Along the slanted floor, the Middle Dread and the Young Dread approached John and his two men. She could see the athame and lightning rod several yards behind John. The stone objects had come to rest against an upturned desk.
John’s men were firing guns. The range was close, and the Dreads should have been easy targets for the bullets. Yet the Young and the Middle had slowed their sense of time to that point she often felt in battle, when a heartbeat took a minute, and a breath an hour. She saw the bullets as they left the barrels of the guns, and her body was no longer in their path by the time they reached her. They themselves would appear as blurs of motion to the others in the room.
The Middle cracked out his whipsword and stabbed forward at the first of the men. The Young’s sword was already out, preparing to engage with the second man. She swiveled to the side as a bullet tore by her head, then she raised her sword. This would not take long.
Before she struck the man, she spared a glance at her master, who was standing behind them, keeping himself apart from this fight. As the Young met the Old Dread’s eyes, her mind shifted even higher. Images poured through her. He had trained her for years, been a father to her, taught her about the hum of the universe. The athame was to move a great mind beyond the bounds, but there were no great minds, only good hearts. Was she a possession? It takes only one hand to place an athame. Only one mind to decide. Where was the justice of the Dreads?
She saw it then. Her master could not rid himself of the Middle Dread. The reason was a mystery, but the fact remained: her master was tied to the Middle. He had been looking, for a thousand years perhaps, for a Young Dread who would do what was right.
Without another moment of hesitation, she turned her sword away from John’s man and thrust it straight through the Middle Dread’s back, as she had imagined doing so many times. As he lifted his own sword to deliver a death blow to John, she neatly pierced his heart.
The Middle reeled backward, her sword all the way through him, and the Young Dread caught him as he fell. John was staring at her, eyes wide, shock and gratitude chasing each other across his face.
Her master was by her side now. He leaned his head close to her ear.
“That was right,” he whispered.
