Red Rider RIsing: Book 2 of the Red Rider Saga by D.A. Randall (ebook e reader .txt) 📕

rocks striking my gut. My head. My face.

I remembered the voice of my other hero, Francois. You gotta stand up and do something, or nobody’s ever gonna get helped, he had urged.

Stand up and do something.

I looked around the empty alley, at the shrapnel of rocks and bricks scattered nearby. A broken wood plank lay among them. I seized it with both hands.

I rose.

The boys stared with surprise and delight.

Denue hurled his rock at my eyes. I slapped it away with the plank and marched at them.

Marched at Denue. The others fell silent and stopped. Muscles threw another stone. I smacked it against the wall and it shattered in half. Freckles hurled another one. I slammed it to the ground.

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“Throw it!” Denue ordered the others.

“Gimme the rock, then!”

Slob surrendered his stone to Denue as I closed in. He tried to throw it but I smacked his wrist with the plank. He yelped as I jammed the end of the board into his chest and drove him back out of the alley with his friends.

We emerged on the open street and I whacked him across the shoulder. He fell to the ground and rolled onto his back. I dropped to my knees in front of him, releasing the plank. The others gaped as I pummeled him with my fists. I continued with single-handed blows, one after the other. Until he lay on the ground, bloody and crying.

I stopped. He cringed and whimpered beneath me, shielding his face with open palms. I could have beaten him into a helpless mass, the way he beat me all those years ago. But what would be the point?

I stood to my feet. “You’re not the one I want. Just keep out of my way.”

I stepped over him and marched back to Monsieur Leóne’s shop.

Denue called after me, half-threatening, half-sobbing. “You freak! You’ll regret this, you scar-faced witch! You’ll regret this!”

I ignored him. He was flesh and blood, like me. Beneath his savage surface, he was as frightened as the rest of us.

I wanted the wolves.

I returned to L’atelier de Forgeron de Leóne and the post where I had left Crimson. He 141

snorted and stamped his feet until I released him and stroked his neck. The fire in his eye matched my own. If he had been free to fight, those boys could never have chased me.

“I don’t think I’ll tie you up again, friend.”

Crimson snorted. I think he understood.

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15.

Something disturbed my senses as I rode through the woods near our cottage. Something in the air.

When we emerged from the forest, I understood. All of our sheep lay strewn about our meadow, turned on their sides, unmoving. A gentle breeze from our yard had carried the stench of their drying blood.

I urged Crimson forward and he charged toward the house. The front door stood open, as if gaping in shock. No sheep were bleating, and a 143

glance told me that a few of them had likely run off, or been carried away. Those that remained lay in puddles of blood.

Valiant lay beside them in his own scarlet stream.

My crossbow was already out and loaded for our trip through the woods. I held it high as I leaped down from the saddle. In my hurry, my foot caught in the stirrup and I stumbled to the ground beside the carving table. I scrambled to my feet and ran inside.

Pots and pans, clothing and half-cooked food, were scattered everywhere and stained with blood. Mama’s rocking chair lay in splintered fragments on the floor to my left. I smelled Mama’s stew bubbling in its pot on the cast-iron stove.

I let it boil.

Wind whistled through the house from the half-open rear