Free Firedragon Rising by Mary Fan

to get inside, out of sight.
    She turned and forced herself to trudge
toward the house. Behind her, she heard the spirit try yet again to
fly through the barrier, but didn’t bother looking back.
    “ Take a hint,
stupid-head,” she muttered. She had a hard time believing that such
a mindless creature had ever been a person, and wondered how psycho
you had to be to end up like that after death.
    When she reached the door
to the house, she found it unlocked, but it wasn’t until she’d
crossed the threshold that she realized she might actually make it . Here
she was, in a rebel hideout, and one step closer to joining the
fight to take down the Triumvirate.
    A thrill rushed through her. Soon, Williams
would get his message to the Rising, and they’d meet her here. If
she could avoid or fend off any enemies until the others arrived,
then by escaping, she’d have won her first victory against the
government. And as part of the rebellion, she could finally begin
changing the world.
    She just hoped the Rising would find her
before the Triumvirate or Storm did.

 
     
     
     
    WAITING WAS THE WORST
THING in the world, and Aurelia decided
she’d rather face another thorndevil than spend another minute
pacing around the empty Way Station. At the same time, the
quietness meant her enemies hadn’t found her yet, and she supposed
she should be glad for that. She feared that the Triumvirate might
track her to the safe house, and had considered staying awake
through the night, but the exhaustion had overwhelmed
her.
    Now, having
rested from her crazy journey the night before and eaten her fill
of the hideout’s food stash, she felt ready for battle. Problem
was, there was nothing to fight.
    She considered grabbing the bow sitting on a
shelf beside her and practicing some shots, or maybe checking out
some of the other weapons in the small room she stood in. A number
of swords, rifles, and more sat piled against the walls, gleaming
under the morning sunlight streaming through the window. She
guessed that the rebels kept this makeshift armory in case the
perimeter failed and they ran into supernatural trouble, and she
was glad to have found it. Maybe she could use some of these
weapons to set up defenses against any would-be attackers, whether
it was Storm or the Triumvirate’s goons.
    Before she could come up with any ideas,
though, a flash of light caught her eye. For a moment, she thought
it might have been the sun glinting off one of the silver blades,
but then she caught sight of a figure in the woods outside the
window. Someone must have just goldlighted into the area. And he or
she was in trouble—there was a flock of black razorbirds, each of
which looked deceptively like a crow, fast approaching.
    Who was out there? Could it be the
Triumvirate, catching up to her at last? Or Storm, still chasing
her for reasons she couldn’t guess?
    She barely had time to
think about it before her combat instincts kicked in, and her eyes
instinctively searched the room for a bow. Spotting one on the
floor, she seized it, then grabbed a fistful of arrows from a bin
against the wall. She didn’t know who that person was or what they
wanted, but humans always trumped supernaturals, and she wasn’t about to
stand by while someone was attacked. If it turned out to be the
Triumvirate, she’d find a window for escape after the razorbirds
were down.
    If it turned out to be Storm, then she
needed him alive to tell her what he wanted.
    And if it turned out to be someone else
altogether, then she would’ve fulfilled her duty as a monster
fighter and saved a life. That last possibility drowned out the
first two, and she decided she’d rather risk saving an enemy than
doing nothing while an innocent was attacked.
    She barreled through the house and burst
through the door into the yard. The other person was at least two
hundred yards outside the Way Station’s perimeter, desperately
throwing up shield spells to block the incoming blades