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)
“You coming?” He came to the doorway, dressed in black clothes that were tight on him. My eyes wandered over him, unable to stop myself. Each abdominal muscle was outlined by the material, tucked inside his pants that showed how trim his waist was. Then he bent and grabbed my hand. He lifted me over his shoulder, and my hand fell out, feeling how his skin shifted over his muscles there, each rippling as he moved me back inside the bedroom and then placed me onto the bed.
Need throbbed inside of me, for him and for vengeance. I couldn’t battle both of them, so I let him see the hunger in me when he dropped some clothes onto my lap.
He stopped, frozen, and I felt his desire explode inside of him. Then he retreated, battling his primal side back down. His voice came out strangled. “We can’t. Let’s go. We have to get your aunt now, before it’s too late.”
“What will happen?” I scrambled into my clothes, trying not to dwell on my disappointment. How could I even think about my desire in that moment? Aumae could already be dead or worse.
“They could go back to the underworld. She can’t go there. The mere entrance will be enough torture for her. They’re still here, but not for long. They’re waiting for their comrades to return with us, once they don’t, they’ll go without them.” Then he grabbed my arm and whisked us down to the car.
When we got in and Kellan started the car, I looked around with an odd feeling in my gut. “We’re…driving there?”
He bit back a smile, but gunned the engine, spitting dirt behind us. “We have to. They won’t be attuned to human transportation. They’re waiting for anything supernatural to come at them. We can get close and they won’t know we’re there.”
That made sense, but… “What about us? Don’t we give off vibes? Won’t they feel us, just being there?”
“Grab those bags. I put them in the backseat. Inside are cloaking medallions. Give them to me.”
I twisted and saw the paper bags he had brought into the kitchen. When I reached inside, I pulled out a small bag with gold coins inside. They looked the size of a quarter, but weighed what a small child might. As I dropped the bag in Kellan’s hand, I could hear whispers of an incantation, in a language that I didn’t know, but they quieted in his hands.
He brought them to his mouth and began whispering the same incantation, then as something was building in the air, his other hand grabbed mine. His fingers entwined with mine and he brought it to his mouth, kissing it as he kissed the coins in the same moment. I felt the explosion around us, the air spread out in a whoosh, but there was no difference in us. Kellan looked the same, so did I, but he’d just done something.
“What happened?”
He put the coins back and then put the paper bag behind us. “Our presence, to humans and other beings are now cloaked. No one should be able to find us until the spell ends. We can’t cloak ourselves. It has to come from the outside world for it to work.”
None of that made sense to me, but I sat back. Kellan knew what he was doing, which seemed too easy. However, I’d keep my mouth shut for now, until we got Aumae back and dealt with my father, not to mention Vespar, too.
The drive took hours, but the adrenaline was still boiling inside of me. Kellan pulled the car over on the side of a street, which seemed to be in the middle of a dense forest.
“Where are we?”
“We have to walk in. They’re in a cave, and I can already sense two of them patrolling the woods. We will have to be discreet until we can get inside and find Aumae.”
“Then what?”
“We grab her and kill everybody else.”
Shivers went down my back, hearing the promise in his words. There had been no other consideration. Kellan was going to destroy them all, even if I didn’t join in. As we got outside, I smelled a whiff of the demons and my stomach turned over, but then something came alive in me. I’d wanted their blood before, but had gotten sick in the next moment. That was not going to happen this time. I wasn’t going to be running to vomit anymore.
Kellan started forward, and I saw the same black cloak come over him that had happened in the kitchen. I wasn’t sure what it was, but something shimmied over me, too. I watched, speechless, as something glided over my skin, translucent to my eyes. It felt like armor, but weighed like nothing, like air.
Whatever it was, I felt protected. I felt like I could walk in and raise hell, knowing they couldn’t touch me.