Firedragon Rising (9 page)

Cold air brushed Aurelia’s left arm. That
was where the specter would materialize next—she knew it at once.
She swiped one blade through the area, where a faint gray glow had
already begun to appear, and the specter let out another
high-pitched wail as it was forced to scatter again.

Aurelia sprinted through the trees, knowing
there was no time to lose. Energy coursed through her as she dodged
an avalanche of falling branches, then slashed her blades through
the specter’s third attempt to materialize. The undead creature
hadn’t caught her yet, but beneath the heat of action, terror sat
embedded in her chest. This spirit was vicious, and Aurelia didn’t
care to find out what would happen if she didn’t make it to
safety.

Her heart seemed ready to explode as she
wove through the quaking trees; she was sure she’d never run so
fast in her entire life. Her lungs burned, and her legs felt like
they were turning into jelly. All she could see was a tangle of
black shapes, and she kept one arm out in front of her as she ran,
feeling for obstacles. Then she spotted a house—wide and squat and
so white, it seemed to glow under the moonlight—through the bare
trunks ahead.

The Way Station. It had to be.

A creeping feeling told
her that the specter would appear behind her next, and she spun on
her toe while swinging her right blade. She glimpsed the specter’s
glowing, silvery outline just before her sword slashed through it,
making it explode into wisps of smoke. Completing the turn, she
continued forward without missing a beat. Then, spotting the
spirit’s hideous face right in front of her, she swung both blades
forward—an instant before the specter
actually
appeared. Somehow, she’d
seen it in her mind before it had made its actual move.

Her gut twisted with discomfort at that
thought. She’d always been freakily good at predicting an enemy’s
moves, but recently she’d come to realize that there was something
more to her uncanny ability than fast instincts. She still hadn’t
fully grasped how exactly it worked, though, and wondered if she
ever would. But she wasn’t about to question it now—especially when
it was telling her that the specter was three feet to her right.
Without looking, she stabbed one blade in that direction and caught
a glimpse of the grotesque, ghostly face in the corner of her eye
before it shattered.

She fixed her gaze on the
Way Station, trying to make out details as she drew closer. It was
a long, one-story building topped with a sloping roof, and patches
of black windows sat against the whiteness of the walls—defensible
enough if the enchanted barrier around it didn’t hold … but not
from a specter that could walk right through it.
The perimeter’s gotta work
, she told herself.
Williams
wouldn’t send me here if he weren’t sure.

A barrage of cracking noises suddenly
assaulted her hearing, and she recognized it as the sound of dry
branches being snapped off trees. A soft whistle rang out; the
specter was hurling the branches at her from behind. She dropped to
the ground without thinking about it, and the branches flew over
her head. A split second later, she sprang up, then sprinted the
last few feet.

The specter would make another attempt to
materialize, but it didn’t matter—she’d already won.

She stopped and whirled back in time to see
the specter crash into the invisible wall created by the enchanted
perimeter. Though the barrier didn’t shimmer like the one
surrounding the Capital—probably because it guarded a smaller area
and therefore wasn’t as powerful—she could feel its magic crackling
around her like the static of a storm.

The specter vanished as it hit the
perimeter, and her ears buzzed from its cry of frustration. It
rematerialized a second later, gnashing its teeth and contorting
its face.

Aurelia lifted her chin in triumph. Her
shoulders were heaving from her fast, deep breaths, and sweat
covered her entire body, but the exhaustion that should have hit
was absent. Instead, her blood pumped with gleeful energy. Maybe
she hadn’t banished the specter, but she was still the victor.

“
And you’re the loser,
because you can’t get me,” she said with a smirk.

The specter screamed and rushed forward
again—only to shatter against the barrier. With the threat gone,
Aurelia suddenly found the creature’s freak-outs to be hilarious,
and a giggle escaped her lips. Unable to resist, she stuck out her
tongue. “Nyeh, nyeh!”

Then the tiredness hit her, and it hit hard.
She suddenly felt like dropping into the ground and going to sleep
right there in the dirt. But she couldn’t let herself relax just
yet. Maybe her supernatural enemy couldn’t get through, but the
humans chasing her could. The Triumvirate’s Sentinels. And Tydeus
Storm. They were still after her, and for all she knew, they could
track her here. She had to get inside, out of sight.

She turned and forced herself to trudge
toward the house. Behind her, she heard the spirit try yet again to
fly through the barrier, but didn’t bother looking back.

“
Take a hint,
stupid-head,” she muttered. She had a hard time believing that such
a mindless creature had ever been a person, and wondered how psycho
you had to be to end up like that after death.

When she reached the door
to the house, she found it unlocked, but it wasn’t until she’d
crossed the threshold that she realized she might actually
make
it
.
Here
she was, in a rebel hideout, and one step closer to joining the
fight to take down the Triumvirate.

A thrill rushed through her. Soon, Williams
would get his message to the Rising, and they’d meet her here. If
she could avoid or fend off any enemies until the others arrived,
then by escaping, she’d have won her first victory against the
government. And as part of the rebellion, she could finally begin
changing the world.

She just hoped the Rising would find her
before the Triumvirate or Storm did.

WAITING WAS THE WORST
THING
in the world, and Aurelia decided
she’d rather face another thorndevil than spend another minute
pacing around the empty Way Station. At the same time, the
quietness meant her enemies hadn’t found her yet, and she supposed
she should be glad for that. She feared that the Triumvirate might
track her to the safe house, and had considered staying awake
through the night, but the exhaustion had overwhelmed
her.

Now, having
rested from her crazy journey the night before and eaten her fill
of the hideout’s food stash, she felt ready for battle. Problem
was, there was nothing to fight.

She considered grabbing the bow sitting on a
shelf beside her and practicing some shots, or maybe checking out
some of the other weapons in the small room she stood in. A number
of swords, rifles, and more sat piled against the walls, gleaming
under the morning sunlight streaming through the window. She
guessed that the rebels kept this makeshift armory in case the
perimeter failed and they ran into supernatural trouble, and she
was glad to have found it. Maybe she could use some of these
weapons to set up defenses against any would-be attackers, whether
it was Storm or the Triumvirate’s goons.

Before she could come up with any ideas,
though, a flash of light caught her eye. For a moment, she thought
it might have been the sun glinting off one of the silver blades,
but then she caught sight of a figure in the woods outside the
window. Someone must have just goldlighted into the area. And he or
she was in trouble—there was a flock of black razorbirds, each of
which looked deceptively like a crow, fast approaching.

Who was out there? Could it be the
Triumvirate, catching up to her at last? Or Storm, still chasing
her for reasons she couldn’t guess?

She barely had time to
think about it before her combat instincts kicked in, and her eyes
instinctively searched the room for a bow. Spotting one on the
floor, she seized it, then grabbed a fistful of arrows from a bin
against the wall. She didn’t know who that person was or what they
wanted, but humans
always
trumped supernaturals, and she wasn’t about to
stand by while someone was attacked. If it turned out to be the
Triumvirate, she’d find a window for escape after the razorbirds
were down.

If it turned out to be Storm, then she
needed him alive to tell her what he wanted.

And if it turned out to be someone else
altogether, then she would’ve fulfilled her duty as a monster
fighter and saved a life. That last possibility drowned out the
first two, and she decided she’d rather risk saving an enemy than
doing nothing while an innocent was attacked.

She barreled through the house and burst
through the door into the yard. The other person was at least two
hundred yards outside the Way Station’s perimeter, desperately
throwing up shield spells to block the incoming blades shooting
from of the razorbirds’ wings. From the sound of the voice, Aurelia
could tell it was a man. And from the brilliant red color of his
hair, she knew at once that he wasn’t Storm. He also didn’t wear
the gold cloak of the Sentinels. It didn’t rule out the possibility
that he was with the Triumvirate, but it did make it less
likely.

Whoever he was, he didn’t have much time
left. The razorbirds were swooping toward him, apparently too busy
closing in on their quarry to notice her approach. Though she was
still some distance away, she was close enough to be within range.
Still running, she raised her bow and slapped one arrow against its
side, then aimed at the razorbird closest to the man and fired.
Without waiting to see if she’d hit her target—and she was certain
she had—she fired again, and then again, and then again. Four
arrows, four shots, four dead razorbirds.

That got their attention. The remaining
creatures from the flock veered toward her, firing several black
blades from their wings. A whirl of alarm spun through her as she
ducked up against a tree. She only had two arrows left in her hand,
and there were four monsters coming at her.

No
problem
, she thought, a plan forming in
her head.

She waited a few seconds
for the razorbirds to get a little closer—and lower. They were
swooping down toward her, probably hoping to impale her with their
blade-like feathers, then peck at her to finish her off. She
pressed back into the dry bark as more blades flew at her, whizzing
past her ears and slamming into the ground. Then, when the birds
were close enough, she leaped out from the shelter of the tree and
fired both remaining arrows in quick succession. They hit their
targets with double
thwacks
, and the razorbirds shrieked
as the missiles impaled them both against the trunk of a
tree.

Catching movement in the corner of her eye,
she dodged as blades rained down from the two remaining razorbirds,
twisting and sidestepping to avoid the sudden barrage. She trusted
her instincts and moved automatically to their commands. The
creatures passed overhead, and she took the opening to race toward
the tree in which the arrows were embedded.

She yanked one out, then spun, firing as the
razorbirds veered back around, coming for her. One fell, its cry
grating against her ears, and the other—the last—whipped one black
wing in her direction. She jumped behind the tree for shelter, then
reached around it and grabbed the other arrow from the trunk.
Before the razorbird could strike again, she shot it through the
middle.

It landed with a
dull
thud
, and,
without the beating of wings or the noise of screeches, the forest
suddenly seemed very quiet.

The tension in her chest loosened, and she
regarded her handiwork, satisfied. Though she had no way of
checking a clock, she would have bet her new swords on the fact
that less than a minute had passed between the moment she’d spotted
the flock and the moment she’d defeated its last member.

Now she turned her
attention to the red-haired Enchanter. He stood several yards away,
as still as the trees, and she could tell even from the distance
that he was gaping. She smirked, strangely flattered by the idea
that she’d impressed someone enough to effectively paralyze
him.
Yeah, I’m that awesome.

Then she strode toward him, stopping briefly
along the way to yank an arrow out of a fallen razorbird. The man
didn’t look like a threat, with his skinny build and narrow face.
In fact, now that she was closer, she realized that he wasn’t much
older than her, and had a bookish look about him, as if he’d been
born to sit in libraries pondering the meaning of life. But after
what had happened with Tydeus Storm, she wasn’t taking any
chances.