Total pages in book: 64
Estimated words: 62637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 62637 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 313(@200wpm)___ 251(@250wpm)___ 209(@300wpm)
I try to take deep breaths but have nothing. Bannik pulls me against his side and hides me from Horus, using his body to guard me. “Leave.”
“And go where?” Cassius says quietly at the door. “To the very demoness that wants him? There has to be a way to help him. Until then.” He nods to Mason and Alex.
I frown. What can they do?
Timber walks in, late to the party. “What did I miss?”
“YOU!” I yell. “I heard what you said to Horus downstairs.”
Timber holds up his hands. “I was at the twenty-four-hour mini-mart down the road getting ice cream, so I don’t know what you think I did. Apologies if you wanted vanilla, most people around here like strawberry.”
“Shit.” Bannik releases a string of curses. “She used a phantom on you. She must have been collecting more beads. She always uses the same one, weird hair, tattoos down his arms, attractive and alluring. Ring a bell?”
Timber drops the groceries in his hand. An apple tumbles toward me, hitting my foot. I don’t know why I fixate on it, but the apple represents something so simple, and now everything is complicated. Now that I’ve found joy, I have nothing but an unhappy ending.
“You should have never come back,” I find myself saying. “Horus should have never looked for me, and I should have never sacrificed for him.” Tears burn my eyes and threaten to fall. “We were never meant to be in the first place. A god will always seduce a fox even if he’s all-powerful, and a fox will always give everything to their god.” I jerk away from Bannik and walk down the stairs, one by one until I’m outside.
When I finally walk at least a half mile down the dirt road, I fall to my knees, then look up at the stars and scream.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
猪突猛進
English Translation:
“Charge headlong.”
~Japanese proverb
Horus
I’m tied to a chair.
Bannik’s pacing in front of me with Cassius behind him, still as a statue. The rest of the girls and the kids have been sent away.
I’m basically with nothing but angry immortals being stared at like I’m the plague, and nobody knows where Kit is.
“Let me at least try to find her,” I say.
Bannik’s answer is to kick my chair back. “You stole her bead!”
“Not on purpose!” I yell. “We just need to give it back!”
“Idiots,” Cassius growls. “All of you.” His normally pale skin pinks at his cheeks. “Did you take her?”
“Huh?” Alex asks. “Take her? Where the hell would he take her?”
“Take her where? McDonald’s?” Mason asks.
Ethan curses, Bannik joins in, and Tarek walks into the room and mutters, “He means sex, dumb and dumber.”
Timber follows in after him. “If he had sex with her, then she was vulnerable, maybe vulnerable enough that if he spoke an incantation, she was able to weasel her way through the eye he gave up to pull the bead.”
I jolt to my feet, the chair still attached to me. “And you didn’t think that was important information?”
The ropes burst free from my arms while the chair crashes into splinters onto the ground.
Timber holds out a hand and takes a sip of his coffee; Alex joins in, I’m suddenly held by two powerful gods in golden rope that burns every inch of my skin with every breath.
“Sit,” Timber commands.
I don’t.
He sighs and gives Alex a “help out” look. Alex rolls his eyes and snaps his fingers. A chair comes from behind while gravity forces me down.
Bannik takes a step backward against the wall.
“I think you’re scaring the fallen angel.” Mason yawns. “Okay, information. We need information. How can you get the bead back to her without going all dark and brooding on us?”
The room falls quiet. Not exactly promising.
“I never wanted it,” I say. “I just wanted her. I wanted her for an eternity. I don’t even remember taking it.”
Bannik pulls out a chair next to me. “She gave up her nine tails, right?”
My stomach drops. “Right. Which means she’s basically lost as a human right now and could easily die.”
“Killjoy,” Ethan mutters.
“Not what I was getting at, vampire!” Bannik slams his fists against the dinner table. It collapses onto the floor, all four of the legs shattered.
“And another one bites the dust,” Alex sings, earning a groan from Cassius.
Tarek kicks at the dust on the ground and grabs the remaining chair, flipping it around and straddling it. “Why the nine tails, big guy?”
A thick silence descends over the living room before Bannik answers. “If she has her nine tails, hell if she had two tails, she could pull the bead back in, only if it’s with someone who’s… mated with her.”
I gulp.
The room goes quiet again.
Alex raises his hand. “So I think the question is, did you two—”
“You didn’t hear them?” Timber laughs. “Why else do you think I left for ice cream?”