Chapter eight: Odd

Acelyn

The demon shivered in the cold. She hated hunting this way. It was so much more convenient for the prey to come to her. It's not like she wasn't pretty enough to lure guys in, and they were certainly dumb enough to keep falling for it, but this time Acelyn had to go to the prey.

She felt the goose bumps on her bare arms and knew that her surveillance would have to be cut short. She could see her breath in front of her and her perch—a tree branch long ago iced over—couldn't hold her weight as well as she would have liked. She expected it to snap every time she shifted her position. She tugged on her hair that was currently pulled back into a pony tail and launched herself from the tree.

Acelyn knew that this was only a surveillance job designed to keep her busy. She'd been feeling odd lately, and it had been interfering with her work. She growled her frustrations to the trees as she walked back to her base. She'd already spent too long amongst the cold. She hadn't seen people in who knows how long. Days? Months? She'd long ago lost count.

She crawled into the comfort of her shack, warming her hands by the small fire she kept going on a regular basis. Too much time in the cold could result in loss of toes. And missing toes could make moving lithely just that much more difficult. It already seemed like the other demons could move faster, hit harder, take more.

And they could stay out in the cold for longer than her.

She kept huddled next to the fire, pulling blankets around her. Focusing now on what was wrong with her, she squinted into the flames and thought. Lately, her game had been off. She'd slowed down, as if someone was physically slowing her movements. Even her thoughts seemed clouded occasionally. She could hardly focus on anything and she felt like she wanted to be somewhere she'd never been. She felt restless all the time and she wanted to keep moving.

She rolled her neck and cracked her fingers. "Why?" Acelyn asked aloud. Why did she always want to move? Even now, sitting by the warmth of the fire, she wanted to move. To walk, to talk, anything other than sitting still. She snarled at the flames and stood, shoving her shack open.

The wind had picked up and she hunkered down into her jacket. Why had she been sent to a frozen wasteland? With a sudden burst of anger, Acelyn whipped around and pounded her fist into the nearest tree.

She snarled away the pain and hit the tree again and again until her knuckles bled. Acelyn wiped the oozing red liquid onto her jeans and rubbed her bruised hand. That had been happening more and more lately as well. Random bursts of emotion. Anger, pain, sorrow, jealousy. She felt them all in extremes. It worried her sometimes. Others, she ignored the bursts and went on with her life.

But sometimes she wondered. It was as if someone was planting the emotions inside of her. Especially when it didn't fit with her current situation. Just the other say Acelyn had felt a deep wave of panic, when she had been curled up in her shack, drifting off to sleep.

Acelyn nibbled on her lower lip and looked around. There was literally no one around. "Maybe I'm going insane," she muttered to herself. Even the animals had deemed this place unlivable. "Maybe they're trying to kill me," Acelyn murmured. She didn't put it past the demons. They'd treated her differently since the day she was brought into their family. "Jealous bastards," she snarled to herself.

She was better than them. They may have been able to move faster and maybe they were stronger, but she was smarter, stealthier. And you didn't always need brute strength to get your way. They couldn't handle that. And it didn't help that Ezra had treated her like a daughter in the beginning while everyone else was treated like an unwanted, mangy dog. Now she was just like everyone else, receiving cold orders and blank stares.

Her walking took her into an empty grove. She looked up and sneered. "Nothing but weeds and dead trees," she spat and turned to head back "home."

It took Acelyn only a few minutes to reach the shack. She dared not venture too far from it ever. If she couldn't find her way back, she was as good as dead.

She crawled underneath the covers of her bed and closed her eyes, blocking out the sounds of the dead forest. Dead. Acelyn shook the thought away. They weren't trying to kill her. They weren't.

She pulled the covers up over her head and tried to relax her muscles, demanding that sleep would overtake her.

Addiana

The angel sighed and looked around. She still couldn't find her charge. For some reason, she felt like there was no charge. Like maybe it was all just a ruse to keep her busy. Addiana bit into her lower lip and looked around.

It was beautiful, the rain forest. So alive and green, but it was too hot. She felt a bead of sweat roll down her temple and flicked it away with her finger. Addiana looked up at the canopy of trees and frowned.

She spread her wings and threw herself upward, landing precariously on a branch that wobbled under her weight. There was nothing.

Addiana shook her head and stood slowly, not wanting the branch to snap. "There is no charge," she muttered to herself. It all made sense to her know. They were trying to distract her. "Well I know I've been a little…odd lately, but that doesn't give them the right to send me on a wild goose chase," she snapped, shooting a glare up at the sky.

For the last week or so, she'd felt different. Not whole. She'd always just shaken the feeling away, but it always returned. She felt like she needed to be somewhere all the time. She felt like she always needed to move, to go, to walk. Her wings ached frequently and she found that she spent more and more time on the ground. Something was wrong and the other angels didn't want to talk about it.

Instead, they'd sent her away. Even before she'd started acting weird. They'd been sending her off on nearly impossible tasks for months. She hadn't been home for more than a day.

Something wasn't right, but she didn't know what it was. When she did manage to get home for a little while, everyone talked about Lance. She'd never met him; they lived in separate wings and specialized in different types of charges—Lance had a lower patience level than she did. She got the difficult ones.

She thought briefly that maybe she should locate this Lance person, but that didn't feel right in her gut. So what if all the angels were talking about him? That didn't mean than she had to hunting him down like he was some kind of criminal.

Addiana shook her head and dropped down to the ground. She'd give it another week. If she couldn't find her charge by then, she was going home and there wasn't anyone that could stop her. She turned and walked the way she had come with a determination that bordered on scary. She was a woman with a mission. Everybody stand back!

roseskyangel- Glad you like it so much. :)

AlysonSerenaStone- *Nods head* I completely can't remember what we were talking about.

Writing In Ink Forever- I actually thought that once too.

AddictedTime- I can't very well kill the main character now can I? *Evil laughter*