Page 22 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
No. No. No.
While hard to tell specifics with only the moonlight and a discarded, broken lantern, she knew General Correa’s eyes, even with that crazed look. His uniform was torn and dirty like those of the soldiers that had attacked the cavern.
He’d survived Achilles.
And he would never let her free.
Just looking at him now made her body explode with phantom pain. She fought her body’s response. He hadn’t touched her. She wouldn’t let him torture her again. She had the power now. She could makehimsuffer.
In the scuffle, Hallie had dropped the electropistol. Niels retrieved it and fired bolts in Correa’s direction. He wasn’t usedto the lack of recoil; he missed by several feet. Correa fired his Cerl pistol back. Hallie and Niels dodged just in time as the blue fire raced past, striking some other bit of the ruined house beside them.
Niels went to fire the flashpistol once more. Nothing happened. “Blast!”
In a moment of insanity, he tossed it aside. The pistol skidded across the mossy cobblestones and under the overturned carriage. Ice-cold fear thrummed in Hallie’s veins. The weapon was merely jammed, presumably, and he’d just—thrownit without a care.
Regardless, she scrambled after the discarded weapon as Correa skirted behind the half-wall of the home across the street. Some of the roof had caved in, and most of the front wall was missing. Golden light from Secondmoon glinted on the dirty window in the nearly intact front door. Correa fired again, but his aim went even more awry.
“I only need the girl!” he shouted as he fired once more. This time, his aim was better. Niels lunged in time to avoid it, barely, but landed on his injured shoulder.
He let out a scream through clenched teeth as he pulled himself back up. “Run!”
Hallie grasped the handle of the flashpistol, trying to cock it, but like she suspected, the mechanism didn’t budge. Jammed. She peeked around the side of the carriage as Niels edged around the doorway and shot an electrobolt at Correa. It hit the cottage door. Sparks engulfed the entire thing, jumping out and catching on the drying overgrowth.
A small flame budded where the spark had hit. Surely it wouldn’t grow. Not with the lingering snow. Surely not. Nothing was dry enough.
But maybe they’d get lucky.
Heat flared inside her chest when that flame did indeed leap to life. As the fire climbed, so did her power, rising higher and pushing harder and growing more and more unbearable by the second.
Hallie whimpered involuntarily as she pushed the heat into the jammed pistol in her hands, unsure what else to do with the power begging for release.
Fire ravaged her veins and flooded into the metal weapon. Someone screamed—it might have been her.
In a blink of an eye, the feeling abated, but her hands tingled. She looked down at the flashpistol.
Despite the discomfort in her fingers, she cocked it with ease, no longer jammed.
Holy blasting stars.
She leaned out from behind the carriage and aimed toward Correa’s hiding place. She hovered her finger over the trigger, breathing deeply to calm her racing heart.
She could do this. She could—
Tingling pain lanced through her hand, releasing her grip on the pistol.
Being old technology and not as reliable, it fired. The bullet nailed an upturned cobblestone, blasting it apart, and ricocheted sideways, hitting Niels in the leg. He shouted and fell against the wall. He slid to the ground, blood smearing on the moss and staining the sludgy snow.
“No!” she shouted. Her hand ached. She stumbled toward him where he tried to fire at Correa. His face was drawn into a pained grimace, his aim wilder than before.
She fell beside him, dodging a bullet. An orange glow grew on the other side of the street, but all she could really see was the blood soaking Niels’ trousers. She fumbled around for her pack, for anything that could help as his shaking, uninjured arm kept the electropistol trained on where they’d last seen Correa.
“I don’t know if—I’m sorry—I just—” She couldn’t find the words as she leaned back onto the threshold. Her good hand touched something that felt like fire.
She hissed and pulled it back. One of the bricks, the one she’d touched, wasn’t covered in moss or decay. It shone with a bronze glow, a soft light glimmering from its surface.
Hallie pressed both hands to the Zuprium brick. Fire raced through her fingers, into her hands, and up through her arms.
The Passage. It had to be. It didn’t look like the archway in her mind, but the power was convincing enough.
