Firedragon Rising Read Online Free PDF Page B

camping. Since
Williams had mentioned the place being stocked with provisions,
she’d even considered bringing only her weapons—less chance of
stuff getting in her way if she had to fight a monster. Some part
of her brain had niggled at her, though, saying it was better to be
prepared than risk being sorry later.
    At the end of the street, a barely visible
silver haze shimmered against the darkness—the edge of the Capital.
What looked like faintly glowing mist was in fact a powerful
enchanted barrier put in place by the Sentinels to keep the
supernaturals out. Those magical wisps were the bars of a
magnificent cage that protected those within from the terrors
outside. But it was a cage nonetheless, and she couldn’t wait to
break out.
    She was still within the cage’s bounds,
though, and her Triumvirate pursuers were fast gaining on her. The
sounds of the patrolmen’s motorbikes buzzed through the darkness,
growing louder by the second. That meant they were getting closer,
and her double shields of camouflage and darkness were far from
perfect. If they recognized her—if they realized she was the
runaway they’d been sent to capture and not a fellow law
enforcement officer—then her journey would be over before it began.
The city’s border was so close—she couldn’t let them stop her
now.
    She twisted the right
handlebar to accelerate the motorbike— gotta move at max speed— and a rush
of exhilaration flooded her as the vehicle shot ahead. It had taken
her longer than she’d planned to make it across the Capital from
the Academy’s location, since avoiding the patrolmen had meant
zigzagging through the streets, but now, an end—and an escape from
the Triumvirate’s eyes—was in sight.
    Despite the danger she’d already faced, she
knew that fleeing the city would be the easy part, since the
Triumvirate had unknowingly given her two important tools to aid in
her getaway: access to a fast transport and a mental map. The
Academy had provided her with a key to the motorbike garage last
year so she could grab a vehicle at a moment’s notice whenever a
monster needed ganking, and thanks to their assignments, she knew
the lay of the land better than most people knew their own
fingernails.
    She’d have no such
advantages in the wild. Out there, it would just be her and her
swords against an unknown, untamed wilderness crawling with
creatures of the Underworld. And the patrolmen would still be after
her. She’d have a better chance of escaping them outside their
turf, but the very things she was counting on to slow them down—the
dangerous terrain and the presence of supernaturals—could snare her
too. She’d have to find her way to an unfamiliar hideout while both
avoiding her pursuers and fighting any monsters that crossed her path.
Tension gripped her, and she drew a deep breath.
    No monster stands a chance
against me , she reminded herself.
Nevertheless, a shard of fear remained embedded in her chest. Even
if she could defeat the fiends, there were still specters to worry
about. Her skin prickled. Specters were spirits of the dead that
had returned to the earth. Most were mindless, bloodthirsty beings
as savage as any beast. Even the least dangerous type—Class Cs,
which still had an element of conscious thought left—could shatter
buildings. Class Bs and Class As—the strongest—were creatures whose
souls had been consumed by the dark powers of the Underworld,
leaving only cruelty and hatred toward all living
beings.
    If Aurelia were the thinking type, like
Connor, she might have contemplated what it meant that someone who
was once a person like her could turn into something worse than a
monster. Maybe she would even have felt bad for them.
    But she was a fighter, and she didn’t have
time to worry about such things when her survival was at stake.
Specters were the worst kind of enemy: The kind she couldn’t
defeat. She could ward them off with silver and force them to
retreat, but she couldn’t