Read Online Broken Quill [2] by Joe Ducie - Free Book Online

canvas with dozens of tiny
pinpricks of light, swaying slowly to the music, as if I had an ethereal radar
in the smoke rings of my mind. One of those was Annie, just outside, and if I
concentrated a touch harder I’d be able to discern which one she—
    My sensory net struck a wall made of
cascading flame, and I almost lost my dinner. The wall felt a lot like what I
imagine hot, raw sewage would taste like. A point on the canvas that was
neither living nor dead... nor human .
    “Oh… broken quill!” I cursed and
pressed my fingers against my eyelids, fighting a sudden nausea.
    Something wicked was at Paddy’s tonight.
    Something… far from Irish.
    I broke away from the starry canvas
with a thought and looked up and over Emily’s shoulder, across at the bar.
    A man stood next to the polished
mahogany and the beer-soaked mats, just before the bridge of frosty taps. He
was dressed in a fine black suit and a matte-purple shirt. A simple bowtie,
untied, hung around his neck. His smile stretched from ear to ear, revealing
rows of pristine white teeth.
    He winked at me and his eye—his
whole eye—turned black as coal.
    A sense of fear and raw insanity hit
me hard, and it was all I could do not to scream. I was looking at the creature
that had torn apart those poor people and left me messages in their blood and
entrails. If Emily was to be believed, I was looking at a monster of
incalculable strength. A servant of one the Everlasting. The nine fuckin’
Ringwraiths. Oblivion, Scion…
    Emissary. A word for messenger,
envoy, herald— harbinger .
    “Why tell me all this?” I asked,
never taking my eyes off the thing at the bar. “Why help me?”
    “Because I, unlike your older
brother, value this world and its people. You are going to be needed. True
Earth has her part to play in the war to come, and I’d soon as not see it
burned to ash by things older than time.” Emily shook her head. “But never mind
that just now. It’s going to kill everyone here, Declan.”
    “He doesn’t look so tough. I can
take him.” Can I? “You should go, and go now.”
    “Yes, I know. I’m going.” Emily
stood and moved around the table. She leaned in close and gave me a kiss on one
stubbly cheek. “ Immortal is, perhaps, the wrong word. Timeless fits better. I’ll miss you if you die and stay dead.”
    “Hey, haven’t you heard? I’m the
Immortal King, sweet thing.”
    “Goodnight, Declan.”
    Emily left through the back door,
stepping out into the beer garden across the restaurant area behind me, but I
didn’t watch her leave. The thing at the bar hadn’t blinked yet, and neither
had I.
    My hands were under the table, and I
pooled a reserve of raw, smoky, luminescent Will into my palms. I didn’t know
what this creature was capable of, but it felt like nothing I’d encountered
before. So I’d have to hit it hard and fast, and never mind who saw me shooting
beams of fire from my palms—
    “Where’d your friend go?” Annie
asked. She sat back down and for just a moment blocked my view of Emissary.
    In that split-second, he
disappeared, as these supernatural monsters are wont to do.
    “Fuck.” I blinked. “That is… Emily
left.”
    “She seemed nice.”
    “Oh yes, she seemed nice.”
    I wasn’t looking at Annie, and she
noticed. She glanced over her shoulder and scanned the bar. “What’s the
matter?”
    “People are about to die, I’m
afraid.”
    “What?”
    The bar exploded. Ka- boom style.
    A fireball of hot red flame, tinged
pink, smashed into the wood and sent splinters of sharp metal, timber and glass
flying in every direction. The two female staff behind the bar were simply
absorbed by the flame, disintegrated to ash and less than ash. The half dozen
or so patrons standing on the drinking side of the fence were blasted back,
ragged and broken and dead before they hit the floor.
    I leaped out of my chair and,
as quick as thought, cast a brilliant argent shield against the hail of deadly
projectiles