I awoke feeling so comfortable and cozy and for a moment I didn’t want to open my eyes but just stay there as I was for a while. There was this pleasant warmth that seemed to be spreading from between my legs to my belly and it made me feel so content. “That was a really weird dream,” I thought to myself. “I don’t remember falling asleep, but it makes sense that I’d have strange dreams with all the stress of Dad’s death, Demons wanting me dead, being on the run, and having to go live with my mother. I hope that Jess is feeling better this morning. I really wish Dad were still here.”

The thought of Dad caused the dam that had been holding all of my anger and grief back for Jessica’s sake to burst. That pleasant spreading warmth within my belly ceased as I sat bolt upright and started to cry uncontrollably, bringing my hands up from where they had seemingly been resting in my lap to wipe at my tears. It was while I was sniffling and sobbing in my hands that I noticed a pungent heady scent. It almost smelled like Jessica’s bedroom that time that I had accidentally walked in on her while she was…

At that realization, the pieces started to fit together and my eyes snapped open to stare at the pale, small, and feminine hands that had been wiping my tears only a moment before. They had long delicate fingers that ended in oval-shaped fingernails with a slightly pearlescent sheen. Beyond those hands, a thick curtain of long white hair fell about me, so long that it pooled in my lap and upon the snow around my apparently naked form.

I looked down to my lap, brushing the hair aside, but I didn’t see my old familiar equipment there. A pair of prominent breasts with large pink areolae and nipples like pencil erasers partially blocked my view, but once the hair was out of the way I could make out a feminine mound with a tuft of hair as white as that which had been getting in my way.

This was not my body, it was definitely a girl’s body and I could barely think from the desire to test that body out. I was pretty sure the only thing stopping me from doing anything with Merriwynd and Jessica while I was in that fog before falling asleep was that they were both family. Jessica was my sister and, even though I hadn’t seen her since I was a child, Merriwynd was my aunt. I was so damn horny, if only there were a girl or a guy who could help me with that.

I quickly shut that thought process down. “No, I’m a guy and I’m attracted to girls, Surie was really hot if you ignored that whole half-Demon thing,” I thought with a smile. Thinking of her got me thinking of the agent that she had tossed aside like a softball. “He was so big and muscular, and kinda handsome too, I wouldn’t mind…”

I could feel my cheeks flushing as I quickly derailed that line of thought too. I couldn’t seem to trust my own thoughts or desires and almost all of them were centered around sex at the moment, it was like I was some sort of nympho… I gasped as a torrent of memories returned from before I had fallen asleep. “O…Oh shit. That wasn’t a dream,” I muttered into my hands, trying to hold back the tears from starting again.

“Afraid so, Kiddo,” Aunt Merry’s voice said sympathetically from where she was sitting on a tree stump nearby.

“No! I’m not… I can’t be… this isn’t…” I couldn’t finish those aborted denials. I began to hyperventilate as it felt like there was a tornado touching down inside my chest and tears flowed freely down my cheeks and past my shaking hands.

“Enough, Seth!” the blue-eyed Fey commanded in a tone that would allow no refusal.

I tried anyway. “But I can’t… I…”

“You’re thinking like Seth, but you’re not him anymore, you never really were,” she interrupted, chastising me. “You’re a Nymph, and you were always meant to be a Nymph, you’re just a bit of a late bloomer. If it’s any consolation, you shouldn’t feel uncomfortable like that. In fact, since you were born to be a Nymph your nature should make it feel more comfortable than your old body. Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and clear your mind. Feel your connection to the ice and snow around you and then think about how your body feels. Not how Seth would think it should feel, but how it really feels with your mind clear.”

I followed her instructions and it took me several minutes but I managed to clear my mind as I felt around me with a sense that I hadn’t known I’d possessed. The ice and snow around me, the moonlight washing over it all and me, it was like I was connected to all of it as if it were a part of me. It felt so right, like I’d been missing out on something my whole life and had just now found out what that was. I felt so alive, beautiful, and a part of the natural world, like I thought that I should have always felt from being part Fey. That emptiness that had always been there was filled now, this was me, and this was how I was supposed to be.

Now that I wasn’t in a total panic I opened my eyes and attempted to focus on my surroundings rather than my problems. We were quite a distance from the side of the cabin, and it was no longer snowing as a nearly full moon in a clear sky reflected off the snow, seeming to light up the entire field of snow. I wasn’t sure that I wanted to know how long she had been outside in the cold watching over me.

I looked up to see Merriwynd watching me carefully, and she gave me a tired smile as I calmed down and told me, “I don’t expect you to be mentally comfortable with your change right now. That’s going to take some time, but you need to realize that this is who you are now. It’s who you’re meant to be and there is nothing wrong with accepting that.”

“How long was I out?” I asked anyway, a bit uncertainly. I didn’t really want to think about my body right now or how right she was. I had never felt this at ease and comfortable in my own body before and it scared me. I grew up a guy so this should feel all wrong. My mind kept thinking that but if I was being honest with myself, my body just wasn’t sending out the signals that this was wrong and uncomfortable. It felt good and right, like this was how I should have been all along. Quite frankly, it was giving me a bit of an identity crisis and as I sat there I just stared down at my body, trying to will it away, trying to make it feel wrong somehow because Seth shouldn’t feel comfortable like that.

“It’s nearly eight o’clock, so you’ve been out almost four hours,” the Fey replied with a shrug. “Frankly, I was expecting you to be out longer with such an extreme change.”

“You could have brought me inside, you must be freezing. Did you go inside to warm up at all?” I said with a frown as I realized how feminine and melodic my voice now sounded to my ears.

Merriwynd shook her head, but I wasn’t sure at first whether she was disagreeing about taking me inside for some reason or admitting to not going inside herself, but it was probably both. “I’m still not sure if the safe house has any hidden electronic or magical monitoring devices inside, so I would rather not reveal that you Manifested, or the nature of your new self. There is one camera outside, over the door of the cabin, but you were out of its field of vision when you Manifested, which is why I kept you here. It’s not like the cold is going to bother you.”

She was right, I was sitting out here in the snow and cold without a stitch on and I wasn’t cold at all. I wasn’t even wearing the bandages from where Surie had stabbed me, I figured that I must have pulled them off when I felt like I was burning alive. Not that there was a wound there anymore anyway, just smooth, pale, and perfect skin.

I shrugged in response to her comment, but that just made me more aware of the weight of my chest which of course brought to mind the rest of my very naked female body. And thinking of a naked girl, even if it was me, made me all too aware of the fact that I was hornier than I had ever been in my life. My cheeks flushed as I tried to get control of myself by taking a deep breath and asking, “Where’s Jess?”

“She’s inside packing our things and trying to find something of hers that you can wear. When she’s done we’ll head back to Vancouver. I’ve already contacted your mother with Air magic to let her know that things have changed,” she told me carefully.

I groaned in complaint. ”I have to wear girls’ clothes? And what’s changed, besides me of course?” I wasn’t quite sure if my objection to the clothes were more because what was left of Seth in my head objected to the fact that they were for girls or because the mere thought of wearing any clothes caused a wave of anxiety to surge through me for some reason.

“You’ll have to get used to them, you need to wear something if we’re going to be around people and your old clothes aren’t going to fit that body. You’re female now so get used to it, Kiddo. With your Manifestation, we have an opportunity that we didn’t before. Anyone still looking for you would be looking for Seth, you’re not him anymore and nobody is going to mistake you for him, so we can use that. We can’t stay here and let anyone, even the PDA, find out about this. It’s better for you and your sister for us to just disappear altogether.”

“But what about our stuff? Dad’s old bike, we rebuilt that together and…”

Merriwynd sighed. She didn’t look any happier about it than me as she cut me off. “Look, I know it’s not going to be easy, but the safest thing for you is if we use this opportunity and cut all ties to just vanish. Your mother has a lot of photos and things that Dairen sent to her so between those and the personal items in your suitcases you’ll still have some things from your old life. We can get you a new vehicle, we can’t get a new you if someone looks too deeply into your faked death and tracks us down here.”

I wasn’t happy, but I did understand where she was coming from. My mother had made our safety Merriwynd’s responsibility and since she obviously cared for both of my parents she took that seriously. Honestly, with the whole Demon hit list thing, a bit of paranoia would probably keep us all alive and healthy. Sure my dad had trusted Chief Little but he wasn’t the only one involved in our little faked death plot.

Sure any accidental human witnesses would have been ‘interviewed’ and had their memories altered by PDA psychics but there were others to consider. There were the fake witnesses, the agent who had been waiting outside the apartment, Surie Rourke, and the pilot who flew us to the safe house and I didn’t know any of them well enough to be sure that they wouldn’t turn informant for a price. Aunt Merry was right, it was best that we just vanish.

A few minutes later Jessica came out of the cabin with a bundle of clothing in her arms. “Sorry that it took so long, Merriwynd. She’s much curvier than I am, I don’t have any bras that are going to fit her either. She is not going to be happy about this when she wakes…” Her breath caught in her throat as she saw me sitting up. “Oh, you’re awake. Are you… y’know… okay?”

“Okay is a relative term,” I replied with a sigh. “Physically I’m fine, but I’m kinda freaking out and having a bit of an identity crisis right now.”

My sister nodded and placed the clothes on the stump that Merriwynd had been sitting on earlier as she tried to give me a reassuring smile and said, “Manifesting can be rough, your perspective can change a lot. At least I knew it was coming and what I would be in for. I was just starting puberty then too so I knew my body was going to be going through changes anyway. You’re my br… sister so I’ll do my best to help you through this.”

I stood up and walked over to hug her as I started to cry again. She just wrapped her arms around me and held me close, telling me that it was going to be okay. It was a little weird since I was used to being strong for her sake and now here she was comforting me while I cried. It felt different too, and I was far too aware of my breasts being squeezed against my chest as she held me close.

I think the weirdest thing though was that I had to actually look up a bit to look her in the eyes when we finally separated. When I was a guy I stood at six foot even and had a good seven inches on her, if you didn’t count her ears. Now though I figured that I was probably about five foot four, though I guess it wasn’t surprising that I had lost height if they seriously expected Jess’s clothes to fit me.

Nothing really fit properly though, as I discovered while I got dressed. Jessica hadn’t even bothered with a bra, which I couldn’t be happier about since I didn’t think I was ready for that yet, but the thong panties she had brought were uncomfortably tight around my wider hips. The pale blue satin dress was too tight in the hips and across the chest, it barely covered my upper thighs, and without a bra, it wasn’t hiding anything with the amount of cleavage it was showing and my nipples poking through the fabric.

Jessica sighed and rolled her eyes when she saw the fit. “That’s the only thing I have that I thought might fit you in the chest, I usually wear a pushup bra and inserts with that and you still look like you’re gonna explode out of it. I’d offer a sweater but there’s no way that you’re going to be able to wear my jeans or skirts with your wider hips.”

Since it was the best option that we had we were forced to go with it and finish dressing me. The black leather ankle boots and matching jacket weren’t too bad. The boots were a size too large but some wool socks fixed that, and the jacket fit okay so long as I didn’t try to zip it up. Overall, the clothes were physically and mentally uncomfortable though and it took every ounce of willpower that I had to not just tear them off again.

Besides the discomfort, I think the worst part was that my hair kept getting in the way and with it being so long I had trouble extracting it from the back of the dress. Seriously, it was down to the middle of my thighs and Jessica had to braid it for me to keep it out of the way, which of course seemed to take forever with its length. While she was doing that, Aunt Merry went inside to grab our bags, well their bags since I couldn’t wear anything that I’d brought and leaving them there would just add to the mystery when I vanished.

It was just as she finished bringing out the bags and the keys for the truck that was parked behind the cabin when the scent of brimstone heralded the arrival of a Demon. Merriwynd reacted nearly instantly, drawing her gun as she whirled around to point it at our visitor. “Thank goodness that I got here before they di… Whoa! Cool it down a second! I’m not here to hurt you! I’m here to fucking warn you!” Surie Rourke offered as she raised her hands from where she sat atop my Kawasaki ZX-10R with a large duffel bag over her shoulder.

“Surie?” Jessica asked in the stunned silence that followed.

“Yeah. At least your bodyguard seems alert. Who’s the hottie? And where’s the kid? You all need to get out of here fast, it seems that the PDA forgot rule seven when dealing with Paranormal threats and we have trouble on the way. Chief Little sent me to deliver these and to tell you to take the truck and disappear.” Surie removed the duffel from her shoulder and tossed it to Jessica. “Go wake the kid up, get him in the truck, and get out of here before company arrives.”

Surie didn’t wait for us to reply, though she did give me a long once-over with her eyes as she started wheeling my bike through the snow and toward the rear of the cabin. Did she somehow realize that I had Manifested? I hadn’t noticed before what a nice ass she had under those skintight leather pants and as she walked away I could feel the fire in my loins igniting once again. Oh my God, I needed to get laid so bad right now. Between Surie’s presence giving me someone that would be an acceptable target for my now desperate libido and trying to fight the urge to just rip my uncomfortable clothes off I wasn’t exactly able to concentrate on my surroundings.

I was snapped out of it by gunshots, snapping my head in the direction of the sound to see Merriwynd holding her gun and something shadowy falling from the night sky. She wasted no time in holstering her gun and drawing her swords to decapitate the creature. “Kadduran,” she spat distastefully. “One down, seven to go. We need to take them out or they’ll just follow us.”

Have you ever seen those stone gargoyles on those old gothic cathedrals and buildings? Well, they were placed there to frighten away evil. I guess that the thought was if you’re going to keep Demons and shit out then what better way than making it look like one of the nastiest creatures of Demonkind is on the building watching. So they based the appearance of the gargoyles on the Kadduran, and trust me their reputation is well deserved. They travel in packs, have hard leathery skin and razor-sharp claws, can heal almost instantly from most wounds, and delight in ripping their victims to shreds.

Jessica and I were staring at our protector, and we weren’t alone. “How did you…” Surie began to ask, her mouth agape as she let my bike drop to the ground. I wasn’t quite sure whether she meant how Merriwynd was able to sense them, shoot one down in the dark, or how she had managed to take one down so quickly.

“I could feel them on the wind and I have good night vision. I was expecting Demons so I had my bullets and weapons enchanted with Divine magic before coming here. Make yourself useful, protect the girls and keep those things away from the cabin.” I was wondering why she had added that last part but then I realized that Surie thought that I was still in the cabin asleep or something and Aunt Merry wanted to keep her and our opponents thinking that.

Aunt Merry managed to fell another pair of the creatures but she was out of bullets now and three of the creatures were swarming her, swooping in to hit and run too quickly for even her Fey speed and reflexes to do much more than get the odd strike in with a sword as they got in close. Those cuts seemed to be slowing the creatures down but Merriwynd was taking her share of cuts too. It was as I watched, wishing that I could do something useful that I thought, “Wait, she said there were seven left, so where are the other two?”

Jessica screamed as one of them swooped toward us and I panicked, scrambling to shield her with my body as a veritable barrage of icicles erupted from the snow in front of us to impale the creature and shred its wings. It was stuck with us on ground level now but I could already see its wounds starting to heal. Surie grinned at me. “Nice! So you’re not just another pretty face.” I could feel my cheeks flush as the half-Demon vanished in a puff of brimstone and saw that the last of the unaccounted Kadduran was flying straight at us to support its injured packmate, only to fly headlong into a wall of ice that rose from the snow between us as I panicked once again.

The injured Kadduran was shuffling its way to us through the snow while its buddy was still trying to shake off its encounter with the ice wall. That was when Surie appeared again, accompanied by the scent of sulfur. She waited a moment, letting it get a little closer before holding out a hand, giving the Kadduran a long look, and saying, “Hey, douchebag, rule seven.”

It stopped uncertainly, confusion written all over its face as its gravelly voice inquired, “Rule ssseven?”

“Always look up,” Surie replied with a grin as my motorbike fell from the sky to crash on top of the creature.

I just stared as she drew a knife and decapitated the creature, having something else on my mind. “My bike! Oookay, maybe it’s not so bad, I mean, maybe the Kadduran and the snow cushioned the fall. I can probably still fix it.”

I tried to get control of my breathing and reassure myself that it wasn’t something that couldn’t be fixed when Surie grabbed the bike by the rear suspension and hurled it one-handed at the other Kadduran, who had shaken off its crash and was flying toward us. Before I could even gasp in surprise she had drawn possibly the biggest handgun that I had ever or likely would ever see. She probably needed her enhanced strength just to hold that thing one-handed. A shot rang out a second before my bike exploded as it hit the approaching Kadduran. I fell to my knees, staring in shock and abject horror at the fate of my motorcycle as the flames from the explosion seemed to take on a mind of their own, engulfing the Kadduran.

The flames pulled themselves into a rough ball shape that came to rest in Surie’s hand as she used the other hand to point her gun at the charred, but still living, Kadduran and pulled the trigger. Its head exploded and she turned from the headless corpse to grin at us. “Regenerate from that, bitch! Now that is why armor piercing high explosive/incendiary rounds are worth the money. We’re lucky though, Kadduran are one of the few types of Demons that aren’t fireproof.” The fireball shot from her hand, nailing the last of the remaining Kadduran and sending it screaming to the ground where Merriwynd quickly finished it off.

I was still kneeling in the snow, staring at the blackened remains of my bike in shock and trying my best not to cry when I felt a hand on my shoulder. “Hey, are you okay, Cutie?” Surie asked. “It’s understandable to be in shock if you’ve never been in a fight like this before but, for what it’s worth, I think that you did pretty well for yourself. How long have you been training with your Ice magic?”

“Umm… not very long,” I replied uncertainly. Okay, not at all, it was all a big fluke from me panicking, but she didn’t need to know that. “I… uhhh… only Manifested recently and it was a bit of a surprise.”

Surie nodded sadly and squeezed my shoulder reassuringly as a dark expression settled over her face. “Yeah, it can be tough when it’s a surprise like that. I never knew about my parentage and I grew up moving from foster home to foster home. My mother killed herself not long after I was born and I guess nobody else in her family would take me because… when I was conceived… it wasn’t exactly consensual. I Manifested when I was fourteen, and since I knew that my foster parents would freak if they saw me I ran away had to figure out most of it myself. I wandered the alleys and dark places of Vancouver for a few months before another Paranormal found me and helped me figure out what I am. He taught me how to use my abilities, survive, and make a living. I’ve been on my own and working as a cleaner ever since, so almost six years now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said uncertainly. I felt kind of horrible thinking about how bad I had it when it looked like her life had been much worse. At least I had a family that cared about me. And I may have lost my Dad, but I still had Jess and apparently Aunt Merry and my mother now too.

She shrugged dismissively but I could still see a haunted look in her eyes. “Hey, I survived. People like you and me, we’re survivors.” Then in a quick and very obvious change of subject, she asked, “So, Cutie, how’d you fall in with those two and the kid? Do you have any plans once they’ve gone off to wherever it is they’re going to disappear to?”

Was she flirting with me? I bit my lip and clamped my thighs together as I took a deep breath and tried to think of baseball. Okay, so maybe that wasn’t the best idea with all those guys in those tight uniform pants. Nope, no sex. I was totally not ready to take that plunge as a girl. I was expecting to have my first sexual experience on the other side of the gender fence and I was not ready to try and wrap my mind around my first time, and every time after, being as a female participant.

I realized that I had yet to answer her questions and shrugged. “I’m probably going with them, I don’t have anywhere else to go.”

“Oh! You and the kid huh?” Surie said with a sly smile as her eyes widened in surprise. For a moment I thought that she was on to me but then she winked. “He is kind of cute, not really my type though. So, is that why he’s in the cabin? Did you wear him out already?”

“I never! I wouldn’t!” I sputtered. My face was burning in embarrassment and I quickly looked away. My eyes fell once again on the charred remains of my bike and I couldn’t help but remember who was responsible for its destruction. Just when it looked like I would be able to keep that piece of my dad it was all destroyed. I couldn’t believe the nerve of her. First, she destroys my bike and she had been flirting with me since. I shrugged her hand off my shoulder and turned on my heel, telling her coldly. “It’s none of your business. I’m going to go check on Merriwynd, she might need first aid.”

I stomped my way through the snow over to Jessica and my Fey aunt. Jess was looking her over and she looked concerned as she turned to look up at my approach and whispered. “Some of these cuts are pretty deep and she’s bleeding bad, she might need stitches. We should get her to a hospital.”

“I’m fine,” Merriwynd objected, “just bandage me up and we can get going.”

As she was saying that I shook my head and insisted in a quiet tone, “No hospitals. I don’t trust them, not after the way they fucked up with Dad.” I looked over her and reached out to tenderly touch one of the worst gashes a deep one that ran nearly the whole length of her upper arm. “This is bad, I… don’t know enough first aid to deal with something like this.”

It wasn’t even the worst of the wounds and Jess was barely staunching the bleeding of those. Jess was trying not to freak out, but her frantically twitching ears gave her away. I was suddenly scared that I was going to lose Aunt Merry, just like we’d lost Dad and I had to close my eyes against the tears that threatened to make themselves known.

I felt a warmth in my hands and I heard a gasp. When I opened my eyes Jess and Aunt Merry were staring at my hands, which were giving off a pale white glow as they rested on Merriwynd’s arm. I thought that I could see her wounds healing before my eyes, but my vision was fuzzy from the tears and getting fuzzier as a wave of exhaustion hit me and I damn near collapsed as the glow faded.

“You… that was Divine magic… you’re a Snow Nymph, you shouldn’t be able to…” Aunt Merry sputtered in wide-eyed astonishment as she removed a blood-soaked bandage to gaze at what was now little more than a scratch. Then she gave Jess and me both a serious look and whispered, “Tell nobody about this until we get to your mother. We can’t risk…”

She quickly cut off whatever she was going to say as I heard snow crunching behind me and I turned to see Surie approaching. “Hey, is everything okay here?” the half-Demon inquired.

“She’s fine,” I said coldly, still pissed at her about my bike.

“Yeah, it’s fine. We just thought that she was injured worse than she was, we should be able to head off any time once we finish bandaging her wounds and she changes clothes,” Jessica said casually, like the most shocking thing ever didn’t just happen. It was a shame that she couldn’t get any Human roles because that was Oscar-worthy.

Surie knelt beside me in the snow looking confused. “Did I say something to offend you? I’m sorry if my teasing pissed you off, it’s none of my business who you have sex with.”

I wasn’t upset because she assumed that I was screwing myself, I knew that as a Nymph I was probably going to hear worse things. What pissed me off was that she had destroyed my bike and she didn’t seem to have any idea just how much that hurt me. Not helping my mood was the fact that in addition to being sexually frustrated, I was now starving and exhausted as well. So I wasn’t really thinking clearly when I snapped, “I’m pissed because you destroyed my bike! Do you have any idea how much work Dad and I put into that?! It was the last gift that he gave me before he…”

As I broke down in a sobbing mess Surie winced. “I was trying to keep you both alive using what I had at hand. Those things were too fast for me to shoot at in the dark without wasting ammo, I don’t have night vision, there was no fire available for me to control, and my regeneration isn’t as good as theirs for a close-up fight. I wasn’t really thinking beyond killing those things, and I… uh… might have been showing off a little for you. I… Chief Little said that was the kid’s bike.” She looked a bit confused as she said the last.

“Stop calling me a kid!” I snapped, wiping at my tears.

I think that we all realized what I said at the same time. I could see Jess and Aunt Merry trying not to give anything away, but they both still winced when we witnessed the light bulb moment as Surie put the pieces together and sputtered, “Wait, you’re…”

Oh shit.