AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It still had the safety on, but that would only stop him for a second, and I was not going to play around with my brother’s life.
My heart thundered in my chest, and the tracker smiled. “Finally, I have you boxed in. It took long enough to figure out how exactly to pin you—you’re soobnoxiouslyunusual. But now that I know the trick, it’s simple enough.” He kept the gun trained on Pat. “He’s your weakness, and those sheep are his weakness. To keep you in line, I just have to threaten a gaggle of humans.”
The instinct to run boiled in my gut, rapidly replaced by absolute focus as I stared up at the tracker, who’d just threatened mybrother.
The tracker flicked the safety off his gun as the magic circle under the humans burned from the angry red to an orange the color of a raging fire. “So, shadow. Answer my questions, or I’ll shoot himandrelease the curse on the humans.”
I listened, not just to the tracker, but to the sounds of the city, hoping beyond hope that someone would come this way—we were standing in the middle of the street! Just one car, that was all I needed.
I could hear the purr of the car engines, but they were farther away—probably over on main street. Beyond that, nothing except for the occasional explosion of feathers as a city pigeon flew past.
“Shadow,pay attention!” the tracker growled. “Turn into your true shape.”
I glanced at Pat, but he wouldn’t look away—he didn’t take his eyes off the tracker.
I tapped the change, and in a moment I was standing next to my brother in my human shape.
“Hands up,” the tracker ordered.
I slowly held my hands up, though I didn’t trouble myself to keep them away from my body. The second I got the chance, I was grabbing my sword—because I wasgoingto get a chance.
There was no way I was letting this creep hurt my brother, or the humans he’d captured.
The question was, could I do itwithoutgetting myself shot at?
“First question,” the tracker said. “Who trained you?”
Something tightened around my heart, squeezing it in my chest. “I wasn’t trained by shadows,” I slowly said, trying to figure out how to mislead him. I couldn’t let him find out about Calor Villa—Noctus had said there was a chance the guy would turn into a full blown zealot if he realized more elves had survived.
I’d go down fighting first.
I licked my lips. “I was self-taught—”
“You use anelven sword, shadow,” the tracker snarled. “You couldn’t be self-taught. You can’t even buy an elven forged sword these days!”
Pat finally looked at me, whipping his head so fast in my direction he must have cracked his neck.
Darn it. Even after we get out of this, Pat is going to be all over me.
I’d avoided explaining any details about my sudden sword skills to my siblings, telling them the people I’d stayed with in the spring and early summer had taught me. But while neither of them could have recognized the forge pattern of my sword, Pat knew enough about supernatural society to know that anything elven made wouldnotbe owned by an unimportant, overlooked supernatural like myself.
“Where did you get the sword, and who taught you to use it?” the tracker continued. “You aren’t worthy of wielding it, and yet youmoveso—you don’t fight like a shadow, fae, or vampire. Why,whydo you fight like an elf?”
The tracker swung his gun so it was no longer trained on Pat, but me.
Big mistake.
“Iknowthere are more elves,” the tracker ranted. “You found them, didn’t you? Youkilledthem—”
I drew the dagger secured to my shoulder strap, yanked it free of the leather tie that held it in place whenever I needed to be upside down, and threw it at the tracker.
It grazed his free hand—I was more concerned about the spell on the humans than the gun. (I didn’t like pain, but I could drink fae potions, so I could rebound faster than Pat or the others.)
The tracker said something in elvish and snapped his fingers, and I noticed the spell circle that had surrounded the humans grew, expanding toward us. Next he swung the gun back to Pat, but I’d reached the tracker by then, pushing his arm down so the gun was pointed at the ground.
Elves are fast, but shadows are faster.
My throat squeezed with anxiety when orange light started to crawl across the paved road, and I realized he’d expanded the circle sowenow stood in it.
