The Heartstone Saga, Archibald Bradford [the snowy day read aloud TXT] 📗

snapped; “Kendra on her moon-time was scarier.”

The Trog looked to him, desperation in her eyes.

“I won’t-”

“On yer life-debt Cass! Ye don’t owe it to me. Ye’ll carry both me bairns away this night, tis what Kendra would want and ye know it!”

On that point, the Troglodyte couldn’t argue anymore, though she had to state the obvious in a harsh whisper, her blade held up to ward off the Chimera.

“How am I supposed to get away from her?”

But Will believed he had found the chink in the other monster’s armour.

Earlier in the fight, he had not missed the moment when the dark-eyed bitch had thrown her human pet to the ground when he had gotten too close to the Trog’s blade.

Evadne coiled herself up, bored of listening to their desperate plotting and ready to finish the troublesome pair once and for all. But then her quarry suddenly turned the blaster against Jonathan, and for once her features showed some emotion.

Fear.

“Now Cass! Save me son!”

He pulled the trigger.

The weapon bucked against the desperate father’s shoulder, while the uniformed Jonathan looked more than a little fearful himself.

Will wasn’t overly familiar with firearms, so he only managed to wing his target with the first shot, but it proved enough of a distraction for Cass to take up her blade and his baby and book it into the woods while the Chimera was lunging to intercept the second.

She took the blast with one outstretched wing, saving her bond-mate’s life, though she hissed at the pain of it.

“You little shit.” She cursed as she stalked towards her prey.

He levelled the gun at her and tried to shoot her again, but it wasn’t firing and he didn’t have the skill to figure out why before she reached him.

So he threw it at her with a curse.

It hardly slowed her down as she swatted it aside, but it bought him enough time to pull a pair of broad fighting blades from their sheaths on the small of his back.

Cass had taught him a great deal over the last several months, building on his own skill with the weapons to the point that he could hold his own against her in their practice bouts.

And the cold certainty of his end made all of his fear melt away, so he took up a ready stance while grinning like a madman.

“Come on then, lets you and me be done with this.”

Her eyes narrowed at his bold mockery as she hissed between her teeth, her tail mimicking the sibilant noise from over her shoulder.

She lunged.

It was the finest fight of William Armstrong’s life, or so he would boast if he had survived it.

Everything Cass had taught him, every brawl he ever had growing up with his brother Davie, every dirty trick he knew from his criminal past, all of it came together in one epic blade dance with a singular goal: to play for time.

Even Evadne would later admit she had never been held up so much by a human before.

Inevitably he ended up in a broken heap on the ground, his lifeblood pouring out from the work her claws had done on his chest and abdomen.

But a smile was on his face as he looked to the pair of little cuts he had managed to open on her cheek; Cass would be proud of him for bleeding the dark bitch, though he earnestly hoped that the Trog was long gone by now.

He sat up as best he could, blood pouring from his wounds as he fought to speak.

“Looks like ye lost a-again, droopy-tits. You killed me w-wife, but our boy lives! I dinnae  ken m-much about Empaths, but tis plain to see that yer’ afeared of him! So you best be knowin’ that he is g-going to grow up and kick your sagging arse with feelin’, just like his pater did t-tonight.”

With one last bit of effort he spat blood at her before slumping against the ground, laughing and coughing in equal measure.

The Chimera’s snake tail darted out, its fangs ending his troublesome resistance for good.

With a petulant frown she took a moment to cup her breasts and flex the muscles of her bottom.

Neither droopy nor saggy.

Shaking off the ridiculous bout of vanity, the demon-touched monster looked back to her bond-mate, on the ground and pressing a strip of his torn shirt against his own injury with trembling fingers.

Their eyes met and it became crystal clear that the dead man at her feet had earned his laughter: if she pursued the Trog now, Jonathan would bleed to death.

William Armstrong had indeed won the day.

Chapter 1: Incognito

“Yay! I won again!”

The Katje hopped up and down in her seat and clapped her hands together gleefully.

“That’s forty five –no! The ante was ten! So, fifty seeds!”

She counted them out under the light of the lantern hanging from the beam above them. Her nimble hands then scrabbled across the surface of the table, gathering the little pile of sunflower seeds to join her much larger pile.

The short man across from her smiled at her exuberance, his own pile now almost gone, only a few sad seeds remained. She had nearly cleaned him out.

“Well played.”

She stopped her adorable gloating for a second and her look turned apprehensive.

“You didn’t, um, you didn’t let me win did you?”

The vulnerability in her widened eyes tugged firmly at his heartstrings.

“No, I’m just not very good at cards I guess.”

Her smile returned as he watched her. Her ears were perked up and her tail swished behind her, poking over the edge of her flimsy and well-worn shorts. Even if he hadn’t been able to sense her emotions, her sense of achievement was palpable.

His own mood darkened slightly as he considered