Izzy shook her head at his response. “It lasted until I saw you for the monster you are,” she amended, her voice trembling slightly with both anger and anticipation of where she trusted this conversation was going.
	She looked fully to Cerasus when he stepped forward, every muscle in her body tensing as she took an instinctive step away, but her heel hit the door of the farmhouse.
	“It was more of a guess,” she breathed, her breaths quickened by dread and the suffocating weight that now saturated the air.
	With heavy steps, she moved so her back was no longer against the farmhouse, her gaze never straying from Cerasus. If this was going to happen here, she needed to keep him as far away from the building, from its current single occupant, as she could. All it would take was a single misplaced blow for the whole structure to come crumbling down on top of Trevor. She silently cursed herself for putting him in danger yet again. If she lost, he would be an easy target, an ant to a lion with the appetite of an entire pride. Not that she felt like much more than that herself. He was the ancient hunter, and she little more than a foolish cub who dared challenge him. He had at least five-hundred years of experience in both fighting and killing. He knew all the tricks in the book, every single one of her weaknesses, while she knew only what he had bothered to tell her, and had never killed anything more than insects.
	But she could not afford to think like that. She tried to shake the thought off, but with little success as he continued speaking. She took a deep, shaky breath, trying to steady her nerves.
	[i]I can do this,[/i] she thought halfheartedly, taking up her own defensive stance. She needed to find out his fighting style, any patterns or preferred methods. After all, she had only glimpsed a fraction of the surface of what he could do. And rushing in, even if she had wanted to, had since proven a poor idea to figure that out. 
	She took another breath, and put on as brave and determined a face as she could muster. “Then what are you waiting for?”