I don’t know if the smoke rising from the floor below is real, but I don’t care—I step through it anyway. Even his henchmen seem to vanish from my sight.
His mouth moves, but I hear nothing.
My head twitches, and the smile that crawls across my lips feels like it came straight from the Beyond: Evil, carnal rage, all aimed at him. He may not have been the ignition to my fate, but he’s one of the sparks that kept me in its cruel grip.
When he raises a gun to me, I laugh, and it’s sharp sound pierces the silence.
I stretch out my hand, pointing my finger that is consumed by my Amoro. The black has crept up my arm completely, under my shirt and I can assume taken hold of my entire body.
“You will suffer as I have.” The cadence of my voice comes out raspy and distorted—barely recognizable as my own.
The way Lars jumps back before firing with a shaky hand, stirs something in me. It shouldn’t excite me this much, but I feel the fear I’m drawing from him, and it fills me with a dark elation, enough to make me horny.
I thrust my hand forward, and a hardened cast of my blood halts the bullet just before it reaches my forehead. I release it, taking a step forward... then another... and another; each one forces Lars to retreat just the same.
He backs toward the floor-to-ceiling window, and beyond it, I still see the Crimson Dawn.
“I can’t wait to feed your mother’s heart to you.” My voice has a guttural power around us.
As though he understands I’m not here to kill him, buttakehim, Lars turns the gun on himself. My eyes widen, the thought of him trying to kill himself never even crossing my mind. In a single breath, I push off the balls of my feet and launch myself at him.
As the gun fires, I lift it just in time. The shot shatters the glass, and with my heavy collision, the entire window buckles outward. We tumble together, falling through, and plummet toward the street below.
Chapter 57
Kairhyse
“Xeraphine!” I scream so loudly that it shatters any remaining glass still clinging to the frame.
Dropping the last of my kills, I rush to the window, my gaze fixed on the ground below. I can see them falling fast. There’s no surviving that drop for either of them, and while I know Xera will eventually come back, that isn’t something we can justwaitaround for.
I’d jump for her, but the momentum coming out of the shadows matches our velocity. If I fucked it up and we hit a solid surface on our exit, my body would burst on impact—and I can’t risk my head going with it.
“Son of a bitch!” I rush back through the room and to the hall, picking up speed. Not entirely sure what I’m going to do—it’s not like I can just catch the both of them.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
I know I won’t make it down before she hits the ground, maybe Mister can catch her? I have no fucking clue, but I’m grasping at anything to stay centered, forcing myself to focus on each step as I race down this absurdly tall building.
I nearly slip on the Necroth blood as I exit, but I’m out of Sidence Tower in less than a minute after leaving Lars’s office. If we thought the stairwell was a bloodbath, the outside is its superior. Beyond the chaos Xera left, more and more bodies litter the ground—some in their own death, others in someone else’s.
I don’t focus on the countless lives lost, but search for my girl. First, I find Brice standing beside Sydni, both covered in crimson but alive. They are staring, and even in the Werewolf’s animal form, I can see shock riddled in its expression.
Maybe even fear.
“Let me go!”
My breath catches as I quickly turn my gaze to where their eyes are fixed—right on the spot where Lars’s voice continues to scream.
“Let me die, don’t do this. Let me die!”
Xera has her hand wrapped around the pale Shifter’s throat, lifting him up to where he barely can reach his toes to the ground. I’d question what happened, but there’s no need—not when she has fucking wings splayed out from her back.
When Sydni and I went through the book back in Ashfer, the photo of a Succubus had horns, a tail—just like we’ve seen with Xera—but it also depicted bat-like wings, though a Beyond of a lot bigger.
These, however, don’t look like actual wings. They’re dripping with her blood, and I know it’s hers, because she smells like a godsdamn dream. They’re leathery, tall, and menacing, but I can tell she’s used her hemokinesis to create them.
“X-Xera…” Sydni whispers, and before she can even say another word, I rush between them. I can tell my little demon is lost at the moment, and I can’t risk her accidentally lashing out at her best friend.
