Charmed to Death

Her strikingly golden eyes carved into mine. “Well, hello there.”

She was a butch woman with icy skin, flaming ginger hair and a smile so wide, it tore through her lips. A black tee clung to her upper chest, a blood-red skirt flaring beneath.

“Hi,” I said, my nerves prickling.

As a respected member of England’s medical council, and an emergency doctor trainee, I knew to question face value. The fact this person was in minimal clothes, her skin smooth as silk out on this forested road in snowy December made it even weirder. Nevertheless, despite my hairs standing on end, I had a duty to check in. “Are you okay?”

A throaty giggle bubbled from her perfect mouth. “What’s a handsome woman doing here all alone?” she asked instead of answering my question.

The compliment rushed to my head, candy floss muffling my senses.

“My car broke down,” I replied slowly, somehow tumbling over my words. “What—”

“You are beautiful,” she purred, inching closer. Something about how she walked confused me; her feet weren’t quite reaching the ground. But when her voice roused my attention, that thought dribbled away. “I don’t get many women noticing me, but I adore when they do. I’m Chantelle.”

“Hi, Chantelle.” My tone had dialled down to almost nothing. “What… did you say you were doing here?”

Verdant green stretched for miles either side of the road, trees blurring into the horizon, no other vehicles in sight.

“Maybe I’m looking for a beautiful woman,” Chantelle replied smoothly. “And you are?”

“Isa,” I supplied, the word pulled from my throat like the unwinding of a string.

“Isa.” The way my name felt in her lips, buffed, polished and shiny, made me crave it again.

My thoughts were soupy, drowned in an iridescent fog, with images of this woman standing guard against the insignificant minutiae. I couldn’t reach them.

“You look distracted, my sweet.” Her fingernail swiped against her sternum and the buttons popped open, showcasing a fiercely plunging neckline.

My bloodstream heated, the flames licking me mirroring the colour of her hair.

“Sorry.”

Her gaze burned through my thoughts. “How will you make it up to me?”

What could I offer that’d be worthy of someone so magnificent?

“I have some snacks for my shift…” I said. “I’m a medic.” Abrupt clarities seared to the forefront:

I was a doctor.

I had a shift to cover.

They needed me.

But those vanished as soon as they’d appeared, replaced with a more pressing dilemma: I couldn’t decide where to stare. Her swallowing pupils. The carmine in her lips. Or the curves falling out of her shirt.

“Smart and sexy,” Chantelle praised and pride burst in my chest.

As she slithered towards me, I noticed her skin was glittering; so pretty, I wanted to reach out and touch.

“I’ll do anything you want me to.” Her words dripped with raw sugarcane. “Anything you want…” The golden flecks in her irises held the promise safe between us.

“Umm…” I stammered.

“Just relax,” Chantelle said, seeping through the cracks in my mind. My muscles unclenched into bags of meat.

She was so close now, I could smell her. Beneath caramelized cinnamon, there was something metallic. The scent zipped a jolt of discomfort down my spine and a faraway voice, one behind panels of glass, told me that I should be more cautious. I wasn’t one to rush into things. I enjoyed the build-up, the simmering tension, the mercy of the first kiss—

Chantelle leaned so near, I could see down her top. “What do you want, Isa?”

“I—”

“You want me close,” she suggested kindly.

Why did that make perfect sense? I felt a flurry of excited energy gathering in the pit of my stomach.

“You want me to touch you.”

I started to shake my head—

“You do want me to touch you,” Chantelle told me and maybe I did want that?

Her hand closed over mine and a shock of ice shot through my veins, into my heart and making it plummet.

“You want to relax,” she repeated, an order more than an offer. My back hit a tree trunk, Chantelle keeping me safe. I glanced down her enchanting form, vaguely noticing her extended fingers; a hot-pink manicure filed into claws. Where her feet were supposed to be, instead was blurry nothingness.

“Your… legs,” I said dreamily. It seemed odd, but nothing to be overly concerned about.

Chantelle winked privately. “Don’t worry. Everything above the thigh works as you’d want it to.”

Like her sacral plexus.

The Pacinian corpuscles in her skin.

And the millions of nephrons draining in her kidneys.

I could picture those anatomy pages from my textbook, and the moment I did, my head started hammering, another personality forcing its way out. For a split second, Chantelle’s smile was crooked and pierced with fangs curving into deadly points. The moonlight enhanced the sallow in her crusted skin, and the gold speckling her eyes melted into the black hole of her skull.

The next moment, she was pretty again, but the fear-stained adrenaline racing to the depths of my being, drenching me in terror, had stifled her spell. Stone-cold reality punctured the charm, and the true atrocity of my situation had acrid bile lapping my throat.

Chantelle realized something was wrong. “You are—”

Before she could finish though, with one clear goal in mind, I charged her using all my weight.

She screeched, so high pitched, it froze my nerve endings. But I continued until I’d shoved her into the nearest tree. While she was temporarily winded, I frantically looked around for anything I might be able to use as a weapon. During our encounter though, the darkness had settled amongst the forest, and my eyes couldn’t focus.

Chantelle regained her footing and glared at me, both her forms flickering ominously. Despite the fangs and the claws, my instincts knew her voice was most powerful; who knew what she’d do if she charmed away my senses? The possibility sent a cascade of dread tripping up my heart.

My medical kit was hung low around my hips, and I pulled out the first thing I saw: chlorhexidine, a disinfectant used before medical procedures.

Hurriedly, I snapped the applicator wings to release the liquid and shoved it in Chantelle’s mouth as she’d opened it to speak. The only thing that saved my hand from getting torn off was her coughing and spluttering.

“How… dare… you…” she gagged, grimacing. She’d spat it out, but the damage was done; she soon realized that speaking or moving her mouth at all enhanced the revolting taste.

“I told you I had snacks,” I said. “You didn’t like it?”

In response, she screamed and threw herself at me.

I grunted on impact and dodged her claws by an inch. I’d never fought anyone in my life (apart from a patient on the worst trip of his life who’d mistaken me for Hitler), but apparently when my body knew my life depended on this, I acquired the skill of wild scrambling.

Chantelle tackled me to the floor, which admittedly wasn’t the best start, but I used her own momentum to roll her off. Her foot dug into a pile of leaves for leverage, and she pounced again.

Clambering to my feet, I jumped high to avoid her. Then I pumped my legs into a sprint. My first instinct was to climb a tree because I doubted she’d be able to follow me up with that weird, slimy leg, but she was too close on my tail.

That left my other instinct: something medical. Plasters or gauze wouldn’t help, but not everything in my kit was useless.

I whipped out a long bandage as I ducked under a branch. Somehow, Chantelle was faster than me, so when I reached the next tree, I swung around the trunk and met her claws. I didn’t dodge this time, instead locking onto my target and forcing the bandage over her attacking hand.

A cry of pain tore from me—getting this close had meant a nail had found its mark, leaving a ragged gash along my forearm. I vaguely hoped she wasn’t venomous, but deadly or not, it stung like razors dipped in lemon juice.

On the bright side, I’d managed to make quick work of her wrist, chaining the bandage tight around the nearest branch.

Chantelle gaped at her suspended arm, the pits in her eyes hollowing with fury. She’d apparently never dealt with a bandage-wielding victim before. She didn’t let that slash her spirit though; in fact, she acted with renewed vigor, using the branch to jump up and plant a kick square in my stomach.

My guts whimpered and I struggled breathing in without throwing my lungs up.

Chantelle, attempting to escape, got increasingly frustrated with the knots I’d tied. She tried to rip it open, but unfortunately for her, bandages didn’t work like that.

I’d found my feet when she remembered she had sharp claws—the perfect counter for bandage cuffs. She knifed it open and lunged at me. I readied another bandage just in time, using it as a shield.

It didn’t work very well.

She carved a long line down my bicep, and I howled in agony. I tried to kick her away, but she grabbed my wounded arm and threw me into a tree.

I now had a few broken ribs, but it was fine. Probably. I had a hard time convincing my body though because it was passionately disagreeing.

“Stay down,” Chantelle hissed. I could tell she’d tried to pour charm into her words, but my antibacterial was still muting her sticky magic. Not that it made much difference when I could see her true form.

My vision hazy, I rifled blindly through my medical bag for anything that’d help. A sedative would’ve been helpful, but what first aid kit included general anesthetic? When I fingered my bottle of morphine, my first thought was: god, I could use some of that right now.

Second: it’d make me too drowsy to defend myself though.

And third: because in high doses, morphine is sedating.

Muscle memory counterbalanced the shake in my hands as they flew over the bottle, piercing a needle through and drawing up, trying to ignore the gnawing pain in my ribs. I snuck a glance at Chantelle who’d stepped behind a tree, disguising herself in shadows for her next attack.

Now, Isa, I told myself. Move.

It took a little persuasion, but I charged clumsily in her direction, my needle prone. Chantelle seemed unimpressed as I hobbled towards her. She didn’t notice the needle until it was embedded in her arm.

I pressed the plunger, getting three quarters before she screamed, knocking it away. I prayed it’d be enough.

That hope disintegrated when Chantelle kicked my legs out from under me and my own ribs skewered me inside out. She towered above, a nasty grimace mangling her lips.

“We could’ve been great together,” she growled, ramming her hands into my neck.

I choked, my eyes watering so badly, her flaming hair and scowl blurred together.

The oxygen in my blood was reaching worrying levels, my consciousness starting to drip down a long,

long,

long funnel.

Then her pressure lessened. She blinked slowly. Her pupils cavitated into vacancy and her body collapsed.

Gulping in as much precious air as my broken ribs would allow, I staggered to rise. My knees wobbly, I trudged to my car where I’d left the door open after my initial mesmerization, my phone abandoned on the seat.

Despite the blood dripping from my arm, my bruised throat and shivering, trauma-ridden body, the worst part was waiting for the ambulance, hoping it’d arrive before Chantelle recovered from her overdose.