A dark hand coiled around her throat and she gasped for air. As she took her last breaths she saw a face with silver grey eyes and pointed teeth the tips stained pink with blood. He looked vaguely reminiscent of a snake.

…

It was the middle of the night when Amy was startled awake. His fetid breath still clung to her skin and he still seemed to linger over her his hands constricting her breath. She turned over and next to her was an even more unpleasant surprise; Dusk was lingering outside her open bedroom door loping around his muscles tense like a jungle cat ready to pounce. This time he wore his true appearance midnight blue cat’s eyes with gold rings around the slits the midnight blue raven on his chest almost blended in to his deeply tanned skin. “What do you want?” Amy asked.

Instead of saying anything he threw her a smirk that displayed his gleaming white feline’s teeth. Amethyst took that as her cue to take his place and taunt him for once. “What are you upset because I escaped from your grasp so quickly? You claim your intent is no longer harmful, so why don’t you come and get me?” She winked at him and swayed her hips all the way back to her bed, then teased him a bit more by patting the bed. She thought she heard a faint purring noise escape his lips, and felt rather than saw his muscles tense in a futile attempt to restrain himself. The next thing she knew he was through the barrier and had she pinned to the bed. His blue and gold cat’s eyes staring into her forest green eyes. He seemed completely entranced, so she took her chance to hook one of his legs and flip him over so she was on top of him.

She pinned his wrists and started nipping at his neck a few times just to hear him trying to restrain a delicious sounding moan, then she trailed kisses down to his chest gradual sliding further down until she had reached his stomach, but she hesitated and hid by turning to him and giving him a slight smirk. She saw a mischievous smile light up his face. “Okay that’s enough fun for you. Now it’s my turn.” He abruptly grabbed her and turned her back over. He started reaching over to unhook her dress, but was very suddenly and violently kicked from the barrier. His skin zipped with electricity that singed his skin. Dusk was puzzled until he looked over and saw that silent tears were falling from Amy’s face. He tried to rush back into the barrier, but was stopped by a wall even stronger than before. That’s when he realized she was still afraid of him not because of who he was before, but because of who he was now. She was afraid of her feelings for him. She was afraid of intimacy.

…

The next night Amy had another dream about the snake man hiding in the shadows. All she saw were his silver grey eyes peering out from a dark mist watching over Dusk. He licked his fangs in anticipation and his hunger pangs seemed to grow with every morally bankrupt action that Dusk was partaking in. After his misstep with Amy’s fear the man snuck in and grabbed him by the throat, then his body took the form of a snake and he coiled around his neck constricting his windpipe until Dusk’s body went limp. Then it dragged him into a lake where Amy’s body and a good portion of the magical community lay. The pit was vaguely reminiscent of Death’s forest in the magical world only this was more like a bog, and the bodies lacked movement. Their necks and limbs were weighted down by dark chains solid as steel but translucent and dark as the smoke from a wildfire.

Amethyst spotted it from all the way across the craft festival. She could sense the contained aura in its translucent glow. From afar it resembled a clear pearl, but upon closer inspection there was a fire burning from within. This was a true enchantress’s stone the most powerful and rare. The fire Opal.

Quickly containing the excitement that was probably evident in her eyes she approached the shop keep. Thankfully she was human she sensed upon arrival.

                “How did you get this stone?” She asked. With a crooked smile he said “Secret of the trade…but if you must know a longtime friend gave it to me. He told me it was more valuable than life itself so guard it with my own.” Amethyst resisted the urge to roll her eyes “What made you decide to sell the stone?” Amethyst asked. His smile faded “She recently passed away, so I want to be rid of the stone and the memories.” Amethyst nodded. This fool was probably friends with a powerful elemental or enchantress and never even knew it. “I would like to buy the stone so what is your life worth to you?” He shrugged. “I am just looking for enough money to leave this town so $2,000 would be enough to reach my goal, but realistically I’ll take…” “I’ll take it for $2,000” Amethyst said. She ignored the man’s jaw drop. She’d been in this world long enough to earn plenty of human money.

Besides she knew someone was following her and wanted to get the necklace to safety before they caught up with her. She couldn’t pick out who it was but she could sense that someone had been following her the entire time, but they were good at hiding their location probably a skilled tracker or even something more lethal. She smirked. He had picked the wrong enchantress to mess with. Channeling some of her energy to her feet with the help of the Calcite in her shoes, Amethyst increased to her full speed fast enough to outrun any human. She made it to her house, but she still felt him on her tail.

With a sharp burst of speed she zoomed into her house and threw up the external fluorite barriers to keep negative influences out, but it was no good he had already entered she noticed as she raced to her room, shut the door, and the barrier came up automatically behind her. This one was more complex to protect what served as her bedroom and work room.

The familiar feeling of the bits of crystal ricocheting onto her face calmed her as she carved the piece of Sardonyx into the shape she wanted. She reveled in her own ability to create such perfect figures out of these misshapen and wayward stones. When she’d started out this stone was just a palm sized circle and a very messy circle at that. After a few hours of carving the nose started to appear, then the eyes and the pointy ears, and now the mouth and the fangs were coming into shape and snarling at her all the while to finish them so the wolf could be released, a wolf created from next to nothing. This was Amethyst’s work every day though it varied in what Amethyst considered small and insignificant ways.  One day she was making an animal totem for someone out of some form of natural material and the next day she was infusing gemstone jewelry with magical spells for the highly superstitious. Her customers believed these charms to be superficial but in reality they were receiving charmed gems with very potent spells on them.

Most of her customers went unaware of her real work. They just knew that whenever they came in jokingly saying they wished this next piece of jewelry she made for them would make their crush notice them or help them have better luck finding a job she would add her own enchantments to them to make what they wanted happen. After a few instances of meddling in others affairs, some more superstitious people came in and started offering her money to charm jewelry for them. She would have added the charms to the jewelry she made for free, but she wasn’t exactly going to pass up some extra cash. So after that Amethyst still passed her store off as a normal jewelry store that did custom works, but now when asked by to charm jewelry for an extra fee she gladly obliged as long as the charm wasn’t too devious for her liking, which wasn’t often for she did like her fair share of mischief.

Amethyst was deep into her latest work and was just putting the finishing touches on the wolf when she saw a midnight blue blur in her peripheral vision and knew Dusk was here to bother her while she was working for the fifth time this week.

“What do you want this time Dusk?”

Dusk gave her one of his barely there smiles and said.

“The same as always your compliance or your life.”

Amethyst turned around and saw Dusk standing in the doorway. She stared at his newest disguise. This time his hair was sandy, his skin tan, and his eyes a sea foam green. He would have looked like a surfer if it weren’t for the vigilant and piercing gaze he always had. For Amethyst that gaze was a dead giveaway no matter what form he took on, though she didn’t know his true appearance aside from his gaze.

“Well good luck getting past the barriers set around my workshop.”

“I figure if I stick around long enough you’ll drop your guard and I’ll get what I want.”

“Let me know how that works out for you.” Amethyst said ignoring Dusk and going back to her work.

This had been going on for the last few weeks now.  Amethyst would go to the market to sell her merchandise or go to her main shop to setup and Dusk would follow from a distance. I suppose he didn’t want witnesses if he was going to try to kill her, so he would always try to get a hold of her when she was closing up but she somehow always managed to get to her home and the workshop before he could catch her. After a few days he gave up following around during the day and just appeared at night outside her workshop. He would wait around until he got bored and once he left Amethyst would get ready for another day of putting up with the nuisance known as Dusk. If he ever kept the same appearance she would have filed some form of restraining order by now because he was getting on her nerves. But for some reason unknown to her he looked different almost every time she saw him.

He had been sent by some woman who didn’t seem to like half breeds very much. The woman that sent Dusk wanted to wipe out half breeds like Amethyst the part enchantress and part sorceress anomaly. As annoying as having Dusk follow her around was she had to admit it wasn’t the most dangerous or aggravating situation that her genetics had gotten her into.

So Amethyst kept working with Dusk looking on, his gaze drilling into the back of her skull. As always she didn’t sense his gaze on her back by the time she was finished with her project for the night and she’d figured that as usual he’d left.  Amethyst started heading out of her workshop completely forgetting her protective ward earrings in the workshop, and she went to sleep for the night, but she didn’t get more than a few steps before she felt something hit her on the head and heard Dusk say “Gotcha.” before her vision went black.