A Knight's Purpose (Book 1) ✔️

Chapter 14 - Loose Cannons

Two years later - Eve

I feel flesh part beneath my blade and I'm reminded why I've always preferred swords over guns. Case in point - the pistol I'd recently dropped after it ran out of bullets. Not to mention that swords are infinitely easier to enchant than the smaller guns. Though I will admit, for long range a modern rifle is much more accurate than any bow and arrow, but I digress.

The mage in front of me collapses with an incantation still trying to escape his lips as my sword reemerges from where it's buried inside his chest. I'd managed to slip the blade just underneath his rib cage which generally severs a major artery, a fact I'd learned after flipping through anatomy books in the 1900s. Killing was infinitely easier when you knew how to make them bleed.

I raise my sword to hip height and scan the area. Raine and Caire were working together to take down a mage to my left but no one else is in the clearing around the Iron Claw base. The old warehouse is so rusted it's slowly falling apart but we'd blocked the door, killing anything that came out. It hadn't taken long to stem the flow. There are no other members to kill so I look to the others.

Lowering my weapon I wander over to see Raine snarl as the mage's offensive spell, some sort of flame shooting from his hand, singes her dark hair. Caire cast a shield spell and the mage's next shot bounces back at him but he's unable to raise his own defenses in time.

Screams escape as the magician's own spell erupts on contact with his skin and I wince.

"Tsk tsk, Caire, that was sloppy," I drawl as I draw up to them, sheathing my sword on my back.

"He almost hurt Raine." The tall blond man shrugs and I can tell he honestly doesn't care about the probably painful death he's just inflicted.  Well, I guess not everyone can retain their soul doing this sort of work.

"I was fine, Caire, back off." The fiery fox shifter snarls back at him. "I would have had him if you'd just given me the next second."

Her head barely reaches his shoulder as she moves to stand and yell up into his face. Raine's a bit oblivious to the reason Caire always shadows her on these missions but I can sense it isn't my place to interfere.

Instead, I head off the inevitable squabble before it begins by stepping between them. "Have either of you seen Rhoslyn?" 

"She said she was going to scout around the base." Caire, his voice emotionless as always, turns and leads the way.

I'd lucked out seven months after I'd escaped from the Heartford Vale Pack's basement. After hunting down a couple old favors I'd made my way into the dark part of the magical world. A few odd jobs to gain trust in the community - assassinations, thievery, the usual - and then I'd put out feelers for a symbol I remembered from my captors. As luck would have it, there were three people wanting to take on the Iron Claw who wanted some help.

And so here we were, searching the forest for our resident loose cannon, Rhoslyn. The mage had been captured and held by the Iron Claw for five months a few years ago. She's tight lipped on the affair but from what I can see of the runes carved in her body they used her like a magical battery, drawing out her magic to augment their own. Not that a shifter like me would know anything about runes, nope not a lick.

Whatever they'd done, her magic had been fried, an unfortunate side effect for humans that drew too much power for extended periods of time. These days it came in an out like a flickering light bulb and the loss of control had broken a little something inside the woman. Now, she's out for revenge.

Three quarters of the way around the building we find a second entrance. It is decorated with bright splashes of vibrant red blood coating the entire door frame, likely from arterial spray. The bodies that had produced such decorations lay eviscerated and splayed open with a limb or two tossed about for added effect.