Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 93448 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93448 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
“Enough!” Grey shouted at the top of his lungs. “I’ve got enough of a headache trying to remove the spell. I don’t need you two adding to it. Lucien, go hunt down the pestilents in the area and get rid of them.”
“Clay ordered me to watch you,” he snarled.
“And I don’t have the strength to do this all fucking day,” the Soul Weaver argued. “We get rid of the pestilents, and there won’t be any more humans under their spell.”
“Go! I can protect Grey,” Calder urged. His face was flushed from exertion, and his inky black hair was now slick from the water that danced about him.
It was on the tip of Lucien’s tongue to demand who the hell was going to watch Calder, but he swallowed those words, balling his hands into fists at his sides. Something deep inside of him twisted and tugged painfully at the idea of leaving Calder without proper protection. Logic said that the man was more than capable of keeping himself safe, but logic didn’t ease the pain and worry.
Of course, that illogical pain only made him angrier. What the hell did he care if the Water Weaver couldn’t watch his own damn back?
With a growl, Lucien waved one hand up in the air and the ring of flames that had been surrounding Grey’s signing tent disappeared in an audible whoosh. He stomped off, heading east toward Wright Square. The Savannah Book Festival stretched over the Telfair, Wright, and Chippewa squares. If the pestilents needed people to brainwash into doing their dirty work, Wright and Chippewa were the most likely places to find them.
The farther he moved from the Telfair Academy and Square, the more the crowds of running and screaming people thinned out. Apparently, the pestilents had largely focused on that square when they’d struck, because that was where all the Weavers had gathered.
Lucien snagged his phone and saw a quick message from Baer’s mate, Wiley, that the foursome was safely on the road with no sign of the pestilents following them. At least one thing had gone right.
Unfortunately, with Baer protecting the mates all the way to the house, it meant that he was out of the fight in the historical district for well over an hour. It would take him that long to drive to the house, drop off his passengers, and come racing back. And the way Baer drove, it would be a surprise if he returned in one piece.
If Lucien ever found his mate, he was never ever letting him in the car with Baer behind the wheel. The Animal Weaver was a fucking menace.
At Wright Square, he encountered a couple of pestilents, and luckily, no humans. The stench of their rotting bodies reached him on the light, afternoon breeze and he wrinkled his nose against it. While they looked like normal human beings to everyone else, the Weavers could see their otherness. They didn’t belong in this world, and something about being here was steadily killing the invaders.
To Lucien, the air sort of wavered around them as if from heat. Some had eyes that glowed red while others had talon-like nails that sliced and left behind a poison in the skin. Clay had told them all of an encounter he’d barely escaped, but not without first suffering four long slashes on his chest that even now were white scars despite Dane’s attempts at healing him.
Reaching inside his chest where his power burned behind his heart like a living flame, he sent it down his arms in an almost liquid rush until matching balls of flames appeared in his open hands. He tossed them like overripe grapefruits at the two monsters. The fire splashed across them, instantly enveloping both pestilents. As evil and deadly as they were, Lucien still winced and cringed at their screams. He wished he knew how to make their deaths quick and painless, but he doubted they had the same worries for him.
Lucien slowly closed his fists, extinguishing the flames on the pestilents and calling the flickering energy back to himself. He started to turn, when the ground rumbled under his feet. Without thinking, he called on the fire again, holding a ball in one hand, ready to throw it.
The tree on his right lashed out with one thick branch. It shot over his shoulder, narrowly missing him. He jumped away from the tree. The fire disappeared as he hit the ground and rolled straight up to his feet. Looking at where he’d been standing a second ago, he found the branch had stabbed through the chest of a pestilent who had been sneaking up on him.
With rising nausea in his stomach, he watched as the tree limb jerked from the pestilent and sort of shook itself, as if it were trying to get rid of the nasty gore. The pestilent flopped to the ground, a forgotten rag doll.