Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
“You know,” his sire said with an autocratic accent. “Of all the places I expected you to turn up, after all these years, some random aristocrat’s house in the mountains is not it.”
Blue pupils with black rims, the reverse of his own coloring, stared across at him. He’d brought no conventional weapons with him, and of course, his father didn’t need any. But that didn’t mean things weren’t going to get very deadly, very quick.
“I cannot read your mind.” The evil smiled. “You are very strong. Tell me, how ever is your mahmen?”
As the memory of standing in front of the demon and seeing her truly for the first time struck a chord, Dev felt an odd need to protect the female.
“I wouldn’t know,” he lied.
“Do not tell me you’ve come here for some Shakespearean reason.” Lash lowered his chin and looked out from under lowered brows. “That would be so unoriginal of you—”
The evil stopped. And glanced out of the open glass slider.
“I think we have a visitor, son.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
Lyric would later wonder why she traveled the way she did, how she managed it—even though she would know the why of her magical trip in real time.
When it was all happening, however, she was aware of only that one moment, she was in the hospital bed at the Brotherhood’s training center. And then in another, she started thinking of Dev and remembering things they had each said, the two of them arguing while he had looked so brokenhearted, her anger rising along with her own shattered dreams of what they could have been—
And then she was just gone.
It was not unlike the swirling trip to the Fade, the appearance up at the Sanctuary, or the twisty twirl of death itself. All she was sure about was that there was a spark of Dev inside of her, and it suddenly yearned to be reunited with the whole of him to such a degree that she was pulled along through the night air with it. Instinctually, she fought the tide, recognizing that she was out of her own control. And yet…
She wanted to see him. She needed the closure.
Rhamp’s parting words haunted her.
When the trip came to an end, it was like stepping off a train’s platform, the movement over, the disorientation gone as if it had never been. Yet she was in a totally different place, on a porch that overlooked a frozen lake and a mountain view.
Glancing down at herself, she was still in the same flannel nightgown her mahmen had brought from home to the clinic. Then she looked around and recognized nothing of the modern house that was mostly glass. She felt Dev’s presence, however—and she followed it as a light in the darkness, a homing signal that she could not ignore.
Even though it was cold, she felt nothing of the wind or the chill, and she couldn’t decide whether that was because she was numb or if it was part of this whole strange experience.
Putting her hand over her heart, she told herself she could feel the beat. But what if she’d died again and just been in a different version of the Fade all day long? Except then why had she seen so many living loved ones?
“Stop it,” she said.
Maybe this was a dream—
Down at the end of the porch, Dev jumped out of an open doorway, looked at her with pure terror on his face, and put both of his palms forward. “Go! Oh, God, go!”
Something came out of his palms, some kind of energy—
All at once, a dark shadow covered him, sure as if he’d been grabbed by a mystical fist, and he disappeared back into the house like he’d been yanked inside.
“Dev? Devlin!”
Riding a sudden panic, Lyric rushed forward, her bare feet slipping over the ice and snow as flurries from out of nowhere blew into her face like they were also trying to warn her to go back, stay away. And then, when she got to the sliding door, it shut in her face. There was some kind of coating on the panes so she couldn’t see inside, but in her fear, she pounded on the—
The flash of light was so bright that the interior lit up to a point that the tinting couldn’t cut the glare. She had a brief vision of Dev surrounded by a ball of energy—
And then something broke out of the house to the right of her, glass shattering as whatever it was catapulted into the air.
Moving over to the ragged, jagged hole, she looked inside.
Dev was standing with both feet planted and his palms forward, his face full of such fury, he was, indeed, the son of evil, begotten of a demon, the grandson of the Omega.
Yet the energy he sent out was not dark.
It was… something else.