I smashed into the beast from the side, thrust my claws under it, and sank them into the creature’s gut. Blood drenched me. Slippery innards slid against my fingers. I grabbed them and yanked.

The beast spun, trying to bite me. I sank my claws into the wound and hung on. The orange lightning bit into me, fire and ice wrapped in pain. The moonlight dimmed.

Raphael loomed on the other side of the beast and clawed it. He was alive. I almost cried from the relief.

The magic stung us again.

Oh my God. It hurt.

The magic wouldn’t kill us. It just hurt.

Hurt.

Raphael and I stared at each other over the beast’s spine through the haze of pain and laughed. Our eerie hyena cackles echoed through the ruin.

It wanted to play the hurting game against two boudas. It had no chance.

We mauled the beast.

It raked us with its hind legs and shocked us with its magic, and we clawed it and clawed it, hanging on and laughing through the pain. I tasted blood in my mouth and clawed even harder, digging into the beast’s stomach, wrenching innards and bone out. We carved and gouged, blacking out and coming to, throwing blood and wet entrails.

The beast shuddered.

We ripped into it. It was the creature or us, do or die.

The beast stumbled, careened to the side, and crashed down.

I looked up, breathing hard. Across from me Raphael stood, covered in gore. His muscular furry chest heaved. Between us the beast lay, the bones of its rib cage bare. We had nearly stripped its carcass. It should’ve died ages ago, but the magic must’ve kept it alive.

I sank to the floor. My body was red with blood, some of it the beast’s, some my own. Long scratches marked my side and right leg from the hip down—gouges from the beast’s claws. The cuts burned. If I were human, I’d have needed hundreds of stitches.

We won. Somehow we had won and both of us had survived. It was some sort of miracle. I was bone tired. The floor looked so nice. Maybe if I just lay down here for a minute and closed my eyes…

“Andrea.”

Raphael’s eyes glowed with ruby fire. His face, a meld of human and hyena, didn’t mirror emotions well but his eyes stared at me with a chilling determination.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I’m taking you home.”

My mind chewed on his words, trying to break them into chunks. Take me home? Take me home…Home. With him.

My fatigue evaporated in an instant. “No.”

“Yes. You’re coming home with me. We’ll take a bath and eat and make love, and everything will be fine.”

I got my ass off the floor. “I don’t think so.”