Deadly Night Shade

Chapter 17

Chapter seventeen

“So you remember me,” she said, her voice humoured, though her eyes, pure crimson, were filled with hatred. “How could I forget,” I replied, subconsciously stroking the snake design of the hilt of my sword, “You designed the remembrance of Claire Forrester.”

A nerve in her mouth twitched, “So I did,” she said, “but she was the one thing, save the Hatred, that I actually respected and cared about, and now she is gone.”

Fury Moon reached behind her and pulled out a silver bow. The arch in the bow was two silver snakes, inter-twining, their heads at either end of the bow, crimson rubies in their jaws, the string protruding from the bottom of their mouths. I shook my head, this was impossible, my sword was crafted by an insane follower of the darkness, and here was a bow of identical make and pattern that could not have possibly been made by a follower of the darkness, as the gems in the snakes jaws were red, which I had now guessed, was the colour of the Hatred, as purple was obviously the colour of the Darkness.

“Where did you get that?” I asked, almost speechless at the sight of the bow. “This?” she asked mockingly, “it was crafted by a former follower of the Hatred whose life was given in the making,” I shook my head, this couldn’t be a coincidence.

“How is it possible that our weapons are identical in make, but were crafted by different people?” I asked, my throat tightening. Jess smiled and stared at my sword, “That’s easy, they were twin sisters,” she said, “Didn’t your Guardian tell you?”

“My guardian didn’t tell me the story at all,” I said softly, “I was told by… someone else.” Fury Moon’s smile faded and a crimson arrow shuddered into existence in her right hand. She began stroking the feathers that were meant to keep the arrow streamlined and pinned me with a penetrating stare. “Who are you?” she asked.

“You know who I am, Fury Moon, I am Night Shade,” I said, my voice level and thankfully, not wavering. An arrow whistled past me, less than an inch from my cheek. I felt the heat from a crimson flame that had engulfed the tip of the arrow on firing as it passed my face and I held up my sword just in time to see the next arrow being loaded.

As this arrow started hurtling towards my face, I held my sword vertically in front of me and the arrow hit it, cutting it cleanly in two identical shards that flew uselessly past me. I smiled in relief that it had actually worked and dived to the side just in time as another arrow soared through the air where my head had just been.

Half a dozen more of the arrows came flying towards me and I blocked three, making them ricocheted into weird and wonderful directions, giving me time to duck under the other three.

My sword erupted into purple flames as I sliced through countless crimson arrows that were pelted in my direction. A grimace of annoyance touched Fury  Moon’s face as I destroyed the arrows that were being hurtled towards me, but even though she was intent on fatally wounding or kill me, I could not bring myself to hurt her. She was, after all, my best friend.

I could see a light sweat break out on her brow as her eyes burned with crimson hatred and she lined three deadly arrows and flung them with uncanny precision.

The first arrow scratched and burnt my right cheek, causing a stinging pain to cross my face. The next pierced me in the hip and stuck there, burning the skin around it. The third arrow was soaring towards my heart when I disappeared, only to reappear on one of the branches of one of the trees at the brim of the clearing.

***

“You coward!” she hissed at the space of air where I had been standing. “You haven’t even laid a scratch on me and you disappear when I hurt you,” she said.