Free Rage by Jackie Morse Kessler

summoning her Sword.
    Smiling sweetly as she imagined using her weapon to slice Adam into ribbons, she pushed open the door and entered the house.
    It was still littered with people, many of whom she recognized as her fellow juniors. The music pounded an angry beat, and Missy approved, nodding her head in time to the drums as she meandered around the living room, searching for Adam. She dragged the Sword behind her, and it left sparks of fury in her wake.
    Missy walked unnoticed, but her presence was felt by every person in the room:
    Erica, still sickened by the way Missy had been used but unable to bring herself to leave the party, wrapped her arms around herself and started scraping her thumbnails over her forearms, drawing blood...
    Jenna, she of the fabulous shredded red skirt that Missy had admired, glowered at one of the other varsity soccer girls in the clique who'd had the nerve to flirt with Matt Higgins, knowing full well that Jenna'd had her eye on Matt for ages, so Jenna made a catty remark about the girl's poor attempt to cover her bumper crop of pimples, and the others in the clique screeched laughter even as the girl blushed in shame and rage...
    Matt, who had coined the term "cutterslut," glared sullenly at the star quarterback, knowing he was the one who'd scratched Matt's custom paint job on his car but unable to prove it, and damn if the guy wasn't smirking at him, the bastard...
    Missy thought about cutting Matt down right there in front of everyone, about taking the Sword and oiling its blade with his blood. But no—she was saving that murderous impulse for Adam. So instead, she smiled wickedly and blew Matt a kiss.
    That's when Matt decided he'd had enough of the quarterback's sneer and crumpled his empty beer can and pitched it at the guy's head. The football star got in Matt's face. Words clashed. And then the quarterback popped Matt in the eye.
    Around them, kids cheered as the fight got under way. Someone started the chant "Fight! Fight! Fight!" and now everyone was doing it, even Erica with her scratched arms and Jenna with her sharp tongue. Kevin, the party god himself, got between Matt and the other guy, telling them to take it outside for God's sake, because if the house got totaled his dad would kill him, and then he caught a fist in the teeth for his trouble. The spectators, frenzied, cheered louder. Blood was in the air.
    Missy sidestepped the brawling teens and continued her search for Adam.
    In the kitchen, groups of people clustered around the mostly empty punch bowl. Missy frowned, remembering how Adam had come up behind her as she'd taken a can of Cherry Coke. Around her, the teens shivered ... and then one of them, suddenly convinced another girl had started a vicious rumor about her, grabbed the target of her rage by her hair and shoved her face into the punch bowl. Shouts and laughter erupted around them, and it wasn't until Missy walked out that someone realized the girl with her face in the punch bowl was drowning.
    ***
    Outside, the red steed stood at attention, waiting for its mistress to return. It ignored the humans around it as a giant would ignore a smattering of gnats, and it entertained itself with memories of battles past. It pretended that beneath its hooves the ground was slippery with spilled guts, that its ears rang pleasantly with the music of murder. It hoped its mistress was serious about giving it a carcass to trample, but War was known for a sharp sense of humor that the steed didn't quite understand. Humor was a subtle thing, dependent on nuances and emotional inflections. Such things were beyond the horse. It saw the world in terms of black and white.
    And red, of course. And red.
    It gazed at one human who got too close to it, and it was sorely tempted to bite off the creature's hand. But its mistress told it not to hurt anyone. The steed was certain that even if it cauterized the wound as its teeth sliced through flesh and bone, the action would cause great