Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
After all, Shuli might have been willing to run headfirst into a legion of lessers, but he was not interested in getting eaten alive by Rhage’s dragon. At least with the former, he had a chance at making it out alive.
“You guys are awesome together,” Rhage said with approval. “A real matched pair.”
Shuli and L.W. looked at each other again.
“We are not.”
“We are not.”
CHAPTER FORTY
Chaos.
Unmitigated chaos.
As Evan tore out of the scene, he ran harder and faster than he ever had in all of his life, and he had no idea, until he was a good seven or eight blocks away from the melee, that he had in fact made it out alive.
Or intact, was more like it.
Slowing his pace, he cut around a corner, put his back against the exterior wall of a brick building, and just stood still. Which was easy to do because he wasn’t breathing hard even with all the exertion. Putting his hand to his heart, he wished he could feel the pounding and the suffocation, the lethargy in his legs, the sting in his cheeks. Instead, he had more in common with what he was leaning on.
He had to keep moving. And he knew where to go.
The next thing he knew, he was under the bridges, heading for the doors he had seen the others go through before. When he came up to one, he tried the knob—
It opened.
Stepping through, he looked down at the stone floor. A black oil trail headed off to the left and he followed it, his boots tracking through the fresh blood. Not that it was blood.
Oh, God, what had he done.
What had been done to him.
When he arrived at a set of stairs that led downward, he breathed in, and knew he should have been smelling the dank and musky. And his legs should have been tired. And his feet should have hurt. And he knew he’d been hit with another bullet in the upper arm and in the calf and that should have slowed him down or made him dizzy.
At the bottom, there was a door half off its hinges and he pushed it aside.
There were lit candles in random places, and buckets, so many buckets. But the sound of sucking… that was what drew his attention to the far corner.
In the dim flicker, the trainer was bending over something on the floor, a black leather duster pooling around whatever was happening.
“What did you do to me,” Evan asked in a low tone.
That blond head came up from the body on the floor, and as it swiveled in Evan’s direction, there was red blood dripping from an open mouth with fangs.
The smile was as cold as the dead. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“What did you do to me.”
The monster with the fangs rose to its feet. “I gave you what you wanted. You wanted to be strong, you are. You wanted power, you have it. You wanted—”
Evan pounded his chest with his fist. “I didn’t want this!”
“You see one fight, and you’re running away? I give you everything you need to succeed and you fucking run?”
Evan took out both his guns. “I’m done talking. I want you to reverse whatever you did.” He nodded in the direction of the body that was lying in an oil slick, red blood pumping out of a neck wound. “Or I’m going to kill you.”
“Really.”
The villain walked forward, all stealth stride with that duster flaring out around him, and even though Evan was the one with the weapons, he backed up until he was, once again, against a brick wall. Except he wasn’t running anymore. He was fucking done with that.
“You make this right,” he said as his voice trembled with anger.
“Do you want to know why I was looking for you?” The nightmare stopped when they were only two feet away from each other. “It’s because I didn’t finish.”
With a casual hand, Lash pushed away the muzzles and put his palm on the center of Evan’s chest. “You have something that you no longer need.”
A searing pain lit off behind Evan’s sternum, and as he started to scream, the entity’s other hand clapped onto his mouth—
Cracking sounds, like dry sticks snapped in half over a knee, sounded loud in his ears, and then there was a messy, wet series of flaps. The agony was so bad, he thought he’d surely lose consciousness, but he didn’t.
He was utterly aware as a hand pushed into his heart’s cavity, and the organ that had kept him alive was taken out of its seat in his rib cage.
It was still beating as the trainer held the cardiac muscle up so Evan could get a good, clear look at the nasty black wedge.
“We were interrupted before,” Lash said. “But now we’ll be thick as thieves.”
Flashing white fangs, the mouth that had sucked him dry opened wide and took a bite of his heart.