Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112089 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 374(@300wpm)
He laughed good-naturedly.
The man licked his lips, and his brow furrowed a bit. His gaze zipped to the side, but he didn’t turn his head toward Edgar. It was like he was trying to ignore the vampire but the process was playing hell on his nerves.
Edgar paused, noticing me. “Oh, hello, Miss Jessie. I was just explaining to our guest the logistics of a good garden. There really are a lot of moving parts. It’s hard to see that from the outside.”
The mage’s dark eyes found me. He gave me a once-over before lingering on my face. Recognition curled within his emotions. He’d pinpointed who I was.
“Everyone here is going to die for this,” he said as though we were sitting down for coffee.
“Die for what, having a nice chat with our new friend?” Nessa asked, passing in front of him while tapping her chin.
“How would they even know who was in this room?” Sebastian asked, bracing his hands on his hips in apparent confusion. It was clear they’d done this a time or two. “If you miraculously broke out of this binding, and somehow broke out of this magically protected box, you’ve already shown you can’t handle a few shifters. How would you hope to escape the territory?”
“Good question.” She nodded, passing back in front of the captive. Pacing, apparently. She stopped, bent, and looked at his face. “I think he’s bluffing, that’s what I think.”
“You think I’m just talking about the people in this room?” The mage smirked without humor. “If I don’t come back with the woman, my boss will take out this whole dingy, backwater, flea-bitten town. No one’ll miss these filthy animals anyway—”
Suddenly, I was standing in the place where his chair had been, and he was crashing against the wall behind him. Ulric had barely managed to dive out of the way to avoid getting hit. The chair broke when it hit the ground, spilling the man out of it. His ankles were still bound to the chair legs, though, and his hands bound behind his back.
My heart thudded in my chest, but it was nothing compared to the surge of power that felt like it was stretching my skin to the point of pain.
“That’s not how you address this town,” I said in a low, rough voice.
He flopped, trying to pull his hands into a useable position.
I didn’t give him a chance.
I hammered him with magic, red tinging my vision. He slammed back against the wall again, his head thunking. I sent a spell that would make him feel like he was being splintered into pieces. He gritted his teeth, and determination pulsed around him. He was clearly used to pain inflicted by spells. Maybe he’d even prepared for this sort of scenario. He wasn’t going to yield easily.
Nessa hop-jogged over to him. She bent and grabbed his slicked-back ponytail, yanking his head back so she could look into his face. Blood dripped from a cut in his left eyebrow and a slice in his lip. That had been from crashing against the wall and the subsequent fall. The magic I’d unleashed didn’t leave physical wounds.
“Let’s try that again, shall we?” she said. “Only this time, don’t insult the people she loves. It upsets her. She was a Jane not that long ago, after all. She still has some sentimentalities. We’re working on it.”
He swore at her before spitting. She yanked her head away just in time. She’d clearly been expecting that.
My magic crashed forward again. I was powerless to control the surge.
“Whoops, wrong answer, my love,” Nessa said to him as she quickly rolled away, her anticipation abilities topnotch.
I unleashed another series of crushing magical blows, blunt but all sorts of powerful. Wave after wave hammered into him, stealing his breath and spinning him around. My gargoyle rode me hard, wanting to shift and claw. To exact a blood price. To end him.
I wrestled for control. This was not the way. Killing him and turning his body over to Niamh, who would probably send his head back to his bosses or something else horribly gruesome, wouldn’t get us information. We were flying blind when it came to Momar, and this was one of his grunts. Granted, it was a grunt at the bottom of a long chain of command, but we still needed what was in this guy’s head.
Not to mention that I’d been the one to say no torture. I needed to get a hold of myself!
Breathing heavily, I barely managed to shut off the torrent of magic. Anger still throbbed within me. My gargoyle ached for action.
I took a step back and rolled my shoulders, my whole body tingling. “You might watch what you say and do,” I ground out. “I’m a little shaky on my self-control right now.”
The room was utterly silent as the mage pushed himself up. Determination still rolled off him. He was ignoring the pain. Oh yeah, he’d been trained for this. He was tolerating this treatment like someone with experience.