Page 121 of Ruthless Scoundrel
“Stop fighting this. Your fate is inescapable.”
I hit the crystal in her center mass with a heavy shot. A spiderweb crack spears through the gem and the sinew of the beast thins. The individual bodies pull away from each other as gravity starts winning the battle against her magic.
I aim for the center crystal again, but she blocks the shot with one of her arms. The other comes down faster than I can react. I’m struck dumb, suddenly landing on the ground beside a golden golem. My head throbs angrily and my vision spins. Nausea overtakes me and I spill my stomach.
“Pathetic,” the voices rumble as one.
“I know you are,” I mumble, wiping the spit from my lips with the hem of my dress.
“So childish,” the creature laughs from many mouths. Some tittering, others bellowing, a few snorting. It makes my heart ache to hear them all and know they’ll never laugh again. That Vansen murdered them, and my mother turned them into thisabomination. I must free them.
She looms over me, reaching with tendrils of darkness to swallow me up. Not this time. Not me.
The sun’s energy culminates in my chest, burning like a pyre. I grit my teeth against the pain, letting it build. When the agony is too great, I roar, releasing my fire. The blue beam rips through my mouth and smashes through the dark crystal, obliterating it. Bodies drop all around me with wet smacks, their skin blackened from ink and flame. The wind howls, screeching as evil magic whips around me.
Vile ice creeps up my arms and pulls me from the floor. I light up my skin with my heat and the cloud shrills, whistling in my ears so loudly I can hear nothing else. I scream against the power detaining me, a battle of pain and wills upon us.
“You cannot defeat me,” the blackness whispers hoarsely as it drags me through the skylight. “In moments, the moons will align.”
Fuck, what was it the dead bastard said? He would call upon the goddess of evil in the lowest hell.
Ashai.
My heart stops as I stare into the cloud of darkness. “Ashai?”
The blackness wheezes a laugh. “Your rebellion didn’t tell you?”
A deafening explosion of water and stone makes me wince and curl in on myself, but Ashai’s hold is too strong. My arms and legs won’t move.
“Reina!” Jasper’s call restarts my heart.
He’s alive.
Alive, and coming for me.
“No!” Ashai snarls and I open my eyes just in time to see my life ending.
Massive jaws of razor-sharp teeth loom around me, and then snap shut. I fall onto something warm and squishy in the blackness. It smells like fish guts and feels like it too. I dry heave, and then there’s a hand around my arm, yanking me up.
“Rei,” Jasper cries, crushing me against his chest.
“What the fuck?” I ask, gasping for air from the stink.
“Ready your power, child,” a voice rumbles around us, vibrating my chest until I feel like puking again.
“It’s the Voice of the Abyss,” Jasper says.
His opal magic lights up the space—the inside of the creature’s mouth—and he sends a wave of healing magic into me. We jostle to the side, falling against the beast’s tongue.
“The dark one is not defeated!” the thunderous voice booms again.
Jasper comes up to his knees. “Give me your arms,” he says, turning me around so we’re facing the rows of teeth that block our escape.
I kneel with him, planting my back against his chest. He raises my arms and puts them together in a triangle directly in front of our joined hearts.
“Draw strength from me, my love, and end this apparition for good.” Opal magic twines around our arms, locking them together.
“I’ll burn you.”
