Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130619 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 653(@200wpm)___ 522(@250wpm)___ 435(@300wpm)
A part of me wonders if the veins warned me of the danger Micah represents and what he will do to me if I prove to be more demon than angel. But whatever the case, this is his land, his world, and I’m at his mercy should he suddenly decide he doesn’t trust me. On some level, I respect him for not hopping inside my head and finding what he seeks in me on his own.
I swallow roughly, bile threatening to form, and for a good reason. I’m questioning everything and everyone inside the life I’d known as my own until a few days ago. “He came to see me right before you saved me and brought a detective with him who wanted to talk about additional murders he felt Jeremy committed.”
“And?” he prods when I take a breath.
“When I shook his hand, his eyes glowed yellow. He was the demon you pulled off of me in the kitchen. I tried to stop Oliver from leaving with him, but what was I going to say that wasn’t going to make him think I was crazy? But now I’m wondering why a demon allowed him to live.”
Micah’s lips press together. “He either believed him to be a stupid human that might be useful in the future, or he’s working with Jeremy.”
“I don’t think he’s working with them, but will they…could they use him against me?”
“I already have someone looking after him.” With that, he starts walking again, and his energy is as wicked as lightning ripping through a vicious thunderstorm.
I double-step and fall into pace with him. “I went on a date with him one time. It went horribly, and we had no chemistry at all.”
“I don’t need to know this, Ember.”
“I want to tell you, though, if you’d just jump in my head and find out for yourself, all the distrust between us would slide away.” I pause for his input, but he says nothing, and I continue onward. “Oliver has an arrogance problem—a bit like someone else I know. He took me on a date and didn’t ask what I like or don’t like. It was seafood—fish with the head on and eyes intact. He’s lucky I even allowed a friendship to form after that. And, come to think of it, I’m not sure my extreme negative reaction says much about where my hunting skills are headed.” Mountain terrain begins to take form, and as my gaze lifts to the horizon, I note the summer green peaks and valleys before us that I would not call welcoming. “Where exactly are we going?”
“To my home,” he replies. “Why did you?”
“Your home? And why did I what?”
“Allow him to become your friend,” he says, ignoring my question about this being his home. I open my mouth to say as much, but considering I’ve taken us to a double-whammy topic of Oliver and demons, I decide better. This is perhaps more of a tit-for-tat situation.
In other words, me first, offering up my position on Oliver. “He was persistent, and he has kind eyes that, thankfully, are not yellow. And as it was, he turned out to be a loyal person as well. Honestly, it seems he might be the only loyal person in my life. It would destroy me to find out otherwise.”
He once again says nothing. Not one single word, and at this point, I’m distracted by the climb up a mountainside, and if I weren’t huffing and puffing so much, I’d ask him about Celine. Apparently, I’m too busy proving I need the exercise I swore I didn’t need to find out about his ex-love interest, and I doubt he’d tell me about her anyway, at least not in his present state of grumpiness.
We halt at a wild running stream that glows blue, the water rough, soundlessly crashing off the rocks east and west, bubbling with the force. I turn toward Micah to ask how we cross, and he fades and reappears on the other side, motioning to me with the fingers of one hand.
“Come to me.”
My heart races wildly with the idea that I’m over here and he’s over there, and the only way to remedy the problem is magic I don’t even believe I wield, at least not with the powers he thinks I hold. “Micah, please—”
“Behind you!” he shouts, and with a leap of my pulse, I whirl around to find what looks like a giant white beast charging at me.
The Sacred Book of Nephilim
Fate is a fickle beast you must learn never to trust. Fate requires you change nothing and do nothing that the universe has not ordained you act upon. Free thinkers are rarely predictable, and therefore your fate may change with one small shift left or right, forward or backward. Fate has an agenda, ensure it’s also yours.