I staggered from the parking lot towards the nearest of the apartment buildings, I needed to get a change of clothes and look at my wounds. As I moved along the side of the building, I felt a hunger growing inside of me. Not a hunger for food, a different kind of hunger that I was unused to feeling. The strength of that hunger, that need grew faster the more steps I took. The burn of it filled every corner of my body. My eyes lost the ability to send my brain information I could understand. What images my brain deciphered were something out of a nightmare.

Thick fog drifting in a directionless wind. At times the fog thinned out, not enough to see anything distinctly but there was a change. Muted red hues of color flickered across the fog somehow casting shadows that danced with the movement of the mist.

I could hear faint sounds, muffled as they were by the mists around me. There were sounds coming from all around me. I could hear shrieks of terror that seemed to embolden me. People running made me want to chase them. Grunts of pain that brought me pleasure. There was somebody laughing that sounded a lot like me.

“That’s it,” a voice full of malice said. An evil voice my prey didn’t seem to hear, or they were too scared of me to pay any heed to the words echoing through my hunting grounds. “Give into your needs. Consume them all.”

I could smell the stench of flesh burning, but there was more than that on fire. There was fire all around me. I was an apex predator, and the smell of fear led me to my prey. The smell of blood and entrails assaulted my nose, and I relished those scents. It didn’t matter whether they hid, they ran, or they fought back, all of them fed my hunger. I laughed as I gorged myself on their fear.

When I had sated that hunger within me, I staggered away from that trail of destruction I had created. Heedless of where I walked or the distance I covered; it was the stumbling path of a drunkard. In that instant I was drunk from the euphoria of that gory feast. Then darkness overtook me, and I fell to the earth face first in a deep slumber.

“That was quite the display. You made certain groups sit up and take notice, and now they have their own hunters after you,” the voice was feminine and angry. Even though I was exhausted I came awake in an instant.

I pushed myself to my knees, my body aching as if I had just spent all day doing full speed tackling drills. The owner of that voice was sitting in from me perched on a large rock. Her hair, dark as ebony hung down and framed her face. There was no mistaking her eyes, which were utterly devoid of life. Those eyes were the color of blood. Her clothes were form fitting and a shade lighter than her hair. Against the trees surrounding us she stood out like a sore thumb.

“Who are you?” I demanded as I looked at her, and then felt the evil rolling off her in waves.

“You may call me Angel,” she mustered all the disdain she could and fed it into that “you”. Her words dripped with irony and a small smile played across her lips at her joke. Clearly, she was not afraid of me, nor did she hold me in much regard at all.

“A demon’s first feeding is not supposed to be that dramatic. It draws too much of the wrong attention. Who is your progenitor? I don’t feel their mark on you,” the words flowed from her mouth.

“Demon? Progenitor?” I hoped my confusion was evident. I had no clue what she was talking about.

“The one that tempted you. The one that made you fall deeper into the blackness of your soul. The one that made you become a demon.”

That information had not made things any clearer to me. I was confident this woman who appeared to like the goth look was trying to feed me a line of garbage. I mean everyone knows that demons don’t exist, they are a thing of myth and legend.

“You aren’t making any sense lady. Go away and leave me alone.”

I climbed to my feet and turned away from her then started walking. Once more I had no direction in mind, I needed to get away from that whack job. After a couple of steps, I turned to make sure she wasn’t going to follow me. The woman was gone. Angel, or whatever her name really was, had made no sound when she left. There was no sound coming from around me either.

I kept my head on a swivel looking and listening for that woman, but I didn’t detect any of those signs. It was like she had vanished into thin air. What I did notice though, was that the woods were entirely devoid of ANY signs of life. There were no sounds of birds or squirrels or any other critter I would have expected to be here. Nothing, until I came to the edge of the trees.

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Down a slight slope from me the torched remains of a dozen cars sat in a parking lot. Easily that many more had sustained some damage. Two apartment buildings had been razed. Besides the remnants of household appliances very little else remained. Another building had lost its upper floors to the blaze. Dozens of firefighters worked to extinguish hotspots in the buildings and among the vehicles. A dozen of the bright red firetrucks were spread around the scene with their hoses snaking all over the place. Police held back a mob of press and other onlookers making sure the firemen had no interference.

In a state of disbelief, I watched the scene for a few minutes. Understanding was slow in coming, but it did come. When that understanding came, it was in the form of brief replays of nightmares I had created.

*flick*

I crashed through a patio screen door. The family inside looked at me in surprise and fear. I didn’t know what they saw, but their fear was plastered upon their faces. The first scream didn’t happen until I had raked a clawed hand across the face of the nearest of the children. The strike had sent the boy tumbling across the living room, his head barely still on his shoulders.

“Claws? When did I get claws?” I wondered to myself as I heard myself laughing out loud.

*flick*

I kicked open a door and stepped into a hallway. I could feel the feel the terror I was bringing down upon the heads of the people who lived in this building. I could feel myself growing stronger as the fear of these insects fed my hunger. A woman ran towards the entrance of the building seeking to escape to safety. She was half dragging, half carrying an elderly man. I laughed, an evil sounding laugh and much louder than I had ever laughed before. Without thought I sent a ball of fire hurtling down the corridor into the two people. They screamed as the fire engulfed them and set the building’s entrance aflame. Their deaths fed my unending hunger too. I didn’t notice as I stared in awe at my hands.

“I can make fire?”

The question flitted through my thoughts for an instant before the hunger took over and I lost myself again.

*flick*

I was laughing at a man I had disemboweled. He was sliding down a wall trying to keep his insides from spilling out onto the floor and failing miserably. His woman screamed and twisted underneath me as I took her for my own. He feebly yelled at me stop. I laughed again as I drove my hand into her chest and ripped out her heart. The man lasted long enough to watch me eat his wife’ heart then I ripped his head from his shoulders simply because it briefly caused him more pain before it come off. Fire alarms were going off throughout the building now.

*flick*

A man hit me with a base ball bat from behind and readied a to strike a second time. I spun around faster than the man was expecting. I lashed out with a clawed hand, forcing my hand deep into his abdomen. So deep, my clawed fingers ripped through his back taking part of his spine with them. I used the dead man dangling on my hand like a weapon and battered another person to the ground. I stepped forward and with a massive stomp the man’s head shattered. Blood, bone, and brain matter shot across the floor in a spray. More fear and death to feed that gnawing hunger.

*flick*

I pounced upon a fleeing family, how they had eluded me this long didn’t matter. They would die now and feed my hunger. There had been much to feed on this night, but I was still within the iron grip of that hunger. I could feel the well had been nearly filled, but nearly is not full so the hunger wasn’t ready to let go.

One hand flashed out and into the back of the mother. She was caught by my claws as I buried them deep. I could feel the warmth of her blood drenched skin on my hand. I raised her up and she squirmed there on my clawed hand, each movement eliciting a new scream. Her life blood spilling down my arm. My other hand reached out and backhanded her husband. The force of the blow sent him tumbling across the floor. Once he came to a stop, the man never moved again. The children rooted to the spot fared no better than their parents.

*flick*

I was back on the edge of the trees looking down at the chaos I had caused. I know there had been far more killing and feeding than I had seen in those brief glimpses of the nightmare I had been. There was no guilt within at what I had done. Instead, there was an eagerness for more, an eagerness to unleash that hunger again. It had been incredible feeding on the fear and terror of the people that had been in those buildings.

Yet, throughout the time when hunger had been the one controlling me, I could feel an awareness of something far off that I needed to find. No knowledge of why I needed to find this thing, just that the desire to find it was powerful. Finding that object would have to wait.

I saw five people that separated themselves from the mob at the police tape and worked their way towards me. I saw nothing out of the ordinary about them, but I knew instantly they were the enemy. I could feel their power, even the weakest of them would be more than a match for me in a stand-up fight. They radiated so much power that they glowed to my inner sight, another ability that I didn’t know I had.

One of them must have seen me, as she pointed her raised arm in my direction with the palm facing me. I had no warning as a white pulsating ball of fire raced by my head. It was close enough to cause burns on the right side of my face as it streaked past. That ball of fire expended itself against a tree without leaving a mark of any kind.

“Angel Fire!” I hissed not knowing how I knew what the ball had been. The burn on my face bubbled and caused immense pain. Things would go very badly for me if I didn’t move fast. So, I turned and sprinted back into the trees.

I charged onwards dodging trees and crashing through the underbrush. The brush caught at my clothing and slapped at my hands and face. None of that mattered. I had to get away from these people. I needed to find a way to mask my nature from them, as I was sure that they could see me the same way I saw them, but I doubted I glowed with the same white fire that they had.