“I will give you this much credit,” Saint Dane seethed. “You are stronger than Press said. But that means nothing to me now. If killing you is meant to be, I am more than happy to be the executioner.”
He lunged at me. I ducked and rolled toward Loor’s body. I had to stay focused. I couldn’t think about her. I needed her weapon. While jumping back to my feet, I grabbed her wooden stave. I was now armed. I spun to face Saint Dane, who held the sword high once more.
“You have been practicing,” he said. “No matter. You are still a weak boy. I should have killed you on Denduron.”
He came at me with the sword. This time his movements were shorter, quicker. He slashed the weapon back and forth. I deflected the blows with Loor’s stave. He wanted me dead. I wanted me alive. If I was going to beat him, I was going to have to use his anger against him. But I had to be smart. The last time I tried that, it backfired and I landed in the hospital. This time I would end up dead.
I ducked away from his attack and spun toward the other side of the cavern.
“It’s over,” I said. “You can’t outwit me. This proves it.”
“Ahhh!” he ran at me and chopped down with the sword like a lumberjack. I ducked away, but couldn’t counterstrike. He was too good. He may have been making bad attacks, but he kept recovering in time to block my counters.
“Go back to whatever cave you call home,” I taunted. “You have no chance of controlling Halla. We’re too strong. The people of the territories are too strong. You’re in way over your head.”
“Rahhhh!” he bellowed, and unleashed another attack. I blocked two of his shots, spun, and cracked him on the back of his head, knocking him off balance. My confidence grew. I had to force myself not to think of this as revenge. I had to stay in control. I couldn’t think about how he nearly beat me to death. I couldn’t think about Loor. I had to be the warrior she taught me to be.
“Your bravery is impressive, but foolish,” Saint Dane said as he circled back for more. “You are not invincible. You will meet the same fate as Press, and Kasha…and Loor.”
I attacked. I faked a shot to his gut, then spun and drilled the other side of my stave for his head. He was ready for me. He didn’t go for the fake and knocked my second shot aside. He followed by lashing at me with the sword. I moved quickly enough so that I wasn’t sliced, but the blade smacked me in the back, stinging. I had committed the number one mistake. He had goaded me into making the first move. It nearly cost me my life. I wouldn’t do it again.
“You’re running out of territories, Saint Dane,” I said. “Your campaign is running out of steam. We are all over you. We know your tricks. We know how you think. And…we’re the good guys.”
Saint Dane thrust his sword at me. I knocked it away, spun the stave, and hit him square on the side of his head. I heard him bellow in pain. I didn’t stop. I hit him again, straight in the gut. He doubled over and dropped the sword. I wanted more. All the anger, all the frustration, all the hatred for this guy poured out of me through Loor’s stave. It was payback time. I had no sympathy. I pummeled him. I hit him in the head, the knees, the gut. I gave him every bit the beating he had given me, and more. I had won, but that wasn’t enough. I wanted to kill him. Yes, I’ll say it. At that moment I wanted to kill him.
I had lost control. I was in a frenzy, beating him mercilessly. It was exactly what he wanted. When I was in control of my emotions, I was in command of the fight. As soon as I let my emotions take over, Saint Dane turned it around. He took the beating, backing into the far wall of the cavern. He looked as if he were ready to pass out, but he wasn’t. He surprised me by ducking down, reaching into his Ghee armor and pulling out a short, three-bladed knife. It was a weapon from Eelong, the three claws of a tang beast. He lashed out with the knife, catching my forearm. I screamed, and lost control of the stave. He lashed at me again and I dropped it. It clattered to the cavern floor, out of my reach. I was about to be skewered.
Without thinking, I threw myself backward. Saint Dane slashed with the knife again, catching and slicing the front of my tunic. I did a full backward somersault. Saint Dane got his feet back under him and charged. This was it. He was coming in for the kill. He let out a roar of bloodlust. I finished the somersault and landed on my back. I saw Saint Dane charging with the tang knife held high, ready to plunge down at me. I didn’t move. There was no way I could get out of the way fast enough. He was coming in full throttle and I was on my back. I had only one chance left.
Without taking my eyes off him or moving my body, I reached out and grabbed the sword that had fallen to the ground. The sword that had killed Loor. Saint Dane’s eyes were locked on mine. They were on fire. He had a single-minded purpose-kill Bobby Pendragon. I felt the handle of the sword…Saint Dane lunged at me… I brought the point of the sword up and…Saint Dane impaled himself square on the blade. His eyes stayed locked on mine. I saw his look change from rage to shock. The unthinkable had happened.
I had killed Saint Dane.
His body transformed from that of the Ghee warrior back to his normal self. But the agony and shock were still there. The blood-red veins on his bald head seemed to glow. His white eyes grew dim. It was over. It was all over.
Or so I thought.
Saint Dane hung there for a moment, then his body turned to black smoke before my eyes. The dark cloud floated away from me and moved quickly to the mouth of the flume. There it grew and transformed back into solid form. Saint Dane stood there, looking totally fine. He wasn’t hurt. Not even a little. Making things worse, he was strangely calm. Gone was the anger. He even had a small smile on his face. I lay on the ground, still holding the bloody sword. My brain had frozen. I couldn’t move.
“I see you are capable of rage,” he said cockily. “I will remember that.”
“How could you…?” was all I could gasp.
“Didn’t Press tell you how futile it would be to try and kill me?” he said with a smirk. He kept his eyes on me and shouted into the flume,”Quillan!”
The flume came to life. He was getting away. I didn’t have the strength, or the will to try and stop him. Truth was, I didn’t know how.
“This has been such an amusing diversion,” Saint Dane said. He was back to his old, confident self. “In spite of what you may think, Pendragon, this isn’t over. I can lick my wounds and move on.” He glanced down at Loor’s body and added, “The question is, can you?”
The light from the flume enveloped the demon Traveler. He took a step back and was gone. As the light disappeared, I could hear his laugh fading away.
I dropped the sword. My mind was reeling. What had just happened? One minute Saint Dane was dead, the next he wasn’t. One moment he was desperately trying to kill me, the next he was back to his old self, as if his attack had all been a planned stunt. Maybe it was. Maybe this was one more way of throwing me off balance. If that was the case, he’d done a pretty good job. I had discovered that under the right conditions, I was capable of taking a life. Or maybe I was only capable of taking Saint Dane’s life. But his life couldn’t be taken. My head hurt.
That’s when I remembered Loor. I rolled over onto my knees and crawled to her.
“Loor!” I shouted. “Loor!”
The Ghee warrior lay still. The front of her black armor was slick with blood. Lots of blood. I lifted her head. There was no sign of life. I wouldn’t accept that. I couldn’t. I felt her neck for a pulse. There was none. I lifted her eyelid. She stared ahead, looking at nothing. It was impossible, but true.
Loor was dead.
I was brought back to the moments when life abandoned Osa. And Kasha. And my uncle Press. I had been there for all of them, and I was there for Loor. I cried. No, I sobbed. Not Loor. Never Loor. It wasn’t right. I put my hand on the wound that Saint Dane’s sword had made. The wound that had spilled her blood. It was warm.