Total pages in book: 138
Estimated words: 130924 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130924 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 655(@200wpm)___ 524(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Goruun is a demon and a giant spider centaur.
And we are so utterly damned.
Try not to look at it, Brom says, still fucking me. I saw it earlier. Sister Sophie had led it out of the basement below the cathedral. Then it proceeded to tear her limb from limb and eat her alive at Leona’s command.
This isn’t helping.
We are waiting until the right moment, Brom says, his breath becoming raspy with exertion as he thrusts into me. I have been speaking to Crane inside his head and he’s inside mine. He’s moving around in the shadows. He’s waiting.
Oh thank god, I think, my heart skipping, but the relief is short-lived when I hear the click-click-click of those spider legs coming toward us.
It won’t be hard to kill the Sisters, Brom says. You have your fire magic, magic that Crane can borrow too. You can incinerate them. And I have the horseman. He will do my bidding now until the end, as long as I uphold my end of the deal.
What deal? I think with a stab of panic.
The demon will be hardest to kill, he goes on, thrusting slower now. But we’re going to give it all that we’ve got. Isn’t that right, daffy?
I meet his eyes for a moment, his troubled, sweet, dark eyes.
That’s right, I think.
Or we’ll die trying.
I’m going to pretend to come now. You’ll know what to do. Just wait until I free you.
He quickens his pace, making his breath sound shorter and more labored, throwing a few more loud groans in there, and it’s hard to know what he’s faking and what he’s not.
“Oh Goruun, come see this up close,” Leona says, clapping her hands together. “Come see the point of conception for the new age.”
The spider centaur comes closer.
I can barely breathe, I’m so terrified.
Brom cries out, a strangled yell, pretending to come inside me, his body shuddering. For a moment I believe it until I don’t feel his cock release, until he remains just as hard inside me.
“Oh, how wonderful,” Leona says. “Isn’t this wonderful, to witness such a thing?”
I feel the spider stop a foot away, the smell of sulfur and rotting flowers and death overpowering me. I open one eye, just a little, to see the waxy hide of the spider’s chest where four needle-like cocks protrude, fighting for dominance, blood dripping from them, and it takes everything not to vomit in my mouth.
The horror might kill me in the end.
He didn’t release, Goruun says with a deep, craggy metallic voice, so inhuman that it makes my skin crawl, makes panic thrum through my veins, the urge to run away screaming.
But I am still in restraints.
And Brom is still inside me.
He didn’t release his seed! Goruun yells.
“What?” Leona says.
Now! Brom’s voice booms inside my head.
The Hessian soldier springs forward, ax raised, and brings it down over the spider’s head, slicing it clean off. It rolls on the floor, stopping just below me, its beady red eyes staring up at me, looking both human and not.
Then Brom pulls out of me, jumps off the altar, and starts undoing the straps that are keeping me down. Once I’m freed he picks me up off the table and places me on the ground behind him, putting himself between me and the Sisters.
They’re screaming, trying to attack the horseman. The Hessian lops off Ana’s head, an arc of blood spraying in the air, and it goes thumping across the floor, causing Leona to shriek. She retaliates by pointing at the Hessian, lightning coming out of her fingers and zapping him.
He shakes uncontrollably, the air filled with the scent of fried leather, then Brom reaches for the wall, pulling a long broadsword away from the stone where it was mounted.
“Kat, stay back,” he says, holding the sword out.
I’m about to tell him that he doesn’t know how to use a sword when Sister Margaret comes flying through the air at him, her hair turned into writhing snakes, her eyes bulging out, her tongue long and flicking like a serpent’s.
I conjure flames to my fingertips, ready to throw a fireball at her.
But Brom stands in my way as he takes the heavy sword and raises it like it weighs nothing at all, waiting until the last moment before swinging it, slicing it below Margaret’s awful face, cutting her head clean off.
Brom can control the horseman.
Brom is the horseman.
He looks at me over his shoulder with an expression of shaky pride as her head bounces to the floor, but that look on his face quickly turns to horror as his gaze goes behind me.
Because eight giant spider legs wrap around my stomach from behind, pinning my arms to the side, before I’m suddenly yanked high into the air.
Chapter 36
Crane
When I first saw the horseman silently approach us from outside the Cathedral, I immediately pulled myself deeper into the shadows, wanting to wait until he was almost at Kat before I roasted him in flames.