Page 166 of Their Blood Rite

Death. I want death.

I am death. I command it. I own it.

I am a necromancer. Blood is my power. My power is with the dead and the damned.

Archie grabs Sinthia. She tries to protect herself, but his jaws are no match for her. She screams as he bites her, snatching her petite body in his mighty jaws. He violently shakes her and only releases her when Dhalia throws a shot of dark magic at him.

Sinthia is dropped, bleeding to the floor, sobbing hysterically.

‘Bad puppy!’ she screeches, looking at her mangled torso. ‘You’re such a bad puppy!’

When Dhalia tries to help her, Dorian leaps between them. He has a doll in his hand and crushes it. She doubles over, and as she does, Archie slams his paw on Sinthia’s head, biting her stomach and ripping. Bits of flesh, blood and organs fly through the sky, showering Dhalia and Dorian in red mist as they soar overhead.

When Sinthia's severed head lands before my mother, an eerie silence falls.

Neve lifts her vengeful gaze to Archie, the male who just murdered her sister, and her eyes go black. Those dark veins pulse, and she pulls back her wrist to throw some serious dark magic at him.

I raise my hand. A wall of rock and soil rises between them, taking the brunt of the power.

I was unsure if the earth still heard me. If it would listen as it did before.

Archie looks at me and roars. But in my head, I hear him. His words beyond the wolf.

LOOK OUT!

A screech from my left rings out, and my eyes widen as a creature I think was once a fae man sprints towards me. He would have the beauty Kieran had if his skin wasn’t a sickly green and his body an elongated and spindly shape.

He’s moving as fast as a hound, his eyes on me. The daggers he holds are coated in blood and ready to drive into me.

A swarm of shadows swamp him, swirling with such violence the air fills with desperate screams and tearing flesh. Sheer terror fills those screams. Complete despair. When the shadows recede, all that’s left is a mess of blood and pulp. The shadows go to Dorian, who then continues his fight.

When I look back to the bridge, my mother fades into grey mist and glowing embers, which soar straight at me. Her body reforms, and her hand is around my throat before I can blink. Those dark tendrils of power seep from her fingers and force their way down my mouth and nose.

‘What are you?’ she snarls, lifting me off the ground. My connection to the corpses are severed. I know they’ve all fallen to the floor. ‘I snapped your neck.’ She sniffs me. ‘Impossible. This is impossible.’ She looks into my eyes hard. ‘Dead…’

There’s another harrowing scream from the bridge. Neve turns. Roots and vines hold down Dhalia as the boys surround her, dodging the streaks of magic she tries to hit them with.

Dorian grips her poppet in one hand, crushing it and making her scream. She uses her dark magic to rip and burn the roots, but I keep sending more, slithering around her struggling limbs, twisting them hard, snapping her bones and keeping her down.

‘Sister…’ Neve whispers, just in time to see Dorian hack off Dhalia’s left arm. Then Shaw takes her leg with a swipe of his sword.

‘NOOO!’ my mother screams.

Dorian bites Dhalia’s neck. He tears and rips like a savage animal, pulling at her hair and yanking her as she screams in pain.

Neve lets me go with a desperate and despair-filled scream. She reaches out for her sister, dark magic building in her blood-soaked hand.

But too late.

With one final tug, Dorian decapitates Dhalia. He tosses her head to Archie’s wolf form, who crushes it between his teeth and then swallows it.

‘No…’ Neve whimpers. ‘No…’

The boys face her. Dorian’s front is dripping red. Archie licks his lips. Shaw points his sword at her.

‘You’re not strong enough without your armies, Neve. And you are certainly not stronger than the four of us. Your turn,’ he smiles.

No.Myturn.

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