Page 80 of Reap the Night
Shit.
The gold veins skimmed Hemlock’s jaw now. But he threw another jet of flame anyway.
Oh God, his hand was hot enough to burn me now.
He was using too much power. How much farther?
The batlings screeched in triumph because we were slowing.
Hemlock was slowing.
He ground us to a halt, spun, and erected a wall of flame between us and them. “Run!” he said to me. “I’ll be right behind you.”
The veins inched up his cheeks. The batlings wanted me, and staying forced Hemlock to protect me. But the veins, the power inside him was surging. He’d told me once that if it wasn’t controlled then he’d detonate. He was risking that for me now.
How much longer could he use his power before it burned him up?
I had to go. I had to leave him.
But my feet remained rooted.
“Go…” Hemlock ground out.
Heat circled my arm as my blessed mark activated, power surging through me as if…as if I was wielding my conduit. But I wasn’t. The power shot down into my hand, an inferno of agony, but my scream was muffled beneath a wave of screeches coming from behind us. A fresh wave of batlings.
The inferno died.
Hemlock dropped the fire wall as shadows rushed across the tunnel ceilings and walls.
The wave of batlings attacked Barin and his minions.
“Now fucking run!” Hemlock ordered.
This time I obliged.
I helpedHemlock into his room. His body was scorching hot and uncomfortable to touch, so it was a relief when he pushed me away. “The whip, the fucking whip.”
I grabbed it from his drawer as he tore off his shirt and fell to his knees.
I stifled a cry at the sight of his bare skin, lit up with a network of fiery fracture lines.
“Hit me!” he ordered.
I lashed out, over and over, not holding back, knowing that he needed this to subdue whatever the fuck was going on with him. His grunts of pain clawed at me, and sobs stuck in my throat.
I hit him again and again, tearing up his back as the fractures pulsed, fighting me.
“Harder!”
My arm ached. My chest hurt. I hit him with all my might until his back wascovered in rivers of blood and the glowing veins sank back into his body, and only then did his grunts morph to something else. Something low and aching.
A sob of relief finally from my lips, even as the pulse at my groin throbbed.
He moaned on the next lash and fell forward, palms on the ground.
I stopped hitting him.
“No…Again. Orina. Again.”
