Total pages in book: 117
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 562(@200wpm)___ 450(@250wpm)___ 375(@300wpm)
His arms pinwheeled as he tried to stop his fall, but he couldn’t stop the momentum.
Was still vulnerable because he was still partially man.
But not completely.
My heart sank when I realized maybe not at all. Not anymore.
Because he landed with a roar and on his feet.
It placed him mere yards away from me.
The distance separating us churned with frigid, ferocious air.
And the light . . .
The light bottled inside me swelled and burned, and my hands tingled with the need to fight. With this purpose that I’d been given.
One I’d struggled with my entire life to understand, but now, in this moment, fully grasped.
It built and grew, manifesting into something so powerful I could barely contain it.
When holding it in became too much, I let it go.
A bolt of energy arced between us and blasted into Ambrose in a flash of blinding light.
I nearly sagged in relief until the dust cleared, and I found Ambrose just standing there with his mouth twisted into a sneer.
Malicious laughter rolled from him as he slowly moved in my direction.
His words a taunt that danced with the frozen spikes of rain.
“You’re going to have to do a lot better than that.” He tsked. “It’s pathetic, really, that you came here thinking you could conquer me. It’s time to surrender.”
“I will never surrender.” It was an oath. A promise to humanity.
I waited for the right opportunity. For the moment when Pax silently eased up behind Ambrose and gave me a telling nod.
As one, we rushed him from both sides, and we slammed our hands on him at the same time.
We let go of the light. The energy that burned and raged within us.
Streaks of power that pelted through him like darts.
Ambrose howled, though he retaliated, and a surge of his own energy blasted us back. I flew, my feet ripped out from under me, airborne for five seconds before my body was thrown to the ground. A surprised cry jutted out of my lungs; nothing I could do to stop myself from skidding fifteen feet back, cutting into the cold, frozen ground as I went.
Pain lancinated, every muscle in my body aching, but I refused it. My breaths were choppy as I staggered back to my feet.
Pax was already on his, and we shared a look.
Together.
The mass still battled behind us. Cries and shouts and the clashing of weapons.
While Ambrose smirked. Smirked like the wicked bastard he was.
And that rage billowed. Coming at me from all sides. All the depravities I’d seen through my years. The torture and the torment.
He couldn’t win. He couldn’t.
Teeth gritted, I ran back for him, desperate to focus on the light. Praying it would regenerate. That I would have the strength to see this through.
It faintly flickered, and with each thud of my feet, it wicked back to life. Growing quick. Combusting to a boiling point.
In a flash, I could no longer contain it.
My arms were stretched out in front of me when Pax and I hit him again, though this time, we held on, trying to inject as much energy as we could into his body.
Into his spirit.
Unsure of which needed to succumb first in order to end him.
Praying that ending him was even possible at all.
That his immortality didn’t actually mean that he would go on forever.
Because this had to end.
It had to.
We couldn’t allow this infestation to spread across the globe. Couldn’t imagine the pain and suffering.
My family’s faces flickered through my mind as I struggled to hold on. To pour everything I had into burning out his soul.
My mother.
My brothers and sister.
My father, too.
Those who’d been manipulated and used. Targeted and violated.
For all of them.
For everyone.
“Don’t let go, Aria,” Pax wheezed, trying to hold on as well. Our limbs shuddered and shook from the effort, from the energy that surged and passed between the three of us.
Ambrose thrashed, trying to buck us off.
Pax’s brow furrowed, a warning that he was going to shift, and for a second, he let go with one hand and withdrew a blade from the sheath attached to his waist.
He lifted it and drove the blade into Ambrose’s side.
Ambrose howled with rage. With a fury unlike anything I’d ever heard.
His fist suddenly flew from out of nowhere. I had no time to prepare before it cracked against my jaw.
I was knocked from my feet before I could even process the agony that splintered through my head.
A moan of misery jolted out of me when I landed in a heap twenty feet away, my chest feeling as if it was going to cave in.
Blackness threatened to take me whole. Consciousness fading in and out. I blinked through it, clawing my way out of the delirium that wanted to pull me under.
I choked as I fought to catch the breath he had knocked from my lungs.