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I raised my voice to a growl. “Leave mysiblingsalone!”
I moved to knee him in the chin. He tried to raise his arm—the one with the now ruined arm bracer—but I had too much momentum, and he was too weak from pain, so my kick just made him punch himself in the throat.
He toppled backwards.
“Leave thehumansalone!” I shouted as I kicked the side of his head.
He’s effectively brained. I just need to get him bleeding to keep him weak, and then I can call Pat and the Curia Cloisters.
Normally the thought would have made me queasy. I was all for self-defense and justice, but stabbing a guy was not my usual speed.
He threatened my parents and hurt Pat and Joy.
I rotated my wrist, adjusting the blade of my elven sword, then stabbed it straight through his boot—and foot.
He didn’t have reinforced boots—a major miscalculation. Or maybe not, I only stabbed him in the foot because there are a lot of major arteries in the leg, and I didn’t want to risk nicking any of them. (This information was brought to you by Charon, who had instructed metocut up an enemy’s leg for that very reason. But I wanted the Curia Cloisters to question him. I didn’t want him to bleed out before they arrived.)
The tracker yelled—his voice raw from pain—and rolled on the ground.
I retreated a few feet and swapped my sword for a dagger. Since I needed to use my phone, a one-handed dagger was a better choice instead of a sword that could potentially be swiped.
I fumbled to pull my phone from my left pocket, then swiped my cellphone screen open when the tracker yelled. “Your parents—the shadows—used you as decoy!”
I paused, then suspiciously raised my dagger to a defensive position, but the tracker was still on the ground. “What?”
“Your real parents—the shadows.” The tracker groaned, a vein popping in his neck. “They dumped you with humans to cover their tracks. I was able to follow them all the way to the human city where they dropped you.”
Oohh I get it, he’s trying to play a mental game.I more warily navigated through my phone’s screens, pulling up Pat’s number.
I had thought a lot about my parents as a kid—why would they have given me up, did they know what I was, did they not want me? But in the end I’d grown up in a loving family, and I was thankful that my birth parents—whatever the circumstances—had loved me enough to see that I was safe.
“Hiding with a newborn would have been more difficult.” The tracker whimpered as he tried to stand, but his stabbed foot wasn’t cooperating. “So they abandoned you—in a public way so your presence was recorded with humans while their trail disappeared. They sacrificed you, used you as a decoy, so they could stay hidden.”
I paused, my thumb hovering over the dial button.
Used me as a decoy? No. If they wanted to make my existence public they would have dumped me among supernaturals, not humans. Right?
Except…if their trail disappeared after they left me…
My gut instinct roared to life. Without thinking I jumped backwards, barely avoiding the dagger the tracker threw at me.
I snapped back to attention, thrusting my dagger out so I caught the tracker—who’d used my moment of uncertainty to get to his feet—in the shoulder.
He roared in pain, and I sensed more than I saw a change in his neck tattoo. Black, shadowy magic wrapped around his fist, which he swung at me, catching me on my left temple.
I felt the magic scrape my skin, trying to dig its claws into me, but my natural magic defenses ripped it apart so it couldn’t affect me. But the magic must have somehow boosted the tracker’s natural strength, because it felt like I’d gotten kicked in the head by a horse.
I was flung backwards, pain crackling through my skull.
I heard the tracker shout—his voice twisted with anguish, and I didn’t think it was just because of his new shoulder wound.
Get safe, I must get safe.
Still blind from the pain, I turned into a cat and dragged myself across the sidewalk.
I think I managed to get half under one of the shrubs lining the sidewalk, because I felt branches pull at my fur.
The tracker alternated cursing and groaning. I heard something dragging on the sidewalk—his injured foot, I think—as his voice grew distant.
