Total pages in book: 51
Estimated words: 49441 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 49441 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 247(@200wpm)___ 198(@250wpm)___ 165(@300wpm)
“But… but that doesn’t make sense.”
“My powers are gone here,” I reminded her. “Perhaps it is not about what infects vampires, but what can infect any average human.”
“Maybe,” she said, moving around me to check my back. I didn’t have to see to know the same redness and spiderwebs had spread across the skin there as well.
The pain was moving down my ass, teasing toward my thigh.
It wouldn’t be long before I could no longer hold myself up.
“Listen to me,” I said, grabbing her with my one good arm. “It has to be something you have the power against. A salve, an elixir, something you can create with your skills.”
The pain seared down my leg, making me grit my teeth, but not quickly enough. A pained groan escaped me.
“Help me to the ground,” I said as my leg became dead weight.
Roxy’s hands shot out, grabbing me immediately, trying to help hold some of my weight so I didn’t drop down as the pain moved across my pelvis and started down my other leg.
“Please fight it,” she said, kneeling beside me, eyes too flooded, making the waves cascade down her cheeks, falling in fat drops onto the ground beside me.
I had nothing to offer her right then as the pain stabbed at nearly every inch of my body. Nerve endings I didn’t know existed fired, making my body tense, my muscles spasming.
I lost my fight with silence.
The grunts and groans of pain quickly became curses and cries as the agony spread like a venom through my system.
“Okay. Okay. I’m gonna try,” Roxanne said, sniffling hard as she whipped around, looking for some sign of what had cut me, what might be the cure for me.
Seeing something, she jumped to her feet, rushing toward the hedge, grabbing at whatever it was with her bare hands.
I wanted to tell her to take care, to not end up like me.
But I was nearly mindless with pain as it spread over my chest, down my other arm, then back, heading up the sides of my neck, creating a blinding, brutal agony in my temples.
I couldn’t hold in the scream as it escaped me.
Roxanne whipped around, eyes huge, tears still streaming.
“I… I think I found it. I just need to work on a… something,” she said, dropping down on her knees near my sliced-open arm.
“No, please,” she cried as a pathetic whimper escaped me. “Please hold on.”
While I didn’t believe this labyrinth would kill Roxanne, a fellow witch, I didn’t have such reservations about me, an enemy of theirs.
It certainly felt like I was dying.
I might not get another chance to say anything. I could feel the pain digging into my brain.
I had to say… something.
Mustering what was left of my strength, I looked up at her pretty face. Full of grief and horror for a man who forced her into this situation.
“It’s been a pleasure… watching you remember who you truly are.”
With that, the pain screamed through my brain.
And I was thankful for death when it came for me.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Roxy
I was losing him by the second.
Each blink seemed to allow more of those purple spiderwebs to spread across his pale skin.
And while he tried to stiff-upper-lip it at the beginning, I could tell by the sweat on his brow and the tightness of the muscles around his lips and eyes that he was in agony.
But I… had no idea what I was supposed to do.
I didn’t do healing magic. Not really. I mean, I created spells to ease period cramps, but that was as close as I got to healing.
I didn’t even waste my energy on spells for my own cuts or anything. I just slapped on a bandage and let nature do its thing.
My grandmother was a healing witch. I used to watch her run around to catch a limping chicken, finding it had bumble foot or a fracture, then lovingly stroking the hen as she mixed a magic-infused salve for the bumble foot, or apply oils to the broken leg as she recited a spell.
Flesh to flesh, bone to bone.
This is the spell that I intone.
Restore the strength that was before.
Take what is broke and make it whole once more.
I could try to rework that for whatever this was affecting Nathaniel’s flesh, right?
I had to try.
His stoic silence became groans, then deep, soul-wrenching screams.
I stared down at the greenery in my hand, the deep purple sap dropping from the torn edge and dripping lazily onto the ground.
It was a poison of some sort.
That… helped, I guess.
“Think, think,” I pleaded with my mind that was full of anguish as Nathaniel went from writhing to stock-still, his eyes opened wide in agony.
He wasn’t going to last long.
But with what little strength he had left, what he had to offer was words of praise for me.
Blinking through the tears as his eyes shut, I forced my misery back and focused on the words. And the intentions behind them.