Read Zola's Pride for Free Online Page B

answer for
what he has done.”
    Zola strode forward until she stood
at his shoulder, then reached down deliberately and curled her hand
around his. “He stays. You leave.”
    She was strong, beautiful. Defiant.
    His.
    Walker gripped her hand and looked
down at her, his chest aching. “They fight as one,” he
whispered, “but so do we.”
    “ Always.” Her fingers
tightened until her grip bordered on painful. “Do you challenge
us, Scions?”
    In response the man pulled a gun and
leveled it at Walker’s head, finger already squeezing down on
the trigger.
    Walker released Zola’s hand
and ducked into a roll as magic surged through the night. One kick to
half-rotted wood brought down the corner of the porch, and the Scion
stumbled and dropped his gun.
    He dove for it, but Zola was faster.
Her first kick sent the gun skittering under the groaning porch, and
her second swiped the man’s legs out from under him, spilling
him to the too-tall grass. A second later the woman—the
shapeshifter—leapt from the crumbling steps in a full-body
tackle.
    Zola bucked and rolled, using the
Scion’s own momentum to throw her aside. Walker caught the
woman off guard, drawing her attention. As the child of a Seer,
Zola’s natural resistance to magic made her a better adversary
for the spell caster.
    And she pressed that advantage,
coming to her feet just as the man fisted both hands and raised them.
Magic cut through the cool air, prickling along Walker’s skin,
but the brunt of the power rolled off Zola as she spun again,
lightning fast, and clipped the wizard’s jaw with her heel.
    His grunt of pain made his partner
turn for a split-second, and Walker slammed his elbow into her
temple. She staggered, and he caught her around the throat. “Will
you go?” he demanded. “Leave and never come back to New
Orleans?”
    She replied with a snarl and a knee
driving toward his groin as magic snapped again, this time slamming
into him .
His vision blurred as pain and magic mingled, and he lashed out,
instinct driving him.
    He struck her in the throat with the
blade of his hand. The delicate bone protecting her airway snapped
and she fell back, choking for air in loud, heaving gasps.
    It wouldn’t take her long to
recover. Walker struggled to focus, to shake off the spell so Zola
wasn’t left to fight alone.
    The sharp crack of gunfire echoed
around him, a second before a warm body crashed into him. Zola’s,
by the scent and feel. She bore him to the ground and rolled them
until his hip bumped into the collapsed end of the porch.
    “ He’s got the gun,”
she whispered, a breath of sound against his ear. “Firing from
under what’s left of the stairs.”
    “ The other support beam.”
The porch had been rickety even in his youth. One more well-placed
blow might bring the entire thing down on the hidden Scion.
    “ Can you get to it if I
distract them?”
    He was still seeing double, but he
nodded. “Get the shifter. I’ll handle this guy.”
    Her lips brushed his cheek in a
whisper-soft caress, and then she was gone in a swirl of near-silent
footsteps across the untamed grass.
    One shot fired into the night, but a
second later he heard the Scion shifter’s grunt of pain as Zola
pounced on her, tangling them up so the wizard wouldn’t get a
clear shot at her.
    As Zola grappled with the shifter,
Walker eased around to the edge of the porch. A shot whistled past,
and he cursed. Without rounding the house, there was no way to sneak
past the caster under the porch.
    Screw this. He scrambled up the collapsed side of the porch, the wood creaking
under his weight. Another loud report, this one accompanied by a
blaze of pain in Walker’s arm.
    He’d been shot, and he didn’t
give a damn. He roared his anger and punched down through the boards
to close his hand in the man’s hair. He managed to slam his
adversary up against the wood three times before the listing porch
collapsed.
    “ Walker?” Zola’s
voice, edged with worry.