Mourning Cloak Read Online Free PDF

benediction. The whip cracks against her wrist, then wraps around it, squeezes. Flutter shimmers, moves
through
the whip, down its length, till she reaches the eerie man holding it. She reaches out with sorrowful grace and shuts his eyes. He falls to the floor.
    The other two eerie men growl in their throats, and thumb the spikes at their belts. Electricity crackles in the air. I gasp out, “Watch out for—”
    She flows around the lash, dances between the two whips tangling for a piece of her. The tip of one flicks her cheek, and she winces, cries out.
    And dissolves.
    Falls into smoke and disappears into the floor.
    No!
    I utter a cry, all anger and frustration. I swing the sword, go for limbs and torsos and heads. Soon, the eerie men are covered in a dozen cuts, oozing their bluish blood. There are tiny stinging burns on my face and arms from their whips.
    If you have taken my one chance of finding Sera from me…
    My muscles jump and twitch from the electric shocks jolting through me. My spiders are there, channeling the energy as fast as they can, but every swing is slower and wilder. I’m losing control, losing the fight.
    Eilendi
chant swells in the room. Toro is at my shoulder, a little behind me, a disconcertingly familiar presence. The scent of green things in the rain comes to my nose. Outtl my nost of the corner of my eye, I see his hands move, fingers weaving the air.
    Taurin has listened. Toro sees.
    Not for me, though. Taurin’s through with me. This is for the
itauri.
    I squint but I can’t see the magic at work. I see its effects, though, as the eerie men, in mid-attack, slow and stumble. Their whips dangle from their hands, fall limp to the floor.
    I attack. A stab through the handless one’s stomach, pull back while he falls, then dispatch the other eerie man. My sword sings its approval, my blood hums in response.
    As the last eerie man hits the floor, Toro says, “Perhaps it would’ve been better to have left one alive for questioning.” He understates, as usual.
    I don’t care right now. I squat at the place where Flutter had been, looking for—what? A scrap of her cloak? A sticky stain of her thin blood? “Where’d she go? What happened?” Even the greater energy of the swift strike hadn’t affected her as that one touch from the eerie man’s whip.
    “They came to destroy her,” says Toro, leaning over me. “They made sure they brought the right weapons.”
    I glance sharply at him. “Do you know who
they
are?”
    Toro doesn’t answer. He moves over to the first eerie man, the one that Flutter touched. He lies still and waxen-looking on the floor. Toro checks him and announces, “He’s still alive. Barely.”
    They.
Flutter has powerful enemies. They tried to kill her outside my alley, then sent a cloak after her, and then the eerie men.
    The cloak had attacked
me,
though.
    They want me dead, too. Who have I offended in Highwind?
    Toro’s hands hover over the eerie man’s chest. “Come quickly, Kato. He won’t last long.”
    I bend over the eerie man as his eyes open. A panicked wildness twists within them, so different from the lunatic glee they had previously displayed. He thrashes his head from side to side, his muscles ripple and bunch.
    “Who sent you?” I ask. “Why did you come to this place?”
    The eerie man growls. It takes me a moment to realize that he’s speaking, his words almost incomprehensible in a mouth crowded with overlarge teeth.
    “…don’t know why…why I do…just do…all I came for…help from…they in their white coats!” The eerie man’s voice rises to a shrill pitch, and I flinch, clapping my hands to my ears. Toro doesn’t, but his hands are trembling and a fine film of sweat has broken out on his forehead.
    I don’t need Toro to tell me what’s going on. We’re losing the eerie man and I need to be quick.
    “White coats, you said. Do you mean the hospital?”
    The eerie man makes a strangled sound and shrinks away from me. His