Page 19 of Forever Frenzy
Surprise lifted her brows.
“I didn’t expect—”
I was in front of her in an instant, backhanding her to the side. She stumbled, grabbing her bleeding lip and staring at me with contempt.
“You didn’t expect me to do what? Protect my family? That was yourfirstmistake.”
She scoffed.
“The second is underestimating me.”
Using my left hand, I sent her flying into the fountain; the concrete splitting apart and the entire thing overturning with a loud crash.
Sekhmet stood and bent her neck left and then right, cracking her vertebrae and giving me a look that saidgame on.
“You’ll regret that,” she promised.
“The hell I will,” I vowed.
Once I made it to the clearing, I saw that it was midday. The snow was mostly melted, water dripping from boulders and the leaves glistening wet in the sunshine. Seth took off running toward Blackwater, but paused when he realized I wasn’t following.
“What are you doing? We have to help Mom!”
“We will, but she has to find Sekhmet first. You can take us directly to her.”
“That’s too risky. Sekhmet could overpower her and then wewould appear right in the middle of a trap.”
I shook my head. Porschia wouldn’t let that happen. Not now.
Mess with her, that was one thing. But mess with Seth?AndSaul? My God.
Sekhmet might be powerful, but she wouldn’t survive the hell Porschia was about to unleash on her.
If she’d been decent, a good sister, I might have felt sorry for her. But she was evil. She was never going to stop. This had to end once and for all, and Porschia had to be the one to stop her.
Porschia was no kitten now. She was a mother bear and she was about to consume the person who dared to step between her and her cub.
Seth raked at his hair again. The leaves on the ground, as far as the eye could see and likely farther, lifted off the ground, hovering a few feet above it. “Seth,” I said calmly.
When he opened his eyes and saw what was happening, his mouth gaped. “You have to calm down. You’re much more powerful than I realized.”
An explosion from the direction of Blackwater shook the ground. “What the hell was that?” Seth yelled, covering his ears.
“I don’t know, but get us there. Now.”
In the center of town, at the Pavilion where I first saw Porschia, there she stood, Sekhmet’s neck in her extended hand and glittering magical remnants raining down around them. Golden tears traced down Porschia’s cheeks and a mournful howl escaped her mouth as she screamed at my sister. What the hell was this?
“He’s pure power, isn’t he?” Sekhmet taunted. “You drank from him, too?” Sekhmet’s throaty laugh was cut short by the squeezing of Porschia’s fingers.
Itwasbecause of Seth, or possibly the combination of my blood and his.
I heard the vertebrae in Sekhmet’s neck begin to crumble, popping and crunching as Porschia lowered her to the ground and quickly snapped her neck to the side. The last thing my sister felt wasn’t triumph; it was every ounce of power she’d ever had being drained away by the person she once described as a bug – so easilysquashed.
Seth and I moved in from East and West, placing our hands on Sekhmet’s body, slack on the ground, her eyes lolling back in her head. “Destroy her!” Porschia screamed after ripping her fangs from Sekhmet’s neck.
We called for the guardians to drag her to the Underworld, to bind her there. She would have felt when her soul was jerked from her body. She would have felt when her body slowly dried, each part of her becoming no more than sand itself. She would have known the moment I blew her away, scattering what was left of her body to the wind.
Porschia, sitting on her knees, began to laugh; a hollow, frightening sound. “She is nothing,” she whispered.
