Page 85 of Death God

Marlowe evaded, ducking between the centaur’s hooves, sometimes skidding and sometimes pivoting out of the beast’s many attempted stomps while slashing his blades at the beast’s calves. The centaur reared back to avoid being cut, then stomped down on Marlowe at rapid speed.

Then, suddenly, the centaur lifted himself into the air and dove toward Shade, who fought shoulder to shoulder with Going-gray, Danielle, and Paris against the former Alpha King’s elite shifter force.

I knew exactly what the horseman was doing.

He couldn’t take down Marlowe, and nor could my mate kill him. Though they had wounded each other, they were locked in an impasse. So he decided to go for easier targets, knowing that by murdering my friends, he’d hurt me a great deal. I wouldn’t recover from their demise. I’d be even more panicked if my family hadn’t been whisked away to safety.

Marlowe spread his wings and shot up into the air, then dropped on the centaur to slow him down. His swords sank into the giant centaur’s thick neck like a toothpick, and the horseman took the opportunity while my mate tried to protect my friend and buried his spear in Marlowe’s left wing.

“No, no!” I screamed.

He wouldn’t have gotten the Vampire God if my mate hadn’t been so desperate to protect my friends and thus exposed himself.

Marlowe roared in pain and wrath, and the battlefield rumbled with his roars.

The horseman centaur flashed a monstrous grin, his claws lashing out, aiming to remove Marlowe’s head. Marlowe drove a blade into the horseman’s claws, and the horseman bellowed in rage.

Marlowe tore his wing from the spear and freed himself; a spray of blood rained down from his wound. My heart ached so much, yet I couldn’t help him. If I distracted my mate, I might cause more harm.

Marlowe twisted in the air and flew back toward the centaur, hurling a blade toward the monster’s skull. At that moment, War shifted.

A dark fallen angel landed, his bloody spear flashing with crimson lightning.

The sight of the lightning sparked an idea in my head, and a brilliant light pierced my consciousness. My dad’s final whisper echoed in my head. I couldn’t defeat the horseman with either my death flame or dragon fire, but fortunately, I’d acquired a new power when Mom and Dad’s powers merged in me. I now understood that had always been my parents’ ultimate design. They’d prepared me before my birth for this day, and War had no fucking idea what my time power could do.

I’d travelled through time and space during my transformation and came back through the revolving door of life and death. I could exist in the past, present, and future, but the horseman of war had rebelled against Heaven’s order and become a thing of the past.

He had expired a long time ago. He should not have existed in the present, let alone in the future.

I shifted, not to a dragon, a wolf, or a vampire, but to a dark flaming skeleton that also shimmered with icy starlight.

I shot toward the dark angel of war. His corrupted power was formidable, but he couldn’t counter my phantom form.

“No, no!” the dark angel cried out. “It can’t be. It’s impossible!”

Now he realized what I could be and what I truly was.

“You’re in denial, fallen angel.” My phantom mouth offered him no sympathy before I tore into him.

My flaming hand plunged into his chest like a dagger going through butter, my claws seizing his corrupted spirit. It was so slippery and cold and evil that instinctively I wanted to fling it away. But I held on and endured as I told myself that this gross feeling would be over soon.

It struggled in my grip, battering me and burning me, desperate to break free.

“I’m awfully sorry,” I told War’s spirit. “But I’ll have to rid the world of the filthy, as you said, and erase you from the timeline like you never existed.”

I ripped his foul essence from his vessel.

A vortex that bore the teeth of time appeared. I arched my phantom eyebrow, but then it made sense, since time was all teeth and claws. Only death was immune to its power.

I tossed the horseman of war’s spirit into the time vortex. Its teeth shredded through his spirit like it was a delicacy, and War shrieked.

He shrieked so horribly that everyone on the battlefield, except the Vampire God, dropped to their knees and clamped their hands over their ears. The intensity of the pain and horror he’d endured in his last moment made up for a portion of what I’d suffered at his hands.

The vortex vanished.

I had utterly erased the existence of the horseman of war.

CHAPTER 23

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