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 skull knocked against its trunk. Hard enough that he slid down to the ground, giving Timothy a reprieve.
The second he realized both men were down, he came running for us, shouting, “We have to get out of here. This is something different than I can explain. These assholes have more than human strength.”
As if to prove a point, the man I’d just sent flailing through the air climbed back onto his feet, and the other one Timothy had been fighting pushed to his, the two coming together as they turned back toward us.
Their faces were twisted in the ruthlessness that oozed in their veins.
“We have to go.” Pax was suddenly there, gripping me by the hand. A shock of his energy rolled through me.
Bolstering.
Sustaining and fortifying.
“Can you run?” he wheezed.
“I think so.”
He whirled us around with the clear intention of racing us back toward where they’d come from.
But we froze when we saw that the men he’d toppled had risen, as well as the third one, who’d been so close to getting to Dani.
Their features distorted, and their skin seemed to crawl and writhe over their bones.
The air around them trembled. Whirring and whirring.
More Kruen.
They spun around their bodies in a violent, cataclysmic storm.
The men closed in on us from behind, moving around to create a circle.
Trapping us.
Fear raced.
Disbelief and dismay.
A palpable wave that rolled through us all.
Pax still clung to me, and Dani held on to my other hand. Timothy was behind us, his back pressed to mine while we all watched the men come closer.
The four of us remained connected.
Our spirits clinging to each other.
It was a flicker at first. So slight that I wasn’t sure for one second before it was there—the light.
It resurfaced within me and quickly began to glow. It seemed to gather strength as fast as the Kruen spun around the men.
The circle of men edged closer as the darkened clouds opened above us.
Lightning crackled, and I swore I caught a glimpse of Faydor.
More Kruen were taking shape, their monstrous forms dripping down from the blackened heavens as if they could reach out and control what happened below.
I was punched by incredulity.
By shock.
It was almost the exact same picture as the one I’d seen that day in the library when Pax and I had first discovered the paintings by Abigail Watkins. One that she had painted of Kruen reaching down and devouring the innocent below.
One that I’d thought had been part of her imagination. A metaphor for the evils they cast into the world.
Had she seen it? Had she known what was to come? Did she sense the wickedness that had been borne in her husband?
Did she possess this energy that seemed to howl beneath it?
Expanding and deepening, becoming something beyond anything I’d ever felt before?
It trembled through me, shivers racking through my body as I tried to hold it in.
My hands burned with the need to do something.
This need intrinsic.
It seemed to feed off the contact.
Off Dani and Timothy.
But even more so, off Pax.
Spurred by the calamity that raged overhead.
And still, something told me to hold it.
Harness it.
Pax flinched as he gauged the men who inched closer. Every muscle in his body flexed with hinged restraint. Violence skated along the surface of his skin, sparks of volatility, and the gun he held in his left hand trembled.
“There’s no good left in them,” he muttered as if he were giving us a warning.
As if it needed to be said aloud.
A judgment.
A verdict.
A penalty.
“I have to do this.”
He started to lift his hand to fire when the force inside me became unbearable. When I could no longer keep it contained.
Before Pax could shoot, I ripped my hand from Pax’s and Dani’s.
And I let it go.
It was an earthquake.
A burst of lightning.
Blinding as it surged out in every direction.
It struck the men in a flash of light.
They flew.
Blasted backward a hundred feet.
They seemed to be airborne forever.
Immune to gravity.
Before they finally came careening back to the ground like darts shooting from the sky.
Dust gusted and whipped, and it was seconds later before it cleared and we could see where they’d landed.
Their bodies were bent at odd angles. Contorted and mangled.
A sob wrenched out of me when I realized what had happened.
Their deaths marked.
I choked on the sickness that curdled in my stomach, and the overwhelming weakness that rushed through me sent me staggering two steps forward.
Disoriented and grieved at the truth of what had to be done.
“Oh my God, oh my God.” I could hear Dani whimpering, and Timothy whispered something to her that I couldn’t make out.
Because the world spun and spun.
The darkened clouds continued to writhe, and a torrent of ice-spiked rain suddenly pelted us from the gaping hole ripped in the heavens.
The Kruen above howled their rage.
One rose high, its gruesome face warped in hate as it peered down at me from the toiling clouds.