Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 79726 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79726 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 399(@200wpm)___ 319(@250wpm)___ 266(@300wpm)
He’s only standing a few feet away from me, and I can see him shaking with emotion he doesn’t know how to express.
An explosive knock at the door stops both of us before anything else can be said or thrown onto the gauntlet between us.
Remus stalks toward the door and yanks it open with an explosive, “What?”
“It’s happening,” Abaddon says, voice urgent.
“What’s happening?” Remus is impatient.
“Goddammit, Remus, you and Romulus need to figure out whatever’s off between you two because it’s really fucking obnoxious to have to say everything twice. The end of the world meeting we had this morning? It’s happening.”
End of the world meeting? I sprint over to where they’re huddled at the door.
“Stay here,” Remus orders me gruffly, stepping through the door and trying to shove it closed in my face.
“Are you kidding?” I slip through the open slit in the door before he can shut it. “He just said end of the world! I’m not just staying huddled in a dark room.”
I see the other women pushing out their doors, too, babies swaddled against their chests in makeshift cloth carriers.
“Where you go, we go,” Ksenia says firmly.
“We don’t have time,” Abaddon says curtly, turning to Hannah standing beside Ksenia. “And I need to know you’re safe.”
“Are any of us safe?” Hannah grasps his arm. “Better not to be separated.”
He looks reluctant but turns. “Follow me. And stay close.”
We do, a huddle of monsters and consorts hurrying down the hallway. We head back into the large central courtyard where we first entered. Do they think we’ll have to take off again in the helicopter? I don’t suppose anyone’s going to stop and explain the whole “end of the world” thing to me, are they? Uh, hello???
“Do you know what’s going on?” I ask Hannah as we rush forward.
She clutches her toddler to her chest and shakes her head as we spill out into the cloudy light of the courtyard. “Something about rogue spirits and a prophecy or something? I don’t know.”
In the distance, in the very center of the courtyard, I see the chief vampire’s granddaughter, Phoenix, bent over with chalk in her hand, along with a woman I don’t recognize. Several fire pits are set up along four points to create a giant circle with lots of symbols chalked all over the ground inside it.
Layden runs around the circle, and I jump back a little when I see light spring out of his hands, illuminating the chalk runes on the ground.
“What’s happening?” Abaddon demands.
Layden doesn’t stop, light still pouring out of his hands into the circle as he yells, “We finally figured out what the AI’s doing, and there’s no time!”
“Well? What is it?” Vlad shouts from outside the circle near where Phoenix stands up, surveying her work. Her grandfather steps forward, almost into the circle, when Phoenix shoves him back at the last moment before his foot crosses the line.
“Don’t!” she shouts.
Vlad looks furious at that. I look to Remus, wondering if he’s in the mood to do something foolish after our fight, but he stays back, his eyes darting around as if he’s soaking in all the information of the situation, just like me and the rest of his brothers.
“The circle’s almost complete,” Phoenix explains hurriedly, eyes still on Layden and the other woman chalking lines. “And we just saw the AI start the sequence to launch nuclear codes in Russia and China. It doesn’t want to control the world. It wants to destroy it.”
I stumble back, Remus’s hand steadying me.
“That will never happen,” Abaddon growls.
“We have an idea to stop it,” Layden shouts. “But you have to trust us. Together.”
Abaddon looks Kharon’s way, then to Remus. Trusting their younger brother doesn’t seem like anything either of them are keen to do. But considering they can’t use their usual ways to combat this enemy, there’s little to do except stomp around in futility while Phoenix, the other woman, and Layden scramble, taking positions around the circle.
Phoenix heads to the center, lifting her arms up toward the sky.
The other woman runs forward with a knife. She slices along Phoenix’s palm and then, together, they drip the blood in a line at Phoenix’s feet. Layden offers his hand, and she does the same, squeezing it out in a line behind Phoenix. Then, he and the woman take positions in front of and behind Phoenix.
The woman begins chanting, and Phoenix lifts her arms even higher.
“What is this?” I ask, bewildered. Yeah, everything I’ve encountered with the boys up until this point has been wild, but at least it was still helicopters and missiles—things of this earth that I understood. It finally sinks in that I’m looking at straight-up magic about to be done in front of me.
Thunder suddenly cracks overhead, and the chalk-marked runes around the circle light up with blue light just like they did when they were pouring out of Layden’s hands earlier, but all on their own. Not only that, but they begin spinning—some interlocked circles move one way, and others spin in the opposite direction.