Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Which was understandable since she’d just broken into his house.
Time to engage in her tried-and-true thieving rules. Her exit was already lost. Distraction was probably off the table along with sleight of hand. And since she probably couldn’t play this one—even if she was a good actress, which she wasn’t—that left her least favorite: run.
But she never got the chance.
Graves and Lorcan barreled up from the depths below instead of taking the tunnels.
Archie raised his hands, which were marked with swirling symbols and circles. “Graves?” he snarled.
“It’s been a long time, Archie,” Graves said.
Then Archie’s eyes landed on Lorcan, and he shot light out of his fist toward him. “You!”
Lorcan blocked the blow, the magic dissipating before him. “I was just leaving.”
“I have nothing to do with him. Me and my associate,” Graves said, gesturing to Kierse, “were checking in on you because I was in the country. I found you unconscious and this thief in your vault.”
“They’re as much thieves as I am,” Lorcan snarled.
“You think me a fool?” Archie asked.
Graves reached to stop him, but already Archie was moving his hands in some intricate order, backing up into a dark circle at the center of his floor. The words coming out of his mouth were unintelligible. Not any known language Kierse had ever heard. It was as grating as nails down a chalkboard.
“Don’t let him finish!” Graves said, rushing forward.
Lorcan moved at the same moment as if they were a united front and hadn’t only seconds earlier been at each other’s throats.
Kierse had never seen them work together. They’d been enemies for hundreds of years, and killing each other every six months with god magic didn’t exactly engender cooperation. But both of their earliest training had been together. It seemed that even several centuries and animosity couldn’t change that.
“The stone,” Graves shouted as he tossed it to Kierse.
She grabbed the fake stone out of thin air just as they reached the black circle, and they promptly bounced off an invisible barrier at its edge.
Graves went one direction, colliding with the wall nearest the door. His body went straight through an antique painting, and they both crashed down onto the old hardwood floors. Lorcan landed against a bookshelf, tearing the shelving from the walls as he slid down to a red-and-white rug.
Lorcan groaned as he slowly came back to his feet.
Graves dusted debris off his black suit. His gray eyes darkened and were absolutely diabolical as he looked up at the warlock at the center of the room.
The dark circle changed to a glowing gold light in the center of the room, blocking their exit to Blair Street. They could brave the tunnels again through the South Bridge vaults, but Kierse wasn’t sure that he wouldn’t send something after them if they didn’t stop him here.
“Entering my home uninvited was a mistake,” Archie said in that same disembodied, scratchy voice. “You will regret it.”
He clapped his hands together, and his head tipped upward, gold light flowing out of his mouth toward the ceiling. The torrent was so oppressive that Kierse had to back up, her back hitting a large wooden hutch full of priceless china. Graves and Lorcan exchanged a glance. And though neither of them could get into the other’s head, it certainly seemed as if they had spoken.
“Don’t move until we give the go-ahead,” Lorcan said. She narrowed her eyes at him, but he held his hand out as a peace offering. “Please, I don’t want you to get hurt.”
Before she could tell him that she didn’t need him to take care of her, Archie stopped spouting gold magic from his mouth.
A pop sounded in her ears, and then out of nothing three disgusting, humanoid beings, the likes of which she had never seen, stood before her.
Monsters, real monsters. And all three looked like they wanted to kill anything that got in their way.
Chapter Four
“What the fuck are those?” Kierse all but shrieked.
She lived in a world with monsters for most of her life. She could name all of the known monsters in New York City—vampires, werewolves, goblins, nymphs, shifters, wraiths, incubus, succubus, and phoenix. She even knew there were more monsters from legend. She ran with warlocks, Druids, High Priestesses, and witches, after all. But nothing like this.
The first was a cyclops, or at least it only had one eye at the center of its massive round head attached to a square chest with no neck. Its arms had claws at the ends, and while its head nearly brushed the ceiling, it was squat. The second was a many-tentacled thing of nightmares. Like an inverted octopus with suctions on the slimy array of tentacles that protruded from its many-eyed “face.” The last one was only as tall as her hip but a solid creature of muscle with leathery bat wings and razor-tipped points. It hovered six feet off the ground as it stared at Kierse with a wide-open muzzle full of shark’s teeth.