Marked For Death: A Dark Urban Fantasy Novel Becca Blake (fiction novels to read .txt) 📖

The hellhound gave up the search for Alexis and turned its attention to Jacob. With the demon between us, I couldn’t make it to him to help with the hound.

The demon raised his hand to shoot another blast of fire, and though he still couldn’t see me, his guess was close enough.

I dropped my invisibility just in time to form a ward in front of myself. The rushed ward caught part of the blast, but not all of it. The heat from the flames shot past me, barely missing my arm.

My breath caught in my throat as the cornfield behind me caught fire. The flames that surrounded us on both sides crawled through the corn stalks toward Jacob’s car.

The demon hadn’t been aiming for me at all.

I rushed for him again, but without the aid of my invisibility, he dodged my attack with ease. He swung out his arm to stop my momentum, and the blow caught me right in the chest, hard enough that my grip on my sword loosened.

We didn’t have much longer before the inferno made it to Jacob’s car. Even if we managed to kill the demon and the hellhound quickly, we would lose our only way out of here… and Alexis with it.

I leaped to my feet and started for the car as the engine roared to life. Dirt and corn husks shot up from the tires as the car swerved out of the field. I rolled out of the way, and Alexis sped past me in reverse. The car smashed into the hellhound, sending it flying into the fire raging on the other side of the road.

As I picked up my sword, its energy hummed in my arm once more.

Attack.

The word echoed through my thoughts until I obeyed. This time, when the demon tried to avoid my attack, I let my blade guide my strike. The soul bond did its work, and I drove the sword through the demon’s chest.

“That’s for Ayla.” I shoved him off of my blade, and as he stumbled away, I kicked him into the fiery field.

The demon’s skin melted away from his bones and caught on the pavement as he crawled out of the fire. His rotting flesh fell away as the flames engulfed him, and the putrid stench permeated the air. Jacob walked over to what was left of the burning demon and decapitated him. The gruesome mass of flesh and bone dissolved into a pile of dust, which blew away on the wind.

The hellhound leaped out from the flames. Embers coated its entire body, but the flames didn’t seem to affect it the way they did its master.

As the flaming mass of hell beast lumbered toward me, I dropped to the ground. When it dove for me, I thrust my sword up into its chest.

The hellhound wailed with its last breath as the flames on its coat crackled around me. The heat closed in, threatening to devour me along with the creature. I put up a quick ward and rolled to the side, narrowly avoiding the body as it tumbled past me.

“Let’s get out of here,” Jacob yelled over the roar of the flames.

He hopped in the passenger seat, and I climbed into the back.

“Drive!” I said.

Alexis sped the car down the road, never stopping until we arrived at the abandoned warehouse. We all sat in silence for a while to catch our breath. Aside from Alexis’s arm, no one seemed to be injured.

“Thank you for saving me.” Alexis traced her finger along the steering wheel and stared at her lap.

“We didn’t do it for you.” Jacob snatched his keys out of the ignition.

Alexis winced, as though she expected him to hit her.

“We need information from you.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on the two front seats.

“And after I tell you what you want to know, you’ll kill me.” There was no question in Alexis’s voice. “That’s okay. I’ve known I was going to die since Casey stole that emerald.”

“We’re not going to kill you,” I said, ignoring the glare from Jacob.

“You killed Casey.”

“She attacked us.”

“I suppose.” Alexis closed her eyes. “Casey is—was—my best friend. But after everything we’ve done, I guess all of this was just… inevitable.”

“You don’t sound like someone who wanted to be involved with this,” I said.

“I only joined the coven because I didn’t want Casey to be alone. She had such a rough life. Her mother left her with an abusive father when she was little, and she never had many friends aside from me.”

“And you wanted to help her?”

“I thought I could fix her, but instead, she dragged me down, too. She got arrested in our senior year of high school, thanks to the boyfriend she was with at the time. I thought it was just the drugs they were into, or something like that, but it was… this.” She let out a cynical laugh and shook her head.

“Dark magic and demons?”

She nodded as she wiped away fresh tears.

“When he died, Casey asked me to join the coven with her. I didn’t think any of it was real. I figured it was harmless, and if I joined, maybe I could get her out.” Her voice broke. “I didn’t know what I was agreeing to.”

I looked over at Jacob, whose expression was unreadable. The Council wouldn’t care about this woman’s story. They would want her dead, the same as any cultist. Did my partner feel the same way?

Did I?

“If you tell us the truth, we might be able to help you,” I said.

Alexis nodded and let out a shaky breath. “Okay. I can try. What do you want to know?”

I pushed the door open to let a gentle breeze into the stifling car. I needed the fresh air to help me think. I had so many questions for Alexis, and I wasn’t sure where to start.

“Who is Maki?”

“He’s the guy in charge right now. I don’t know much about him, except