Chapter 117: You’re Out of Luck [pt 2]

Donzo looked displeased and Theo looked amused. The other three had backed off to the edge of the ash and stayed there.

Theo glanced down at his leg.

The cut on the thigh had already stopped bleeding, and under the skin he could feel the muscle shifting round it, closing, faster than he could watch. Heat he had adapted to long ago. The only thing worth thinking about was the wound itself, and his body had decided a small hole in the thigh was not worth the attention.

The darkness gathering round him had other things to say. It came in low over the ash and thickened round his boots, and it did not look nearly as relaxed about the injury as he was.

Donzo twirled the swords in his hands. The displeasure had gone and a mad grin sat where it had been.

"Out of luck? Bitch, look around you, you’re out of luck!"

He twirled them again, and this time flames burst along both blades from guard to tip. Then he ate the distance in a blur and was standing right in front of Theo, the left sword already on its way down.

It never landed. The darkness under his front foot went hard as wet stone and dragged him half a step back, and his heel went out from under him in the ash.

His face came down to meet Theo’s fist.

He went away backwards, rolled over his own head, and smashed through three of the burnt pines before anything stopped him. The third one came down on top of him in a cloud of black glass.

Theo twisted his wrist, Raindrop loose in one hand, and started walking. Behind him the girls had gone pale.

Bethe shifted a step further from Theo without seeming to know she had done it, and mumbled:

"This has never happened before. He struck him."

For a moment Donzo stayed down among the splinters, as shocked as they were.

’Looks like I slipped there... this is embarrassing.’

He pushed himself up onto one knee, then to his feet, glowering at the man strolling towards him.

"Don’t get excited over a cheap shot, Theo!"

Theo shrugged.

’It was a cheap shot. I’ll take it.’

And in the same breath Donzo had crossed the ground again. Even for Theo that speed was a troublesome thing to have to deal with, which was exactly why he was not rushing. He watched, and he let the ash and the trees do the work of slowing the man down.

That was how he was going to win this.

Donzo was a Realm above him. All that bought him was speed, and the skill to use it. Take the speed away and the skill had nothing to ride on.

This time he came in spinning, both swords wheeling like a hurricane of fire, and brought them down in a blaze that blew the ash flat and set the nearest trunks smoking.

The moment the flames stood up, so did their shadows. Theo stepped into one and came out of another thirty yards back, behind the man’s shoulder.

Donzo could not see through his own fire. He slammed the whole burning weight of it down anyway, grinning at the inevitability of it, at a Theo who had finally been had.

Then somebody tapped him on the back.

"Why are you grinning so hard? The battle’s not over, you know?"

His face went white and he staggered back, but this time Theo was faster than his feet. He buried a blow in the middle of Donzo’s chest and sent him coughing, took a fistful of his hair, and brought his face down onto a rising knee.

Theo kept the hair. He hauled the head back up by it, and while Donzo was still reeling, shot forward and slammed a round kick straight into his face. Donzo went sprawling across the clearing and ploughed a furrow in the ash.

He swept one blade sideways from where he lay and threw a fan of fire across the clearing at head height.

Theo lifted his free hand. The shadow of the fallen pine stood up between them like a wall and drank the fire whole, and it went out inside the dark without a sound.

Donzo was already on his feet, faster than a man with that face had any right to be. The other sword cut a low crescent of flame across the ash at knee height, and Theo had to leave the ground to get over it. In the air he was a target, and Donzo knew it, and the first blade was coming up to meet him.

Raindrop met it.

The sound was a bell hit with a hammer. Fire ran down the flat of Theo’s sword and found nothing on it to catch. Heat rolled up his arm and did nothing either, though the cuff of his sleeve went black. He landed with both feet under him and Donzo’s blade still locked against his own, and for two breaths they stood chest to chest with the fire lighting them from below.

Then the shadow of Donzo’s own sword reached up off the ash, took him by the wrist, and held it.

Half a second. That was all it gave Theo, and all he needed. He turned his hip into the lock and drove his elbow into the man’s jaw, and the swords came apart.

Donzo staggered three steps and went down on his knees, still gripping both blades. His face had gone somewhere for a moment, and when it came back Theo was there waiting for him, one hand in his pocket and Raindrop hanging lazily by his side.

Bethe had both hands over her mouth. Sivvy had sat down in the ash.

He rose slowly, and this time his face was bent with fury. He glared straight past Theo at the girls, gripping his swords as though he meant to crush the hilts.

Then he twirled, and moved so fast that even Theo was caught off guard.