Page 3
Story: Rogue (Assassin’s Magic #7)
M y fingers dig into the blood-stained soil as I claw my way along the ground.
I have to get to Peyton.
Hadrix holds her aloft, her own whip wrapped around her neck, his other arm slashing back and forth, cutting her to pieces even as she heals.
Her crimson hair is coated in blood, and her clothing is in shreds, pieces of material falling off her.
Suddenly, all I can see is the memory of her huddling against the wall of her bedroom after Raptor first attacked her. The way her blouse was cut open. The welts across her chest. One bra strap cut through. Her blood.
I will never forget my rage at that moment. And then my powerlessness that I couldn’t protect her.
Never again.
Only moments ago, my beast’s voice within my mind reminded me that, to save Peyton, I must destroy what is left of my soul.
He said, If you want her to survive, you will give up everything she wanted to give you.
All the love she wanted to give me.
I gave it up. I gave her up. I made her hate me.
By loving her, I hurt her. She was weak because of me. Whenever I was anywhere near her—physically near her—she would lose her power and become human.
That won’t happen now.
The men behind me are so fixated on Hadrix, their faces filled with sickening glee, that they don’t seem to care that I’m crawling toward their leader.
I’m dying, and they know it. I’m no longer a threat as far as they’re concerned.
Vulture has lowered her wand. She, too, smiles at the silent bloodbath, the destruction of Peyton’s body.
Peyton can’t even scream: her breaths, horrible choking sounds.
Beast , I whisper within my mind. I need you one last time.
His response is faint and weak but perceptible: I’m here .
Closing my eyes, I call on all of my remaining strength. I tell myself I just need one last surge of energy, even if it’s the end of me.
Fire bursts to life across my chest, lines of lava forming as rapidly as my claws do while my muscles expand, my chest and shoulders broaden, and my height increases. Within my mouth, I sense my teeth sharpening and my jaw expanding. In this form, I can rip out an opponent’s throat.
I remain quiet, conserving my energy, not even uttering a snarl as I prepare to launch myself forward.
I can never make amends for my hellish choices or all the brutality I brought into Peyton’s life, but I tell myself: I will keep her alive.
Up ahead, her eyes are closing, and her head is lolling.
She’s on the verge of passing out.
The fire burning across my body becomes a streak of light around me as I launch myself upright and into a run.
I aim for Hadrix’s right side, closest to Peyton. I can’t simply knock him down, or I’ll hurt her, too. I have to make him let go of the whip he’s using to dangle her in the air.
I’m not as tall as he is in his Berserker form, but I’m a fucking survivor, and I won’t give up until I’m forced into the ground.
Fire billows around me as I crash into Hadrix. At the same moment, he swings his left arm back, preparing to drive his axe into Peyton’s chest again.
My right arm wraps around his torso, my claws driving into the space between his upper ribs. I punch my left hand forward, directly at his exposed wrist. It’s the hand with which he’s holding Peyton aloft.
Every bone in his wrist breaks. My punch is so violent that his hand bends back. I nearly break his fucking limb clean off.
It has the effect I wanted: He can’t keep ahold of Peyton.
As he and I crash to the ground, he releases the whip, and she falls to the grass, the rope sliding away from her throat.
Her eyes fly open.
Her irises are full of crimson power.
That’s all I see before I hit the ground, my claws raking across Hadrix’s side, tearing through his bones.
He retaliates quickly, kicking me off him, but I won’t let him get back to Peyton. I regain my footing as fast as Hadrix does, charging at him again, my fists blurring.
He hits back, and then we’re exchanging brutal blows, tearing up each other’s bodies, breaking bones.
Fuck, I think he breaks one of my arms, but my beast is keeping me pain-free, so I don’t know for certain. Only by the way it bends badly when I try to punch with it. I know for certain that the bullet in my chest has shifted in a bad way. But again, my beast keeps me functional.
One last fight.
Fought for the right reasons.
I’m fighting for her.
She is my reason.
I’m aware of Peyton watching our movements—the way she follows the swing of our arms and legs. Most importantly, the way her wounds have healed, the awful bruise around her neck fades, and her snakes surge around her body again.
She has deposited the whip back on her hip, where her belt is hanging on by a thread. So is the remainder of her clothing, clinging to her beautiful body.
I’m also conscious of the way my fight with Hadrix is forming a barrier between her and Vulture.
It seems that isn’t what Peyton wants.
The moment I land a punch in Hadrix’s gut, causing him to hunch over, Peyton runs at us, launching herself into the air and using Hadrix’s back as a springboard to jump over the top of us.
Her momentum takes her straight at Vulture, who screams more spells.
Peyton doesn’t appear deterred.
Somehow, she isn’t affected by the White Wand.
Neither am I. It’s a fact that confuses me. When the other students were tearing at Peyton, she was trying to scream something at me.
She shouted to me, telling me to take the wand.
The echo of her words spins around within my mind even as Hadrix pummels me into a bloody pulp.
Striker, it’s you! Let out your rage. Be who you are.
I did let out my rage. I fucking hurt her with my rage.
That’s all I will ever do with my anger. Hurt the people I care about.
It’s time for my anger to die with me.
Not that I would have a choice anyway.
Hadrix’s next punch—delivered with his unbroken hand—crashes right into the location of the bullet wound on my chest.
I stumble backward, desperately trying to stay in the fight to keep Hadrix occupied, but my heart is finally giving out, stuttering, failing to beat. Kicking into life again. Stuttering again.
Nearby, Peyton flies directly at Vulture, and then… My eyes widen… she wraps her hand directly around the White Wand’s uncovered tip.
She fucking takes hold of it with her bare hand and wrenches it away from Vulture.
At her touch, white light bursts across the clearing.
It’s a blinding light that forces all of the students and all of Hadrix’s men to crouch to the ground.
Hadrix himself is so close to the blast that he tumbles across the grass, landing in a heap.
Vulture falls back to the grass with a panicked cry, her empty hands grasping for the power that no longer belongs to her before she’s forced to fling one arm over her face, her screams drowning in the power radiating around us.
Peyton stands over her, still gripping the White Wand in her bare hand, light streaming around her.
She is the eye of the storm, completely in control. Her chest rises and falls with a deeply inhaled breath before she glides forward and presses the wand to Vulture’s neck. “Death.”
Vulture jolts, her upraised arm lowering for the split second it takes for shock to fill her eyes.
Then, her eyes turn blank, her life consumed in a heartbeat.
Her body collapses to the ground a moment before Hadrix recovers. He lurches toward his wife, scrambling across the ground to her, pulling her lifeless form into his arms.
Peyton steers clear of him, appearing to ignore his roar of rage as she moves toward me instead.
She is serene once again. Fully in control.
The threat Hadrix posed to her only minutes ago seems to no longer concern her.
Now that she’s a full Fury, she is otherworldly.
She doesn’t take her eyes off me when I drop to the ground, landing on my knees before I slip to the side and then onto my back.
I find myself resting in a patch of torn-up earth as if the ground is already trying to swallow me, staring up at a sky that mocks me with its beauty.
Peyton crouches beside me, meeting my eyes.
I expect her to end me—to end my pain—but to my confusion, she holds the wand up for me to see.
“This belongs to you,” she says, her crimson eyes glowing. “ Choose .”
My forehead creases. Choose… what?
I try to focus on her, even though my vision is beginning to fail. I don’t care that she could use the wand to destroy me. She has control of it now, and that’s all that matters.
All I want is to keep looking at her until my life gives out.
All I need is to know that I did this one thing right.
Her stern look becomes a glare, her crimson gaze and continued intense silence demanding an answer.
Somehow, I manage to rasp, “I don’t want it.”
I only wanted you.
“It’s yours!” she screams, her snakes darting right at my face but stopping just before it seems they would have bitten me.
The edges of my vision are turning dark, and my voice isn’t much more than a murmur as I repeat, “I don’t want it.”
I wanted a life with you. A life without fear and pain.
“Then destroy it,” she snarls, her beautiful lips trembling with what can only be rage because, for some reason, my rejection of the wand has upset her. “You. Must. Choose.”
She has commanded me to destroy the wand, but I don’t know how she expects me to do that.
Even so, she shoves it at me, stopping a scant inch above my chest.
This slender wand and all its bright, destructive energy.
The power radiating out from it is like that of a wild animal that refuses to be tamed, even more intense up close.
When Peyton first asked me about this wand, I told her what I knew.
It brings power to its wielder, anything they want and everything they could imagine, but it’s an instrument of deception.
It controls anyone who tries to use it. Even those who thought they had conquered it were manipulated into situations where the wand could do the most damage.
Then, it killed them and everyone around them.
According to the myth, only a supernatural with a truly dark heart can wield it.
As I look up into Peyton’s eyes, her earlier scream echoes back to me once more.
It’s you , she said. Let out your rage.
And now she’s holding the wand out to me, giving it to me, and telling me to choose whether or not to destroy it…
My heart gives a thud.
It’s you.
It seems she knows my dark heart better than I know it myself.
Somehow, I make my hand move. At first, it’s only a twitch at my side, the barest movement.
It takes everything I’ve got to slide my hand, palm up, onto my stomach. I don’t have the strength to reach for the wand, nor the strength to speak any longer.
She doesn’t hesitate, placing the wand onto my waiting palm and curling my fingers around it before she withdraws again.
I want her to be wrong.
I want the wand to take control of me, to prove that my heart is not filled with darkness after all, even though that’s what she needs.
I wait for the power to take me over, wait as my heart thumps slower and slower until there’s no denying what I am.
“Now choose,” she orders me.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3 (Reading here)
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
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- Page 39
- Page 40
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- Page 42
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- Page 46