Page 58 of Their Blood Rite

My breathing slows as I gaze into it. My heart thumps hard.

Thump… thump… thump…

It’s so loud, it’s almost deafening.

‘Two Kindreds?’ I hear one of them say. ‘Have you ever heard of that before?’

‘No,’ another replies. ‘Both an earth witch and blood. Two kindreds. I’ve never heard of such a thing.’

I can’t tell who is who or if they’re mad or happy.

I stare harder into that mirror. My face becomes another’s. A woman with dark hair blinks back at me. I wince at her mangled face. At the deep gashes across her cheek. At the eyeball hanging by a long piece of muscle to her chin. And I feel such pain and fear.

I fucking feel it. The more I look, the more I do. The way it feels to be clawed to pieces. The hot ripping. The agonising cuts.

Why won’t they let me go? Why can’t I look away?

The woman in the mirror slams her fists against the glass.

‘Let me go!’ I scream.

‘You have to link to it!’ Shaw insists.

‘She’s breaking through!’ I thrash harder. The mirror cracks. ‘Shaw. I beg of you. Let me go!’

‘She’s already connected to this Kindred…’ Dorian whispers as he holds me from behind. ‘That’s impossible.’

‘What?’ Shaw demands, his eyes dancing between us.

‘She hasalreadyconnected!’ Dorian reaches over and smacks Shaw’s hand. ‘Move the mirror before the spirit breaks through!’

The mirror cracks further, and a ghostly hand wraps around my throat. Dark fingers with black staining on the tips claw at my skin.

Dorian’s eyes widen as he sees it. ‘Destroy it! Before she possesses her!’

Archie rips it from Shaw’s hand and tosses it across the room.

The sound of it shattering is followed by silence. We all look at the shards scattered on the floor. Then they all look at me as I gasp in breath after breath.

‘Shaw…’ Archie whispers. ‘Did you see who that was?’

‘I saw.’

‘She already had a Kindred?’ Archie asks, falling back on his knees. ‘But, she has no scars. There are no marks on her body except those we put there when we claimed her.’ He gestures to my forearm. ‘Where’s her Kindred mark? She should have-’

My stomach turns, and I retch and heave, vomiting the wine I had only moments ago.

My head… my head!

‘Pixie?’ Shaw says, tapping my cheek as my head lolls. ‘Ashe. When did you connect to your Kindred?’

No words come out. Not a single one.

‘What the hell has happened to you, Pixie?’ he whispers. ‘What are you?’

My eyes close, and everything fades to black.

Chapter 9

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