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)
There was a moment of suspended pause, the sky storming around the concentration of malevolence, lightning flashing.
And then the teeming mass of evil dropped into the middle of the frozen lake, the impact breaking the ice and creating a tidal wave that emanated out from the center hole, swamping boathouses all around.
After that…
Nothing.
There was nothing left of his father.
Dev collapsed to his knees and fell forward. When he was rolled onto his back, Lyric was leaning over him.
Her eyes were wide, her breath coming out in pants. “Dev…”
For a moment, he had a ringing sense of completion, the job well done as she was alive and his sire gone. But then he felt his strength start to ebb, and he realized, in saving her and her kind, he had sacrificed himself, just as her brother and those males had intended to do.
Just as the angel had foretold: He had given his all and gotten his wish for her.
With a trembling hand, he tried to reach up and touch her face. “I’m… sorry.”
Yes, the angel had been right, but destiny had also been a kick in the balls. He was “dying” in the only way an immortal could.
There was no more soul left in his corporeal body.
Fine, if this was his fate, then he had finally done something important, something worthy of the love he had at last known, at the end of his destiny.
“Dev, don’t leave me—”
“It’s okay… better off… without me…”
“No! You have to stay,” she stammered. “Please, we have to figure this out. We have to figure us out—you saved my life, you can’t leave me now—”
“And you saved my soul.”
Damn it, he wished he could touch her; he had to settle for looking at her.
“Live your life free and out loud…” he whispered. “And know that you are loved…”
That was as far as he got. His life-force was like a rope he’d been holding on to.
All of a sudden, his grip slipped.
And that was it.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
Dev!” Lyric moved his head into her lap. “Dev—no, no, no… Dev!”
She was drawing in a deep breath and getting ready to scream when she heard something outside the house. Ignoring whatever it was, she just kept saying his name again—until abruptly, the sound outside grew so loud she could no longer ignore it.
Lifting her head to the shattered glass sliders, she frowned as she focused on the lake beyond.
In the midst of the ice surface, there was a great hole, as if a rock the size of a football field had been dropped by the hand of the Creator.
As more lightning flashed, bubbles rose out of the black, oily water—and the force of them abruptly turned into a geyser. Something was emerging out of the depths, rising higher and higher, and as a ringing chorus of dread swamped not just her mind, but her body, she knew that whatever was coming for her, coming for Dev, was unlike anything she had ever seen.
Or anything she could survive.
She’d been looking for magic, but not this kind… dearest Lassiter, not like this. The enormity of the evil was incomprehensible as it manifested, so vast that it blocked out the mountains and the sky.
The heir to the Omega. The entity that existed only to hunt and kill her species—
Lash’s essence rushed at the house, and as the great waves of darkness zeroed in on her and Devlin, she threw herself over him—for all the good that would do.
Besides, he was barely breathing.
Bracing herself, she knew that dark energy was going to wipe them both out, and she screamed—
All at once a figure appeared before them. A female.
Valentina Disserte?
From… Resolve2Evolve? Yes, it was, in all her purple-dressed glory, her dark hair up in a bun, the grapey perfume Lyric had smelled when they’d met saturating the air. Except… the face was different now. Very beautiful, yes, but the features were not exactly what they’d been.
After a moment of eye contact, the woman turned around.
And then a strong female voice reverberated through the entire Northeast, it seemed: “No! He is my son, and you will not hurt him.”
The female planted her stilettos and surrounded them all with a shimmering force field. And then, as a great roar began, she separated herself out, took two running steps, and leaped off the porch at the dark energy.
And something… happened.
Just before the evil slammed into the house, some kind of merger occurred in the sky, and the resulting luminescent waves exploded across the horizon, northern lights except in red and gold and purple, so much purple.
After that there was only darkness, inside the house, outside at the lake with the hole in the center, over all of the whole world, it seemed.
But Lyric didn’t give a shit.
Looking down at Dev’s face, she felt the cold in his skin and panicked. She didn’t have a phone on her, she had no idea where they were, and she wasn’t sure whether anybody could help them anyway. This was not mortal business: It was in the realm of immortality, and the implications terrified her.