Total pages in book: 49
Estimated words: 47052 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 235(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 47052 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 235(@200wpm)___ 188(@250wpm)___ 157(@300wpm)
He blocked one with his sword and caught the other in his fist, gritting his teeth against the spikes. As he tossed those weapons away, more maces swung toward them. “Keep moving!” He and Poppy sprinted forward.
Dodging strikes, they turned left. They curved right. Ducking and sliding.
Whenever they came to a fork, maces would spur them in a particular direction. Between breaths, she said, “They’re steering us.”
“Getting that feeling.”
High above them, an apparition shook the limbs, sending thorns flying. Rök yanked Poppy to his chest just in time to shield her.
Once the downpour ended, she said, “Tell me you didn’t get barbed.”
“I don’t think so.” He tugged her along, and they rounded another corner. “I see the exit!” The corridor ended about two hundred feet away. Beyond the maze, a pair of double doors marked another castle entry point. “We’re close.” Yet then Rök stumbled.
It’d been cute when he’d stripped. Not so much now. “You tripped over your feet running from bogeys.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Like a blonde in the woods.”
“Yeah, I know!”
“I’ll never let you live this down.”
“Yeah . . . I know.” Was he slurring?
Poppy dropped back to scan the demon. “Oh, Hecate!” Thorns dotted his back.
He slowed. “What?”
“You don’t feel anything?” The toxin was already working. “We’ve got to get these out.”
He turned to her. His pupils were enlarged, his skin clammy.
“I need your sword.” When he handed it over, she used the edge to scrape the briars free.
He scowled at the growing pile of barbs atop the gravel. “How long before those hit me?”
“In less than twenty minutes, you won’t be able to move.”
Most people would have panicked; he looked resolved. “Then I’ve got that long to get you out of here. You’re going to be . . . the final girl . . . if it kills me.” He reclaimed his sword.
“By definition that means you do get killed.”
“You know . . . what I mean.”
He was about to lose the use of his body, and she couldn’t protect him. She had no pouches. No abilities. No ally to save the day.
Another mace struck, missing them by inches. “Rök, they are steering us.”
“To where?”
A horse’s shriek sounded from the direction of those doors.
Eyes looking black from the toxin, Rök said, “If they want us to go to there . . . then we head back. Do not go through those doors!”
She nodded, and they reversed course.
A snarling mass of foes blocked their way. The killer clown and the healed camp slasher had materialized. The fiend with the razor gloves and Jack O’Lantern too. Aliens and gremlins emerged from the hedge walls. Annelise and the other dolls balanced atop thorny limbs.
“We’ve gotta break through them.” Rök swiped his eyes. “Stay right behind me.”
“You can’t fight them all!”
He chucked her under the chin. “When I said I’d take on hell for you . . . I meant it.” He faced the visitors with his horns sharpened and fangs bared. Raising his sword, he roared until the hedges trembled.
He couldn’t trace; he had no smoke. And still he charged. . . .
Sword and weapons clashed. Parries and blocks. Muscles slashed, skin flayed.
He would slice one foe with his sword while mauling another with his claws. Fire and ice.
Poppy held her breath as he fought, kept digging into her satchel from habit. A bystander at her own battle, she could do nothing but silently urge him on and flinch with each hit he sustained.
He’d “killed” most of them at least once. Though he’d dispatched five aliens, seven regrouped. And the toxin seemed to prevent him from accessing his demonic self. Which meant the battle was a losing one.
Then came the coup de grâce, the strike that ended all hope of victory: one wave of a blank-eyed doll’s arm.
Poppy’s and Rök’s bodies left the ground once more.
FIFTEEN
Annelise’s telekinesis launched them down the maze to crash through the double doors. They tumbled across a hard-wood floor, his loose sword clanging on the wood.
Poppy scrambled to her feet. “Rök!” She rushed toward his motionless form some distance away, struggling to get her bearings.
Gas chandeliers cast a wavering light over an enormous ballroom. Towering windows framed lightning from the storm outside. Between them, grim-faced portraits gazed down at the sheet-draped furniture and statues that lined the perimeter of the room.
“Poppy,” Rök muttered. “Can’t bloody move.”
“I’m coming!” Before she could reach him, visitors appeared and blocked her way. She darted to her right; more appeared. To her left, more visitors.
Within moments, they’d filled the ballroom. Even the earliest manifestations of her curse had shown: vampires, werewolves, and more.
As they closed in on her, Poppy kept Rök in sight. The slasher leaned down to grip one of his arms, the killer clown grabbing his other. When they dragged Rök’s limp body upright, his head lolled.
Never had she hungered so for power. The curse that had threatened her sanity would now take her life—and his.