Page 4 of Phoenix Academy: Madness

Wild foxes hid in their dens. Rabbits in their warrens. The trees were full of little birds: woodpeckers, songbirds, and a few hawks here and there. I let my senses touch each of them, leaving a bit of my magic behind in their fur and on their feathers. Then, with the web of awareness they created, I tracked the Heretic and his followers.

"Two from the east... maybe a minute away. Three on the west, two minutes. The Heretic..." I swallowed, uneasy. "I can't tell how far away he is. Could be five minutes, could be five seconds."

"If he were five seconds away I'd be able to see him." Mom set rounds in the grass beside her, ready to reload her rifle at will. "Any predators you can turn against him?"

She meant my naturalist skills, which let me tame animals for a short period of time. With prey, that meant taking their ingrained fear of humans away from them so that we could hunt them. With predators, I turned their aggression against others instead of me.

But the wolves had long been hunted from the woods we sheltered in, and I didn't sense any hawks close enough or large enough to take down a grown man. It would be just me and Mom against the five men and the Heretic himself.

"Nothing," I told her. "We'll just have to aim efficiently."

She nodded sharply. "If I go down, get your sister and run. Don't look back, and don't come back for me. Just grab her out of that tree and get as far away from him as you can."

"He'll follow," I said, voice low and raspy. "I could... I could let him have me."

"No." Her tone was absolute, allowing no argument. "I didn't get you this far just to give up. He'll take you over my dead body."

It felt less like a threat and more like a prediction of her future.

They came out of the woods faster than I'd thought imaginable. Moving like ghosts, their bodies somehow empty of souls, they came at us with weapons in their hands and feral anger in their eyes.

Mom kneecapped one. Hands trembling, I shot wildly at shoulders and legs, afraid to kill another and find out what I was truly made of. They fell back, and for a moment we breathed. We reloaded our rifles and exchanged a brief, hesitant look of triumph.

Thenhecame out of the woods and into the clearing, moving like a shadow detached from its human form, and it became clear that the reason why his followers retreated was because their kind was here.

The Heretic himself. With pale, dull skin, a messy beard, and pale blue eyes leeched of color, he looked more like a hulking beast walking on its hind legs than a human being. Just looking at him sent terror thundering through me like a herd of wild horses.

"Get your sister," Mom said, voice grim. "We're not getting out of this alive."

"Let's at leasttry," I argued. "I can't give up."

Her mouth thinned into a pale pink line, but she nodded sharply. Kneeling behind the barricade, we leveled our rifles at the Heretic and put our fingers on the trigger.

One by one, we emptied every round in the chamber into his chest.

He barely flinched as they buried themselves inside him.

His steps faltered, but didn't stop, as he approached us with a smirk on his lips.

And I knew. We weren't going to win this one.

Glancing over my shoulder, I met my sister's frightened eyes. She cowered high in the tree, arms and legs wrapped around its trunk.

I looked to my mother as she unsheathed her hunting knife, and knew she was planning a last stand.

I couldn't let either one of them sacrifice themselves for me.

At the end of the day, this was my fight, my nightmare to face. My mother had been running with me for nineteen years. She hadn't been able to sleep in the same place for longer than fourteen months. My sister had been born into a life on the run, living in the shadow I cast.

Before she could stop me, I pushed my mom away, threw my rifle to the ground, and leapt over the barrier, arms up over my head.

"I surrender!" I ignored my mother's snarl of anger and stepped between her and the Heretic, preventing her from getting off another round in him. "Take me wherever, I don't care. Just leave them alone."

His nearly colorless eyes met mine, and a little smile curled up his lips. He shook his head, deliberately, twice. "Not in those words."

I swallowed. Looked back over my shoulder, towards my sister, who was even now climbing down the tree, and my mother, who was staring at me in horror and shock.

Then I looked back at him. My nightmare. My hunter. The man who wanted to bleed me dry.

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