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)
“You going to snap gold bands around our necks, too?”
My father looks genuinely remorseful. “Would that I could. But the halos are only truly effective on newborns who have developed no will of their own yet. And I trust you and your lovely wife will give me a fresh supply of those.”
“That’s never going to happen,” I growl, but he disappears from in front of me. Poof, one second, he’s there, and then he’s gone.
“It already has,” he whispers in my ear, suddenly reappearing beside me and snapping another halo around my growing daughter as he snatches her out of my arms. “She shall be named Lilith.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
PHEONIX
Present Day
“No,” I say, my voice calm and cold. My entire life, I have denied what I am. But now, in the face of this monster, I need to become everything I’ve been afraid of. I need to remember who I was... before.
I will no longer be afraid of who I am. I am the one who searched with endless hunger for better than I had. I am the one who didn’t give up until I got what I wanted. I pushed beyond the boundaries of spirit and hunted until I found the warmth I craved. Until I found flesh and blood. I was young then. I can forgive myself for all I didn’t know.
Because everything that I was then has brought me here to where I am. It brought me to Layden. And now, life has given me three more gifts. In my arms, my second-born has grown almost to pre-pubescent age.
I look the angel hunting me in the eye. “You will not have my children.”
I will remember who I am if that is what it takes to protect what is mine. I will remember the darkness. I will remember my strength. I will remember all the sacrifices made to become flesh, born wailing into this world as my own children just were.
With my son in my arms, I lift off the ground. Not standing or even flying. I float up. The laws of gravity have no hold on me. I am beyond. I am not of this world, and its rules cannot hold me. My son begins to flap his wings, and he flies, hovering beside me.
“That is good, son,” I say to him, though I’m not sure if he can understand me. So, I speak in his mind through our blood bond: That is good. Stay away from that man. Mentally, I project the picture of his grandfather into his head, along with a bad feeling. My son and I rise higher.
My father-in-law only laughs, white wings suddenly appearing behind him. He lifts off the ground, easily flying to face off with me.
Below, Layden forms glowing runes in his hand and hurls them at his father. His father casts them aside with a careless swipe of his hand.
I try to feel for the blood in his father’s body. But there’s something… off about what’s inside him. There’s liquid circulating, but it’s not blood. Not the kind I can manipulate anyway. I can’t stop the flow of blood to his head or yank him apart from the insides out like I want to.
But what if…
Quickly, I glance toward the door. I’m still flooded with power even though Vlad is dead. His death didn’t immediately sap me of power. So either I’m still running on the juice of what he last fed on, or… or he’s been lying to me this whole time. He was never the sole source of my power.
I call to the rest of my family, pulling on the threads of the blood bond between us I’ve never dared to fully embrace. But gods of every realm, now I yank.
All my uncles come spilling in through the door, dark suit after dark suit. They immediately begin yelling when they see Vlad dead on the floor. But I don’t let them stop there. They’re able to come into the circle like I thought they would. I had the feeling it’s the kind of spell that lets anyone in but only certain people out.
I intend to finish this here.
I tell my second-born son, now a teenager, through our blood bond, to fly in the other direction. Then I launch myself at my father-in-law, bearing him back toward the floor where all my vampire uncles wait. He looks momentarily surprised, then smiles at me in the instant before he disappears right before my reaching uncles can snatch him to the ground.
Dammit, I know exactly where he’s going. I turn around and launch myself through the air back toward where my second-born is flying near the very apex of the atrium. I can see the terror on his young teenage face as my father-in-law reaches out with a glowing halo for his neck. My new son doesn’t know much about this world, but he knows to be afraid of his grandfather. I hate that this is his introduction to life, but there’s no getting around it.