foreign language. And my magic. It grew larger and larger. The pleasant warmth spread through my veins, moved with my blood. The energy one I had to keep inside all my life.

But I was tired. I was so tired. I just wanted to close my eyes and sleep.

My magic wrenched, a violent tug that made my back arch and felt like a fist squeezing my heart and lungs.

What's happening?

Before I could wonder anymore, a human man was in front of me, holding a bottle to my lips and forcing me to drink again. The silver in the water poured down my throat like liquid fire, scorching my insides and making my magic retreat deep within. But I could still feel it, like I had never felt it before. It was so wild and alive and angry. So protective and powerful.

I'm so sorry you can't defend me.

The demon came closer, a smug smile on her grotesque face.

"Good bye, Fae," she said before thrusting her clawed hand in my stomach with a sickening sound. I gasped at the pain, too exhausted to scream. So much pain.

"As long as there's life, there's hope."

I'm so sorry uncle Robert. His warm brown eyes smiled at me, his big hearted laugh cloaking me in warmth. The memory made the pain bearable.

The demon moved her hand inside my chest until she closed it around my beating heart.

That was when the tides turned.

A knowing inside my head, my magic stretching its limbs from where it had been hiding in my heart. The energy licked against the demon's grip. Hope blossomed in my heart. I could do something to keep this nightmare from occurring to someone else.

I wouldn't survive it. But I was dead anyway. So I listened to that faint instinct, looked the demon in the eyes and smiled, blood coating my tongue.

I saw the exact moment the demon knew she made a mistake. She tried pulling her hand back, but my magic had gotten hold of her. Punishing her for what she had done. All the anger and the hate I felt towards her fueled my magic. It flowed in a sudden, strong burst of wild blue.

Beautiful blue flames filled my vision. They engulfed the demon's body, swallowing her screams and reducing her to ash in a blaze of sapphire.

The demon was gone.

And I burned. The fire spread from my chest slowly but surely, until it covered my entire body, until it brushed the silver manacles around my ankles and wrists.

The magic couldn't touch it, but its heat sure did. The shackles simply ceased to exist in a matter of seconds. My flames were never a worldly thing.

I dropped to the floor, losing any resemblance of control I had on my magic. The flames, no longer hampered by the silver, fanned out around me. The ground underneath me kept sinking and sinking, and I realized the heat must be melting the stone.

My vision was all blue. The magic rushed out of me like a trapped bird finally out of its cage.

That was when I realized I really was going to die. I no longer felt my arms and legs. I was badly injured. The heat didn't hurt me but it cauterized my wounds. However, the silver was still in my system, and if I didn't get help in a matter of hours I was going to die.

There was no way my flames would die down in hours. I could feel the energy leaving me bit by bit, and I knew it would be a long while before it stopped burning.

After it stopped burning, it would take a long time for anyone to come close to me. The remaining heat would be unbearable.

I only hoped Arthur had evacuated the city. Even if I was underground, these flames would burn miles around me.

I smiled, drifting into unconsciousness, embraced in the warmth of my powers. Well, at least I took the damn demon down with me.