Page 11 of Death God

The dead had reached me.

In the past, I could sense them here and there. I could especially see the souls the moment they slid out of their shells, but it was nothing terrible like this.

The ward erected by the horseman and his dark mages was imbued with tens of thousands of tormented souls. As they pressed in and touched me, the horror of their violent deaths and being trapped here as fuel for eternity overwhelmed me. The oldest souls here were centuries old, and Spartoi kept adding new souls to the ward as well.

As Death’s daughter, I saw it all and felt it all. I was connected to the dead like no one else, which wasn’t exactly peachy. But I was who I was. Even Marlowe called me little monster.

The horde of the dead brought out the dormant part of me, and it grew and expanded, linking to the dead like a live wire. My heart beat hard and fast, wanting to escape the agony of the restless souls in the endless dark sea.

I gritted my teeth as I enhanced my shield, and yet screams still tore out of my throat.

Then suddenly, the shrieks of the dead ceased, the echo of their nightmares pulsing in the air now just a memory.

We were through the portal. Our van touched down on the other side of the ward, unscathed.

I gasped to calm my heartbeat, blood still pounding in my eardrums from the adrenaline of encountering the horde of angry souls in endless misery. I was a far cry from being prepared.

The Alpha King studied me. “Are you okay, Pip? It seems you reacted worse than anyone else.”

Spartoi peeked out through the alpha’s eyes, his intense, creepy interest sending chills slithering down my spine.

I wanted to throw up, but I fought against the dry heave that threatened to come up. Cold fury writhed in my insides, and my hatred for War burned hotter. I now had an endless supply of hate for one man—no, one evil entity. The horseman wasn’t a man.

The motherfucker caused so much harm and misery to millions of beings. He wouldn’t even let the dead rest.

He’d go down, I vowed. I’d do everything in my power to make sure of it, even if it meant my own demise. For the first time, hope brewed in me—my death power might undo him. That was what the light mages had tried to tell me all along. They’d tried to draw out my death power, but I’d been too full of life and love around Marlowe; there hadn’t been room for the death power.

Now that I was all alone in enemy territory, away from those I loved, I might just open myself up to this new power. I’d made my first contact with the dead, kind of. It wasn’t for the fainthearted, but it was necessary to turn the spirits into my allies if I wanted to take down the dark angel of war.

I had also found another useful truth—though the cuffs bound my power, they couldn’t mute or cut my connection to the souls that fueled the ward. I needed to explore this further, no matter how unpleasant it was, and see if I could turn the wrathful spirits against Spartoi.

“It’ll get easier, Pip girl,” Going-gray murmured from his seat. “You’ll get used to it.”

If he could have heard the screams of the tens of thousands of souls trapped in the ward, he’d never have said something so naïve.

I didn’t ridicule him though, as the last thing I wanted was to let my enemies know about my death power.

My dark gaze fixed on the red castle that was coated in dark magic, then the familiar tower behind it. It was shaped like a black swan stretching into the unnatural sky and emitted the foulest magic. I could feel its malevolence even from this distance, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Morbid goosebumps crawled over my arms.

In my gut, I knew that most of my years of captivity had been spent inside that dark tower. All the flashbacks I’d had of waking up in agony in the middle of an operation because the drugs ran out or the dark mages intentionally bringing me out of the induced state to see my reaction and feed on my pain were from inside the tower.

I couldn’t go there. I would never go there again.

Without a doubt, the horseman would toss me on the operating table again as soon as he got what he needed from me, or sooner if he grew more desperate or lost patience. I would never allow him to lay a finger on me again. I’d come back, no matter how much I hated it, to finish the job and to pave the way for Marlowe and his army.

My rage and fear became a live wire, and I gave all I had to restrain myself from trembling, yet I still trembled inside.

Let fear pass through so it won’t latch on to you, I said to myself again and again.

How badly I wanted to reach for my mating bond and draw strength from my true mate, but that was the last thing I should do. It broke me just to think how devastated Marlowe must be with the unbreakable ward separating us.

We were in a different world now. He’d hate it so much to know that I was all alone in enemy territory. But we had different roles to play, and we had to do what we had to do if we wanted to see each other again and preserve this world.

The enemies’ vehicles started rolling again, cruising across the plain and toward the red castle perching atop a range of cliffs. The dark-blue sea roared beneath and crashed into its base.

“Don’t be a downer, Pip,” the Alpha King criticized. “As I said before, holding a grudge isn’t healthy. Let’s move forward for a better future.”

“A grudge?” I snorted coldly. “Do you know Spartoi, the horseman you merged with, experimented on me and cut me open daily for a century?”

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