Free Redemption (The Alexa Montgomery Saga) by H.D. Gordon Page A

girlishly as I stepped back to calculate a better
attack.
    “You’re faster than I expected,”
she said. “Good for you.”
    A crooked smile found my lips,
and my left eye twitched. “Not so good for you,” I said, moving in to strike
again.
    We danced. That is the best way
to describe it. Every time I thought that my blade would land home, Surah would
parry just at the last moment. Similarly, I blocked and moved away from her
strikes in what seemed to me to be just in time. I began to get frustrated, and
was consoled only by the fact that Surah’s cool mask was slipping as she too
became frustrated. Apparently, she had thought I would be easier to kill.
    Well, that’s a damn big ditto,
now ain’t it, Warrior?
    “She’ll slip up eventually.”
    Yes, or we will.
    But Surah did slip up, and I
couldn’t help a smug internal smile to my Monster as I saw the opening I
needed. It was only the slightest faulted movement on her part, but it was all
I needed. That magnificent, terrible feeling rose in my chest, the way it
always did when I was heartbeats away from a kill. I ran a tongue over my wet
lips, and thrust forward with deadly precision of my blade.
    I roared when my sword halted
just before it slid into home plate. I tried to move, and found that I could
not. It was as if someone had…
    “What the f—” Surah began, and
was cut off when someone behind me said, “Stop.”
    I knew the voice instantly.
Nelly.
    Without my having told it to do
so, my sword lowered from where it had been aimed at Surah’s heart, and I
noticed for the first time the sai in her left hand had been only inches from
my own. I guessed she wasn’t the only one that had slipped up.
    Surah’s face was calm and
unreadable, but her soft voice was strained when she spoke. “What are you doing
to me, demon? Get out of my head!”
    Nelly’s voice filled my head
then. Be cool, Alexa, she said, and then she let me go.
    I breathed in and out, sounding
very much like an angry wolf, a growl trailing my every breath. I gripped my
sword hard in my right hand and swung it back up before I could stop myself,
fully intent on removing this girl’s head from her shoulders. Maybe part of me
had thought that Nelly would stop me again. But Nelly didn’t, and at the last
moment I arched my blade, sending it over Surah’s head rather than through it.
I spun around on my heel, my Monster roaring inside my head that I should have
finished it. A string of obscenities came out of my mouth and I stalked over to
where Nelly, Kayden, and Tommy—who I hadn’t know was here—stood. I felt like a
starving animal denied a piece of prime meat.
    When I was safely over the invisible
boundary that kept harmful things out of the Outlands, Nelly released the
Sorceress from her suspended position. “Cowards,” the girl spat. “You hide
behind your border and refuse to fight? I would have expected more from the
fearsome Accursed and the Sun Warrior I’ve heard so much about.”
    Nelly stared at the girl for a
moment, and I didn’t have to ask to know that she was Searching her. It only
took her a flash of a moment, and then Nelly took a deep breath, and I could
see sympathy behind her hazel eyes as she looked at Surah. “I’m sorry for your
loss,” she said. “But you’ve been lied to. My sister and I did not kill your
bother.”
    “Oh, no?” Surah said, her chest
heaving and her sais still gripped tightly in her hands. Despite the mask that
she had managed to slip back into place, she still looked like she was about
two seconds from charging the invisible border. I kind of hoped she would. It
would be funny.
    She didn’t. “Then who did?”
    Surprising us all, Nelly stepped
over the border before I could stop her. She came to stand face to face with
the Sorceress. I tensed, wanting to trust that Nelly could handle herself, but
more than uneasy about letting this girl near her. Nelly met the girl’s stare
squarely. “I think we have a common enemy,” she