Rites of Passage by Annie Reed Page A

Finn hadn’t seen the creep dive at him from the pipework over his head.
    The creeps had the shape of men, but that was where the resemblance ended. Their thick bodies were covered with scales the color of bilge water. Their arms were heavily muscled, their fingers tipped in razor-sharp talons. Their leathery wings were tipped with barbs. Except for their angry yellow eyes, they were nearly impossible to see in the dark.
    The attack had come so fast, Finn had no chance to draw his blade. He had to dodge away from dive-bombing nightmare instead.
    He didn’t quite make it.
    The creep’s talons missed his neck but ripped into his shoulder.
    Finn went sprawling on the dirty concrete floor. Pain shot down his arm and raced along his spine, hot white and urgent.
    Before the creep could attack him again, Finn struggled to his feet and drew his katana in as smooth a move as he could manage.
    The creep propelled itself back to the ceiling, its heavy wings churning up a windstorm inside the plant. It taunted Finn with curses and promises of a long and painful death, but Finn focused on the creep’s movements, not its words.
    They had fought that night among the machines and the belts. Over the piles of entrails and fish heads, sending the scavenging wharf rats scurrying for safer ground.
    Finn had ignored the way his blood fell in thick splatters every time he swung his blade.
    Ignored the bone-rattling thrumming coming from the dozens of portals.
    Ignored the rumbling, grating laughter as the creep’s master shoved its bulk through a passageway that had no right to exist.
    Finn’s injury had sapped his strength, but at last his blade found its mark. He’d put every spare ounce of strength he had left into the swing of his katana, and the creep’s mottled head had separated cleanly from it shoulders.
    When the creep died, the portals faded from existence—each and every one—as if they’d never existed at all.
    Finn had allowed himself a grim smile when the creep’s master screamed, the sound of its fury fading to a distant echo.
    Stuck in the passageway with no place to go.
    “Take that, monster,” Finn had said, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper.
    The scars on his shoulder from that long-ago encounter had faded. He had new ones to replace them, and when those faded, more would take their place.
    He was a Guardian. Scars came with the job.
    Ever since that night, Finn had checked the processing plant just in case another creep decided to try creating a portal there. Tonight was the first time he’d seen another creep inside.
    The belts and machines and shipping crates that had cluttered the floor of the processing plant were gone now. The place was nothing more than a deserted building in a long row of deserted buildings in a part of town the city fathers didn’t like to acknowledge existed. It still smelled of fish guts and seaweed and the oily murk that dripped off the overhead pipes.
    Street gangs had claimed this place as their own. Graffiti marking their territory covered the walls. Only in this part of town—the rough part of town—goblins ran the gangs. Finn had recognized the ruins they’d mixed in with the graffiti. Simple threshold wards, most of them.
    Thresholds wards didn’t work on someone like him. He’d broken through just by stepping inside.
    Enough faint streetlight filtered through the filthy windows that Finn could see the creep still crouched in the corner. Its mottled, brackish face was surrounded by a thick cloud of cigarette smoke, but Finn caught no hint of green light.
    The creep hadn’t started a portal yet.
    “Nice place you got here,” Finn said. “Love what you’ve done with the décor.”
    The cigarette flared brighter, then the creep chuckled, a deep, throaty sound. “Only for you, asshole.”
    “I’m flattered.”
    The creep nodded its head. If it had been wearing a hat, it might have tipped it in Finn’s direction.
    Creeps never acted so nonchalant, not around