Rites of Passage Read Free Page A

from either side of elongated skulls complete with heavy brow ridges and stunted, malformed noses that looked like a human’s nose, only half rotted away.
    Maybe those noses were the reason goblins didn’t mind the stench from their unwashed clothes. Or maybe it was the things they ate. Goblins also didn’t care how long the things they ate had been dead.
    From where he sat, Finn could make out the strips of colored cloth wrapped around their wrists.
    Great. Just great.
    Not only were his attackers goblins, they were gang members.
    The processing plant must be their territory.
    And he was smack in the middle of it without their permission.
    Finn wondered what the creep had given the gang in return for allowing it to use their turf to create its portal. Maybe the creep had promised that its master would grant the gang favors once it arrived.
    If so, the gang was about to be deeply disappointed.
    The Elder Gods did not keep promises made by their minions to vermin that inhabited a world the Gods intended to conquer.
    Finn didn’t know for sure that the monsters the creeps served were the Elder Gods of myth. But the more he’d studied the creeps—and the more he learned from the ones who’d begged for their lives before he killed them—he believed their masters were the massive, terrible creatures men mistook as Gods in ancient myths and stories handed down through the ages.
    He also believed that at least one of them had made its way through a portal to this world, and found it a tasty treat indeed.
    Otherwise why would the monsters keep trying to come back?
    The goblins congregated at the far end of the building as if they couldn’t decide what to do. Finn counted nine of them.
    On a good day he could handle nine goblins. Even on a bad day he could hold his own against that many with only a few minor injuries and maybe a broken bone or two to show for it.
    But never, even on his worst day, had he ever gone up against nine goblins armed with guns.
    Steel was poison to fairies and goblins and their kin. Just picking up a gun should have caused the goblins incapacitating pain, much less holding one long enough to fire it with any precision.
    And at least one of these goblins was a precision shooter.
    The shots that had kept Finn pinned down had been placed in exactly the right spots to prevent him from running for a window or back toward the open bay door he’d used to enter the plant. But none of the shots had come close enough to actually hit him.
    Which meant that the gunshot to his shoulder hadn’t been an accident. The shooter had wanted to wound him—to incapacitate him—but not kill him.
    The goblins probably wanted him alive so they could present him to the creep’s master.
    But then why not shoot him in his sword arm?
    He’d gone for his katana right before he’d been shot. The shooter should have known which arm to take out of commission.
    Just like the guns, this made no sense.
    An eerie green light started to emanate from the circle the creep had etched in the windowpane. It threw a ghoulish aura over the interior of the plant.
    “I’ve always wanted to kill a master,” Finn said to the creep.
    The only response Finn got was a grunt. Apparently the time for distracting the creep by insulting it or its master was long past.
    Too bad. Finn had some good insults lined up.
    He watched the creep slice open its wrist. Blood that looked black in the greenish light seeped out of the wound.
    The creep dipped a claw from its other hand into the blood and began to draw symbols on the glass.
    The goblins hooted and screeched with glee. They must have felt the same energy in the air that Finn did.
    The use of dark magic always gave Finn chills, but the goblins apparently enjoyed it. They scrabbled toward the window, all but two of them walking with their backs hunched forward like great, invisible weights were tied around their necks.
    The other two had to be the leaders of this particular gang. They stood with