Page 165 of Their Blood Rite

I lunge and bury my face in his neck, the compulsion to bite taking hold. When I do, his skin breaks easily. I drink. My fucking gods, I drink, and I drink like a female possessed by a dire thirst.

He screams, and I moan, relishing in its taste. When I feel something hot on my shoulder, I let him go, and he scrambles away, clutching his neck.

I pull out a dagger from my shoulder. The bastard stabbed me!

It hurts. A lot. But when it’s out, it eases. My tongue runs over my teeth. I have fucking fangs.

I roll my head and feel something inside snap back into place, erasing the tension I felt a moment ago. Confused, I check myself. My wounds are healed. The cuts. The bones.

All fine.

I was dead. Dead! I stood beside my corpse as a spirit, and then, in the blink of an eye, I was back inside my body.

The urge to kill Cole is overwhelming. To rip out his throat and consume every drop of blood is all that drives me. As I go to attack, he slams his hand into the dirt and gets pulled beneath its surface, swallowed whole and hidden away. I lunge and claw at the soil.

He’s gone. His earth magic burrowing him to safety. I scream and slam my fists into the ground. When I hear Sinthia’s depraved giggle, my focus shifts.

I’m up and running to the fight. When I break the treeline, I stop dead.

Archie is battling creatures I have only heard of in stories. In dark myths and legends. In the retelling of the war. Monstrousbeings with wings and horns. With soulless eyes and death-dealing talons.

The Dark Unseelie. Every creature is contaminated by darkness. All the monsters that followed the Blood Coven and its queen.

My mother.

The ground is littered with dead creatures, and their blood only strengthens the sisters. Many willingly offer themselves to the coven, proud and delighted to sacrifice themselves for their strength. They're running up to them and tearing at their own throats, spraying them with blood.

My mother stands between her blood sisters, dripping in red and thrumming with power.

They face the three guys.

Shaw and Dorian ready their swords. Archie digs his paws into the dirt to charge.

The three of them will not win. Not alone.

I fall to my knees and press my fingers into the dirt as the guys charge the smiling witches, who are more than happy to end them.

But their smiles soon falter when they see that the guys are not alone. As Dorian, Shaw and Archie run, facing death, they’re overtaken by an army. An army that has the witches overwhelmed.

Unseelie. Dead Unseelie.

An army of the dead.

Corpses, risen to fight.

My corpses. My army.

Me.

I exhale, calming the storm of power inside. Soothing the urge within me to abandon this and rip at throats instead.

Fight. Protect. Focus.

I command a hundred of the dead. I am the dead.

It doesn’t matter if my puppets get hurt. It doesn’t matter if they get struck down or have limbs torn off. They’re already dead, so they just get up and carry on.

Malevolent calm is what settles inside of me. A relishing of the chaos and death. One that urges me to carry on. To push myself harder. To command my empty vessels to fulfil my desires.

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