Total pages in book: 87
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 81867 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 409(@200wpm)___ 327(@250wpm)___ 273(@300wpm)
“Now,” I scream, and all the remaining vampires attack him as soon as his legs are within the circle. Layden runs toward them, runes still extending from his hands as our children begin to hack away at my uncles from behind. It’s cruel, but I don’t stop the vampires from what they’re doing. They ruthlessly sink their fangs into my father-in-law’s legs, hanging on like rats at a feast.
When Layden gets to them, our eldest spins, brandishing the shining sword at his own father. He’s still completely dead-eyed, with no trace of emotion on his face.
Layden doesn’t try to reason with him. With one hand connected to the runes, yanking his father further into the circle, he tosses out another hand of runes toward our son. Our son lowers his stance, ready for an attack. But the runes aren’t meant to attack. They simply yank the glowing sword out of our son’s hand and pull it toward Layden, who catches it nimbly.
Meanwhile, I’m feeling the energy that’s being fed to me by my uncles. They’re feeding off whatever that power is that’s beyond blood in my father-in-law, and now it’s singing through my veins.
I attack with all my pent-up fury, letting out a scream so loud and high-pitched that it breaks the glass of the atrium’s center display surrounding the sacrificed body. Glass explodes outwards.
I fly down and grasp my father-in-law, where he squirms, surrounded by blue light that is obviously keeping him from disappearing. I can tell he’s trying, but runes have banded around his arms and legs, holding him tight.
Now to send him to the darkness.
I grab him by his neck and drag him over until he’s at the very center of the sacrificial circle inside the atrium where the body is. I understand what all of this was for now.
They made this circle to call forth more spirits from the cold so they could be embodied in my children. The succubus we thought was Ammit and spirits like her who cross over to this realm by means of a sacrifice will only ever be shadows hiding in the shell of a human body. Possessing a human who already has a life in this world is usually the only way for a spirit to gain entry into flesh.
Unless one is incarnated at the moment of conception, otherworldly spirit uniting with human flesh before there are any other souls to occupy it. I bought my way in slowly, generation by generation of blood drinkers, until I got myself incarnated.
My father-in-law and Vlad decided to speed up the process with this unholy circle magic, my womb, and Layden’s seed. I won’t know what sort of spirits my children are or where the proclivities from their realms might lead until we get to know them more. But they are mine, and they can learn to choose the person they want to be, just like I did. Or just like I’m learning to do.
I slam my father-in-law down on top of the already sacrificed body. Apparently, part of this new person I’m embracing doesn’t back down from gore as long as it’s in protection of the ones I love.
“What do you think you’re doing?” my father-in-law laughs up at me. “You can do nothing to me other than bind me for a while.” He looks up at Layden as he approaches. “You think this will hold me? I’m invincible! Indestructible. I’ve been here since right after the first garden, and I’ll be here to see the winking out of the last star!”
Layden holds up the sword he took from our son and lops off his father’s head.
Unlike Vlad, though, my father-in-law just keeps laughing as his head rolls to the side. His face grins up at us. I snatch it up and set it in place near the other head. This is a creature who grew back from a mere ember in ashes. We have to do this right so that not a single piece of him is left out. “Get his legs and arms, too. Section them up just like the body beneath him.”
Just as I’m about to carve his heart out of the center of his chest, Sabra yells, “Behind you! Phoenix!”
I swing around just in time to see my daughter, a young woman now, running full speed at me with her sword raised. Her toga barely skims her thighs at this point, not that she appears to care in her dead-eyed state.
I roll backward right as Layden lifts his sword to block her strike. She’s knocked back by the strength of his block. Layden doesn’t waste a moment. He brings the sword back down on his father, severing his right leg and then his left.
Our daughter raises her sword right as our firstborn comes in from the right like a linebacker, tackling Layden away from the severed pieces of my father-in-law.