Chapter Twenty-Three – Ryder

 

“No!” Esther shouted. “Wait!”

Shotgun already at my shoulder, and my finger on the trigger, I spun to fire at the bitch who’d cursed me. I didn’t even have to look, just pulled. The firearm leapt in my hands like a startled bull, slamming back against the muscle as I unleashed a load of rock salt in her direction, the boom of the propellant filling the room like a bomb.

Paper and leather plumed into the air as shredded books tumbled to the floor, spilling their loosened leaves across the threadbare carpet.

“Ryder,” Esther said from out in the hall, “listen to me.”

“Yeah,” I growled as I rushed to the door, closing the gap in a series of long strides as I racked another shell into the chamber, “keep talking.”  I swung around the door frame, shotgun raised.

“Ryder!” She was just on the other side of the desk, her face twisted into a mask of rage.

I fired again, but she was already moving faster than I could see, down the hallway towards the bar.

“Wait,” Stephanie called from inside the hidden lab.

“Stay here!” I barked. I hit the desk at a run, vaulting over it with my right arm. Pain erupted in my side, and I felt my shirt dampen with blood as I hit the ground running and sprinted off after Esther.

“Dammit, Ryder!” Stephanie called from behind me as I raced her words down the hallway, all the faded and ancient pictures and paintings flying by as I headed for the little bar where the two women had cared for my cut side.

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with,” came Esther’s words of warning as I slammed back into the wall beside the bar, the shotgun up across my chest.

“We can work this out, Esther,” I growled. “Whatever you’re doing, we can fix this.”

“That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you—”

As Esther replied, I whipped around the corner, shotgun raised.

She stood there, a figure of almost stately beauty in her long skirt, arm raised and fingers outstretched, her raven black hair flying and writhing out behind her. “I’m not the problem here.”

Shit. She had the drop on me. I went to pull the trigger.

A wave of force from her pointing fingers slammed into me, lifting my feet from the worn carpet. Weightlessness overtook my body for a split second, just before the sudden sturdiness of the wall behind me reminded me what the word solid actually meant.

With a pained “Oomph,” I felt the force slam the air from my lungs.

Behind me, the glass protecting the antique pictures shattered, and I tumbled to the floor in a pile, the shotgun flying from my hand and down the hall. A bloom of fire erupted in my back, and blood trickled down my skin. A hail of frames and crystalline shards fell around my body as I slumped to the carpet.

Gasping for breath, I tried to force myself upright. I felt around at my back and slashed my hand open with a shard of glass lodged in my flesh. “Dammit!” I growled, only managing to raise my head even as my hand began to heal itself.

Down the hall to my right, Stephanie screamed. Ahead of me, Esther advanced with her hand still outstretched. “Stop, Ryder! Don’t get up!”

I got to my knees, struggled to my feet. Fists balled at my sides, I glared at the oncoming witch. This was the second time she’d used her power on me, and I’d be damned if I was going to let her go for a third. “Screw you, bitch!”

“Ryder, no!”

My vision tunneled, and, with only blood on my mind, I rushed her. I crossed the threshold of the bar and kept barreling ahead.

She flicked her offered hand to the side, like a little slap at the air.

More raw power slammed into my side, lifting me from my feet again. I flailed uselessly as I went flying.

Both a bar stool and the bar stopped my momentum with a loud crack, this time, and I fell to the floor.

Pain flared in my side, and my breath came in ragged, pained, gasping jags that seared my insides. The snap I’d heard wasn’t the bar, or the bar stool; it had been one or more of my ribs.

Esther advanced on me.

I pushed off with my hands, trying to leap for her.

More force at my back, forcing me flat on the worn carpet, driving my nose into the mildewed floor covering. “Stay. Down.”

I fought against it, but it was like trying to push against a train engine that was already moving with a whole line of loaded cars behind it. There was no stopping it, no matter how much I tried.

She applied more.

I groaned as inevitability won, and I had to drop to the floor.

“Now,” Esther said as she came to a stop next to my face, the toes of her conservative flats pointed right at my nose, “are you ready to listen?”

“Listen to what, bitch?” Stephanie asked from behind me, a split-second before the shotgun boomed with finality.