Free Din Eidyn Corpus (Book 2): dEaDINBURGH (Alliances) by Mark Wilson

forced the men out of here. After that, we’ll discuss my plans for The Gardens.”
    Jennifer’s eyebrows rose and the corners of her mouth turned down.
    “Took you long enough.” The words were delivered coldly. She was mocking Alys.
    Alys was unaffected.
    “Aye. I got talking to Uncle James recently.”
    Alys watched her mother’s expression change to one of open-mouthed shock.
    “We decided that it was time for you to tell me the truth,” Alys said.
    Jennifer’s right cheek twitched as she struggled to control her temper. She was simply too experienced to allow her anger to grow and affect her fighting calm, but it was apparent to Alys that her mother was badly shaken at the mention of James.
    “So, you beat me,” Jennifer smirked at the notion, “and I agree to tell you anything you ask. That right?”
    Alys gave a sharp nod.
    “What’s in it for me?”
    Alys hid a smile. She knew that she had her.
    “Well, Jennifer, you get to put me in my place and show everyone here you’re still the big woman. I’ll also need you to assist me in organising a defence strategy. Uncle James told me Somna will be heading this way in the spring.”
    Jennifer had moved from shocked anger to dismissive disdain at Alys’s presumption.
    “Not much left to discuss then, is there?” Jennifer spat, half an instant before sprinting at her daughter.

In the Zone
     
    I watch for a full second, which lasts an eternity, as the woman who brought me into the world charges, a streak of shadow come to life, across the bloodied fighting ring towards me. Any shock I might feel at my mother launching a vicious jumping kick at my upper chest is batted away by cold calculation and by the memory of hundreds of moments when we’ve done this dance before. She’s looking to end this quickly. It will, but not in the way she wants it to.
    She doesn’t understand. It’s been eighteen months since we last sparred. She can’t understand.
    Her movement, her kick, her speed and her strength, once so unfathomable, so impossible to me, have lost a faint sliver of power. Not much, but just enough.
    Mother hasn’t fought one of the infected in years, much less a group of them. I can’t recall the last time she ventured outside the fences of our home. She never learned from fighting in a team, and if she did, back in the early days, she’s forgotten how it feels to trust and to learn from a fighting partner.
    She’s vicious and unchallenged and completely sure of her vast experience and flawless technique, but she hasn’t placed herself in a real-world combat situation in far too long. This has cost her her edge. She’s too accustomed to fighting people less skilled than herself. Too arrogant.
    Too slow…
    She hasn’t fought someone like me in a decade.
      My own skills have been honed in countless battles with the living and the dead. My speed, technique, power and accuracy have all been enhanced with every battle as her own have faded. On my own, with Joey, against hordes, madmen, strong men.
    All I do is fight. I’m exactly what she intended for me to be and more.
    I try really, really hard not to enjoy myself too much.
     
    Her kick is deadly. Aimed at my sternum, it’s intended to knock the wind and the fight from me. To put me on my back and end the fight in a single second. I watch her come to me and drop my left shoulder a tenth of a second before the sole of her boot connects. My left hand grips her leg like iron and I pull hard on it, using and increasing her momentum. I flash my right hand out and stab an open hand chop she taught me when I was eight years old into her throat.
    All one hundred and fifty pounds of my mother crash to the sand as I turn my back on her one last time and leave the ring.
    “When you get your breath back, I’ll be waiting in your tent.”
    I manage to stop myself from skipping or running as I pad calmly across the grass to Jennifer’s tent.

One step away from entering her mother’s tent, Alys felt