Battlecry by Emerald Dodge

Author:Emerald Dodge [Dodge, Emerald]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-01T05:00:00+00:00

23

Rational thought stopped.

I planted a hand on the balcony rail and jumped over, dimly aware of Benjamin and Eleanor shouting something at me. I landed on top of a bookshelf, then lightly jumped to the ground. Blood pounded in my ears as the details of the library zeroed into sharp focus.

Patrick was here. If he’d killed Marco, he was going to die, simple as that. I’d killed before, and I had no qualms about killing again. I shrugged off my lack of knives; bare hands would do.

I whipped around the corner of a bookshelf and froze.

Patrick stood in the main aisle with his back to me. Marco hung above him like a grotesque puppet, his limbs twisted. Marco’s face was a violent shade of purple as he clawed at his neck in a vain effort to remove the invisible hands that choked off his air supply. He saw me and gurgled.

“It’s about time,” Patrick said, his tone so icy that it cut through my fury. What did he plan to do here at the library, in public? How desperate was he for revenge? The memory of his fearful eyes when I attacked him so many weeks ago played across my mind.

He was afraid then—it was possible he was afraid still. I needed to exploit that fear, as he’d exploited mine too many times. I squared my shoulders. If Patrick wanted a showdown, he was going to get one.

But he was going to have to fight Battlecry, not Jillian.

“Drop him and face me.” I raised my voice as if I were on the streets with a common thug. “Only a coward uses a human shield.”

Patrick spun around. “A coward?”

Marco dropped to the floor in a heap. He was breathing, so I didn’t spare him a worry. Patrick was working himself into a mania, which would make him dangerously reckless. But I had learned how to exploit recklessness when I had killed rabid animals in the woods back home.

“Yes, a coward.” I didn’t take my eyes off Patrick’s face. “You attacked Marco to lure me out. That was a bad move, leader.”

I needed to keep talking while I came up with a plan. Now that I was within feet of my furious, lethal, and highly unpredictable foe, I realized that jumping over the balcony and announcing my presence hadn’t been the best idea I’d ever had.

Telekinesis prickled at my skin and clothes, though it was too indistinct to have any effect on me. I suspected that he wasn’t consciously controlling his power anymore, instead letting it billow off him like fumes from a gasoline can.

He was going to explode if I didn’t stop him.

“Well, say something.” I put a hand on my hip. Several feet to my right was a janitor’s closet with a fire alarm next to it. I casually took a step towards it. “Don’t just stand there and glare at me. Where are your usual threats? I’ve missed them so much.”

“I’ll kill you for what you did to me,” Patrick hissed, his face flushed white.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.