Chosen One (Forever Evermore #6)(64)
Even with the fury boiling my insides, keeping me nice and toasty warm, my damn chin trembled the barest bit. His fury was a force all unto itself. His pompous nature irritated the shit out of me. His cruel, merciless side I hated with a vengeance, but would probably have respected if it hadn’t been aimed at me, hurt me. But this…nothing…he was giving me struck a different chord altogether. I wasn’t sure what it was, but I knew I didn’t fucking like it, the elusive emotion churning in my gut.
I rolled slowly, hiding my face, and cleared my throat quietly as I stood on exhausted legs, chancing a glance to the clock, praying I was close to being done here, needing the small reprieve of breakfast to pull myself together.
And that was when I felt it.
Through everything inside me, my Core thumped.
My breath caught.
It thumped again, and I quickly rubbed against my breastbone.
Buh-bum. Buh-bum. Buh-bum.
Harder…and harder it started to pound with magic, until it felt like another heartbeat inside my chest. My feet were moving instantly toward the pull. I felt as if I was in a daze of magical drunkenness, moving toward my destiny. “I have to go.” My voice was a mere toneless whisper, eyes on my destination, the door. “Have to go.” Elder Zeller was instantly in front of me, bringing a breeze, and I pivoted automatically, moving around him. “Gotta…go.”
“Kitten?” Leric asked inside my mind. “Are you on your way?”
“I’m coming,” I murmured aloud and through the bond, instantly ducking under Elder Zeller’s arm as he blurred in front of me again, his mouth moving, but I heard none of it, only Leric’s voice and the constant buh-bum, buh-bum filling my ears. “Is it time?”
“It is.”
I knew I should feel fear, but all I felt was the…pull…inside me to get outside. I blinked when Elder Merrick was instantly in front of me, walking backward; navy blue eyes scanning my face, his face still expressionless, but his lips were moving. I stared at them as I moved out the door, he beginning to walk up the stairs backward while I quickened my pace, my heart rate accelerating the faster my Core thumped. I shook my head at Elder Merrick, feeling dizzy, in a daze, pointing at my ear, stating loudly, “I can’t hear you.” I was starting to sprint up the stairs. “I have to go. Have to go. Have to go. Have to go. Have to go.”
He was managing to keep up with me, jogging backward, eyes trained on my face, and I shook my head. “It’s time.” I nodded, reaching around him for the door handle, thrusting the door open to the main floor, rubbing at my throbbing Core. “Grimm Reaper. I’m a fucking Grimm Reaper. Time to reap. Reap the fuck away. Reap…reap, reap.” And in essence, that was exactly what I was as the Chosen. “I’m not scared right now.” I was running through the halls, Elder Merrick keeping pace beside me, his face stone solid, attention avid on me, but his lips were no longer moving. “Not now. I just gotta…go. Gotta go. Gotta…go.” I laughed on a breathless chuckle, crazed, my mind chaotic as screams of the Damned, the trapped, began to fill my mind as I threw open the back door. “Insane. I’m going to be fucking insane. Another spirit…lost.”
Leric was there on the lawn already, face tilted down toward the ground, white rolls dangling about his face, glowing, his hands rotating, stars flying from them, not hiding his work this time—going to the Temple as I had suspected he had been doing previously for this—as spirit Guardians stood behind him, come from the Temple, a massive black, iron door beginning to form into the ground from his work. “Hurry, kitten.”
“Coming.”
Elder Merrick stopped abruptly when hands grabbed him from behind, and I kept moving, chest heaving, my mid-sized daggers materializing in my hands, already glowing, not sure when that had begun. I raced to stand beside him, staring down at the door. It beat in time to my Core…the Damned, those stuck between living and death, the truly evil which didn’t want to give in when it was their time, inside wanting free. I swayed back and forth to the beat, and my eyes drifted up.
There was a crowd on the lawn, everyone, plus house staff having followed me outside. All staring between Leric, myself, the Guardians, and the door, which even they stared at warily. Elder Farrar was knocking anyone back who started to take a step forward with a blast of his magic, or just flat out shoving them. But somehow, Elder Merrick snuck around the edges. I watched as he crept into the scooped tree line, but lost sight of him as he melded into the shadows.
“Grab the handle,” Leric ordered quickly, the door solidifying further from his working star-fueled hands. “You need to do this the first time now that we’re connected.”
I nodded instantly, no arguments, only the need to get inside. Tucking a dagger in the back of my shorts, I squatted and lifted the enormous wrought iron handle. “Open it?”
“Almost…” Leric’s stars power flew across me like a breeze onto the door, not hitting me, only its destination. “Yes, open it, and prepare yourself.”
My muscles strained and I grunted, shouting with the effort to open it, seeing my own power filter down into the door, the black ugliness of it slowly spreading to white from where I touched it, until the door glowed like the moon, and it flung open, hitting the grass on the ground with a juddering quake. Furious, enraged screams lit the air. Goosebumps instantly covered my flesh as the sounds of the soulful wretchedness in the world pounded.