Page 95 of Her Psycho Beasts

The fourth snake rotates into position, the sound grating on my ears.

“Baby, I love you,” Savage grunts, “but hurry the hell up.”

Two minutes. I have two minutes left to figure this fucking thing out.

“The last line of the spell,” I say in my calmest voice, “says that it’s going to trigger all six to… That symbol means ‘chaos’ or ‘anarchy’.”

The groaning of the rocks for the fifth time practically slices the air in two.

“You three should get out,” Lyle says. “Angel, you too.”

Uncle Ben’s serpent blood contract swims in my mind’s eye. Hurriedly, I raise my left hand and focus on shifting my fingers into wolf claws. Black fur erupts from my skin and my nails elongate and sharpen. Before I can think about it, I slice the pad of my right index finger open.

A crimson bead drips out and I mark the stone, making a messy version of the symbolcease/stopat the end of the instruction for the final snake.

The symbol absorbs into the stone, settling alongside the rest of the spell.

Relief washes through me.

“Of course it wanted blood!” I cry. “I did it!”

But Lyle doesn’t move his foot. Instead, Savage yanks me into his arms and runs out with me. Eugene squawks loudly in panic as he flees for the door alongside us. I try and twist to make sure Scythe and Lyle are right behind--

To see Lyle and Scythe diving for the door, as the sixth snake remains unmoving.

We all sigh in relief until a movement at the side of my eye makes my head snap up.

I don’t even get to shout as a seventh snake, hidden above the entrance, snaps forward on a silent hinge, it’s mouth open, shooting ancient darts in quick succession.

I should have suspected trickery from the start.

We all dive, Savage cushioning my landing with his own body allowing me to see Lyle batting away two fast-moving objects with his telekinesis?—

And a dart catching Scythe right in the neck.

“No!” I scream.

Savage lets go of my twisting form as Lyle and Scythe stumble towards us. I leap up and catch Scythe, or rather, he stops when I place my hands on his chest. He reaches up to the old-fashioned feathered dart poking out of his neck.

“I can heal you,” I say, stopping his hand. “Wait.”

But there are feet pounding down the corridor behind us.

They know we’re here.

Chapter 47

Scythe

The dart in my neck immediately seeps venom into my system. I have no idea what type of snake venom it is, but I have a pretty good idea considering it was Aurelia’s great grandfather who put it there. It burns, sharp and fierce, where it sits in the thick muscle and luckily not the carotid artery so close by.

Aurelia’s eyes are wide and panicked when she tells me she can heal me. But the footsteps behind us need to be dealt with.

“Kill them,” I instruct Savage and Lyle.

They nod, darting behind me down the corridor. It was likely that Ben had failed to come up with a convincing lie about his absence from his guard post. He clearly loves Aurelia and wouldn’t have betrayed her if he could have avoided it. Even so, the only thing that kept him alive tonight was Aurelia’s request not to execute him.

Consciously lowering my heart rate to slow down the venom’s rate of movement towards my heart, I watch as Aurelia goes up on her tiptoes to reach my neck. But I’m about a foot taller than her and she can’t reach the dart.

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