Page 71 of Strength of Desire

I don’t know how long I lay there. A minute? An hour? Everything was silent, and part of me began to hope the man had somehow vanished, until I heard the sound of footsteps crunching past me in the snow.

A third gunshot cracked through the air, and tears leaked from my eyes.

Erika.

Even getting kicked in the face hadn’t been enough to make me cry, but knowing that I hadn’t stopped the man, that I hadn’t saved her, was too much. The tears mixed with the blood and snot dripping from my face.

I’d failed her. I’d let her die.

“No!” I screamed, beating my fists in the snow in anguish like a child.

It wasn’t fair. I’d done all I could, but it hadn’t been enough. I was too weak, too scared, too pathetic to stop that man from taking whatever he wanted. From hurting whoever he wanted. From killing Erika, and soon, me.

Why was Ineverenough? I should have gained control of my powers faster. I should have mastered that stupid light spell from class. I should have stayed inside with my friends tonight. I should have dragged Erika away before she made those symbols in the air, but I hadn’t. I hadn’t. I hadn’t.

I tried to push myself up. I needed to get to Erika, needed to stop—needed to see if maybe there was some slim chance that I could save her. And if I couldn’t do that, I needed to kill the man in the overcoat, before he could do more damage.

I still didn’t know what he wanted, but I couldn’t just let him roam free on Vesperwood’s grounds tonight. Not when so many students were outside, alone.

I’d barely gotten to my knees when a hand on my shoulder yanked me over, forcing me down onto my back. I looked up wildly, blood and tears still spilling from my face, and saw the man with the gun kneeling above me.

This is it, I thought dully. This was where he killed me, before I could do anything useful to stop him. Before I’d done anything useful with my life at all. I’d never mastered magic, or my powers. I’d never proven I had a right to the air I breathed.

Maybe I deserved this.

Fight, whispered the voice in the back of my mind.Fight back.

But all the fight had left me. I was drained. What good would it do to fight now? Nothing I did ever made a damn bit of difference anyway.

The man shook his head, looking down at me, but then he put the gun in his pocket. I frowned, barely together enough to register confusion. And then his hands were around my throat.

Thatstarted me fighting again. Whether my higher mind cared or not, the animal part of me wanted to live. My hands went to the man’s wrists. They were strong and wiry, and it felt like I was tugging against steel.

I tried to remember what Noah had said about breaking a head lock in combat, but that had been standing up, with someone’s arm around your neck. And my thoughts were too jumbled, too frantic, to remember anything anyway.

I kicked wildly, my body flopping like a fish in a boat, trying to throw myself against the man and knock him off balance. Something spiky and cylindrical poked into my back. A tree branch, maybe.

“Hold. Still,” he said through gritted teeth, his hands tightening around my neck. “Why are you making this harder than it needs to be?”

I was losing air. My grip on his hands loosened. I couldn’t pull them apart. I gnashed my teeth, wishing there were something I could bite.

The man growled and swung a leg over me, straddling my body to keep me still. I tried to fight back, tried to resist, but it was hard.

Look at that, whispered the voice in the back of my mind.You’re being straddled by a guy, fighting for air, and you’renothard for once in your life. Itispossible.

I started to giggle. It was a thin, frenzied sound. I couldn’t control it, couldn’t control anything. The man’s eyes narrowed in confusion, and I wanted to tell him what was so funny, but of course, I couldn’t. Oh well. I’d stop laughing soon enough, once he killed me.

“What the fuck is so—”

He broke off when a harsh caw flew through the air and something black and feathery hit him full in the face. In an instant, his hands left my neck to claw at the thing attacking him. I watched in dazed confusion, until I realized it was the raven.

“Cat,” I croaked. My voice didn’t sound right. “You came.”

I hadn’t realized I’d named the raven in my head until that moment. I’d never been more grateful to see them, that was for sure. The man groped for the knife in his pocket and pulled it free, but Cat tore it from his hands, flinging it into the trees.

The man grabbed Cat and threw them off into the night too. But the raven had given as good as they got. When the man looked back down at me, there were tears in his skin, bloody and ragged, where Cat’s claws had dug in.

He reached for me, but I scrambled back in the snow, my legs spidering jerkily. Cat swooped in again, catching the back of the man’s head this time. He screamed, turning and pulling his gun like he meant to shoot the bird. A fourth shot went off, but a second later, I heard a whoosh in the air and a triumphant caw, and I knew Cat hadn’t been hit.

---