Murder Most Fowl – Part E #atozchallenge

For the A to Z challenge, I present Murder Most Fowl, an unedited serial story from the unpublished Cera Chronicles. Please excuse the grammar mistakes. This hasn’t been critiqued yet. If you’re just diving into this story, you may want to start with .

Electricity lanced down my spine. The shock threw me backwards, and I slammed into the wall. Air—and my insult about the guy’s mother—seized in my lungs.

A steadying hand caught me as I slid toward the floor. Tiny jolts shuddered from the touch. I yanked free and glared at the open doorway. Heat rose in my face. Nobody attacked me and got away with it.

I raced out into the open. My masked attacker was fleeing on the back of a galloping … ostrich? Molly hung over his saddle with a white bandana gag shoved into her mouth.

I charged a fireball in my palm. Could I hit him without hitting Molly? Did it matter?

“Hey!” The shirtless guy from inside ran out. “Are you—”

I fired. A roiling inferno shot from my hand. The ostrich evaded with a swerve to the right. Sneaky little feather-brain. I knelt to cast a transport seal.

White light enveloped me. Five colored ribbons whipped past my vision. Hair rose on the nape of my neck. Fatigue drained my muscles.

I re-materialized. The ostrich squawked and tripped over me. One foot caught back of my head on its way down and face-planted me in the dirt. Molly tumbled into a cactus. The masked man somersaulted and rolled into a crouch, weapon drawn and aimed at me.

“Whoa!” shouted a voice. “That was awesome.”

I frowned and glanced to my right. Shirtless guy sat on the ground next to me. How in the Realm had he gotten tangled up in my seal?

The masked man pulled a second gun and aimed it at the shirtless guy. His gaze flicked between us. “What do you want?”

“How about an apology?” I righted myself and tugged the singed tatters of my clothing. “You ruined my skirt.”

His eyebrows furrowed together. “Sorry?”

I snorted. “Hey kid!” I shouted to Molly but kept my gaze on the masked man. “You okay?”

Molly glared and gave me her best impression of a pin cushion. Good enough.

I stomped forward. The man stared at me from behind a strip of tailored black cloth. I wrapped my fingers around the barrel of his ray-gun and squeezed. The metal whined as it buckled beneath the pressure. “That’s for my clothes.”

The masked man cocked an eyebrow, twisted a knob on the gun, and let go—leaving it in my hand.

Weird, I’d never heard a gun tick like that before…

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