Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43557 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 218(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
He wasn’t supposed to make contact with me. He was never supposed to touch me. Zayne was supposed to prevent that. But Zayne isn’t here yet. Where is Zayne? Maybe something has gone wrong with the plan. I don’t know. My head is ringing and I am functionally glued to the floor. The taste of blood is in my mouth, a coppery tang playing across my tongue.
“Pathetic,” Simon says. “I’m glad I didn’t waste a decent starlet on this. You are going to be replaced by a talented, beautiful, deserving young woman who has the sense to do as she is told. You are going to be forgotten as soon as she begins her tour. Don’t you see, Lyric? You have come far too late.”
“Please,” I whimper, instantly helpless and pathetic. In this beast’s paws, I am nothing but prey begging for its life. “Please don’t do this.”
“Please don’t do what?”
“I can’t say…”
“I want you to say it,” Simon says. “I want to hear you say it before I do it. Tell me what I am going to do to you.”
I cough as he picks me up in clawed paws. Where the hell is Zayne? I was never supposed to be hurt. Simon was never supposed to be able to put his paws on me. This is absolutely terrifying, to my very core. And that’s my saving grace, because I am now running on instinct, and instinct makes me default to the repeated training I have had.
“Say the words,” Simon hisses. “Tell me what I am going to do to you.”
I spit blood into his eye.
The leonine demon curses and hurls me across the room, throwing me in to the wall. I hit it hard, and I hear something crack. My cry is involuntary and the break in my arm is obvious. At least I can still run. I think that was deliberate. I think he wants me to be able to run. I think he wants to watch me stumble and tumble around the room in front of him, streaming various bodily fluids all the while.
“I was going to kill you quickly,” he says. “But now I think I will draw this out. You don’t deserve mercy. You deserve pain, and you will have it. I will crush every bone in your body before you are set free from this mangled form of yours. I will make you beg, and I will not heed a single one of your cries.”
“Zayne…” I rasp my bodyguard’s name.
“I don’t pay Zayne to look after you anymore. Nobody is coming for you. You came from nothing, and I intend to return you to that same nothing.”
The predator looms over me, his claws flexing. I see my end in his eyes, and I lose hope, just as he intends me to. I am broken and I am bleeding from my mouth. I feel the ends of my bones grinding against one another in agonizing broken splays.
“Tell me what I am going to do to you,” he repeats. He is toying with me, and I know that this pain and this torment will likely go on for hours. He will break every part of me before he kills me, and he will draw out the moment of my death until I not only want it, but beg for it.
Where is Zayne?
Zayne
My intention is to meet Lyric up in Scowl’s office in the guise of a Schlorp Special Delivery officer. I cannot walk in there with her, that would invite far too much attention. Our individual presences must seem to be random coincidence right up until the moment our intentions and identities are revealed.
I go in the back delivery entrance, where I am immediately stopped by an armed guard. He is a hefty human with an abundance of facial hair and a demeanor of smug self-importance. This is different. Scowl never had private security before. Is this all on my account? Has he been holed up in this tower since the great lie of Lyric’s passing made him richer than ever before? Has he feared me all this time? Has he known this altercation must inevitably come?
“No Thrakins in the building,” the guard says, taking one look at me and reaching for his sidearm. “This is a human-only space.”
I wanted to only kill one person today, but I suppose I can do two. I’ll try to drop the guard without ending his life, though. He’s just hired muscle; it’s not his fault he works for a monster. I committed the same sin for many, many years. As I prepare to handle him, a door marked SECURITY opens behind him, and three more hefty guards emerge. That makes a body count of five, minimum, and a lot more fire power aimed at me.
I look at them, and at their weapons and I mentally calculate all the damage I will have to take in order to destroy them and move further up the building. It is a lot. Maybe I can still bluff my way in. Appeal to the camaraderie of the working man.