Page 161 of Every Shade of Shadow

I’m close enough now to scent the rot, to see the way her skin is cracked and mottled.

"You are nothing."

A spike of shadow materializes in my grip. I tighten my fingers around it and drive that fucker right through her black heart.

For a moment Mortis stands transfixed, mouth gaping. The shadows, the creatures she called…they evaporate around us.

I grit my teeth and shove the stake deeper, hitting bone.

But still those eyes flicker with life. She starts to laugh, slow at first and then building as the shadow I drove into her is consumed by the hole in her chest.

She shakes her head, coming forward and lifting her hand.

At once, I’m petrified, turned to stone and completely powerless before her.

I should be able to get out of this, but her power is too great even for me.

“Ana!” the Professor shouts.

But not before the Headmistress places her hand around my neck, lifting me from the floor. “And to think, all that fucking around with dear Damien and you’re still going to die.”

Her other hand goes back, shadows pulling around it.

This is it, I think to myself.

This is where I die.

There’s a snarl on that ashen face before me, the shadow lance rushing through the air towards my abdomen.

Something crashes into me hard from the side, enough to break me from Mortis’s grip.

I’m thrown clear, rolling sideways on the floor, and coming right just to see the shadow lance pierce through the back of Damien’s body, it’s tip ruby and wet with gore.

Oh, God, no.

I scream internally as Mortis lifts the Professor aloft and tosses him aside, his body thumping to the floor.

No.

He sacrificed himself.

For me.

The scream inside me grows louder. Deafening.

The rage builds and builds until it blots out all else. I concentrate it, focus it, and the petrification spell breaks, feeling returning to my body.

I rise from the floor on steady legs, concerned with only one purpose.

The lance is gone, but Mortis’s hand is still thick with the Professor’s blood.

I see him, lifeless, and the shadows that come to purpose inside me are of such undiluted power it’s as if I’m no longer human but energy itself. Whatever human limits I had before have been transcended.

Mortis is laughing. “Sorry about your bo—”

I don’t let her get the word out. I bring my hands up and scream, releasing everything I have.

Energy, pure and concentrated, runs from my core, through my arms, twin bolts of lightning that bore Mortis to the very back of the room.

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