Page 68 of Malice
He fell to the ground, gurgling and twitching as he struggled to heal. He would survive, but it wasn’t an injury he could immediately recover from.
Chaos let out a primal roar, mowing down the men in front of him. But once again, it was Merri who stole the show.
In a move straight out of a horseman’s handbook, she took several steps forward, palm out, eyes narrowed in rage and swirling with power. I watched in a mix of terror and fascination as her eyes turned milky white and two tiny black horns appeared at her hairline.
She was the spitting image of her mother.
Then, as Malice, Chaos, and I stood by, Merri sucked the souls out of every remaining human on our property. They crumpled into heaps, eyes staring vacantly, pure horror etched onto their deathly visages while she positively glowed from the power. Hands held out at her sides, she lifted her face to the sky, and her hair swirled around her as her feet lifted from the ground an inch.
I swallowed past the lump in my throat as I watched the woman I had pledged to protect fully come into her power. She turned those milky eyes on me, and her feet returned to solid ground.
All I could manage was a heartfelt, “Fuck.”
Chapter
Nineteen
CHAOS
“Merri?” I said, my voice a tight rasp as I watched the horns retreat and her eyes return to normal.
She turned her attention away from Grim and trained her gaze on me in painfully slow motion. “W-why are you looking at me like that?”
“Like what?” I asked.
“Like you don’t recognize me.”
“I’ve never seen you do anything like what you just did, Red. Forgive me for being taken aback.”
My focus flicked to the bodies littering the ground before us. The power she just displayed would have terrified a weaker man. In my case, a healthy dose of caution was definitely warranted.
“They’re dead,” Malice confirmed, voice low. “All of them.”
“She sucked out their souls. I watched it.” Grim’s voice held both awe and pride as he walked into the mass of death, stepping over the fallen humans and inspecting them as he went.
“I didn’t. Did I?” Merri’s frantic question had me closing the distance between us. I needed her to know she wasn’t in trouble for exercising her power. She stopped them. She defendedherself and us. That was more than we could have hoped for. It was what we’d been training her to do all this time.
Taking her face between my palms, I whispered, “You were incredible.”
“But . . . but . . . I killed them.”
“It was them or you, Red. You saw what they did to Sin. You would have been their next target.”
“Oh my God. Sin!” She tried to twist her head out of my hold, but I tightened my grip.
“No need to look. He’ll be fine, and you don’t need that image in your memory.”
“But—”
“No,” I repeated firmly.
I’d been trying to assuage her panic, but I could see it in her eyes as they darted from body to body. “I killed them. Oh my God. I killed them all. I’m the monster Lilith always said I was.”
“What are you going on about?” Malice asked. “You were amazing. That”—he pointed at the pile of corpses at our feet—“was a thing of beauty. Do not for a second regret what just happened.”
Her wide eyes swung to him. “How can you say that? They’re innocent humans.”
“They were trying to kill us,” he retorted, disbelief lacing every word.
