Carly was wide-eyed and in full deer-in-headlights mode when Tzich got behind her and took her hand. Without blinking, she looked frantically between his subtle grasp and the raging beast bounding toward them. Her breath became uneven. Then, as he brought her hand out and forward, and the Hell-dog was flying towards them, things slowed.

She blinked. She felt an undeniable heat burst between her and Tzich’s hand, and an unbeatable force churned in her chest like a great whirlwind. Her teeth clenched and she felt lethal. At the ends of her fingers, her nails, it began to itch, and intense warmth radiated throughout.

Things returned to current motion. Her pupils had engulfed the amber of her eyes and more, breeching to the whites. A savage sneer curled onto her lips, and her hand, suddenly much heavier, came down on the animal.

It yelped in pain. She was so engulfed that she disregarded the thick, black claw that had replaced her once innocent flesh-toned nails. Blood rippled up and out from its meat, an oozing black with a clear sheen. It recuperated quickly and came back to strike.

A growl started in the heart of her throat, then ripped out completely when she brought her foot up and into the dog’s chest, pelting it against the dumpster where it had once foraged.

Tzich was sitting on the pavement, still and watchful while the warm crackle of Carly's power dissipated from his veins. That had been a kick he wasn't expecting: a blow to the gut like he'd put a crack in the Hoover dam. Her claws glinted black.

It was clear where this was going. Tzich crawled slowly to his feet, just as the dumpster banged like a drum and the dog crumpled and skittered angrily among food wrappers and boxes. She could tear that thing to pieces -- and he could care less if she did, except that the farther she fell down that hole the harder it would be to drag her back. Once that dam broke, there would be nothing stopping her from ripping him apart -- and anything else that moved.

He hadn't realized before just why he had been chosen for this job. He knew what it was like deep down in that darkness, savage and bloody and mindless. He knew what it was to wake up and realize the nightmares were real.

"Carly." he snapped, his voice loud and firm. "Breathe." This was no longer a game, and he was no longer smiling. "This isn't a dogfight. You're a hunter, not a pit bull. You can feel the power now, it belongs to you, so use it. Control, Carly."

Her name would be important, from now on. As long as he could remind her of who she was, she would be fine. He hoped.

Like a cat on its feet, her head snapped toward Tzich when he called her name, inhumanely so. Her eyes, large and swollen by the deep black of her pupils, fixated on her mentor. Then, as he continued to speak, her shoulders loosened. Her pupils shrank, and by the time he was reinforcing the word “control,” they’d restored themselves to original condition. Her nails receded and her pathetic fleshy ones were returned.

Her heart was racing at an alarming rate. She felt like she were about to have a heart attack. As her mind blindly swam, she turned her gaze back to the dog, who was recovering and coming back with a vengeance.

Before the dog clipped her with its oozing maw, she dodged to the side, but clumsily. Her back hit the sharp edge of a brick wall and she winced, then hissed. The dog, however, was not deterred.

Carly whimpered. She was back on her feet soon enough, and she began to look left and right. Out of the corner her eye, she found a dull knife, rediscovered and overturned by the hellish beast’s scavenger hunt. It wasn’t ideal, but it didn’t seem that there was much choice.

She dashed for the knife. Of course, it lit a fire under the beast’s ass, and it tailed after her. Carly panted in high whines as she tried to beat the dog to her goal. When she got there, she slid on her leg, like a baseball player skidding to home run, and she grabbed the blunt weapon.

Before the dog could do much else, she cried out and plunged it in between its ribs. It yelped into the night, and using as muscle as she could, she drove the weapon into it again and again until ceased to do else, except fall over on its side.

Tzich hissed through his teeth and flung his arm out, but nothing happened. Carly had done something -- drained him or stunted him, he hoped temporarily. He snarled and lunged forward, ready to tear the beast off his student -- but Carly got to it first.

By the time he was near enough to grab Carly's shoulder, the dog was motionless. He stared at it with violent, confused black eyes, his fangs glinting. He pulled his hand away from Carly. "That dog is already full of holes, a dagger shouldn't make a difference." But it had, because Carly had willed it to. He rubbed his face, paced a few steps back and forth, kicked the dog but it only flopped in response.

Finally, he dropped to his knees and peered close at the dog's maggot-eaten face. He opened his mouth and sucked in a trickle of black that was much less opaque than the woman's demon had been. This was grainy, and it went down like fiberglass.

He gagged and coughed dryly, but he got to his feet and swallowed it down with a twitch in his mouth. He tipped his head and cracked his neck. "There's nothing left but fragments," he said in a wheeze, and cleared his throat. "There wasn't much left of that demon in the first place, but you pulverized it like a meat grinder." He wasn't even sure how. He gave her an uncertain look. "How do you feel?"

Slowly she rocked back to sit on her behind, then she slumped back against a neighboring brick wall. Her lips pressed into a frown and her eyebrows knitted together uncertainly.

In her hand, the knife stayed. Tremors came into her wrists, subtle but determined, and the dull blade fell to the concrete with a small clang. Shakily, she lifted her hands up to her face and she rubbed it. Beneath her skin, her muscles unleashed thousands of spasms, only slightly visible beneath her clothes. Carly tried to regain her composure, but she was lost at sea and she’d left it at shore.

“Exhausted,” she muttered, one knee brought up and her elbow propped on top of it. Her fingers splayed over the top of her brow and she looked at him from the corner of her eye. “I’ve got a headache. I feel like a fucking diabetic or something.” Waiting for the sugar spike, for her insulin to come in and soothe her wild nerves. Unfortunately, it didn’t come. Blood trickled down her forearm and on the left side of her head, where’d she’d been clipped.

Tzich sat on the mucky ground a few feet beside her, his arms on his knees and a haggard cough in his throat. He squinted up at the spark of sunlight that hovered in the space between buildings, a stark contrast to the reek that permeated everything. This was like sitting among the racks, imagining sky. He imagined Carly's difficulty a bit better.

"I thought I was here to teach you how to find your strength," he said idly, still peering at the blue above. "Turns out you're a pro at hulking it, turning yourself inside-out and through. Turns out I've got the harder job."

After awhile he looked at her, noted the blood and the look on her face. "You feel like shit because you threw it all at once. You're chucking handfuls of bullets at your opponent and your gun's in the holster. There's thought," he tapped his temple, "and precision. Each bullet has the power to kill, but used wrong you just make a mess. Is your diabetes-head following?"

He arched his back, rummaged in a pocket, pulled a stick of gum for himself and tossed her the pack. It was hard as a rock. "I told you not to touch the thing." He popped the gum in his mouth and crunched. "There's a sort of poison in those kind of demons that's either flesh-eating or soul-decaying, I can't remember which. It's probably halfway through your body by now." He leaned his head back and stared at the sky again, very glad he hadn't come in contact with the dog's dripping maggoty flesh.

While Tzich spoke, she stared down at her right hand. It twitched, currents of adrenaline still thrumming in her fingers. Whenever she raised her hand for closer inspection, it shook, but from what she could see there was no evidence of the ravenous black talons that had been there before. They were very human. However, the foul odor from permeating the dog’s muscle and skin certainly wasn’t. It smelled like week-old Indian food wrapped in vinegar and old fish. That wasn’t leaving anytime soon.

She was going to ask what had happened, how she could keep it from happening again, but he brought up a much more important point. Her eyes widened and she nearly choked on her own breath.

“What?” she sat forward more and eyed him like the madman he was. “You never fucking mentioned that! Jesus, I just thought you meant ‘Hey, don’t touch that dog, it’s gross.’ And I thought ‘No shit, Sherlock,’ but you neglected to mention the whole venomous thing.”

It was then that she realized that the pack of gum was solid, like a rock. She made a face and picked it up, but her hands weren’t very responsive. Her hand let go as soon as she’d grabbed it, shaking immensely. “What’s with the pack of gum? Better yet, let’s talk cures.”

"You're fine," he drawled without one iota of concern, too busy examining the shine of sunlight on his Hello Kitty lighter. He was out of smokes, though. The gum was all right. He liked it stiff and ten years old.

He could feel her aura jittering beside him, though. He didn't like the word aura, and he made a face the moment he thought it -- too hippie for his taste -- but another word didn't come to mind.

"Chill out." He sighed and flicked the lighter a few times, watching the fire spark and disappear. "Ya don't breathe right and ya talk too fast. Ya let somethin get in your head and run it like a freight train off a cliff." The flame flicked and went out.

After awhile he finally looked at her with his usual dull gaze. "You're fine," he repeated with more conviction, and he raised his eyebrows at her meaningfully. He saw, very clearly in the corner of his eye, how hard her hands were shaking, but it didn't phase him.

"I don't even know that you're actually infected with anything at all, probably just your own body getting used to that power surging your muscles and straining your bones. Somethin's woke up in your core, it'll take an adjust." The lighter flicked to life. "But hey, if you really think you're actually poisoned, all right I'll believe you, but you won't like the cure. So I suggest you use that power of yours and get rid of it yourself."