Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 141492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 707(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 707(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
The creatures screamed and shrieked, the sounds filling the chamber of the cave as half their bodies were cut off. Still, they continued to drag themselves to the surface of the cave until what was left of them flopped onto the dirt. The other creatures rushed to them, falling on them, raking at their bodies with their long, hooked claws, tearing deep gouges in the strange, mottled fur. It wasn’t fur exactly, Safia decided as she studied the demons. Hair grew in patches over reptilian scales. Armor that wasn’t armor. Not fur. Not armor. These demons had been manufactured, just as the beetles had been.
She had a book of demons and could identify all of them. The drawings had been painstakingly made over centuries, along with as much information on each type as could be collected. There was a hierarchy of demons. Some were much more powerful than others and extremely difficult to kill. These little creatures were disturbing, and she’d seen the evidence on the farm of what they were capable of. Now she was seeing what the demons would do to their own if they were injured.
She reached out in the way she had to the beetles, touching the frantic chaos of their minds. It wasn’t as if they were thinking creatures. A red haze seemed to be where their brains should have been. Slashes of deep weeping wounds that bled acid into the craniums caused even more pain. Their skulls were too small to hold the leaking fluid, so they shook their heads back and forth in a useless effort to relieve the agony. The slashing smile wasn’t because they were grinning on purpose; their mouths were cut wide open to show their teeth and allow them to drag larger prey inside.
She pushed down the bile rising along with compassion. The woman below was twisted and evil. Excruciating pain, fear and the need to consume flesh drove these demons, just as they had the poor beetles. The bats couldn’t eat these horrid demons. They were hers to dispose of. She couldn’t imagine them let loose on the city.
She lifted the sword in the air an inch higher and began to chant. The moment she did, the blade blazed into a bright yellow-orange, casting an eerie flame-like shadow ringing the wall. At once, the demons began to crawl toward her as fast as they could, abandoning the dead or dying demons on the chamber floor.
Safia spun in a circle so that the blade burst into a brilliant light bathing the chamber in scarlet. The blade pulsed with life, causing the glow of red to illuminate the cave in that strange eerie glow. She had trained her entire life for this one purpose—to defeat demons. She was the defender, keeping demons from coming through a vent, a tear in the earth, any means of entry at all. That was her job. She had to destroy them or send them back.
She was aware of the position of each of the dreadful creatures in the cave. Where they were, how close to her, how close to Aura. They thought themselves good at utilizing the scant vegetation growing in the cave. The rocks and stubby shrubs. They skittered fast across the dirt and rolled behind the thin brush to conceal themselves from her. They had no idea of her connection to the earth. How she felt the heartbeat like her own. How it gave her information and told her exactly where her enemies were at any given moment.
As the creatures circled the two women, coming up on them like a pack of hungry wolves, she spun again, her crystal sword pointed toward the ceiling, the light spreading outward, glowing brighter and brighter as she chanted in a low, very sweet voice. Concealed in the other hand was the small vial of water. As she spun, droplets sprayed outward and mingled in the red light. The drops caught in the tempest—a mini tornado she created with her spinning sword. She was the calm in the center, barely moving while all around her the deluge was pouring down. A force of nature hurtled itself on the demons that were desperate to rip her apart.
“Hear me, demons from the underworld, sent by your queen and the commander of her army. You cannot have my lifemate. You cannot have any member of my family or my people.” She didn’t raise her voice or change her tone. She continued to speak in as angelic a tone as she was capable. It had been one of the things her mother had worked with her most on.
Safia plunged the blade of the sword into the ground of the cave. It was shocking how easily the vanadinite slid right into what should have been hard, rocky ground. As the crystal blade sliced through the soil, the earth shivered and moaned. The creatures shrieked and cried out. Rocks jolted forward, and the shrubbery shook as if having a seizure.