Chapter 55: I’ll rather die

"Come out," Sophia said. "I know you’re there."

For a few seconds, there was only the wind pushing a paper cup across the street. Then footsteps sounded from the dark, slow and unhurried, and a figure stepped into the light of a lamp.

Sophia raised her hand. Ice gathered in her palm and stretched into a long, thin blade.

Then she saw his face.

"Leon?"

He waved at her and smiled, the same smile he always had, a little crooked, a little sheepish.

The ice blade dissolved at once, and panic hit her stomach. She had told him she would stay. He had made it clear that he did not want her going out alone, and she had snuck out while he was in the bath.

"I can explain," she said quickly. "I know you didn’t want me to leave, but I needed some air, and I wanted to pick up a few things from my old place, and I didn’t want you to worry, so I..."

He crossed the distance and wrapped his arms around her.

He held her tight and patted her back, slowly, the way you comfort a child. She stopped talking. Her face was pressed against his shoulder, and some of the tension went out of her body.

"You don’t need to worry," he said.

Sophia froze.

It was Leon’s voice, but something was wrong with it. It was too smooth, too even, a perfect copy that missed a tiny thing she could not name. She knew his voice like she knew her own heartbeat. And this was not it.

She shoved him back and stepped away.

The person lunged at the same time.

Something cold and sharp drove into her stomach. She gasped. A blade had torn through her shirt, through the skin and the first layer of muscle, and blood gushed out over her fingers. It had not hit any organ, but the pain was white and bright.

She stumbled backward and landed on one knee.

She looked up, shock and confusion on her face.

The person was smiling. It was a wide, a smile that was not natural, not human, with too many teeth. Then his body began to change. His face rippled, and his shoulders shifted. His height stretched and his clothes melted into something else. In a few seconds, it was a different man entirely, tall and thin, wearing a trench coat, with the same smile still stretched across his face.

"You must know him very well," the man said. "To detect even the slightest difference in his voice. I was quite proud of that one."

Footsteps scraped behind her.

Sophia glanced over her shoulder. A second man had stepped out of the alley, thick and heavy, with a bat in his hands. It was studded with spikes, and rust stained the metal. The trench coat man held a knife, still dripping with her blood.

"What do you want with me?" she asked through her teeth.

She pressed her hand over the wound. Cold spread from her palm, and a thin layer of ice sealed the cut and stopped the bleeding. She knew she was in for a fight, and she could not afford to lose any more blood.

The trench coat man tilted his head.

"I have no business with you, girl," he said. "I only want your boyfriend. But it seems he is a bit hard to get. So we are going to have to use you."

Something inside Sophia snapped.

She did not care that they wanted to kidnap her. She did not care about the knife or the wound. The only thing she heard was that they were after Leon.

She thrust out her hand.

A blast of ice shot across the street and slammed into the trench coat man’s chest. It threw him backward through the air, and he crashed against a wall.

Behind her, the heavy man was already moving.

He leaped, and the bat came down in a wide arc. As it fell, it grew, swelling to three times its size, wrapped in a red aura that hummed like a furnace.

Sophia sensed it. She spun and raised both hands.

An enormous dome of ice formed around her in an instant, thick and clear.

CRASH!

The bat tore through it. The dome shattered, and the edge of the blow caught her across the shoulder. She was hurled through the air and hit the ground hard, rolling over the stone until she came to a stop on her side.

She spat blood and pushed herself up.

A shape rushed her from behind.

The trench coat man had recovered. He came at her with the dagger, low and fast. She rolled to the side, and the blade scraped the ground. She drove her fist into his gut.

Her hand sank in.

It went through his stomach like it was made of clay, soft and warm. She stared at it, and the man grinned down at her.

’His body isn’t solid.’

She poured her mana down her arm. Ice raced through his torso, spreading from her fingers, and the clay turned hard and pale. The trench coat man shrieked. She pulled her hand out by force, tearing a chunk of his body with it, and he staggered backward, clutching the frozen hole.

"You bitch!"

The heavy man swung again from behind.

She ducked, felt the wind of the bat pass over her head, and kicked off the ground. She slid under the swing and froze the man’s ankle to the road. He tripped and roared. She spun and hit him in the face with an ice-covered fist.

They did not let up.

The trench coat man’s wound had hardened, but he forced his body to move. He shoved his dagger into the ground and twisted his arm, and it split into a long, curved blade. His other arm became a spike. He lunged, slashing with both.

Sophia blocked one with an ice blade and felt the other cut across her ribs. Another strike sliced her thigh. She grunted, struck back, and cut off a piece of his shoulder, and it shattered when it hit the ground.

The bat came down again. She rolled aside, and it cracked the pavement where she had been.

Blood ran down her arm. Her breathing came in short, heavy pulls. Her hair stuck to her face, and one eye was half closed from a cut across her brow. But she did not back away.

The two men attacked harder. They were getting desperate. They had not expected a girl to hold on like this.

"Why won’t you fall?" the trench coat man hissed.

Sophia staggered, caught herself, and lifted her head.

"I’d rather die," she said, breathing hard, "than let you find him or hurt him."

Ice spread across the ground around her feet.

"And before I’m done with you, I’m going to find out exactly who sent you. If I have to pull it out of your mouths, I will."

She charged.

She cut and froze and punched. Every time they hit her, she hit them harder. The street filled with the sound of cracking ice and screaming steel, and for a moment, it looked like she might actually win.

Then the bat man swung low, and she took it in the knee.

She dropped. The trench coat man raised both of his blade arms over her head.

Something moved through the ground.

A line of darkness slid across the pavement, quiet as a snake, and wrapped around the bat man’s leg.

He looked down.

It yanked him into the air. He flew up ten feet, flailing, and then the shadow whipped him down.

BOOM!

He hit the road so hard that the stone cracked in a wide ring. He did not get up.

Sophia stared. The trench coat man stared, his blade arms hanging in the air.

At the end of the street, a figure was rising out of the dark.

It was cloaked in shadow, a tall shape wrapped in black, and it drifted slowly toward them. Two eyes burned in the middle of it, red and glowing, and the rage pouring from the figure was so thick that Sophia could feel it from where she knelt.