Escape by Sheritta Bitikofer

6
                It wasn’t long after their run through the graveyard that Amelia began to feel the effects of the great strain she had put on her body. Every muscle cried out for rest, especially her feet.
                She tried to stay strong like Connor, but she just couldn’t go on. He may have been perfectly fine, but she was not.
                Connor continued walking, even after Amelia plopped herself down onto a rotten log on the edge of the path. “Wait!” she called out, her voice heavy with exhaustion.
                Connor stopped and turned around, as if surprised to see her so far behind him. He sighed and returned to her side and placed his hands on his hips, looking down at her. “What is it?” he asked, obviously a little frustrated. Could he really have had impossibly high standards for her that he would expect her to be totally fine after what they had just done?
                “I’m tired,” Amelia complained, rubbing her aching calf muscles.
                Connor’s eyes ran up and down her body, as if surveying the damage. Then, he squatted down by her legs, rubbed his hands together as if to warm them up, his eyes fixed on her calves. He swatted her hands away.
                “What?” she cried, growing irritated by his actions.
                Before she could get an answer, Connor had replaced her hands with his.
                Amelia’s eyes went wide as she watched him massage her calf muscles, pressing his thumb firmly along her shinbone and squeezing the meat beneath them between his fingers in soothing motions. He was gentle, but firm in his method. His hands roamed from just behind her knees all the way to the balls of her feet after he slipped her boots off.
                The longer he massaged her legs - first the left, then the right - his hands began to glow with an aura of gold. Her muscles and skin tingled beneath his touch. Amelia tried to yank her leg from his grasp, but his grip was too secure.
                “What are you doing?” she asked as he worked his hands down from her ankles, all the way up to the tops of her knees once more. The sensation spread with his hands.
                Connor shushed her and continued his massage.
                Amelia watched Connor’s concentrated gaze and his kneading hands. She felt her heart pounding against her chest so rapidly she thought it would burst. Her hands became shaky and damp from nervousness while her head grew light. She felt she would faint if she didn’t pull herself together. Did he know what he was doing to her?
                After ten minutes of this constant rubbing and steadily applying pressure, Connor removed his glowing hands to give Amelia her legs back. Now, they were completely painless and felt stronger to endure the long walk ahead.
                Amelia quickly recoiled her legs and rubbed her palms against them, making sure that this was no trick. How could she scientifically explain what he just did to her?
                “Anything else hurting?” he asked, his palms up like he was a doctor waiting to perform more surgery. They were still glowing. Amelia’s confused eyes darted between her healed legs, his hands and his still face.
                “What did you just do?”
                “Don’t your legs feel better?”
                “Yeah, but I didn’t think that demons could heal. I thought they only caused pain.”
                Connor’s face fell and a shadow passed over his eyes. “Then you obviously don’t know enough.”
                That was the first time that Amelia had ever been accused of not knowing enough. She knew plenty of facts, formulas, dates and grammatical rules to make anyone believe she had an above average intelligence. But now, it seemed that all of that knowledge