Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79726 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79726 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Sabra looks back at him. “She can’t, actually. We can’t use the same kind of summoning circle to send them as we used to bring them.”
“Why not?” Kharon asks stubbornly.
“Because it’s not built for that. Well, it was, until Grandpa Vlad went off script and used your blood to supercharge her.”
Kharon glowers at her. “What difference does that make?”
“All the difference, actually,” Sabra says, standing up and getting in Kharon’s face even though she’s only literally half as tall as him. “You’re the planes-crosser. Can’t you take them back to where they came from?”
Kharon’s mouth drops open like Sabra is from an alien planet. Maybe he’s shocked that she knows what he is? I get it. I feel absolutely lost here with everything happening so quickly around me.
“It doesn’t work like that,” Kharon shouts. “I can only cross to the deathly plane.”
But Sabra just shakes her head. “I doubt it. Have you even tried going to other planes?”
Kharon scoffs in disbelief and what sounds like anger, too. “Don’t tell me what I can and cannot do. What do you know of me? My father explained my role to me—”
“So just because your dad said you could only go to the human death plane that’s the only place you ever tried?” Sabra doesn’t sound impressed. “I’ve never heard of a planes-crosser who can only cross to a single plane. It’s far more likely that was just the first plane you crossed to, and then you stopped looking because you thought that was all there was.”
Kharon opens his mouth to disagree, but Sabra holds up a hand. “The fact that Vlad drinking your blood helped boost Phoenix’s power to bring the Devourers over is more proof. If your daughter has inherited any of your powers, I bet she’ll be able to travel to more than just the one plane you regularly go to.”
Kharon and Ksenia exchange a look. Uh, yeah, cause everyone on the helicopter when we escaped Russia saw that newborn baby Luna was definitely able to travel to other planes of existence. I try to control my shudder and don’t quite manage it.
“Fine,” Kharon says through gritted teeth. “But if I can’t access that power, it still doesn’t help us, does it?”
Sabra breathes out, looking around. “We need Phoenix. Since she’s reached out there once with her mind at least to call the creatures here, maybe she’ll be able to help you, I don’t know, connect with it? Maybe together, the two of you can figure out how to cross to the plane to get them back once they’re done eating up all the nuclear power on this planet and before they move on to all the other energy sources we have left on Earth.”
“I don’t think Earth is the immediate problem.” Ksenia’s voice comes from the couch where she’s breastfeeding her daughter.
“What do you mean?” Sabra turns to her.
“Look at the screen,” Ksenia says. Our heads all swivel in unison, and Layden turns it up.
“Everything that’s happened in the past hour has been absolutely unprecedented,” the newscaster says. “And this new unfolding situation continues in that vein. The creatures who have descended on many nuclear facilities across the globe appear now to be retreating. . . into space.”
The feed switches to a wide-angled view of the sky with a long, never-ending line of the now-glowing sky-whales heading straight up. And up and up and up.
“Space?” Kharon asks, obviously confused.
“Oh my god,” Layden breathes out.
“What?” I ask.
Ksenia, obviously the first to connect the dots, fills the rest of us in. “There’s still one more excellent source of radioactive material on this plane of existence. The sun.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
REMUS
Well, shit.
I see the terror on my Lo-Ren’s face and feel it in her tense body. I swore to protect her and that she would never have anything to fear being at my side.
Now, the world as she knows it is about to end. For the second time today.
And at least part of it is my fault. Phoenix never would have gotten the power up from Grandpa-Dearest if I hadn’t given him the intel on my family, including Kharon’s plane-crossing abilities. Granted, I didn’t know that was how Phoenix’s family’s power worked without the intel on the situation my brother may have gathered while I slept, but still. Not sure it’s up to quibbling about the finer points when the sun that warms my beloved’s skin is about to go dark.
It would be just my luck to finally find love and then watch her die cruelly along with all of her kind, only for my brothers and I to be left all alone on a cold, lifeless planet.
No.
Fuck no.
I squeeze Lo-Ren to me. She’s warm and breathing and alive now. I twist her toward me and kiss her.
She tries to pull back. “What are you—”