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Off-Grid

The Rose Cottage


Jorey leapt forward the moment the garden took shape around him, gun in hand, targets before him. He raised the weapon—and staggered as bright fire danced up and down his spine, sparking his Gift into pain.

His vision blurred—and cleared.

He heard one of the brats scream, “It’s Cousin Jorey!” and raised the gun, sighting on two small fleeing figures. He squeezed the trigger—

Black lightning streaked between him and his targets. The gun spoke. The lightning screamed, fell away, and something hit him from the side, hands over his, trying to wrench the gun away.

Jorey pushed, and that distraction was gone. He found the brats under the tree, pressed against a table, their stupid furry pet standing on the girl’s shoulder.

Easy targets.

Jorey raised the gun again, and fired three times.

There was a zing as something went past his ear, the brats improbably still standing at bay, and a sudden roar inside his head, teeth and claws rending.

Jorey screamed and raised the gun again.

A boom! rocked him back, and there was an obstacle between himself and the targets. An obstacle stitched with fire, eyes blazing green and gold.

Not an obstacle for long.

Jorey raised the gun.

The obstacle raised a hand and gripped Jorey’s wrist.

Æ

“Murderer!” Geritsi screamed inside Tekelia’s head, and there was a moment of disorientation in which Tekelia Saw the garden, the dark rumple of fur on the lawn, the twins at bay, and a man raising a gun. The scene snapped out in a flare of fury and pain.

Tekelia shouted a warning—“The kezlBlythe here! The children!”

 . . . flung into the ambient . . . 

 . . . and arrived next to the downed sokyum, facing a man with wild eyes in a tight white face, rage and bloodlust spinning ’round him like a cyclone.

The man raised a gun.

Tekelia flung out a hand, grabbing his wrist, felt Chaos rising—and gripped harder.

The man—the murderer—spasmed, screaming, even as a boom! rocked the ambient, accompanied by a blinding flare of wild energies.

Tekelia felt strong fingers around one wrist, blinked away the afterimages of the flare, feeling Chaos stutter, ebb, and flow away.

It was Padi yos’Galan at the murderer’s shoulder, holding Tekelia’s wrist in a grip that would surely leave bruises, lavender eyes ablaze, and her voice frantic inside Tekelia’s head.

No! Tekelia, do not!

I won’t, Tekelia sent and shuddered to think what might have happened; what would have happened, had she—bright dancer that she was!—not intervened.

The man they held between them moaned. He no longer held the gun, and, indeed, his hand looked—odd.

“Let me go,” he whispered, and Tekelia did.

Which was when Geritsi slentAlin hit him in the back of the head with a shovel.


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Framed