Total pages in book: 163
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 154735 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 774(@200wpm)___ 619(@250wpm)___ 516(@300wpm)
The Book clapped again, the emphatic sound an obvious attempt to focus her—except she was already locked upon what it was showing her.
It clapped again.
“You want me to go find them?” she asked. When there was a third smack of the folio, she shook her head. “I am sorry, but however important they are to you, I am not going to go look for these two males—”
A sharp clap interrupted her.
“But you need me, too. This landscape is in my mind, so if I am here I know you’re safe. No one can get to you—”
The faces broke apart, the letters bursting into action as they whirled around once again, the features dissolving… only to re-form in a different alignment of eyes and nose and mouth.
“My cousin, Sahvage,” she whispered.
Another scrambling, another face, this time a female. “His shellan, Mae.”
In a relentless procession, more portraits created by the letters cycled through, and she knew them all: They were the males and females from her time in the present down below, the people at Luchas House, where she had taken shelter. Nate, the male she had saved. Shuli, his best friend…
Her sadness at the gallery was such that Rahvyn lifted a hand to her sternum and rubbed at the physical pain. Nate’s face was especially difficult to see, given all they had gone through after he had been shot… all she had done unto him.
The letters continued to shift, and currently, the visages alarmed her. No civilian males were these. One by one, the Black Dagger Brotherhood appeared. She knew not all their names, yet they were not the kind of thing that was easily forgotten.
And now… the last portrait.
Her heart stopped. The male had long black hair falling from a widow’s peak, and a visage that was both aristocratic and cruel. Dark lenses—which she had learned were referred to as wraparounds—covered his unseeing eyes and added to the menace he presented, a threat that was alleviated not in the slightest by the deep, ferocious furrow between his brows.
Wrath, son of Wrath, sire of Wrath, the great Blind King—
Those glasses were slowly removed by a steady hand… and then those strange, nearly pupilless, eyes stared straight out upon her.
With a hiss, Rahvyn jerked back. Yet they could not see her surely? This was but a rendering, and in any event, the male had no sight upon which to call.
The lips began to move, as if he were trying to tell her something—and then from the four corners of the open folio, a black tide rushed into him, the roiling letters overtaking him as he began to scream. The tight swirl of utter darkness consumed him… and then an explosion wiped all of it away, leaving only blank pages.
In horror, Rahvyn sat back and covered her face with her hands. When she finally collected her wits enough to look once again, she saw that single letters were falling from the top of the open pages to the bottom, like rain.
No, it was snow. It had to be because the flurrying symbols collected at the base of the book’s display, the level growing higher and higher.
“I am not a savior,” she whispered. “I cannot—”
A portion of the Book’s pages curled up and then blew out one side, like a tongue: Pffffffffffffffffffft.
A sense of impending doom tightened her throat. “What happens if I leave here? I do not know if it compromises you in some way—”
The Book closed itself abruptly. After which its gnarled, ugly cover pulsated, as if it were flexing.
“You can take care of yourself,” she murmured.
The sharp clap was an affirmative if she’d ever heard one.
“But I should rather stay here with you—”
The Book flopped itself open and the windowpane reappeared, Lassiter’s face not as something created by an artist’s hand, but as a photographic representation of the fallen angel, a flickering light playing over his grim features.
He was before a fire, she guessed, and as she tracked the way the golden illumination made his eyes shimmer, she realized that the wall behind him seemed to be some sort of rock. Had he taken shelter in a cave for some reason? She had overheard someone saying that he lived with the First Family and the Brotherhood.
Why would he be alone in the wilderness? Was he in danger?
“The angel is wrong,” she said roughly. “I am not the Gift of Light.”
The Book clapped again and did not stop, the urgency of the two sides impacting and falling back like a military drummer’s beat.
She thought of the portrait of the King, consumed by evil.
And the two males she did not recognize.
Then Lassiter.
“Their destinies are all connected.” When there was no reply, she looked over with even more dread. “Tell me.”
Before there was a reply, Rahvyn was already getting to her feet. “Where do I find—”