Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
It was too late. Too late.
Because he stared at me in nothing but stark, unmitigated hate. Death brimmed in his eyes.
A torrent of fear rushed through my veins, dousing my spirit.
I’d wanted to be strong, and I searched around inside myself for the piece that had promised to fight. But I thought maybe Timothy had been right and the beast was bigger than all of us.
Beyond our power.
But it was me it wanted, so I forced myself up off that table as he started to stalk back in my direction, and I ran out of the kitchen.
“If you want me, then come and get me.”
I sprinted through the living room, my feet pounding across the carpet toward the door. I had to lure him out. Make him follow. It was their only chance.
I could feel him behind me. Harsh breaths panted from his mouth, his determination steel.
I had to make it out ahead of him.
A scream tore up my throat when a hand pushed me hard at the upper back. It sent me reeling forward, and my arms pinwheeled as I tried to remain upright, but there was no subduing the forward momentum.
I lost footing and flew, and I slammed against the floor.
My elbows took the brunt of it, and a new pain splintered up my singed, fiery arms.
He flipped me over and straddled me.
I wailed, bucking up and trying to get free, wheezing, “No, no, let me go.”
It all felt so similar to that day when they’d taken me to the facility.
When my lot had been cast.
When my fate had been decided.
I’d known then that everything would change. Had known somewhere deep inside that I would meet my end.
And I knew right then that I had.
Now the wholly unrecognizable face of my father glared down, distorted by pure hate. “You ruined everything. It was you. You!” he snarled.
I fought, thrashing my arms and kicking my feet. I whipped my head from side to side when he wrapped his hands around my throat.
He squeezed.
Squeezed so hard it closed off my windpipe, the oxygen locked in my lungs. Nothing could get in or out.
Terror bulged my eyes, and I struggled to get a breath, to war, to do anything to change what I already knew was coming for me.
He squeezed and squeezed, and panic lacerated my thoughts.
My mother. My brothers and sister.
No.
I couldn’t let him do this.
I had to stop him.
I had to fight.
Consciousness began to ebb, flickers of light and flashes of darkness as the world began to fade.
I could feel the life in my veins bleeding out.
Horror slammed me when my mother was suddenly there, yanking at his back and screaming, “Get off her. Get off her! That’s our daughter. Please, oh my God, please. Aria, oh my God, Aria!”
He tried to shove her off with his shoulder without letting go of my throat.
“Wait your turn, bitch. I’m going to take care of you next.”
Sickness churned, and that urge that had first found me in that facility roiled, building from deep within, beyond the tide of succumbing. It was a wave that gathered strength and rose to take power.
The impulse to touch him overwhelming.
Somehow, I managed to find the strength to jerk my arms free from where he had them trapped beneath his legs, the man too lost to the need for my execution to notice the shift.
He kept squeezing my throat as I reached up and gripped his face with my hands.
The same familiar cold streaked through my failing veins, my hands afire, an inferno burning me alive.
But I could see.
I could see the Ghorl.
“End her now. Don’t let go. It’s her fault. She’s the one who destroyed this family, not you. She’s poison.”
Tightening my hold, I tried to wrap my mind around it, to contain it, to push out the light from within and bind it.
I fought with all of me to separate the black spirit from his.
But it was so powerful. So strong. Still, I projected the light. The Ghorl wailed when a tendril whipped out and struck it in the side.
My father’s hands loosened for the bare flash of a second, and I inhaled a shattered breath, sucking oxygen into my aching lungs.
I hung on with everything I had.
Something different passed through his eyes as my mother continued to beg him to stop, confusion glittering through his gaze.
“Cal, why are you doing this? Please, stop. Listen to me. Oh God, please stop.”
The Ghorl regrouped, massive and enraged.
“Kill her now. Do it. It’s already too late. There’s no turning back.”
My father’s hold tightened again, and I fought harder, with all the strength I possessed, pulling from the deepest place inside me.
In a place that shouldn’t exist.
The Ghorl shrieked as a glance of energy hit it against its middle, and a piece of it fell away, burned to ash.