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

way they had done countless others. But it wasn’t blood I was after. That would have been a mercy, and I was fresh out .
     
    The Lamia’s bodies collapsed to the ground in unison, their cries cut off and disappearing on the breath of the wind. I felt a wild rush of energy, watched as whatever force gave the damned creatures their existence found a new home in me. My body stood ramrod still, strong as waves of it seemed to swell and crash over me. My companions were rocking back on their heels, eyelids fluttering, sharing in the sensation, my name falling from their lips in whimpered gasps, the way one might say that of their Maker. The dead Lamias on the ground began to fade, the way chalk does if swiped with a dry cloth.
     
    And then the Lamias were gone. Just gone. I had ripped the very essence of life from the shells that contained them, separated the physical from the metaphysical, stolen the recycled energy that never truly belonged to anyone. I’d killed them. And, yes, it had felt good.
     
    When I began to move forward, my legs feeling like weightless buoys drifting in a sea of thick, dark waters, I felt my people move with me, as if tugged along on leashes, Simon gathering Bethany into his arms once more without having to be told. None of them had to be told.
     
    The pain of Daniel’s departure was still throbbing within me, pulsing and heating like the fresh wound that it was. No tears fell from my eyes, but I felt those of my companions as truly as if they were rolling, wet and warm down my own cheeks.
     
    And none of them blamed me. Worse yet, they all regarded me with that wonder and undeniable devotion that I was so clearly unworthy of. Worse still , I couldn’t seem to find it in me to care. And worst of all, I wanted more .
     
    Only when my gaze settled on Daniel’s lifeless body—his brown hair lying dully and limply over his forehead, his once-warm brown eyes staring heavenward, as if the light had that once filled them had returned there—did I take pause. I felt something then, not the ripple of souls around me, not the thrum of life that coursed silently through space, or the almost sweetly sickening adoration of my followers, or even King William’s red anger and hatred back in the Queen’s office. I felt something physical, and it seemed to zip me back from wherever I’d been, which somehow seemed to be a high place, in every sense of the word, and push me over the edge of nothingness, where only broken things lay, all at the same time.
     
    My stomach clenched. Hard. I felt my legs, which had been of no consequence and so sure just a moment ago, go as soft as heated butter. I collapsed to the ground, the dirt and roots and sandy earth that were beneath my feet meeting me head-on and cold, very cold. I felt these things too, along with the sharp pains that accompanied them. But as I stared up through the thick trees and beyond, seeing so much more than just needles and branches and sky and stars, I knew that the physical pain was not so much a bad thing. In fact, I welcomed it. It seemed to clear my head, only a little, but enough for me to know that killing the Lamias the way I had, removing them in such a simple and basic and forbidden manner, had only left me hungry for more, had opened a dark box inside of me that would not be so simply closed.
     
    The pain in my knees, my neck and head, and everywhere else was something I could deal with, something that I understood. And, no, it wasn’t bad at all. I had to fight this urge, this rooted inclination to keep taking and taking, stealing and stealing the life energy that did not belong to me.
     
    It doesn’t ever belong to anyone, whispered a voice in my head. Not really, so why shouldn’t you take it. Why shouldn’t you—
     
    I closed my eyes.
     
    And saw sunlight. Or at least, that’s what it felt like. I recognized it as that thing I’d seen in the distance, the thing that my companions had wondered at. It was nearer me