Chapter 12 I Run with Pointy Objects #2
Olivia held a trophy in each hand and wore a Miss Perfect sash draped across one shoulder. She smiled at me, but not in a kind way. I wrapped the sash around her neck and pulled on both ends. She dropped her stupid awards and fought for her life.
“No, no, no!” I chanted and ran faster, kicking through pine cones and ducking under low branches. I found the creek and then ran past a pile of bones and monster dust where the drakon had eaten the kalamodonta.
I tried to stay focused on my surroundings.
It would be so much easier if I took off the ring, but I remembered how many monsters I’d run into my first time in the Zone.
Being invisible was the only way I could travel safely and maybe find Grant before I ran out of time. If I cost Clarisse this race…
Of course, this whole thing was her fault to begin with. If Clarisse hadn’t been so selfish and cruel, Grant could have been running by my side right now, enjoying the baton race.
CRACK!
Clarisse sprinted beside me, smirking at my distress. As I reached the fissure where Grant had found the ring, Clarisse pushed me away from it. I tripped her and buried her face in the dirt while she struggled for air.
I let out an enraged scream that echoed through the trees. Half a dozen squirrels scattered in different directions, uncertain of the source of the sound.
I was on my knees at the fissure. The vision of Clarisse had vanished, although I could still smell her sandalwood shampoo and feel the nape of her neck under my fingers, and the way she’d struggled as I tried to suffocate her.
I hated this invisibility ring. But, also, I was reluctant to take it off. I had a sense that the violent fantasies running through my mind weren’t just side effects. They were the ring’s fuel. Somehow, it was drawing out my worst impulses, my darkest thoughts, and using them to turn me invisible.
I was terrified of what it showed me about myself. Even more, I was terrified that if I kept wearing the ring, I might start to like it.
“Are you lost?” said a man’s voice.
I scrambled backward into a crabwalk position.
Standing over me was a hooded figure—unnaturally tall, broad-shouldered, and shrouded in a gray cloak.
A bronze breastplate glinted underneath.
Between the darkening sky and the shadow of his hood, I could barely make out the man’s scarred cheeks and thin-lipped smile.
I gulped. I hadn’t felt the cracking sensation of another vision, but I very much didn’t want this to be real.
And yet the man was staring right at me, waiting for a reply.
If he was real, the invisibility ring clearly didn’t work against him.
“Well, Katie Kim?” he asked.
I flinched—not just because he knew my name, but because it came out so sharp, like a knife cutting flesh.
I got to my feet, keeping my eyes on the man’s face. “Not lost,” I said. “Just looking for”—I glanced around—“something.”
The man made a rasping sound that might have been a laugh. “Is running through the woods and screaming part of your process?” The man circled me, stepping deftly over the fissure. “Or perhaps it’s a character defect?”
“I’m not…I’m not d-defective.”
What a perfect time to stumble over my words.
The man bared his teeth. “No? Perhaps your counselor is right. Perhaps you are a D-list demigod. Unimportant.”
“How did you—?”
“Wrong question,” he chided.
“Who—?”
“Also wrong question.” His lowered his gaze to the ring on my right index finger, which he apparently had no trouble seeing. “An interesting choice…that particular piece of jewelry.”
“I—I didn’t choose it,” I said. “We just randomly found it.”
I made the mistake of glancing at the fissure.
The man chuckled. “None of this is random, girl. You were chosen to be here. You know this in your violent, chaotic little heart. But you’ll have to go deeper into the Wild Zone for your answers. This…” He gestured to the rift in the forest floor. “This is just collateral damage. A mere scratch.”
A scratch. The words made my insides twist into knots. Go back. You’ve only scratched the surface.
I narrowed my eyes. A hard sphere of anger started to form from the jumble of emotions in my gut as I realized who this guy must be. “What are you doing here?”
He smirked. “Perhaps I’m not here at all. Perhaps I’ve decided to appear in your hallucinations because I’m having second thoughts about your abilities, Katie Kim. Show me why you’re a worthy choice.”
Clink, clink, clink.
Ohhh, that sounded so much worse than an incoming vision.
From the man’s right hand, a chain unspooled, until ten feet of serpentine metal trailed from his grip across the ground. The links were as thick as my fist and could no doubt hit much harder.
Without warning, he whipped the chain in my direction. I ducked just before it could decapitate me. The chain lashed a tree behind me, ripping a swath of bark into sawdust.
“Seriously?” I shouted. Then I did the only sensible thing one can do when faced with a giant chain-wielding, bloodthirsty brute: I ran.
This guy definitely meant business, but I didn’t see how killing me would help anybody. If he was trying to scare me, mission accomplished. If he was in my imagination, he deserved an Oscar for Most Realistic Performance by a Hallucination.
I hadn’t brought my scythe, because it wasn’t exactly practical for a footrace. That left me with a baton (not helpful) and my dad’s dagger, which was sheathed at my side.
In two blinks, I pulled the dagger, spun, and hurled it at the man. The dagger flew fast and true. It should have hit him in the chest, but somehow he swung his enormous chain and knocked the blade out of the air.
“Shoot!” I took off running again, flexing and unflexing my hand by my side. “Come on back,” I mumbled under my breath. “Come on, come on.”
On the third flex, the handle of the dagger flew into my palm. Good dagger! Good unpredictable, slightly homicidal dagger!
RRRIPPPP!
I glanced back. The chain had gouged a crescent-shaped scar in the ground where my foot had just been, spraying the backs of my legs with twigs and rocks.
The guy didn’t even seem to be pursuing me.
He was simply standing there, at exactly the same distance.
Maybe he was a mirage, but that chain seemed to be doing real damage.
I couldn’t just throw my dagger at him again. He’d deflect it. I needed to distract and attack.
As I ran, I spotted a young tree growing beneath the canopy of a larger one. Maybe three feet tall and two inches around, the sapling was just the size I needed.
“Sorry to break up the fam,” I said as I uprooted it.
The sapling tore free in a shower of dirt and worms, and I hurled it at the man. Again, he used his chain to deflect it, but while he was distracted, I sprinted toward him, slid under the arc of his chain, and drove my dagger into his thigh.
He yowled in pain and swatted me aside. Not in the casual way you’d shoo a fly that ventured too close to your face. More in the determined way you’d try to whack a mosquito into oblivion.
I tumbled several yards away, my ribs on fire.
Maybe it was the demigod in me, or maybe it was the fact that I’d had a lot of practice falling from fencing and soccer (and taekwondo and…), but I rolled to my feet and got right back up.
I faced the man as he yanked the dagger out of his leg.
“Your father’s, I presume?” He held it between his thumb and forefingers like it was a dirty Band-Aid.
I flexed my fingers, and the dagger flew back into my hand. “Actually, it’s mine.”
I flung the dagger again, but this time, I aimed at a branch above the guy’s head. The blade cut cleanly through the wood, and the branch dropped on top of him. It wasn’t heavy enough to knock him down, but it was cumbersome enough to entangle him and his chain.
With a roar, I lowered my shoulder and tackled the guy, launching us both into another tree. My teeth rattled from the hit. Pine cones rained down, but the man didn’t push back. I let go and smirked in satisfaction.
What I lacked in fighting skills, I made up for in—
The man thrust out a hand and grabbed me by the throat. His fingers dug into either side of my windpipe. I clawed at his fingers, trying to pry them loose.
“I was right about you, but not for the reasons I thought.” He lifted me into the air. “You have the necessary powers, but you’re holding back. You are not ready to face what is out here.”
The edges of my vision went darker than the night sky.
The man relaxed his grip on my throat, and I gasped for air. He allowed me to slip through his fingers. As pathetic as it sounded, I couldn’t wait to fall to the ground.
And I did fall—onto his raised knee. With my stomach.
With a guttural “Ohhh!” I sagged against him, but he flung me away. I crumpled to the soil, the scent of wet leaves and earth filling my nostrils.
The man stooped beside me. “Become ready, Katie Kim. And do it quickly. Don’t forget why you’re here. Don’t fail me.”
I curled into a defensive—some might say cowardly—ball and braced myself for another assault.
But none came.
I glanced up.
The man was gone. If he’d even been there to begin with.
For a moment, I lay shivering in the dirt. I tugged the ring off my finger and my body reappeared in all its battered glory. My clothes were ripped. My arms were crosshatched with cuts and scrapes.
I shifted to a sitting position and winced. The knee to the gut had not been my imagination. The man’s finger marks still throbbed on my throat. The cut branch, the chain scars on the tree trunk and the ground…they were very real.
And yet…
I retrieved my dagger. No blood on the blade. No footprints in the mud except my own. The hooded man had left nothing of himself behind except damage. Was it possible I’d been fighting against myself?
And those visions the ring had shown me—violent, hate-filled visions…Was that who I really was? Was that what would happen if I didn’t hold back?
I might have stayed there all night, incapacitated by pain and shock, but the distant sound of a conch horn brought me back to my senses.