Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 125077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 125077 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 625(@200wpm)___ 500(@250wpm)___ 417(@300wpm)
This was the moment when I would normally grow a handy demon arm and throw myself into battle.
That’s not how it would go this day. I wasn’t putting my body into this fight. It was my soul that would win this day, and it meshed with Gladys.
Now I understood what Duffy had meant. Gladys was angry. She didn’t want to be used by the wizard. She wanted to wipe the wizard off the face of the Earth plane, to banish his soul forever for laying a single finger on her.
She’d been roiling in rage for over a decade with nowhere to put it. Now we knew where it belonged.
The human part of me understood that frustration. I’d been this angry, this wrathful, with nowhere to put it. I’d sat up late at night and wondered if it would go away if only I found someone I hated and watched the light die in their eyes, watched them plead and beg and find no mercy from me.
Except I really hadn’t, but in this place Gladys had taken me to it felt like truth. I was protecting Fenrir because I was supposed to. He was part of the team. I wasn’t feeling the maternal love I usually felt when I was near him, and it kind of felt good. I was cold, and that definitely felt good.
Before whatever the witch was sending my son’s way could traverse space and time to inject him with the poison of her magic, I directed Gladys’s blade her way and sent my will through.
A flare of blue light sparked from my sword and slashed through the witch.
Like really slashed through her. In an arc that split her in two. Pure satisfaction ran through me, and I knew I’d found the place for all my rage to go. It could go into her, into all of them.
Fenrir hit the ground as I waved Gladys again. The words she wanted me to say whispered along my skin, firing my blood and granting me the will I needed to make the words real.
“Scutum praesidium.” Then I heard a whooshing sound that let me know I’d gotten what I wanted—a shield around Evan and Fenrir.
My sword’s rage pulsed through me, mixing with my own in a volcanic cocktail, and I couldn’t hear what Fen was saying over the pounding through my head. Blood. I wanted it. Or she wanted it. It didn’t matter in that moment. Fen and Evan didn’t matter in the moment. What mattered was destroying every single one of these witches who wanted to use us to destroy the world. They thought they could use us to unleash Hell and make slaves of everyone we loved? We would show them.
Vaguely I understood that other things were going on around me, but my vision had narrowed to what Gladys wanted me to see—our enemies.
Every witch in the room had turned my way. They exchanged glances as though silently deciding how they would go about destroying the new threat.
A broad-shouldered witch hunched over as though gathering her strength.
I wanted to see what she would send my way. It was kind of like a cat playing with a mouse because I knew she couldn’t hurt me. In that moment I was a magical god who could touch the powers of both Heaven and Hell through the energy Gladys had stored.
It was heady. It was intoxicating. It was fucking dangerous as hell.
The witch came up, throwing a massive ball of flames my way. I could feel the heat and wondered just how much strength she’d given up in her effort to prove she could take me out.
I simply held up a hand, whispering the words Gladys sent through my mouth, and it dissolved.
The witch’s eyes went wide and I moved in on her, touching a single finger to her chest. “Bad girl. Duratus.”
She froze where she stood, her whole body going to ice.
That was when the others seemed to realize I wasn’t going down easy. Or at all.
They surrounded me and I let them since out of the corner of my vision I could see Rose had awakened her husband and they were working their way around, trying to stay out of the witches’ sights.
They would help Fen and Evan. The shield I’d erected around my son and Evan would allow those of good will inside and keep everyone else out. I didn’t have to watch over them. I could do what I wanted to. I could fight and kill so many of them. I could kill them all.
I let all thoughts of the people who should have been my priority drift right out of my head. The fact that I wasn’t thinking of Fen and Evan should have been enough to warn me, but honestly, the rage felt good. I’d let my sorrow flow, allowed Trent and Gray to wring it out of me, but the anger was still a tidal wave waiting to be unleashed.