The Rise by H. D. Gordon Read Free Book Online Page A

little heart-shaped face, her bare feet dangling off the ground, a moon-white arm coiled around her fragile neck. Bethany discarded on the ground, having been ripped from Simon’s grasp and tossed aside like garbage.
     
    The Lamias hissed, the sound seeming to grate up the bones in my spine, and I felt my own throat vibrate, returning the sound as does a rival lion, roaring out my anger. All of my companions were at the mercy of the Lamias’ stone arms and saw-teeth, looking out at me with wide eyes filled with terror and shock and defiance. They were not even inches away from death, and yet they all still trusted me . I stood in the middle of them all, the creatures at their throats leering at me, daring me to make my next move, my heart pounding like war drums in my ears, and for a moment, was taken aback by the loyalty of these nine people. It seemed to strike a chord in me that hummed, harshly but not unpleasantly, and my soul seemed to be choking with burning tears.
     
    Wrong, wrong, wrong…
     
    When the Lamias’ heads tilted back, wide mouths stretching inhumanly over rows of razor sharp teeth, inky eyes rolling back to show the completeness of those black, black windows, I shot forward. Not with my body, but with the force that was so fierce within me, and wrapped my mental fingers around the nasty souls of the creatures. They froze, eyes as wide as eight balls, hisses cut short like a stopped record. They struggled to be released, and I knew that I would not be able to hold them for very long, not while I was still controlling King William behind the stone walls of Two Rivers. Searching the Lamias, holding them was like trying to keep a slimy, boiling plasma from spilling out of my grasp, leaking between the cracks of my fingers. I was only vaguely aware of my physical body, swimming in a sea of only sensation. And I could feel my energy depleting fast.
     
    Horror struck my heart, another chord plucked hard with a calloused hand, when I felt one of the Lamias break free of my hold. I managed to regain control of her quickly, snatching her back as one might a fly from the air. But it was not quick enough.
     
    The Lamia holding Daniel seized her moment of freedom, and with arms as swift as white lightening, she snapped his neck. My people and I felt a link in the chain that held us together snap as well, something elemental breaking free and floating away like a large piece of ice in a cold sea, and to this day I am not sure whether it was the bones in Daniel’s neck I heard cracking, or the connection to his soul, which was gone. I felt it. My people felt it. We all hurt , but mostly, me .
     
    And I had failed them. Failed Daniel, and he was gone .
     
    This is when I fell over that ledge, that cliff that hung over only darkness and broken things; that abyss which I would find so impossible to climb out of, for I was too broken to do so; broken in a way that could never really be fixed.
     
    A bellow of rage, guttural and feral, the cry of a wild beast, rang out through the trees, across the land. It was the sound of heartache, of fear and rage and crumbling things. I was off handedly aware that it had come from me, and that my arms were rising, my hands clenched into fists hard enough to make my palms bleed. I squeezed them harder and harder still, raising and raising what felt like bloodless extremities to the star-flecked ink high above. My rage and pain and guilt, what seemed like countless years of it, a dark and brilliant force that had been forced into a box too small for too long, came pouring out of me, and I commanded it.
     
    Around me the Lamias had released my people and were ripping at the hair on the sides of their own moon-lit temples, their shark’s mouths snapping shut, open, shut, open, the yawning jowls of demons. Their shrieks, high-pitched and wonderfully agonized, rang out in my ears, in my soul. I squeezed harder, harder, harder still. Drinking in their beings, sucking them dry the