The Price to Pay

Chapter Thirty Two

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Death

I can't possibly listen to another word she says, the rage is growing and I know it's about to burst. She sees this, the cats eyes flash with alarm knowing when a lion will pounce.

"I did it selfishly at first. I have to admit I wanted to see her fall but I saw the girl that I used to be in her. She had the same desperation, the same look of utter disgust for what she was becoming. That used to be me and it hurt to see her fall, when she killed that human I could practically hear her cries from where I stood. Hundreds of miles away and I heard the pain it caused her to lose a part of your humanity. Don't hate me because I tried to give an ounce of it back."

I shook my head, "You are mistaken it was your actions, the way you have laid out this so called plan to give her, her humanity." It only takes one step forward, one step closer to ending the demons life. "You have dragged her to the very destruction that will end the little humanity she has remaining." My words are nothing but deadly whispers, I see how they cut deep into Bastet's skin. She knows what she has done was not the way to free the human.

Every step they have taken as led her to the one person that will destroy anything innocent and whole. Lilith. A succubus. The first succubus to manipulate the ways of man not with the seduction of her voice but with body and mind.

I watch as tears fill and spill onto her cheeks, she's feeling real pain now. It radiates off of her, seeping onto my skin, sympathy does not come. She was wrong to lead her to the one person who will do the very opposite of help.

"How can we fix it?" She sputters.

Fix it. It is best now to think Adeline is already on her way to the succubus, there won't be enough time to reach her. "She's gone. Let it leave your mind." She can forget about her book, she can forget that it will ever be touched by her hands.

The strength that is needed to walk away from her is unbearable, everything in me points to her blood in my hands.

"Stop! How can you just walk away?" That's when it snapped, the very thing holding me from killing her breaks into two and I'm forcing her up in the air my hand wrapped around her throat, my wings beating powerfully behind me as we rise off the ground.

Her face is inches from mine, her small whimpers and choking sounds are pushed away as I squeeze harder. "I can rip your head off with a flick of my wrist. Don't think I won't, Bastet." I nearly choke on her name, how can someone so small inflict so much damage by speaking. "She will not survive, don't you get that. As soon as she finds out who she is and where she came from, Li-" I can't say her name out loud, it's worse to endure. "She will kill her."

I drop her body to the floor, ignoring the way her body hits with a loud thud and the sound of her hands rubbing her throat as she coughs up, fighting for air.

"She hasn't gotten there, Ulsif was taking her there. She could still be here." The harshness of her voice barely delivers the words.

"Where is here Bast! She could be anywhere right now, she could be dead for all we know." But I knew she wasn't, I still felt her. She was alive.

She puhsed herself off the floor, clutching her throat in the process, "We can track her. Have Meeksha do a locating spell. She can be found."

A flash of the map soaked with my blood crossed my mind. Meeksha had mentioned someone else on the map that she didn't know who it could have been, was it her. "Did Adeline ever reach the fey realms?"

Please say yes.

She shook her head, "That's where they met, where I lost her. She was dragged inside by whatever magick that was attached to this crystal. She screamed until I couldn't hear her anymore. That's why I had came running inside wondering where she was, it terrified me the way she screamed. I couldn't reach her." She really felt some guilt, it still didn't stop me from wanting to kill her.