“Such a pity we didn’t get to you first.” The man pried off his gloves, revealing a strange pentagram tattoo on each of his palms. He rubbed them together, and the metallic ink suddenly burned bright red as the guy started chanting something foreign. Despite my constant fighting and flailing, he didn’t seem the least bit affected by my desperate attempts. He even snorted out a laugh at one point.
“Producite eam ad inferos,” he hissed at the end, raising his hands up. Smoke rose from out of the tattoo as the skin underneath the symbol rose like cauterized flesh.
“End of the line,” he grinned.
“Yeeeeah, I don’t think so,” remarked a familiar voice behind us at the mouth of the alleyway. I painfully angled my head in the direction, seeing an upside-down view of a dark frock militia coat and riding boots.
“This doesn’t concern you,” remarked my attacker, homing his gaze on our surprise guest.
“Hate to bust your chops here, but your whole penance stare thing doesn’t work on me,” said Reese. “Now, before you hurt yourself, why don’t you run along back to the Underworld?”
Something thin and long gleamed in the magician’s hand, and my attacker clawed at my jacket. In one swift motion, he flung me off the ground and hurled me backward clear out of the fabric. My body pounded against the chain-link fence before succumbing to gravity. I dropped back to the cement, letting out a painful yelp from the impact. Something dug into my leg, and I reached down, prying out a sizeable shard of broken glass.
The attacker met Reese’s proposal and suddenly removed some kind of sword from a sheath strapped around his waist. Light caught the blade in the magician’s hand, and I realized he, too, was armed. As if things couldn’t get any weirder…
“You seriously think you can beat me?” the blonde snickered.
Reese’s eyes surveyed the sheer bulk of my attacker, and he grimaced. “Probably not. I’m really not a swordsman myself,” he huffed, suddenly putting his blade back into its sheath. The attacker dropped his own sword with a low laugh, sliding off his trench coat. Snapping noises emanated from his back, and I shrunk against the fence, seeing the discs in his spine punching out against the skin as the white flesh darkened to a sickly gray.
A long dagger suddenly manifested in Reese’s hand. “I’m more of a marksman.” He hurtled it through the air, and I lost sight of the blade as my attacker gasped. The blonde staggered over to the wall, revealing the handle of the dagger sticking out of his chest.
“Others will come,” the blonde spat, crumpling to the ground.
“And you can rest assured, I’ll do the same to them,” said Reese, making his way over to us.
I all-out screamed, seeing him plunge the steel so far in the blonde that the tip came out through his back.
My attacker howled in agony before…turning to ash?
In an instant, his entire body became brittle, crumbling apart and falling to the pavement in a mass of what looked like sand.
What the f*@#?
What the f*@#?
What the f*@#?
I pried myself off the ground and frantically climbed up the fence again. This time I managed to heave myself over the top, and I leapt off the other side, barking out a few curse words from the impact my ankles took.
“Not again,” muttered the magician, racing after me.
I sprinted off out of the alleyway, hearing the chain-links rattling behind me as I assumed Reese was heading over the fence as well.
“Kat? Kat!”
I tried to ignore his words, but I couldn’t ignore how close they sounded. With each declaration, it was obvious he was gaining speed on me. Cutting across another street to make it back to the main boulevard, I screamed out, begging for help. No one met my plea, except Reese.
“Kat, will you please just stop?” he huffed as his footsteps trampled closer and closer.
I continued to give it my all and tore off down the main drag. Was this guy an Olympian or something? I’d beaten one of the fastest runners on the track team just yesterday, and yet it seemed like Reese wasn’t exhausting himself nearly as much as I was.
“My sincerest apologies for this, but you’re not exactly leaving me with another choice here,” he finally said.
Just as we raced past a park, his hands hooked around my hips and he drove me sideways to the ground. Crashing into the grass, I furiously wrestled against him. I tried climbing back up to my feet, but Reese managed to pry me back down and pin me to the lawn by the base of my wrists.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said softly, peering down at me. “I’m just trying to help.”
“You just killed someone!” I howled.