Fury Rising (Fury Unbound Book 1) by Yasmine Galenorn Read Free Book Online

chattering. “I’m sorry, honey. I just don’t want to chance freezing if we stayed at the platform and the next train didn’t come either. I can’t afford a cab. We’ll try another Monotrain platform when we make it to Darktown.”
    I shrugged. “Whatever. I’m cold but it’s okay. I’ve been colder. I can walk if you can.”
    “Thank you for being such a good sport. Did you enjoy the party?” Marlene beamed at me.
    It seemed important to her, so I nodded. “Yeah, good food. It was pretty.” The decorations had been a muted glow of gold and silver and red against the walls, and the tree had looked real enough to me. Nobody ever cut down trees for decorations anymore. Gaia had put an end to that along with a number of other activities.
    “I promise, we’ll be home soon and I’ll heat up some soup and we’ll curl up and watch a late movie. I have the day off tomorrow.”
    Marlene wrapped her arm around my shoulders and I leaned against her. I loved her, and though she wasn’t ever fully sure how to cope with having a daughter who was a Theosian, she did her best. When my father had died of blue-lung disease when I was five, she picked up the pieces as best as she could and shouldered on for the both of us.
    “I wish Terry was here,” she said softly, staring up at the sky. “He always loved the holidays.”
    I gave her an absent nod. I didn’t like thinking about my father. His death was ugly, and I hated the coughing and hacking up dark blue mucous—one of the main symptoms of the magically induced lung disease. He had taken a shortcut through the Sandspit one too many times. So I had taken to telling people that he had been a soldier, killed in a faraway war.
    Just then a car pulled up. Marlene leaned down to peek in the window. A moment later, she turned back. “He says he can give us a ride. What do you think?”
    I frowned, closing my eyes. A dark shadow hung over the car and it chilled me to the bone. “No. I don’t want to get in.”
    Marlene nodded. She didn’t fully understand my powers, but she didn’t question them, either. She turned away from the car, but the door slammed open against her back, knocking her to the sidewalk. She landed with a hard thud. A man scrambled out before I could reach her. He scooped her up and shoved her in the back seat as I was across the sidewalk in a blur, slamming against him. But he was too big and burly for me to unbalance, even though I was a Theosian and already stronger than most of my classmates.
    “You want to come, too, little one?” he said in a low voice, gripping my wrist with one hand. He lifted me up and tossed me in with my mother as if I were a bag of old clothes. I landed on top of her and rolled away, trying not to hurt her.
    The next moment, the door slammed shut and he slid into the front seat. I started to scream, but with the windows closed, I realized nobody could hear me. At this time of night, there was almost no traffic down in the Metalworks.
    “Mom? Mom!” I turned my attention to my mother, trying to wake her up, but either he had hit her really hard or he had managed to drug her when I wasn’t looking, because she wasn’t coming around. At that moment, he flipped a switch and a window rose between the front and back seats.
    Unable to wake Marlene, I tried the doors again, but the handles had been removed. The car had been retrofitted so that the backseat was basically a holding tank.
    I closed my eyes, trying to summon Hecate, but nothing happened. There was no spark when I reached for it. Next, I tried to sense my mother’s spirit, but again—nothing. An anti-magic zone.
    Cursing, I rummaged through my backpack, looking for something hard enough to break the window. No luck. But then I remembered my mother carried a small hammer in her purse. It was a multi-tool that she carried because of her job. I grabbed her purse, found the tool, and began to pound on the side windows.
    Four blows later, I realized the glass was