Rites of Passage Read Online Free PDF Page A

and true, but the portal still didn’t close.
    One of the master’s appendages reached Finn.
    The monster struck Finn square across his body. He felt a rib break, and then he was sailing through the air.
    Something else broke when he landed.
    He hoped it wasn’t his back.
    One of the master’s eyes was visible now. As big as Finn’s entire body, the eye glared at him from inside the portal with a triumphant, vicious insanity.
    Finn had lost.
    All of his years of training had been for nothing.
    His parents would die. His friends would die. All of the women he’d longed for but never had time to meet would die.
    All because he’d lost.
    He dimly heard the female goblin empty her gun into the monster, but the shots had no effect.
    “Give me your blade,” she said.
    She was standing next to him. When had that happened?
    He looked down at his good hand. He was still gripping his katana.
    “You wanted my help,” she said, her voice a near growl. “Give me the damn blade!”
    He handed it over.
    He thought she’d handle the katana carefully. The sharp steel could kill her just by touching her skin. But she grabbed the long handle with the kind of ease that made her look like she’d been wielding his sword her entire life.
    Goblins were naturally stronger and faster than humans. Finn had always thought they were also far less graceful.
    Watching the female goblin fight the monster, he realized he’d been wrong.
    She fought as well, if not better, than his old master. She sprinted around the edges of the portal, deftly avoiding the grasping appendages and the slime trails on the floor. She hooted and yelled at the monster in a language Finn didn’t understand, and he realized it was her battle cry.
    Whenever she had an opening, she attacked an appendage with the blade.
    Each slice made the master roar. When she finally managed to severe an appendage completely, the entire building shook with the volume of the master’s bellow.
    The monster’s anger only seemed to spur her on.
    Finn lost track of her individual moves. She was a blur against the fading light of the portal, a busy stinging hornet who knew she had her prey on the run.
    She cut and sliced and sprinted away, laughing and chattering at her foe.
    She was magnificent, a warrior like none Finn had ever seen.
    And when she thrust the katana deep into the monster’s mad eye, he knew she’d done something he never had.
    She’d defeated an Elder God.
    She yanked his blade out of the mess of blood and ichor that had been the monster’s eye just as it pulled back into the portal, drawing its wounded appendages after itself.
    The brilliant light turned sickly green, and then it was gone leaving only a filthy, cracked window behind.
    The goblin trotted across the floor to lay the katana at his side. She wasn’t even breathing hard.
    “You should keep it,” Finn said. “You earned it.”
    She shook her head. “Pretty poison is still poison, but thanks for letting me try it.”
    He got the feeling she liked to try all sorts of things.
    She picked up the empty plastic gun he’d dropped at his feet.
    “What are those things?” he asked.
    “Haven’t you heard?” She gave him a wicked grin as she slipped the gun through a loop on her leather belt. “Human technology. You creatures can print almost anything these days, given the right incentive.”
    Finn thought he understood. “And the bullets?”
    Her grin got wider. “My little secret.”
    One of those secret bullets had taken out a creep. That was impressive.
    He’d always wanted to kill a creep with a gun. Maybe someday she’d let him use one of hers.
    The thought made Finn pause.
    He was getting up there in years. He’d made mistakes tonight. Those mistakes would have been fatal if he hadn’t stumbled into the middle of a goblin gangland coup d’état.
    Or had he stumbled into it?
    What if fate had sent her into this building tonight just like it had sent him to walk through a field on the night