Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 88849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 444(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 88849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 444(@200wpm)___ 355(@250wpm)___ 296(@300wpm)
“We can make them hurt.” Dylan touched her arm. “Kellan tried to erase my memory, but it didn’t work. I knew a spell that kept it from happening. His power can’t touch me.”
“How do you know that stuff?” she whispered, choking on vomit.
“My grandmother. She told me about things like them, what we can do to protect ourselves against them. They killed my entire family.”
“I saw your brother in school today.”
“Gus killed them, but I think Kellan brought them back to life.” He took her shoulders and turned her to him. “They can do things like that, but we can stop them. We can hurt them.”
With tears running down her face, Leah frowned. “How? They’re so powerful…” She looked back and felt another stab in her heart when she saw Kellan place a gentle kiss on Shay’s forehead with his hand holding her cheek. It was a tender gesture, but could they feel tenderness? Did they feel love? Why did she feel comforted by him?
Dylan drew back, smiling. “I know what to do. Do you trust me?”
She jerked her gaze back to his and took a deep breath. “I want the memories to go away. I can’t stand it. I’m haunted, Dylan. They made that happen. I feel like I’ve been ripped apart and sewn back together with a knife and rope.”
“I’ll make it better. I promise.” Dylan took her hand and squeezed. Then he slid an arm around her shoulder and drew her against him. “Come on. We’ve got lots of work to do.”
Leah looked back over her shoulder, but Kellan and Shay had disappeared.
Kellan drove through the night. At first I didn’t realize that we hadn’t gone back to the house. I hadn’t wanted to ask because I wasn’t sure what I was going to do about Vespar, but when we’d been driving for an hour, I knew we weren’t going home. So I looked up and regarded him. He had a determined look on his face, like he could do anything at that moment.
Then I felt a tug in my stomach. It was Kellan, telling me he didn’t want to talk at that moment, but to trust him. That’s when I knew something more than learning that we were soulmates, had changed between us. Something had started to grow between us, like an invisible rope, and I felt it pull me. It pulled on me when I’d been standing with Damien. Kellan had tugged on it and I knew what he wanted me to know, that it was okay to talk to other Nephilim, and that he wasn’t worried about Damien anymore. Now he pulled on it again and I knew we’d be driving for a long time that night. So I moved to the backseat and lay down, closing my eyes. I didn’t need sleep, but I rested there anyway, listening to the drive, feeling Kellan and how something rock solid had come over him.
When the first light of dawn started to peek over the horizon, I sat up, realizing I had fallen asleep for a bit. Kellan still looked refreshed. Then I grinned and leaned over my chair’s headrest in the front. “You look like you could drive for a week straight.”
The invisible rope relaxed, and I knew Kellan had relaxed with it. The corner of his mouth quirked upward. “I needed to make sure we’d get a head start.”
“From?” My mind wandered a bit, and I knew whom he meant. “From Vespar?”
Kellan nodded, grim again.
“Where are we going?”
“To get some help.”
“What?” My head jerked up. “From who?”
“Another messenger.” He watched me in the rearview mirror, his eyes studying me, wanting to know everything I felt. “She’s friendly to some of us. She’s not aligned with your father.”
“Why?”
“Because you need to know answers that I can’t give you. And you need to learn about what you can do. It’ll help you be able to control the messenger inside of you.”
I shook my head, feeling… I didn’t even know. Nervous. Agitated. Scared. And pissed. “You just decided this without even talking to me about it!”
A glimmer of a smile appeared over his face, but his eyes snapped to mine, angry. “We need space from Vespar right now. Unless you’re ready to declare war with him and face the consequences, then we needed to get away. He won’t know where we are. He can’t track us if we’re driving in a car, using human transport. He definitely won’t want to follow us even if he does figure out where we’ve gone. This messenger is not one to take lightly. She loathes demons that kill.”
I sat back and muttered, faint under my breath, “And Vespar loves to kill.”
“Yes.” Kellan stopped the car and turned around. His eyes were fierce. “He does, he does now. He started when we were young, but now the taste is unquenchable in him. He won’t stop. He can’t.”