Fate's Edge

lose him.”
    The man next to him raised his rifle and fired into the crowd. A dark-haired man dropped to the ground. On the other side of the church, another gunshot popped. A man screamed.
    They were shooting at their own congregation.
    The bearded guard raised his rifle.
    Oh no, no you don’t, you sick bastard.
    Audrey sprinted and hit him, ramming him hard with her shoulder. The man went down. Jack landed on top of him with a guttural snarl, ripped the rifle from the guard’s hands, and smashed the butt into the man’s head. The other guard stumbled back, jerking his weapon up.
    George’s eyes ignited with white. Tiny streaks of white flash, bright like lightning, rolled from his hands.
    The guard dropped the rifle and took off.
    People still ran from the church. Kaldar and Gaston were nowhere in sight.
    The kids were looking at her. They had to get a car. Audrey whirled, looking around. Yonker’s Jeep Cherokee was parked on the side of the church. “Jack, grab that rifle and follow me!” She sprinted to the Jeep, her bare feet barely touching the ground.
     
    THE exit beckoned Kaldar, a glowing rectangle of light. He walked up the aisle, light on his feet. Behind him, two men writhed in pain. Farther still, behind the low wall of fire, Yonker screamed curses from the pulpit.
    A peculiar calm claimed Kaldar, the smooth serenity that always came to him in battle. His family was old, rooted in a half-forgotten time when wars had pushed elite warriors of the old Weird kingdoms into the pit of hell that was the Mire. Their blood flowed in his veins. His uncle was a man of the Old Ways—his sword was death on the battlefield. Cerise was one, too. His brother Richard was one as well. And so was he.
    The blade had been a part of Kaldar’s education since he could stand on his own two feet. He didn’t like to kill unless he had no choice. Not even Murid’s death had changed that. But he was raised to find peace within the slaughter, and that peace sustained him now.
    A bullet whistled by Kaldar’s ear. On the left, a young man, barely old enough to hold a rifle, tried to reload his weapon with shaking hands. Kaldar ducked and threw a knife. The blade sank into the wall next to the guard’s head. The boy dropped the rifle.
    “Run!” Kaldar called.
    The guard scrambled outside.
    “You!” Yonker snapped out of his daze and screamed like a stuck bull. “Stop him!”
    A man lunged at Kaldar from the right. Large, muscular, but sadly too slow. Kaldar rolled his blade over the man’s left thigh. Blood gushed. Kaldar leaned away from the man’s punch and sliced the other thigh. The man croaked something and went down like a log. Kaldar skirted him and kept walking. Three guards burst through the doors, ran down the aisle, saw him, and halted. The blond man on the left looked at the two bodies behind him. “Holy shit.”
    “Shoot him!” Yonker howled from behind the flames. “Shoot his ass!”
    Kaldar looked at their faces. “Let me pass, and you will live.”
    “He said to take him alive,” the man on the left said.
    “Fuck that.” The older of the men jerked his rifle up.
    Kaldar flashed. The magic flared from him in a blue sheath, shielding him. The guard’s bullet ricocheted and bit into the wall.
    Kaldar ran forward.
    As one, the guards fired.
     
    “HOLD on!” Audrey stomped on the gas. The Jeep roared and jumped over the threshold into the church. She saw Kaldar in the aisle, three armed men opposing him, and slammed on her brakes. Kaldar’s face was so relaxed, she barely recognized him. The Jeep skidded to a stop.
    The guards fired. A glowing blue wall surrounded Kaldar. The bullets impacted on it with weak ripples and bounced off. The light imploded, sucked back into Kaldar’s blade.
    Kaldar struck. Light, graceful like a dancer, he cleaved the first guard’s arm. It fell off. Kaldar kept moving, so sickeningly fast, she had no chance to be shocked. He spun, moving as if his joints were fluid, sliced the second man’s chest, his blade going through the muscle and bone like a hot knife through butter, swept past him, and thrust his blade backward, into the small of the third guard’s back.
    The three men dropped.
    Kaldar turned toward her and smiled. It wasn’t his usual smug smile. His face was at once sad and at peace. Audrey wasn’t sure who this man was, but she knew she hadn’t met him before.
    The corners of Kaldar’s mouth drooped, and the smile turned into a scream. “Get