Chapter 11 #2
But the fire didn’t stop there. It continued running under the stone floor to blast outward once more, collapsing parts of the backwall including the doorway through which the other Elders were attempting to escape.
Trapped and panicked, a couple of them threw down vellums to quickly form new protective wards before them as the others tried to reopen the way out.
Father Paulus and his acolyte joined forces to thwart—or at least hinder—their efforts.
A glance at my mate filled me in equal measure with awe and worry.
Eleni had been a powerful mage before, but now she was something else.
Judging by the small set of horns that poked out between the fiery strands of her mane, a fire demon had lain dormant within her.
Her forehead and the sides of her cheekbones were covered in cold lava-looking streaks.
Like with the spears impaling the cultists, fire glowed between the creases on her forehead.
It further underlined the eeriness of her now completely obsidian eyes, devoid of sclera or irises.
However, those mutations didn’t seem to be set in her flesh.
It looked almost like an ethereal version of them hovering just above her skin.
Still, she was breathtaking. However, the savage expression of her face hinted that she was feral.
I welcomed my mate embracing every aspect of her true nature.
The almost palpable violence radiating from her rather aroused me.
My female’s darkness beckoned mine. However, it was too early to tell if she would lose herself to its madness.
I couldn’t allow it.
Eleni ran towards the Oracle. I wanted to stop her from finishing them off too quickly as I wanted to gather as much information from them as possible.
We still hadn’t found the missing clerics.
And memories faded quickly from the target’s organs once they died.
A still beating heart or a fresh brain provided the most in-depth insights—not that I particularly wanted to consume any part of that foul female.
But two dozen constructs charging us demanded my attention.
I fired my lightning at them, hoping for the same outcome as their counterparts earlier by the altar. To my dismay, they didn’t shatter, my power having apparently reverted to its previous level. The electric blast made them falter, some of them even collapsing as it fried their mechanical brains.
Without the cultists using their magic to mend the constructs, I rampaged through them with unbridled savagery.
They were fast, but compared to me, they were lumbering giants at best. Even their considerable strength paled against mine.
With my claws extended to their maximum length, turning them into mini daggers, I stabbed and slashed at my enemies, butchering and eviscerating them.
No word could describe how orgasmic it felt severing their tendons, ripping their limbs off, and decapitating them before tossing their still bleeding parts towards their masters.
Where the constructs ‘died’ quietly, their cultists masters filled the Sanctuary with their screams of terror and agony as they continued to self-mutilate.
Half of them were now lying on the ground, either unconscious or dead, swimming in a pool of their own blood.
Their pain was the sweetest aphrodisiac—their just punishment for harming my woman.
In between two attacks, I glanced at Eleni to make sure she was still safe.
At first, I’d feared that, in a blood rage, she might kill Paulus and his friend.
But she completely ignored them as she focused her wrath on the Elders.
She hadn’t killed the Oracle and her two helpers as I initially assumed she would.
As they were incapacitated—and slowly bleeding out—the other trapped Elders remained the clear and present danger.
With Paulus and his friend weakening the Elders’ protective walls, Eleni was taking each of them out, one after the other.
In a mesmerizingly horrible display of power, my mate would select one victim and throw her hand in their direction.
The air blurred as an instant wave of heat shot out in a concentrated beam.
The moment it hit her target, their chest would glow red, then she would cook them from the inside out.
Their eyes ruptured, and boiling fluids bubbled out of their ears, eyes, nose, and mouth, while blisters spread all over their skins.
They would collapse in seconds, their bodies quickly turning into charred husks.
She was magnificent.
Just as I was finishing the last of the constructs, a subtle ripple in the air had my head jerking towards the throne. My heart skipped a beat when a man appeared next to the spikes upon which the Oracle was impaled.
“Elliot!” I breathe out.
Busy slaying the last trapped Elder, Eleni and the two mages assisting her noticed the newcomer half a beat after I did.
Before she could launch an attack on him, Elliot raised his open palm towards the staff upon which the medallion containing at least half of my mate’s soul still hung.
He shouted a word of power, and the Amulet of Reaping flew towards him.
“NO!” Father Paulus yelled, mortal fear audible in his voice.
Without thinking, I unleashed my lightning.
Although it wasn’t at lethal force, it was powerful enough to knock the medallion off course.
It sent it flying to the right end of the room, past the pillar upon which Eleni had been shackled.
My mate cried out and collapsed on the floor.
She panted heavily, her eyes rolled to the back of her head as violent spasms wracked her body.
“Eleni!” I shouted, horrified that my attempt at protecting her had instead caused harm.
Running towards her, I simultaneously blasted a nightmare at Elliot to keep him from attempting to snag the Amulet again. But the wretch slapped his hand on the Oracle’s flayed shoulder, and they both vanished with a swoosh, the same way he’d escaped the crematorium.
“It’s too far from her. They cannot be separated!” Paulus shouted over his shoulder as he ran towards the Amulet.
It was all the explanation I needed. I picked up Eleni, holding her tightly against me to restrain her thrashing before running after the Templar.
The closer I got to the Amulet, the more my mate’s body relaxed in my arms. Father Paulus picked up the medallion with great care and met me halfway.
He attached it around Eleni’s neck, and she exhaled a shuddering breath, all tension fading from her face.
To my shock, her demonic features also receded, as she regained her original appearance. She blinked groggily, the dark ink that had overtaken her eyes resorbing back into the normal pupil size, once more displaying her beautiful green irises and white sclera.
The other priest cast a protective shield around us to stop any potential attack while we cared for Eleni.
Aside from the trapped Elder, there technically was no one left who could attempt anything.
The other cultists were all dead or dying, including the two Elders still impaled on the spears next to the one left vacant by the high priestess.
Father Paulus placed his hands over my woman’s forehead and chest before reciting and incantation.
My back immediately stiffened, and my fangs instinctively descended.
Unfazed, the priest—or rather Templar—completed his spell.
Although my need to protect my mate urged me to attack him, at a visceral level, I understood that he was trying to help her.
“I stabilized her the best I could, but she must be made whole again,” he said, running a nervous hand through his hair. “She will not survive very long with her soul split in half like this. She might last two or three weeks at best.”
“How do we reverse it?” I demanded.
He shook his head and gave me an apologetic look. “With this extent of reaping, I honestly don’t know. I never thought she would resist this long before releasing her darkness.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? If you didn’t have a clear way of reversing what was being done to her, why the fuck would you have allowed it to begin with? Why turn on the cultists after potentially irreversible damage was done?” I demanded, anger audible in my voice.
“Because she needed to release her inner power. Eleni remained a target as long as she had not fully embraced her true nature. I have dedicated my life to protecting her. My time is counted, and greater forces are seeking to enslave her. I had hoped she would have done so of her own volition while under the protection of the Church. But she took my initial warnings about keeping it locked away too much to heart. Even after I told her that it was finally okay to release it, now that I trusted that it wouldn’t control her, she couldn’t. ”
I eyed him with continued anger and disbelief. He lifted his chin defiantly and pulled out a small blade from his robe. Without hesitation, he made a small cut in his wrist and lifted the wound before my face.
“Drink, and see my truth,” he commanded. “Eleni is a daughter to me.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. I drank his blood, his memories flooding into me with powerful clarity, all the way down to the first day he met my beloved.
What her blurred past—largely influenced by the drugs the cult gave Eleni—had kept hidden from both her and me, Paulus fully revealed.
For her, he had broken countless rules, plotted and manipulated to keep the Church from executing her, from culling the threat of what she might become and that fiendish people coveted.
For her, he would have faced excommunication.