Page 120 of Solar Shadows

The screaming started, the solar figures shooting through the house, choking the air with vampire ash and death, chasing the darkness away.

“No…” I managed. “Please…please stop.”

It didn’t stop until the light vanished and a slimy presence slid out of me, hitting the floor with a thud. A fizzing lump of golden jelly burning a hole through the floorboards, disappearing into the basement shortly after.

Gold.

Gold like his tooth.

I collapsed into the wall, nothing but silence around me. No signs of life, only the silence of afreshly made tomb. That’s what this house was now, one big red graveyard created by me.

They’re all dead.

I slid down the wall, my chest clogged with dust and distress.

This vampire clan had survived so much, only to be undone by me. My power. Even if I wasn’t in control, my magic ended them. And that came with the worst kind of skewering guilt I’d ever experienced. As if a rusty pole had been dipped in acid, then driven through my body.

I killed them…

I killed them…

A cloud of crimson dust appeared, bobbing in the air, glittering like a million tiny rubies.

I rubbed my eyes. Was it Shania’s essence? That was the first thing I thought, seeing as Tony wanted it.

Two beams of white light whizzed past me, piercing the cloud, locking it in place. It stopped moving as if paused by a remote.

I got to my feet, ducking under the beams to press myself against the wall. My ears were ringing, and my eyes sore from the dust in the air. But I powered through, determined to get into the fresh air and find Tony.

Cut off his head, cut off this bullshit.

Carefully, I slid toward the front door, body wracked with the pangs of guilt and fury. Adrenaline guided me across the wall, determination to kill my ex a real fire under my arse.

I killed them…

Crimson light flooded the white beams, flowing through them like blood, heading outside. The chanting started then.

I ducked under the beams again when I reached the door, moving into the garden of destroyed flamingos. I glanced at Tony, who watched me with a smirk on his face.

The real him now, no more other version.

This hurt my head and fucked me off! The sooner he was dead, the better.

His coven formed a line outside the house, the beams coming from the two crystals Tony held in the air. The others pressed theirs to their heads, chanting a word repeatedly.

There must have been at least twenty of them.

“Become, become, become.”

The redness in the beams inched closer to him. Shania’s essence almost inside him.

New magic. He’d really created a new form of magic by abusing, and eating, the Hecate Crystals. I didn’t want to believe it, but here was the reality staring me in the face.

By Hecate. What a horrible abomination.

“This is it,” Tony said, offering me a massive grin.

His gold tooth was gone. It’d clearly been a magical tool to infect me with his new brand of power, it’s remains now fizzing in the basement of Blood House.