The Serpent in the Stone - By Nicki Greenwood Page 0,98
in a frigid breath, but it wasn’t enough to shout a warning. He forced himself upright and staggered toward them. Luis raised the sword to swing at her. Sara knelt gasping, unaware of the danger. Step, stagger, step...too damn slow! He forced his feet to move faster.
Racing footsteps sounded behind him. Ian glanced over his shoulder. Flintrop dove toward him, his face a livid, bloody mask of hatred.
Ian whirled to avoid his grasp, but not fast enough. Flintrop seized his right arm and unleashed his power.
Electricity fizzed though their point of contact and raced, snapping, up Ian’s arm. His world exploded into agony. He screamed and toppled, reaching even as he fell. His left hand brushed Luis’s arm. “Terminatus,” he gasped out with the last of his breath.
The shock flew, sizzling, from his fingers and into Luis, who gave an earsplitting shriek and crashed to the ground just short of Sara. The sword thumped to the earth.
Ian dropped like a stone.
****
The ground lurched. The screaming of a thousand voices rent the air in a wild surge, and then cut short. Stunned into incomprehension, Sara looked from Ian’s prone form to Flintrop, standing above him. Flintrop’s lips pulled back in a snarl of satisfaction, then he lumbered toward the collapsed wall. He hefted a stone the size of a cement block to his shoulder, then staggered back toward Ian with the gleam of bloodlust in his eyes.
Wrath swept through Sara and washed away her fog of confusion. Trembling, she thrashed to her feet, calling on everything she had left and pouring her fury into it. The shapeshift took hold in a brutal storm. Flintrop’s figure blurred as her human vision gave way to animal sight. She smelled the blood-mad reek of his scent and heard breath whistling in his throat. She opened her mouth to scream, and out came the enraged roar of a grizzly bear. She charged.
Flintrop raised the stone over Ian’s head, growling, and it began to fall.
She plowed into him and took the blow on one broad, flat shoulder, arcing over Ian’s body. Her momentum carried Flintrop backward. Snarling in his face, she hooked an enormous paw around him and scooped upward. The stone tumbled from his grasp. Flintrop sailed into the air and landed ten feet away.
Ian’s rifle lay nearby. Flintrop launched himself at it and turned it on her, then fired.
The shot missed her by inches. She galloped the few strides to him and bashed the rifle out of his hands.
He clapped a hand against the left side of her muzzle and released an electric charge. Lightning exploded inside her head. Bellowing in agony, she jerked backward and swung blindly at him with the last of her strength.
Her strike connected with a thwack, and she heard bones breaking. Flintrop’s body went slack, and he tumbled into the fault. He’s bleeding. Gifted blood.
No sooner had that thought entered her mind than the eerie voices screeched one last time. The ground rumbled, and then all was quiet.
It was over.
The scent of burnt fur stung her nostrils. A tremor ran through her body. She swayed and collapsed, losing hold of the shapeshift, then passed out.
****
When Sara came to, tearing pain settled in behind her eyes. She raised her head. Gooseflesh bloomed along her arms, and she trembled in the icy air. Her breath puffed out in steaming clouds, adding to the fog covering the ground. Her right shoulder throbbed. She didn’t have the strength to cradle it.
A dark haze hovered somewhere to her left. She shook her head, but it didn’t dissipate. She pushed herself up onto her hands and knees. Disoriented, she shuffled forward. Her hand landed on something sharp that sliced along her palm. She snatched it away with a hiss and saw fresh blood welling in a drying cut. Old blood crusted along a gash in her forearm.
A sword lay on the ground before her. She looked along its length without recognition, trying to rid her vision of the partial haze.
The mirror shine of the sword blade, edged with feathers of frost, revealed the reflection of her eyes. Her right eye showed hazel. Her left was green. She blinked, and it didn’t change to brown. She knew it should have, but couldn’t remember why. Confused, she waved a hand in front of her face from right to left. A little more than three-quarters of the way across, her hand disappeared from her line of vision, swallowed by the haze plaguing her.