Page 160 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
When the slaver ignored her concerns and shoved her away, I knew Pete was right about this whole situation. Those cursed beyns were as good as lost even if Howlite had me where he wanted me. I wondered who at the Spring Palace I needed to kill for orchestrating this clusterfuck as I raced off, deeper into the city—before the slaver gandered Rye flying our way, another line of slaves in tow.
The slaver tore after me, blowing a whistle of such high pitch that it shredded my inner ears. “Stop in the name of the king!”
Danu must think she’ssofunny,I mused at the irony of the command as the slaver blew his whistle again. I clutched my head, wincing at the dissonant warbling, and scrambled over tree roots and through corridors, having no idea where I was going. With my head throbbing, my eyes only worked in flashes.
Not long after the first whistle, a symphony of metallic shrieks pierced my eardrums, and my brain was 10 seconds away from rupturing. I wept for Danu’s mercy and staggered to the verdant ground, crawling for my life when a hand snarled in my hair.
I screamed, that hand wrenching me to my feet, jerking me around to face its owner—the devil incarnate. Tears streamed down my cheeks as I glared at him.
Hydra glinted through Howlite’s eyebrow in the golden morning suns. Several of his fellow slavers sprinted up behind him, whistles still in mouths. Pete was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s Maggie, you evil shithead?” I hissed.
That’s all I could think to say at the time, and I got rammed in the nose by a hairy-knuckled fist.
My world fractured into stars, a furious crack reverberating through my face, my jaw, my eyes. I dropped to the ground like a bird with a broken wing—just the kind of disadvantaged creature the devil would revel in tormenting.
The first kick booted all the wind out of me. So, I couldn’t even breathe to cry for help when the second got that tailbone the bogeybats had splintered.
“I want my bloody seeds, you fusty cunt,” Howlite seethed, lumbering after me as I army crawled through the dirt, bleeding from my nose. “And I’ll get them from you one way or another. Even if I must sell you at market to the highest bidder, you’ll recoup my losses. Where do you think you’re going, anyhow? How did you evade the curse?”
A wracking sob finally escaped me when Howlite aimed to kick me again. I managed to get ahold of his foot to unbalance him as Pete had shown me. But I couldn’t remember how to counteract Howlite yanking my hair until I let him go. Or what move would’ve prevented him from flattening my hand to the ground and stomping on it, the straight-up dick that he was.
This time I screamed, my bones pulsing in shock as I gripped them to my chest. Tendrils of smoke were beginning to fume from my fingers.
No fire, no fire, no fire! I promised, I promised, I promised!
“Need another curse seed, cap?” some other slaver called.
Hyperventilation was a real possibility for me.Wind! I demanded of my magic.Give me my goddamn wind!
“Nay need, Bain.” Howlite snatched me by the bicep and lugged me back to my feet. “Just the paralytics for this one. I want her to ken what’s happening when we take her.”
Something resembling a grenade pinged to the ground a yard away from us. Howlite saw it the same moment I did and bellowed to his comrades to take cover.
Just as the tiny canister exploded in a solar flare of fibrillating light.
The force of that light flung slavers and citizens alike. I, myself, was propelled skyward and slammed into a mammoth tree trunk. The collision must’ve knocked me out, because I couldn’t recall what happened to me between impact and when Pete swept me into his arms and spirited me away.
“This is precisely why you need combat training,” he chided, breathless, as I bleared up at him. “If you kent how to defend yourself against pricks like Howlite, I wouldn’t have used my sol-scuttle.”
I groaned as he bounded over a boulder, jarring all my injuries back to awareness. “You threw that grenade?” Just talking seared after having my nose crunched in. Goddess, I hoped the damage wasn’t permanent. “You could’ve really hurt me.”
“Aye, well—I did tell you not to get caught.”
I huffed a laugh, licking a trickle of blood from my lip.
“And better a few scrapes than slavery.”
That, I couldn’t argue with.
“Hold on tighter, Shorty.” Pete darted around bracken, joggling me as he went. “We must reach Sionna and Bob at the passage before the slavers catch us. There’ll be no more pleasantries if they do. They’ll come to fight and, well—”
I stared up at the coniferous canopy in mute alarm, knowing how that battle would end. Pete may have been mighty, ruthless, and cunning, but the slavers had curse seeds. And paralytics. Something that might render even Pete useless. And that was a gamble we just couldn’t make.
As it happened, we did reach Sionna and Bob at the road, right where Pete had doubtless told Bob to be. Pete plopped me in the back of the wagon beside a fretful Sionna, then clicked at Bob to, “Leg it!” The enchanted donkey clattered off down the mossy road like Satan had caught our trail.
Pete hauled himself into the wagon with me before we picked up too much speed. First, he patted Sionna’s bobbing head, then he grabbed me by the back of mine, which now felt like a cracked nut in need of shelling.
