2 Death Rejoices by A.J. Aalto Read Free Book Online Page B

bearing a stake.
    I was back on my feet, not knowing how I got there, words abandoning me. Helplessly, I shouted, “ Fuckshitwitchystuff!”
    Lucky for me, intent is often more important than word choice; I blinked through a bleak and windless limbo space, spilling from thin air directly in front of the killer chicken without a split second tothink. The lack of time to consider what I was doing was probably for the best.
    I slammed into her just as she leapt. The collision knocked both of us back; she landed with pissed-off grace, I stuck my landing in pure surprise. Anyone watching might have thought we'd done a celebratory chest bump until I lunged forward and tried to drive my knee into her cloaca. I felt my kneecap connect with squishy bits under her feathers and padding. She squawked, doubled, and her breath huffed out in a mewling whine.
    I grabbed her wrist and bent it back sharply, twisting until she dropped the stake. I brought my knee to her chin, hard, and sent her flying spread-eagle backwards into the table. Food and dishes clattered while the candles jittered and began to topple, their meager flames whiffing out.
    The air crackled a warning behind me; I hit the deck, covering my head.
    Malas’ kinetic heat, a blast wave finally freed, roared past me; wavering blue fingers of psi licked around the killer hen like electric tongues, snatching her up higher and higher in a visible vortex. The woman inside the suit shrieked as every muscle in her body contracted as if pulled by a thousand tiny wires. Her puppet master was a speed fiend; each flailing jerk was frantic and eye-blurring. She hung at Malas’ mercy, airborne and arching, head whipping back and forth. Her helmet flew off, revealing a black woman in her mid-thirties who howled agonized nonsense.
    Malas shot his withered hand forward. Released through the room, the revenant's power rocked everything in front of him to one side, shuddering the very air. The house trembled on its foundation. Hen buckled as her face caved in, a cascade of bone and bits of grey matter sprayed in a slimy fan as the rest of her sailed toward the stairs. Didn't even get a chance to see her face , I couldn't help thinking, as my brain digested the carnage. In her wake, the remains of the table tumbled end over end, contents tossed in an ear-splitting crash.
    The giraffe was the only one who screamed; I felt the remaining Furries’ horror as a wave of empathic chill, but their terror froze them in place, desperately certain that this did not involve them, that when it was over they'd be safe.
    “Yes, Prioress, you see now what you have stirred.” Malas turned on Harry and the girl, pointing down with his withered hand through the haze that enveloped him. The kinetic suction caused a second dormer window to shatter inward, showering the room with tinkling glass shards. “I will drink from the chalice of your battered skull.”
    Harry urged, “Malas, you mustn't.”
    Malas’ jaw unhinged, wider than humanly possible, a grey-pink strip of lip quivering around that single fang. “Come for me, Prioress.”
    Kitty screamed her wordless challenge over the howling wind tumbling into the room. Under Harry's hand, she writhed. Her hair flew in rippling waves against the blue mat, a tossing whirlwind around her tiny face. “Return you to the dust, fiend. Return you to the abyss. You and your kind!”
    Kitty cut her attention up at Harry; with a dagger no one knew she had, she hit him square in the throat.
    Harry mouth's dropped open in a soundless cry. My feet were in motion before the fountain of his watery blue blood could jet across the mat.
    “No, you little bitch, no! ” I went for her, fingers crooked into claws.
    Harry's arm clothes-lined me, sweeping me back. He struggled to grip the slick handle of the dagger with the other hand. Taking her chance, Kitty rolled twice, spun, and sprang to her feet, shooting her hands out in some sort of martial arts readiness position that