Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 122946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
Tensing, I tried to pull away my hand, but he held on tighter. “What’s wrong?”
“Witches.”
Chapter 9
“Witches?” I repeated, sure I heard him correctly but unsure why that had made him snarl. I listened, but I couldn’t hear anything. In fact, I couldn’t hear anything but us.
“Strange, is it not?” he asked, noticing my expression, rising to his feet and slowly dropping my hand but staying close to me. “Our kind often becomes accustomed to tuning out the rest of the world. We ignore the sounds of everything we do not need to hear, especially in public spaces. The witches know this and magically enhance it because most would not even notice until it was too late.”
“Too late for what?” I asked, rising out of my chair just as slowly.
However, he didn’t answer when his eyes shifted to the air vents above us.
I listened again, watching him. All I heard sounded like… “Hissing?”
“Move!” he hollered, and he grabbed my shoulders, as a large, double-headed, white-scaled python burst out of the air vent. Its eyes were pure red, their pairs of fangs dipping with what smelled like black acid, and it lunged toward me—no him—as he threw me behind him, sending me flying into the glass cabinets. They shattered against my back as I slid down off Dr. Lovell’s black desktop and landed on the ground.
I stayed there for a second, a bit too shocked to understand what the hell had just happened…why the hell this was happening. Theseus?
I stared as he fought the creature on his arm, blood and poison soaking through his black shirt.
“Theseus!”
“Do not get up!” he hollered at me, yanking the python from him, ripping off its head, and throwing it across the lab, grabbing the scissors I’d just used to cut cotton. In the same second, he threw them perfectly and with so much force into the opening throat of the second snake that came from the vent. The head sliced right off with black blood coming from it.
Placing my palms on the titled floor, I started to push up when Theseus grabbed me.
“Are you alright?”
“Am I all right?” I repeated. “Are you all right?” I lifted his arm, so he could see the four bites in his skin. It wasn’t healing but rather oozing a dark-purplish color that reeked of decaying flesh.
“I’m fine,” he replied and brushed my hair from my face; I hadn’t even realized my hair tie had broken, unleashing my curls. “I apologize for throwing you; I did not realize I used that much force.”
“That’s what you’re worried about? I’m fine, not these.” I looked at the pure-white snake slithering on the lab floor, the heads frozen. Vampire, human, witch, or whatever the hell it was—I hated snakes with a passion.
“The witch was strong enough to create them, but they are not forming new heads or rising again.”
I looked back to him with eyes wide. “New heads? Rising again?”
“The tendency of bewitched animals.” He nodded. Gripping his arm, he twisted his head left and right, wincing once he did.
“We need to get the poison out,” I said quickly.
“As much as I enjoy the thought of your teeth on me, we don’t know how poisonous this snake is yet,” he replied, picking up the cellphone with his other hand.
“So, it’s all right for you to be poisoned but not me?”
“Yes.” He hit one button and held it up to his ear before I got a chance to really look at the screen. “Forget whatever you are doing, and come to Druella’s work. Bring whomever you can with you. Witches just tried to attack us, and I feel at least one full circle of witches here already.”
I glanced up at the white lights above me, and I had to strain to hear people walking, but other that, there were no sounds but us.
“She’s worked here just fine, and no witch has bothered her—”
I knew that voice…
“It’s not your place to question me,” he sneered; his whole demander changed even his eyes seemed to darken.
“Is that Mrs. Ming?” I reached up for the phone, and when I touched it, I saw the caller ID. Sure enough, the name Lucy Ming appeared on the screen.
“We’ll be there in five minutes,” she said.
“You have two,” he snapped before turning off the phone.
“What was that? How do you know Mrs. Ming? And why the hell would you speak to her—” Mid-interrogation the lights above us flickered.
“We need to go.” He grabbed my hand, but I yanked my back.
“What the hell is going on?” For the first time, I didn’t truly trust him.
He looked wounded that I had done so, but I didn’t understand. He flexed his rejected hand a bit and stood straighter, meeting my gaze. “I understand that you are confused. As am I, but I assure you, I cannot explain to you what I am trying to piece together. I made a mistake by not telling you when you asked, but right now is not the time to talk about it. We are pinned down in here.”