Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Which is when all mayhem officially breaks loose.
Our second-born flies down, as fully grown as his brother, and rips him off of Layden. Then, the two brothers start to wrestle viciously on the ground. I hate to see my sons fighting, but neither of them has swords, so I’m hoping the damage they can do to one another is limited. I turn back toward the pieces of my father-in-law and our daughter, who’s crouched in a protective stance over what’s left of him. She’s squaring off with Layden, both of them with swords raised.
I glare at my father-in-law, who watches on with glee even as he lies in severed pieces. It’s time to end this.
I call my remaining vampires to me, and only seven hobble toward me out of the twenty who initially rushed the circle. Together, we circle my father-in-law on the floor. As one, we all grab whatever piece of him that remains intact and begin to yank him apart. It’s far more grisly than the sword would have been. If he feels pain as he’s dismembered, he doesn’t show it. We don’t stop until we’re all covered in blood and my father-in-law is in as many pieces as the sacrificed human below him.
Behind us, sparks fly from the golden swords as Layden fights our daughter.
“Sabra!” I call.
She runs up to me. We look into each other’s eyes, a thousand things we both want to say but have no time for brimming there. “Let’s do this,” she says.
We lean down as one, her hand on his head and my hand on his chest, as she begins to chant.
I could already feel the power flowing through me, but as her words call forth the channel between the spirit realms, I feel it surge. It reminds me of old times in a weird way. I’m still the battery. I’m just super-charged this time.
Which is good because I want to send this motherfucker into a hole so deep and far away he’ll never be able to find his way out again.
“It’s opening,” Sabra whispers, and I hear the fear in her voice. I’ll never ask anything like this of her again. She’s been enslaved by my family for her entire life in ways I never imagined. I hope after this, she can live free and do anything she wants with her life. Away from this darkness so she can heal from the trauma we’ve inflicted on her.
But now, it’s time to focus. I focus all the power roaring through my veins and an energy I’ve never felt before. If ever I felt godlike, it’s now. I see the haziness between flesh and spirit. As Sabra continues chanting, that line becomes even more ephemeral.
“Hear me, foolish whelp,” my father-in-law snarls, for once not laughing, “Wherever you send me, I’ll just come back. I’ll never stop coming for you. For your family. For my family. This world is mine. Wherever you send me, I’ll only conquer it. No realm can hold me. All will bow!”
I reach down with my blood-soaked hand and turn his severed head toward me so I can look him in the eye.
“No, Gol’gonaar,” I say his true name calmly, “you will be the one who bows.”
For the first time I see true fear register on his face. Right in time, too, as I press down on his chest, my hand sinking through until my fingers grasp and clench around his beating heart.
“I name Gol’gonaar,” I pronounce, “and claim his spirit in sacrifice.”
I squeeze his heart in my fist and crush it. Then, the flesh in my hand disappears as the space between realms opens up.
My vision schisms like a kaleidoscope. Power pulses behind my eyeballs, and I give in completely. I am only spirit again and the most powerful in the room. This weakened spirit I hold in my hands will go where I take him. Where I drag him.
He only thought he was the strongest because he picked on those who were weaker before. Like a bully in a playground.
But I cannot waste time, even though here in this space, time feels like nothing at all. Time is just a silly construct humans made up to file away their lives. First this, then that. But there is no forward or backward here.
There’s only now. Always now.
And now, I will send the devil to the darkest, coldest, most remote hell I see in the kaleidoscope of realms. There are no other beings to conquer there. It is a void, and there are no pathways back. It is a lonely place for souls who deserve no better.
I press down with my will, and Gol’gonaar’s spirit is siphoned through what I can only liken to a cheese grater to the portal I desire him to go to. I hear a brief scream of disbelief, but that’s all. The being who has tormented my husband and his family is finally gone.