Chapter 17 – The Widow's Grief
The sound wasn't a thud.
It was a wet, grinding crunch. The kind of sound that vibrates through the soles of your boots and settles deep in your marrow.
Ronnie scrambled backward, her heels slipping in the sludge. Mud coated her tongue. Her breath caught in a throat that felt like it was filled with glass.
"Uzo?"
The name scraped out of her. A broken croak.
Dust billowed up from the crater where Uzo had stood a second ago. Now, there was only the boulder.
A massive, jagged chunk of granite the size of a carriage sat dead center in the clearing.
Beneath it, there was nothing but stillness.
No struggle. No scream. No magic.
The Strongman stood over the rock, wiping his massive hands on his leopard-print singlet. He didn't look remorseful. He looked like a man who had just finished a heavy set at the gym and was waiting for applause.
"Squashed," the Strongman grunted, his voice deep and gravelly. "Like a bug."
From the sidelines, high up on the branch, the Ringmaster peeled another slice of his orange. He tossed the peel onto the bloodstained ground below.
"A tragic end to our protagonist!" he called out. His voice was projected magically, echoing through the trees with a theatrical reverb.
"But the show must go on! Act Three: The Widow's Grief!"
The Ringmaster pointed a gloved finger at Ronnie.
"Enter the grieving lover. Cue the tears. Cue the screaming. Give me drama, darling! Make the audience weep!"
Ronnie didn't scream.
She stared at the rock.
At the very bottom edge, pressed into the mud, she saw a hand.
Fingers twitching faintly.
He's alive.
The relief washed over her for a split second, hot and dizzying. But it was immediately replaced by something else.
Rage.
Not the hot, shouting anger of a fighter. But the cold, white, silent rage of a killer.
She turned to look at the Strongman.
She didn't look scared anymore. She looked like a cornered wolf that had decided to stop running and start eating.
"You dropped a rock on him," she said. Her voice shook, not with fear, but with the adrenaline dumping into her blood.
The Strongman flexed his biceps. The veins on his arms were as thick as garden hoses.
"I can lift it and drop it again," he grinned, revealing rotted teeth. "If you missed it the first time."
Ronnie reached into her boot.
She pulled out her last flash bomb.
In her other hand, she gripped her chain-dagger until the metal bit into her palm.
"No," she whispered. "You're done lifting."
She sprinted.
It wasn't a tactical retreat. It wasn't a flank.
It was a suicide charge, straight up the middle.
"Oh, I love a feisty understudy!" the Ringmaster cheered from the trees.
The Strongman laughed. A deep, belly-shaking sound. He bent down to grab the boulder again. He intended to rip it out of the earth and crush her with it, just like he did the boy.
"Heavy..." he grunted, gripping the stone.
That was his mistake.
He was distracted by the weight. He thought she was just a girl with a knife.
He was wrong.