Page 86 of Sweet Violence
Wait, my extremities wereactuallygoing numb, the feeling leaving my fingers and climbing up my palms to my wrists.
"Son of abitch!" Taj roared, releasing me to slam his fists into—the air? Wait, what the fuck?
He hit the air, but it was like a wall of plexiglass was there instead of oxygen, c02, and whatever the fuck else made up the atmosphere.
"We're locked in. Someone bound us in a trap. This is bullshit!"
I was wound so tightly I jumped, my breath hitching at Taj's growled rant. He continued to slam his fists into the invisible wall, even shifting into his eight-foot-tall form and thrusting those hands at it. They glanced off; not even claws could penetrate it.
"Taj," Arkan barked, exhaling a rough breath. "Enough."
"My thoughts exactly," a different, unwelcome voice agreed, and Izan stepped out of the fog with a dramatic whoosh of his cloak. "It ismorethanenough."
Cold slipped down my spine, the same eeriness I felt earlier, only this time I recognised it for what it was: warning.
Recognition.
"I'm surprised it took you so long, Aveline," Izan remarked, his eyes fixed on mine, making my heart skip.
He took another step, and the cloak washed away, clothes changing from flouncy and theatrical to practical, brutal canvas and camo. Pale, vulture-ish features became rounder, blunter. Izan's tall body grew shorter, stronger, until I was looking at Christian Lachesi. The Canine Slayer. The biggest monster in the whole fucking world.
My dad had been here,under my damn nose,this whole time. While I'd been running around, looking for his minions, he smirked at my obliviousness.
And now we were all going to die because of it.
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Arkan snaked an arm around my waist and pushed me back, angling himself protectively in front of me as he erupted into shadows and bone. His skeletal hand extended in a scary, threatening point at my dad.
"I mark you for death, Eidolon," he told him in a voice that would make the most hardened criminals piss themselves.
But Dad only smiled at him, a horrifying thing empty of humanity. "Death didn't take me the first time; I doubt it'll be so successful a second time."
I swallowed. I needed my bravado, my bravery.
"I'm going to kill you, I swear to you," I whispered. "I don't care how many deaths it takes."
"I look forward to it," he replied, and meant it—there was nothing but genuine warmth in his voice.
I shuddered.
"But first," he said, stepping forward, "I'll be taking my prize."
"You're not taking heranywhere," Arkan snarled, backing us up, protecting me, X, and Joseph. Taj growled, clawed crimson hands lifted in threat.
When Dad reached for the barrier of air separating us, my brow wrinkled. His face was familiar, his body the one I'd grown up hugging and flinching from in equal measure, but there was a spot in his cheek, curved from his smile, that had … flaked away. Like burned paper curling up. And underneath it was something scaly and swampish.
I was so focused on watching that spot on his cheek, something demonic visible underneath his human façade, that I didn't realise his hand punched through the shield trapping us and reached forTaj, not me.
"No!" I yelled, my voice hoarse as Arkan and I threw ourselves after Taj, grabbing an arm each.
Taj roared, dragging himself back, struggling against my dad, but more bits of Eidolon’s mortal body peeled away, revealing something far stronger than he'd been before.
But Taj was a prince of Hell, and in full demon form. He was stronger … right?
I pulled hard on his arm, and cried out when it slid through my grasp, Taj tumbling forward all at once.
"Taj!" Arkan yelled when his red body lurched forward, Dad dragging him out of the cruel barrier that kept us trapped.
