AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Shadowlands Omega
A Preview
_______
Order on Amazon Today
| Kiandah
Orias Village
“Kia, help me!”She shouts. Automatically, I roll onto my knees, crawling until I reach his body. I press my palms around the arrow over Zelie’s to try hold back the bleeding.
“Should we try to remove it?” Someone says.
I shake my head, but it’s Zelie who vocalizes it, “No!” She shouts. I’m still shaking my head and staring into Tor’s lifeless blue eyes as huge gales of thick grey smoke bleed around the edges of the front door.
Everyone is crying. My heart is a battle axe in my chest,just like the ones that he wore, cleaving away at everything that matters. Everything that counts.
I picture his face, the little I’d seen of it, as he’d come down the hillside. Wreathed in darkness, just as his skin had been cloaked by it. I’d sensed more than seen his justice, his firm hand, his desire for retribution. I know it has something to do with my parents and my sisters and the Betas and the dead bodies in the basement. I know it does. I love my familymore than life itself, but right now I can’t help but wonder why they did what they did? Why did they feel they had to? My mama said she wanted more for us. More. More more more. More will be what kills us. And I find a sentient rage simmering in my chest along with that all too potent grief, too.I was fine with less.
A window shatters and a glass bottle sails through the air, something alight sticking out of the neck end. “Someone catch it!” A voice says. But no one catches it. It shatters against a row of empty pews near the altar and they instantly blaze.
The church was built to burn. The heat is immediately sweltering. Several more of my family try for the broken windows and I see in cold clarity as Justine takes an arrow to the chest. Justine. She’d been my friend for as long as I can remember. I went to all of her birthday parties. We snuck out once together and took our punishments together, too. She went with me to the Paradise Hole forests once, just on the edge, where healing berries grow. We even managed to sell some of them in our village market before Owenna and Justine’s older brother, Victor, caught us.
They’d sentenced us to take over the latrine duty in the castle. We’d had to do it for a week and, they thought it was a punishment, but it had been one of the most memorable weeks of my life. It’d been my first time in the castle — my only time in the castle — and I’d been cleaning a latrine on the first floor when I’d seen him for the very first time. At least, from up close and beyond just a photograph or a painting, but in person.
He’d been talking to one of his Alphas in the long, breezy corridor. He hadn’t seen me, of that I’m sure. I’d been twelve. He’d been eighteen. The energy cascading up and down the entire hall had shifted with his presence — it’s what drew me out there in the first place. It’s the same energy I feel in the air now. Subtle vibrations. They’re terrifying, unwelcome. Unwelcome, but still magical.
Fire licks up the walls. Bodies fall over one another in desperation. Someone is screaming my sister’s name and I see that Owenna has thrown herself over my father who is…he has an arrow sticking out of his back. What… How…
“Cyprus!” Zelie screams. The room fills with smoke. I can’t see. Everything stings — my eyelids, my nostrils, my lungs, with every inhale. I drop to my knees and glance to my right to see Sandra and Nikolai shrieking as they hide beneath the pews. Fiancés, their wedding is set for next month. They’d asked me to bake the cake. It’s not the first time I’ve baked a wedding cake, but I’d been honored.
A burning fills my chest. I release Tor and clutch at my apron with bloody hands. Zelie screams my name next. I try to look up and find her, but I can’t see… And then Cyprus’s voice chimes next, “Move, Kia, move!”
But he’s too late. A huge weight slams into my back.
The fire. Something’s on fire. It’s on fire on top of me, pinning me to the ground and I can’t move. I open my eyes and see Cyprus crawling towards me on his belly, but I want to tell him to stop, it’s no use. I’m dying.
“Kiandah, no!” Cyprus roars and he’s suddenly up on his knees, touching at whatever’s got me pinned, moving it off of me. Lifting it like it weighs nothing.
“Cyprus,” I whisper, amazed and spellbound. He’s almost got the beam completely off of me now, but before he can fully dislodge it, a massive, splintering sound shakes the foundation of the church. Cyprus says my name again and I look up at him over my shoulder as he burns both of his hands, just to help me. Save me. But I notice that his hands aren’t the same hands they’ve always been. They’rebigger. His chest swells. His eyes flare as they connect with mine. All at once, he emits a powerful scent marker, like he’s wearing cologne and, while it doesn’t appeal to me — he’s my brother — I still gasp. He’s ascending…
Holy shit. We always thought he would. Funny timing.
“Cyprus,” I say again, wanting to laugh. I don’t feel the pain in my back, though I probably should. Instead, feeling something terrible coming. I don’t know what it is, but I can feel it charging the air, a premonition, though I’ve only ever had one of those before. I was five when I had it. Right before the accident.
And then a cracking sound and in the next second, Cyprus is no longer standing where he had been. Cyprus is on the floor, disappeared beneath the flaming beam right in front of me. It’s singeing my hair, burning it all the way to my scalp. I’m on fire. My entire body is burning but who gives a shit about that. Cyprus… I have to do something. I have to save him.
A mouth opens up inside of my chest and I release a terrible scream. Pain hits me again but I still don’t feel it, not against the rattling of the floorboards. They’re shaking. I’m shaking. Cyprus is shaking, moaning, still alive, but not for long. Not if I don’t do something.
I release a sound I’ve never heard myself make before — a moan. I moan like I’m in the middle of a rut. Heat and flame and wretched, wonderfulblisschar my body and my bones. Pleasure slithers up my spine, swallowing me bone by bone, while fear and panic and rage and terror and the overwhelming desire to save Cyprus andeveryoneelse. These are my family. I am not the one who does something, I’m just the one who’s content, but right now I feel like I might be able to do something. The only one who can.
I exhale and inhale that desire, that belief and then…the fire starts to recede. The top of Cyprus’s head comes into view. He’s pinned underneath an overhead beam, just like I am, but he’s not on fire anymore. He’s not moving though. He’s not moving. Why isn’t he moving?Cyprus, you ascended, you can’t die now,I would shout at him had I the voice. Instead, I open my mouth and pain tears out of me and it’s a horrible, magnificent thing. I moan again, deep and from the belly. I press my knees and bloody palms into the floor. Sweat slicks my skin.
A scream rips out of me and a moment later, my brother’s cries rise with mine and that fuels me. He’s alive. He and I might be the only ones who are, but that’s not going to stop me from trying for him. I’ll try for him until my last breath. Waves of energy cascade out of me and as I scream and pain contorts every one of my bones, the fire starts…to retreat. And retreat…and retreat…until the pews become blackened ash and the windows and walls are pocked with holes that look like mouths with shards of glass for teeth. I can feel the fire moving away from me, through me,it is me.
I hear people coughing. I hear shrill shrieks. They may be in pain but they’re alive. Finally.
