Beast of the Damned #2

*Chapter Thirty-Five*

~ KINLEY ~

I'm back in the tower, a thick steel door I'm no match for blocking my way out. Not that it would matter. There are probably angels guarding the entrance.

This bracelet...I trace the beast, its face the centerpiece while its body and tail encircle my wrist. If Tristan hadn't given this to me, I'd be dead. Worse than that, I'd be trapped in a headless body. The only way out of this flesh is if a god banishes or consumes me. Otherwise, I'm stuck here on this earth no matter the state of my flesh.

Marianna and Tristan seem sure Satan will obliterate my soul, that I am the sacrifice she must use to possess my immortalized body. Even if that is true and the universe has forsaken me just as the gods of this earth have, I still have to try to make a difference.

What the—Is that a seed? I swipe my thumb over the cut that used to be in my arm. I didn't cut deep enough or Tristan's blood is still in my system because it's healed over.

A stinging hiss of discomfort flees from my lips as I dig out a seedling half sticking out of my forearm. I lift the seed into the torchlight to get a better look. It matches the seed I found on the floor at the castle. Only this one isn't blue. It's like a fuchsia pearl with a colored outer tint. Come to think of it. The blue seed also had a multi-colored sheen to it like this. It reminds me of how Cayuga ducks' feathers can take on beautiful shades of luminescent greens, blues, and even purple when the sunlight hits them.

How did this seed become stuck in my arm?

I drop the seed when Roarra's shimmering outline appears.

"You could have stopped this bloodshed. Many more will die because of you," Roarra fumes. "Your beast may have destroyed Azlan's flesh and her pendant, but Zeura will knit her new flesh. When my sister returns, the gates of Heaven will open, and she won't need her pendant because Heaven will be upon you. It won't matter how many fanged devils Tristan Darkos calls upon. We will smite them where they stand."

Azlan's necklace, I glide my fingers along the thin gold chain around my neck. The center stone is shattered. The live energy that was once moving inside the opal-like stone has leached out. If only I had been able to reach Tristan.

"Ah." I double over, searing heat blazing up inside me. The heat pools beneath my skin, ciphers being burned into my flesh from the inside out.

The ritual has begun. Queen Rakasha said I would know when it has started. These symbols appearing have to be it. I can hear the other massarra chanting the words Queen Rakasha taught me. Adalynn and Cora have already taken their pledge. No, not taken, forced. Adalynn would have to have been forced because she never wanted to be a massarra in the first place.

"Take me to the roof." I wrap my arms around my stomach, the fires of hell seemingly already moved in.

"Why should I do anything for you? Your beast will try and slaughter every last one of us, all for what? To save one life?" Roarra replies, yanking her sister's broken pendant from my neck. "She never should have tried to save your life. I took her place because I knew she wouldn't be strong enough to keep the evil at bay they implanted inside you."

"Take me to the roof. I want to see." I struggle to stand through the intense inferno marking me with demonic symbols similar to those Tristan painted on himself.

"If I could kill you myself, I would. But as I can't, I'll take you to the roof so you can see all the blood being shed in your name."

Roarra touches my shoulder. In the next blink, I'm on the roof, a veil of light making the humans lined up in front of the fort distorted as if I were looking at them through moving water.