Damian's Immortal

"Life for a life," Jule reminded him.

"You're not an immortal anymore," the Other snapped. "I don't need to abide by the rules."

"You haven't killed me yet, so you must want something from me."

"Daughter, go inside. Get your coat."

The woman hesitated.

"Now!" the Other barked.

In that moment, Jule pitied her. By the look on her face, it wasn't the first time the Other had raised his voice at his alleged daughter. She hugged herself and hurried towards the door to the pub.

Yully closed the door behind her, shaking out of fear and cold. She started to the table then stopped, unable to dismiss the feeling of the man's arms around her or what she'd felt when they touched. Her gift of changing or transforming objects into others should've turned him to stone. Instead, she'd touched his soul, and it'd laughed and turned her magic away. She couldn't describe the sense any other way, just like she couldn't determine why she still felt the connection to his soul.

The conversation between her father and the man who should've killed her rattled around in her thoughts as she returned to the door. Cracking it open, she peered out. She was too far to hear them talk. An arc of lightning left her father's hand and slammed the stranger into the wall.

He crumpled, and she gasped. Her father knelt beside the still body. Suddenly, they both vanished. Whatever lingered from his touch faded without disappearing.

"Everything okay?" Sean asked from behind her.

She jumped and looked up at him. Unable to find her voice, she hurried around him to the table where she'd left her coat. Yully fled the pub for her car and opened the door with cold, fumbling hands. She locked her doors and wiped rain from her face.

Her father said the man came to kill her, yet she was still alive.

She started the car and blasted the heat. Part of her wanted to return to her home that very night, and another part of her feared what she'd find if she did. Her father had disappeared into thin air with the body of the man he called Jule.

She wasn't going home. If she'd had friends, she would've gone to visit one. She drove to the bed and breakfast instead, where the friendly woman who rented rooms had left the back door open for her. Pacing in her room, she tried hard not to think of what her father was capable of doing to someone he thought was a threat to her. At last, she forced herself to lie down and tried not to think of the man named Jule, whose soul still lingered.