Page 106 of Suncatcher

“Tensions are high,” Mayor Brooks commented lightly. “Let’s discuss the reason for our meeting.” He withdrew a piece of paper. “I have an agreement between the company and Faltsprings, where the railway station will be. Salt Bluff also declines to build one.”

“That is extortion,” the commissioner stated, his eyes wide, flicking between his wife and Mayor Brooks.

“Yes, it is,” Mayor Brooks agreed. “But you’ll sign it, won’t you? Your pretty wife is innocent in all this. She should be able to go home, shouldn’t she?”

The commissioner spluttered.

“Sign the damned paper,” Sheriff Oak snapped at him, her rifle still on Geoff. Her aim was steady, but a tremor shook her jaw and her leg.

“You can’t mean to give in to these thugs?” the suited man blustered. “We’ll be complicit!”

“Like I give a fuck. Take or destroy all the sundering railroad. They won’t spare your wife. Now sign it.”

“Fine,” the commissioner said, his face beet red, and reached for the paper.

A roar split the air, sending a shiver down Pearl’s spine.

Sheriff Oak’s face paled, but her eyes narrowed in determination. In the moment of distraction as Geoff and the others jumped in confusion, she fired. She struck Geoff in the throat, and Pearl ducked, lunging awkwardly back for the revolver in his grip. She twisted, her hands still tied, and snagged the weapon as he fell.

Sheriff Langly also fired.

Her mother’s body recoiled from the close-range shot.

Horror and hot fury blinded Pearl. She buried her own bullet in Sheriff Langly with barely a glance, lunging toward her slumping mother as the front wall collapsed and the world exploded.

30

Awoken

Driz stared into a blinding inferno trying to devour the sky.

The sun. It was so bright.

How was she seeing the sun?

She turned her heavy head, disoriented by the painfully vibrant world around her. A waterfall of sensation and something hot and raging rushed through her ears and limbs, shaking her.

Pearl was in danger. Driz had heard her.

Her strange body moved, sluggish and uncoordinated, as she lumbered to the edge of the cliff and dove off it. Each beat of her wings was wrong. Slow. Heavy.

Necessary.

Driz didn’t know how, or why. All that mattered was getting to Pearl.

Instinct drove Driz, following the direction of the scream that had awoken her. She would destroy anything that tried to stop her.

The land and sky blurred. Too bright. Burning her, like the fire in a mine. Driving her wings faster. Harder.

A shack appeared in the clearing of a brushy valley. Humans surrounded it, fighting one another. Driz inhaled, scenting them over fresh gunpowder and blight. A dozen at least. None of them mattered.

Their cries did not impact her. A bullet collided with her arm as she landed outside the house. She knocked the nearest human to the earth and roared in fury. Not at the pesky, inconsequential bullet. At everything in her way.

Several more things crashed into this body that was not her own. She batted them away, not caring as they fell beneath the stride of her unfeeling feet. Swiping at a man who was closest to her, she crumpled the barrel of the weapon and tossed it, along with the human, aside. Another rushed her and she tore through him with a single swipe, crushing what was left as she charged forward.

Inside, Pearl cried out again.

Driz lowered her head and barreled through the door, taking a chunk of the surrounding wall and a bit of the roof with her.