Larva by Azalea Ellis

Author:Azalea Ellis [Ellis, Azalea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Seladore Publishing

17

In which Percy resorts to physical violence

Percy

Month 11, Day 3, Tuesday 7:50 a.m.

* * *

Percy knew that sometimes he made foolish decisions or became so blinded by his goal that he didn’t realize the consequences accumulating along the sidelines. But he was not an idiot.

And so he didn’t lunge for the satchel of expensive artifacts.

He spun around on his still-shoed foot, just as determined now to escape the thief as he had been to catch him, but before he could take a single step to escape, the man who had been sneaking up behind him punched Percy in the stomach.

Percy folded over the man’s fist, his eyes bulging and his tongue straining out of his open mouth as watery bile spilled over his lips and splattered on the man’s forearm and the ground below. If there had been more in his stomach, that would have come up too.

The man withdrew his fist, shaking off the bile with disgust.

Percy slumped bonelessly to the ground. His vision swam, but the man standing over him was close enough to make out the red and black bandanna with the sloppily embroidered “M” of the Morrows displayed proudly on its side.

He’d seen them patrolling—and the way people went out of their way to leave an empty space around them. Several of the shops around where Dad worked paid them protection money, and they had even been putting pressure on Dad to take up that practice as well.

And one particularly stupid Morrow man had pinched Mom’s butt at the morning market and gotten an automatic backhand slap hard enough to bloody his mouth. He had threatened dark retribution but ran away when she lost her temper and tried to attack him in truth.

All the kids had thought this was hilarious, but Percy had noticed how Dad’s mouth grew pinched and worried when he heard the story.

Percy tried to climb to his feet, his limbs trembling and his open mouth working futilely as he gasped for air.

“We can’t have that,” Boris said, his voice approaching from behind.

Percy’s bare foot, slippery with his own blood, failed to take his weight and shot out to the side, sending him collapsing in the other direction.

As he caught himself with his hands, he saw Boris’s foot shooting by out of the corner of his eye.

If Percy hadn’t slipped, it would have hit him in the back of the knee, but instead it slid right past Percy and hit the bandanna-wearing man right in the shin.

Bandanna let out a muffled shout and hopped backward on one leg, hunched over and cradling the injured one in his arms.

Scrambling to get away, Percy slipped again, this time falling onto his stomach as his legs shot out behind him, hitting something that could only have been Boris’s own feet.

Boris’s shout of surprise cut off abruptly as he hit the ground beside Percy. He landed in the narrow space between Percy and the alley wall with a heavy thud that Percy could feel through the ground.

The

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