Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116263 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
When I hadn’t moved, he shook my mother hard. Her cry was muffled when just the tip of the knife pierced her throat.
“Come here,” he hissed.
Gulping down the terror, I inched around the island, moving closer to him. My hands itched to reach out and touch.
To heal.
To bind.
But more predominant was the repulsion that quickened in my veins. The warning that it might be too late for him.
Still, there was something there. Something that made me believe there might be a chance.
Even if there was the tiniest flicker, I would fight for him.
“Let her go, and I’m yours.” The words were crushed gravel from my tongue.
Black eyes gleamed, and the sickness that oozed from him crawled along my flesh.
Sticky and wet.
I took one more step, and I lifted my hands in surrender. “Free her. Let her go. And I’m yours.”
He wavered, torn between getting to me and the truth that saving my family was the only reason I had returned. The bare logic he possessed at odds with his thirst for death.
I nearly wept when he gave in and ripped the tape from my mother’s mouth.
She gasped in shock, inhaling desperate breaths as she coughed.
He didn’t slow, taking the knife and cutting through the rope in one swipe, first at her feet and then her wrists.
“Aria,” she wheezed. “Oh my God, Aria.”
She tottered forward like she was going to come for me, and he shoved her hard. “Run, you stupid bitch.”
My mother’s eyes were wild. Darting between the two of us.
Torn.
Terrified.
“Run! Get the kids and get out. Run to the neighbors and call the police!” I shouted. “Hurry! You have to get them out!”
Her brow pinched and her head slowly shook, as if she was going to refuse, but I shouted once more, “Go! You have to get them out of here before it’s too late!”
There was one strained beat of resistance before she finally relented and snapped into action, which I knew she was only doing because of my brothers and sister, and she fumbled around the island and out into the living room.
It was enough to distract my father for one fleeting second.
It was the only opportunity I had, and I took it.
I grabbed a pan that had been left on the island and whipped it around. It whooshed through the air and smashed into his wrist in a flurry of pain and desperation.
He lost hold of the knife, and it clattered to the floor.
A roar barreled out of him, a sonic boom of fury. Rage spiraled through the disorder that instantly struck in the room.
A match and hate and gasoline.
It combusted in dark, wicked flames.
He came for me at the same second I flew for him. My hands were outstretched in a bid to take him by the face. If I could just touch him. Reach him. See into his mind so I could free him from his chains.
My hands landed on his cheeks for the briefest flash. They were seared at the contact, and agony streaked up my arms.
I choked on the pain, and I struggled to hold tighter, to push through the darkness in his mind that clouded everything.
Only a blow came out of nowhere as my father drove a fist straight into my stomach.
It rocked me back, and I could barely remain on my feet as the air was knocked from my lungs. I bent in two, gasping, battling to stay oriented.
He dove for me, and he sent me flailing into a chair at the table. A shock of pain ricocheted up my back as I struck the wood. He threw another blow that landed at the side of my face, and it sent me toppling the rest of the way onto the tabletop.
He leaned over me, trying to pin me down, and I struggled to get to him, reaching for his face. I finally got my palms against the bristle of his cheeks.
Lightning struck and thunder rolled, and visions of darkness crawled through my mind. It was there.
The Ghorl.
The one we’d hunted.
Desolation whipped around it.
“Kill her. She’s the one responsible for ruining your life. She’s poison. Your wife will never forgive you. It’s over. It’s over. End her now. Then end them all.”
A cry hitched at the base of my throat at the wicked intonations, and I hung on, pressing harder against my dad’s jaw, trying to possess the light. To stretch it out. To bind the evil that zapped like the lick of an exposed electric wire.
A violent shout screeched from my father, and he ripped himself back as his hands flew to his face.
Heat blistered my palms, and invisible flames burned up my arms. I wondered if his cheeks felt the same as he roared and stumbled and floundered in an enraged circle.
And I knew there was nothing I could do to stop him, to stop this, when he finally regained his composure.