The Rise of Io Read Free

stood there, frozen, wearing a look of indecisive panic on his face.
    This guy was leaving her to fight all these thugs by herself. This hit Ella right in the gut. He should be doing something! It was so unfair. Being smaller and scrawnier than most kids, she had often been bullied as a little girl. A righteous rage twisted and burned inside her.
    She looked back at the woman. By now, more than half of her attackers were lying unmoving on the ground. However, the remaining three or four were beating her up pretty badly. Her movements were no longer beautiful; she was staggering from each blow. One of the men took a bat and jammed it into her stomach, doubling her over. Another punched her in the face, and she crashed into the pile of garbage not far from where Ella was hiding. The woman’s eyes were glazed over and unfocused. Yet she continued fighting, struggling to her feet.
    One of the men approached from the side, wielding a stick with two hands, ready to bash in her head. Ella watched the end of the stick hover in the air, about to end the woman’s life. She looked down at the woman’s face, and saw the determination still around her cheeks and mouth, even as the life in her eyes faded. Ella noticed the trinket around her neck and the expensive-looking watch around her wrist.
    Something in Ella snapped. In a split second, she calculated the possible reward to risk for doing something. The woman was wealthy and there were only a few of those men left. Ella bet there would be a massive reward for saving her life. That, and honestly, it felt like the right thing to do, since that ass of a friend of hers was just standing there letting her die.
    Ella jumped out of the garbage heap, shank in hand, and stabbed the guy behind the knee. He screamed and toppled over, and then the woman finished him off with a knife that magically appeared in her hand. She struggled to her feet and limped toward the remaining three thugs. She glanced over at Ella once, and then, without a word, focused on her assailants.
    The three attackers weren’t taking Ella lightly. They were clearly puzzled by this scrawny little girl holding a bloody object in her hand, and they maneuvered accordingly, trying to stay in front of both Ella and the other woman.
    The woman attacked, baton in one hand and knife in the other. She swung them in wide arcs, and the sounds of clashing metal hung in the evening air. She ducked under a swing and jammed the knife into the sternum of one of the attackers. Another thug got behind her and was about to strike when Ella jumped on his back and jammed her shank into the side of his neck.
    The woman turned to face him just as blood spewed from his mouth. She shot a side kick to his chest that sent both him and Ella crashing to the ground. Ella just managed to jump clear and roll away to avoid getting crushed. The woman nodded at her and, for an instant, smiled.
    â€œLook out!” Ella cried.
    The woman stiffened as the point of a blade suddenly appeared through her abdomen. She lashed out in a circle with her baton and struck the side of her attacker’s head. Both bodies crumpled to the ground. Ella was on the man in an instant, her shank stabbing him in the chest over and over. She didn’t know how many times she thrust downward but when sanity returned, she realized that her hands were covered in blood, and his eyes were staring off into nothing.
    Ella looked at her hands and fell onto her back. She had never killed anyone before. At least, none she was aware of. She had stabbed dozens of people in her short nineteen years. Most of them had even deserved it. It was one of the occupational hazards of living on the streets, but she had never actually stuck around long enough to see someone die from injuries she had inflicted. Until now.
    The woman next to her coughed, and her labored breathing snapped Ella back from her daze. She crawled over to the woman and checked her wounds. There was blood