Page 25 of Harbinger

“Eden,” Brianna murmured.

The witch was staring at her daughter, face ashen.

The young mage smiled faintly. “Don’t worry. Woody and I will not fall prey to this disease.”

The devilwood pendant quivered against her throat. Eden’s confident tone seemed to allay some of Brianna’s fears.

“Be careful.”

Cassius’s heart pounded as he crossed the floor to the screen showing the satellite feed. He pointed at a spot over the ocean some thirty miles from the shoreline.

“We should make our stand here,” he told Theo and Eden. He turned to face the rest of the room, his gaze sweeping the humans and otherworldly who would stay behind to defend the city. “Try to get people as far below ground as you can. Subways, the basements of buildings. Anywhere deep that can slow down the spread of this plague if it does make landfall!”

* * *

Darkness swarmedthe Goddess’s mind. An eternity of darkness. Just as coldness swallowed her body whole, the chill of it so deep it would have frozen her bones were it not for her divine powers.

She could not recall a time when she had been warm.

Has there ever been such a time?

Her thoughts scattered to the winds, like they always did. Whoever she had been had long succumbed to the will of the one who controlled her. She would have felt anger had she retained a fragment of her consciousness. But she had none.

She did not even recall her own name.

And so she moved, relentless in the task she had been assigned by a merciless God, raining death and destruction in her path across the realms he’d chosen to attack. The screams of the dying did not reach her ears. The stench of rotting carcasses never filled her nostrils.

Instead, she fed on the despair of all those she killed and funneled it into the dark seed her master had carved inside her body, so he could feast upon it and grow stronger still where he bided his time in the Nine Hells.

Strong enough to destroy all worlds.

Strong enough to kill the Gods themselves.

Something shimmered in the distance. Points of light. The coastline grew defined.

A city of man appeared, towers of glass and metal gleaming under the sun as they soared toward a pale blue sky.

Not for long. Soon, they will be but ashes and ruins blemishing the Earth, just like all the others.

Nothing survived her passage. No man. No creature. No tree. No building.

Well, almost nothing.

A trace of unease flitted through her, only to be consumed by the corruption dampening her mind. She had been vaguely aware of the otherworldly souls and the few humans who had not breathed their last when she had scourged the lands to the south of mankind’s realm. Since they were inconsequential to her mission, she had not paused to investigate the reason for their survival.

After all, their world would soon be dead and their hopes crushed.

Something drew her divine gaze. Another source of light.

The Goddess frowned.

It was arrowing toward her at supersonic speed, the ocean parting beneath it in a V-shaped trail of foam-tipped waves.

Whatever it is, it too shall fall.

The dark mist she travelled in thickened as it started to drop through the atmosphere, the plague eager in its intent to destroy everything upon the land ahead of her.

The point of light grew. Expanded. Became blinding.

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