Total pages in book: 162
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 662(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
We sprinted through some rooms and down yet another hall—this one contained nothing but cell doors (a goodly number of them)—to another dead end.
It was made of stone.
And there was nowhere else for us to go.
Though, strangely, even if that was the case, it looked like someone along the way wanted to go through it, quite badly, because there were an abundance of blast and scorch marks all over the surface.
“Gods dammit,” I bit off and whirled on her. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Face the wall, Cat,” she demanded.
“What?”
“Honey,” she whispered. “Trust me. Just face the fucking wall.”
She was no less tweaked.
No.
She was more tweaked.
Therefore, I did as told.
Feeling like an idiot, feeling more crucially that we were wasting time when we were trapped, even though I had no idea what was happening, I did know someone was after us, and I would not, in that moment, allow my mind to go to where Tanyn was and what it meant he was not with me, I turned and stared at the wall.
I barely aimed my eyes at it before the lights in the room illuminated.
I was seeing through red, but I still knew those lights were also red.
Holy Lilith.
And then I jumped when the stones in front of me started shifting.
“What in the realms?” I whispered as I watched them go.
An arch formed.
A door.
And beyond it, a pitch-black void.
“Do you have a light?” I whispered.
“Go,” Monique said.
I twisted my neck to look at her in shock. “Go where?”
“Just go.” She whipped to look behind us, I felt it too, she turned to me and shouted, “Go go go!”
With nowhere else to head, I stepped into the void.
And instantly, tiny pinpricks of red lights illuminated on the walls, dimly showing there was another staircase here, again going down.
Those lights formed ancient symbols. And runes. The characters that made up the long-gone demon language that only the most fastidious scholars now knew how to read.
And they didn’t light the way.
No.
They lit where we were and a few feet in front of us.
After we passed, they faded to black.
I noticed this like I’d been noticing everything else.
Vaguely and on the run.
It felt like we were dashing down those stairs forever. Like they never ended. Like the lore behind Berg Castle being built on the steps that led to the hells was true.
And maybe it was true, because I eventually saw something at the bottom.
Small, and still far away, but I could make it out.
It got bigger with each step we rushed down.
Another doorway beyond which there were red and orange lights that couldn’t be misconstrued.
Fire.
Not a cheery little blaze.
It looked like the space beyond was filled with fire.
We were running straight toward fire.
“Fuck, fuck, fuckity fuckfuckfuck,” I bitched as I kept moving.
“Faster,” Monique urged.
We went faster.
So much faster, when the stairwell let out into the…I had no idea what the fuck it was, a chamber, a temple…neither of us had it in us to stop.
Therefore, we dashed across the narrow bridge single file to the plateau in the middle before we were able to halt our progress.
Around this plateau, the rest of the circular space—outside that bridge—was what appeared to be a bottomless pit of fire.
And this was it.
There was nowhere else to go.
We were trapped.
Did Monique lead me into a trap?
Impossible.
Impossible!
“Stand ready,” Monique warned.
“Ready?” I demanded. “For what?”
She didn’t answer.
I had many questions (so many!), primary at that moment to all of them was how we were being followed, by what was clearly a threat, and why it seemed she led me into a trap.
However, this question went unspoken due to the fact I was standing still as a statue, stupefied as she lifted one clenched fist, shook it once in the air, like one would shake a cocktail shaker, and a staff sprung from her fingers made of bright white light.
It was very long.
She held it in the middle.
And each end was not blunt. They were both wicked-sharp blades, facing in opposite directions. Each had a lethally curved tip.
Agog with this, I wasn’t ready for when she swung her other arm in front of her, and at the end of her arc, a deadly blade of white light curled around her knuckles.
What.
In.
The.
Fuck?!
“They’re here,” she whispered.
But I knew they were.
Shit!
And it began.
I learned what that spot was on the photo of Tanyn and me from the party.
Our attackers were invisible.
I didn’t have time to contemplate that either, because Monique went right into action.
The shriek the first one let out was abrupt when, with a swing of her blade staff, Monique cut the first one in two at the midriff, his blood spraying monstrously as the glamor flickered out and he instantly became visible when he received the wound.
His shriek might have been abrupt and short lived, but it was deafening in that chamber.