Airel - Aaron Patterson [129]
The Sword was featherlight in my hand. I felt warmth and power filling me. It was not red like anger, or white and wonderful like love—but something else entirely. It didn’t even have a color—not one I could put into words.
Stan sneered, unsheathing the same black dagger he had had at his house, stepping toward me in a sideways crouch, dagger in his leading hand. “The Brotherhood wants you alive. They will have to understand if I bring you back dead—I had no choice, you see—you attacked me!” He snarled, snorted and spit.
Kreios barreled right at the Seer, taking him on without delay. The two tumbling bodies fell out of sight in the forest, behind a small rise. I could hear branches breaking; maybe whole trees from the sound of it.
I studied my enemy. Stan was not just any man. Not only was he being propped up by supernatural—unnatural—power that found a home in the Seer, but he was also the father of the lover who had left my heart in a heap of ashes.
My enraged heart was now looking at the target for the blame—Stan. And not only Stan, but the being known as the Seer. I focused my pain on him as the cause of it and charged forward with a shout that surprised me.
Stan’s guard was inadequate at best, and as She guided me through my body’s motions, I stabbed with a thrusting motion and felt the Sword take over, driving the point of the blade in. I could feel ribs break under the force of the blow.
Stan howled in pain, dropping his hands. I moved fluidly to the side, forcing the point of the blade to pivot on the rib, ripping him apart inside and opening him up. Stan fell to one knee and gasped, eyes bulging. The Sword was withdrawn from his wound. I felt almost like a spectator as I watched myself move like someone who knew what she was doing; who could handle herself with a weapon like this. I swept the Sword out and around to the side, spinning back to my opponent, keeping the Weapon between us. It was amazing how easy it all was.
“You think you can kill me that easily,” he croaked. The wound began to heal right before my eyes, though a deep crimson scar remained. “As long as I have this—” His voice cut off as he fondled the red bloodstone that hung around his neck. Then a new cut emerged on his neck: long, with five points at its end. It began to bleed. It looked like claw marks, or maybe invisible strong hands.
Kreios.
If I killed Stan, the Seer would die as well… or will he just retreat into the red stone? I couldn’t remember. Stan got to his feet and smacked me with more force than I would have thought he was able to muster. I thought I would fall, but my body moved into the motion his strike had created, moving with it, spinning back around, using it to reset my fighting stance.
“We must coordinate our kills, Airel! The Seer must perish first, otherwise he will escape into the stone.”
In our macabre dance, we had exchanged positions; the rocky cliff now stood behind the wild-eyed man. Maybe I can back him up and push him over. Will a fall of that height kill him? It might knock him out and drown him…
I swung the Sword powerfully, meeting the edge of his jagged dagger in a spray of sparks. The tip of his weapon was cut; it sailed off into the lake below. He tried to counterattack with a quick jab, but missed. I swung again, bringing the tip of the blade in an arc up from the ground to the sky, pushing him back.
Stan twitched and cried out, slapping at new wounds on his body. He was limping and favoring the side where I had hit him and smashed his ribs. Evidently the healing power of the bloodstone was not working fast enough. His ribs are still broken.
I pulled up and kicked him in the gut, knocking the wind out of him. He doubled over; I raised the Sword high overhead, and clubbed him on the back of his skull with the end of the handle. He slumped to the dirt in a wrecked pile. Unconscious.
I wasn’t even breathing