Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 727(@200wpm)___ 581(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 727(@200wpm)___ 581(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Vasilisa paid no attention to the vampires, her brother, Afanasiv or the venomous, thorny vines bursting through the ground forming a towering cage around her. Her entire focus was on the demon creatures dragging themselves into the fray. She was well aware they could burrow beneath the ground and the vines caging her in. The venomous vines seeking to rip open her skin or stab through her to hold her in place came far too close for comfort, but she couldn’t take the chance of moving. Any movement could bring a strike.
She kept her light pointed toward the sky, the umbrella of luminous beams a shield. Any moment, the gathering demons would attack. Timing was everything. She had trained her entire life to defeat demons, to drive them back to the underworld each time they found a way through a tear in the earth, a vent, a thinning wall. This was her job, her purpose. A legacy handed down from mother to daughter right along with Afanasiv’s soul.
She was aware of each of the foul creatures as they came closer. The earth’s heart beat beneath her feet, giving her the information she needed as they came from every direction, trying to conceal themselves beneath the ground, behind rocks, under the ice, in the trees and brush. They skittered under the vegetation lying on the ground like real salamanders might, but they were so much larger, and though they possessed some ability to do magic, they could not hide from one such as Vasilisa.
She waited, holding still, needing answers. There was something amiss here. Humans, Lycans, vampires and demons all acting together as one, or was this simply a coincidence? She didn’t believe so much in coincidences. With that booming, low-pitched note, the leader induced the others to charge as one. They rushed under the thorny cage and then scaled its walls, using the thorns dripping with venom as hand- and footholds to scale up the sides. They didn’t seem in the least concerned with the poison, as if they were immune. That was her answer.
She went into action before the demons could expand, taking their true forms. She spun fast, her sword of bright light tipping outward now toward the cage made of thorny vines with the occupants clinging to its walls. She called on the heavens above in her soft, angelic voice. Her musical notes rivaled that of the low booming notes that strove to displace the finer grains of rock in the interface between the tectonic plates.
As she spun, the sword aloft in one hand, she released droplets of a liquid from a vial she held in the other hand. The drops were caught in the twister she created with her spinning sword. She didn’t appear as if she were going that fast because she was the center, the eye, completely calm. The drops expanded to become a deluge of rain, water pounding with force, hurling against the vines and creatures as they tried to reach her.
Siv could hear her soft voice as she continued to speak to the demons. Her tone never changed from that sweet, magical, melodic pitch. “Hear me, demons, sent by the commander of the army of Lilith, queen of the underworld. You cannot have my lifemate. You cannot have my brothers.”
She plunged the blade of the ceremonial sword into the icy forest floor. When she did, the vines shivered and shrieked as if she had sliced through them with the cutting edge of the blade. Bright red blood bubbled up everywhere the vines had erupted through the ground. The low humming notes of the salamander creatures turned to shrieks and screams.
“This ground is lost to you. This shape is lost to you. Each form she sent this night is now locked in this consecrated earth.” She scattered drops of the liquid from the vial in four directions and then above her head and onto the ground.
On the surrounding trees, malevolent spiders smoldered with smoke and leapt from the trunks, bursting into flame before they hit the snow. Beetles and other insects screeched in distress as they erupted into bright blue flickering flames that leapt into the air and then floated as wispy ashes to lay as black specks on the white surface.
The salamander demons had begun to elongate, stretching from their amphibian forms to something more human. At Vasilisa’s sweetly voiced command, they desperately attempted to throw themselves at her with wicked claws extended, with gaping mouths wide, stretched to their fullest extent, serrated teeth dripping with venom. They tried their best to bite her, to sink a venomous-tipped talon into her, but she glided away even within the close confines of the cage of thorny vines.
The rain of liquid fire falling on the demons began to dissolve them. Siv saw that holes began to form straight through the hapless creatures as they wailed and gnashed their teeth. They fell from the sides of the vines onto the snow, where they writhed and sizzled and smoked. The foul stench was sickening even to him. Siv had to cut off his sense of smell immediately. He almost automatically did so for his lifemate, but fortunately at the last moment he refrained.