Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 108517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108517 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 543(@200wpm)___ 434(@250wpm)___ 362(@300wpm)
I hefted the blade in my hand. Good to go.
Alessandro and I walked down the ramp. He held out his hand. I gave him my yoga mat—arguing with him about it was pointless—and we approached the gates.
The house, a two-story Texas Mediterranean, rose in front of us at the end of a long driveway. It could have been on the cover of a luxury real estate publication in any of the state’s large cities. Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, it didn’t matter. Rich Texas was rich Texas. You could drive through any millionaire neighborhood and find a monster just like this one: thirteen thousand square feet and way too many bedrooms and bathrooms mashed together by beige stucco walls under a red tile roof.
This particular variation featured a Roman style portico with columns protecting glass-and-wood double doors and a short turret to the right of the entrance with a wrought iron Juliet balcony. The driveway ended in a roundabout with a massive fountain in the center of it, its spire the same height as the house. An iron gate stood wide open at the mouth of the driveway as if daring us to enter.
“Can you feel her?” Alessandro asked.
“Not yet.”
We both knew Kaylee would zero in on me the moment I came into range. I was betting on a lifetime of feeling inferior. No matter how pretty and rich someone was, among the Houses, your magic was your primary asset. Kaylee had spent most of her life hiding her lack of magic power from her friends and her family. Crushing a mental mage would be the ultimate flex for her. Arkan must’ve told her about my powers and killing me would be doubly sweet. I was both a mental mage and a rival. I saw the way she had looked at Alessandro when he took my hand.
Nobody would be sniping us. That’s why we had left our aegis with the transport, guarding our civilian ride-along.
We strolled up the driveway, taking our time, me on the right side and him on the left. The protective shell I’d been growing around my consciousness was almost complete. My mind floated in a tightly wrapped ball of vines spun from my magic. I’d begun building it the moment we decided on this trip. Maintaining it sapped my strength, but I had magic to spare.
Alessandro stopped and put his arm in front of me.
A creature perched at the top of the fountain, gripping its spire with oversize clawed fingers. Seven feet tall, it resembled an ape, slabbed with thick muscle under long nasty black fur. Its face was a horrifying meld of a baboon and a lion with a simian nose, massive jaws, and tiny eyes sunken deep into its skull. Sharp black quills thrust from its back, bristling like the needles of some nightmarish porcupine.
Revulsion hit me.
The beast stared at us. The quills on his back snapped upright.
Nausea swirled deep in the pit of my stomach and blossomed into fear. The urge to run gripped me, overwhelming my common sense. My body knew on a basic animal level that this thing was wrong and awful and the only way to survive was to run as fast and as far as I could.
Prime Nathan Sanders. A metamorphosis mage out of Alberta. Powerful, experienced, and nasty in a fight.
We had fought a metamorphosis mage before. Her name was Celia. Neither my magic, nor the bullets from the handguns Alessandro had summoned, worked on Celia after she’d transformed. My memory served up Alessandro splattered with blood, slicing a beast in half with a chainsaw. It had taken that chainsaw, a sword, and the world’s most powerful hunting revolver shot into her mouth to take her down. Later we found that Celia happened to be Nathan’s cousin.
A low growl sounded from my right. A larger version of the baboon lion waited under a tall oak. This one on all fours, bigger, thicker, with paws the size of dinner plates and claws like steak knives.
A third beast perched in the branches of the oak to Alessandro’s left, smaller than the largest monster but larger than the one on the fountain. Its fur was a dark, dirty red mottled with black, its face more cat than baboon, its body completely quadrupedal. It gripped the branch of the tree with all four feet, its black claws hooked into the bark like sickles. A reddish mane framed its head and thick neck. If it had the ability to transform into a human shape, no signs of that remained.
Luke and Gabin. Sanders had brought his sons.
Alessandro slid the screen off his shoulder and unfolded it calmly. I sent my magic twisting to Nathan on the fountain. His mind was completely opaque, inert without any humanity left. The lights were on, but nobody human was home. Nothing I did to this consciousness would have any effect. House Sanders were holos-metamorphs. Once they changed shape, only the prey drive remained. They locked on a target as if their life depended on it, pursued their prey with single-minded ferocity, and didn’t stop until they ripped them apart.