Fever Fae - Meg Xuemei X Page 0,2

followed by a terrible stench that had me gagging.

From the corner of the dining room, a beast stared at us, its crimson eyes glowing with a murderous light. It stood over eight feet tall with fangs protruding from its giant, hideous jaw.

Fear punched my guts. My heart beat so fast that I was afraid it would tear out of my chest.

My siblings screamed.

“I locked the doors,” I shrieked. “I closed all the windows last night!”

“It didn’t come through a door or a window,” Fawn said. “It must’ve escaped my dreams.”

The monster snarled. Thick fur rippled and muscles flexed along its massive shoulders.

I glanced at the glass of milk in my shaking hand—the only weapon at my disposal.

Dad had trained me in swordplay since I was old enough to hold a stick, but the strenuous physical training was useless without a weapon in reach. Even if I’d had my dagger on me, I had no advantage over a monster from a nightmare.

The monster growled gutturally, and the terror that kept my siblings frozen in place hit me like a living black wire. My anger rose to a blaze of fury. I leapt around the counter with the glass of milk still in my hand and stepped in front of my siblings, shielding them from the fiend’s view.

“Dark. Princess. Kill.” The fiend uttered the three broken words, its fangs dripping a string of saliva.

I didn’t recognize its speech as any human language, yet I understood the words perfectly.

It raised its claws and lunged.

I chucked the glass of milk at the monster’s snout. The glass slammed into its nose hard enough to stun the beast, and the liquid splashed into its eyes.

“Run!” I shouted as the glass crashed into pieces on the floor.

My siblings screamed and bolted toward the stairs.

Every one of my instincts urged me to follow them before the monster finished wiping the milk from its eyes, but running would only doom my siblings. Trembling with fury and fear, I snatched a fork and a butter knife and jumped onto the table, planning to flip and land on the fiend’s back so I could stab it in the eyes.

I prayed I wouldn’t miss.

The beast snapped its eyes open and snarled viciously. An answering roar tore out of my throat, a sound so savage I could scarcely believe it was my voice.

A wave of unexpected energy rolled across my belly, and a surge of shadow fire blasted out of me, crashing into the monster. The nightmare sailed across the kitchen and smashed out of the window, howling in pain and surprise.

The glass shattered and shards fell all over the counter, followed by a loud thud outside.

I shook, staring at the broken window. I’d somehow shot out a dark fire, and it had flung the monster out of the house.

What kind of freak was I?

Panting, I looked around wildly in search of more threats.

“You’re the Night and Dawn Star, Evie,” Fawn said with pride.

I gazed down, my pulse still pounding in my ears, as my sister hugged my leg from behind.

My other siblings had fled, locking the door behind them and not making a sound.

“Go up the stairs, angel,” I warned as I extracted myself from her. “And don’t come out under any circumstance!”

When she disappeared upstairs, I padded across the kitchen to the mudroom by the back door. An umbrella with a wooden shaft and a metal point leaned against the corner. I grabbed it, then saw a bottle of bathroom refresher on the bench, and snatched it, too.

I yanked the back door open and peeked into the backyard, checking for the whereabouts of the monster.

The sky had brightened, gracing me with more pink than gray now. It promised a lovely California sunny day, yet I still shook in dread. I’d have crumpled onto the red wooden stairs outside the door if I hadn’t been running on a rush of adrenaline.

I surveyed the butterfly bushes all around the fences. The beast could be badly wounded or even dead, but I needed to be sure it got the fuck off my property. I wouldn’t allow it to remain a threat to my siblings.

That’s when I spotted it. The nightmare crouched under a lemon tree. A hummingbird fled from picking honey from a blossom.

I charged down the steps, hissing, ready to throw my shadow fire at the monster again. This time I’d make sure it stayed dead, for it had uttered the word “kill” with the very intention of harming my family and me.

The