Page 43 of Broken Souls

So it’s just my paranoia playing up again.

Everything is fine…

And yet, as the streets of St. Augustine roll slowly past, a part of me is screaming that it isn’t. That this ride is taking too long. That I need to be homenow.

Feeling unsettled, I glance at Khalid.

But he isn’t panicking. His knuckles aren’t white on his phone, and I wonder if I’m simply on edge for the same reason he is. Micha is away on her own, driving up to her father’s. The car has a tracker, and I have a duo following her for safety though – neither of which she knows about, but I still don’t like her away from me.

Deciding that’s the issue for the itch of my skin, I pull out my phone and check the notifications.

The men have claimed she’s arrived at her father’s. No trouble on the way.

The tracking app also says she’s there.

But there’s no text from –

My phone buzzes.

Micha:Arrived. Spotted goons. Need better tail training.

A small smile hides behind my flat lips.

My girl is safe.

Everything is fine.

Seventeen

HER

Holy fucking shit, I’m going to die.

My back slams into the wall as I trip over my feet. The large claw I was dodging pierces the ground in front of me, cutting through the floor like it’s butter rather than wood and concrete. The creature looks up at me, its beady neon green eyes actually fucking hypnotizing, and I tear my gaze away before it can make me freeze.

Rolling away from the wall just as its other claw swings for me, I hear the sound of a gun being fired. The claw digs into the plaster, no doubt piercing all the way through to the outside, and a bullet grazes my arm. I twist, my feet dancing a wild beat. My knees give out, and I drop like a stone, trying to make my movements unpredictable; I roll towards the monster. My heart is in my throat, getting this close, but it has both its claws stuck, and –Fuck.

It’s claws arenotstuck. It’s ripped the one in the floor free, and now it’s shooting down towards me, right in line to split my head open, to stab me like a shish kebab from one temple to the other.

Activating a rune on my side, I throw up a quick shield. I still grunt beneath the force of impact, it’s so fucking hard, but I stop the claw from reaching me. With my other hand, I aim a blast of fire at the monster’s bat-like face, its wide gaping mouth hissing in frustration – a clear shot.

But a sudden flash of black near my feet has me aiming my hand down and blasting at the floor instead. I shoot across it like a rocket, away from the shadows that were swirling at my feet, ready to suck me into the Plane of Monsters. An instant kill, and the place where this fucking gorgon-bat thing came from.

Its body is that of a gorgon – dark green scales across its serpentine body, with patches of light green. Two massive wing-like claws curve out of its upper body. Its head sort of resembles a bat on crack with a longish furry snout that has a mane like a lion, except within it are a hundred black tube-likethings– like if Medusa slicked all her snakes back. So far, they haven’t moved, so I’m pretty certain they can’t, but I was also pretty certain I could kill Sau, so I’m not taking anything as fact anymore.

But fuck, I can see how she’s a named sup – basically a title for a “badass mother fucker,” one of only seven here on Earth. The Reaper of the Sired is about to add one more name to her list of kills, and as I’m dodging gun shots and stabbing claws, I wonder if this is how she killed all of Aleric’s sired children and why thefuckno one mentioned it on all the blogs that talked about her.

Because this would’ve been brilliant information to know three minutes ago when I charged her like an idiot. I knew she would try to use her shadows to suck me into the Plane of Monsters. I knew to keep an eye on the floor while I wore her out with my own magic. But what I didn’t fucking know was that she could use minimal magic, and thus, minimal life force, to open a portal to that place and call out one of the monsters living there.

So now she’s still fresh as a daisy, shooting at me from her place in front of the stairs, while I’m expending all my energy and magic just trying to stay alive.

Fuck.

My.

Life.

Arching my back, I jump to my feet, change my mind, then flip backwards just as a claw swipes the air in front of me. It catches my leg, and I find out it can cut as well as stab as pain flares up my body. Shooting my magic down my leg, I stop the bleeding. It isn’t healed, but it won’t be the first thing to kill me.