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

tree branches from the point of impact. The wound itself was a mixture of charred black chunks and yellow bits of skin. It looked like an old, festering infection that had been left alone far too long.

“I’ve had worse,” Orion said.

“Oh, really?” I raised a brow. “Somehow, I doubt that.”

“Yeah, maybe not.” He winced. “Go check on the others. I’ll be fine here.”

While I’d been taking care of Orion, Ayla had managed to drag herself downstairs to Celia. I jogged over to join them. Celia still hadn’t moved, and she showed no signs of waking up.

I gave Ayla a questioning look, and she pressed two fingers against the side of Celia’s neck.

“She’s alive,” she said, her voice hoarse. “She’ll be okay.”

I knelt down to examine her injuries more closely. Raxael hadn’t slashed any major arteries or made any deep cuts, and though she had a broken wrist and a nasty burn, none of her injuries looked life-threatening.

He really had just been toying with us.

“She must have passed out when she fell,” I said, checking her head. “We’ll see how she is when she wakes up.”

“Do you have any healing herbs?” Ayla asked.

“Not enough for all of us. Besides, her wounds are all infernal. What about you? How are you doing?”

“Don’t worry about me. Aside from still feeling like death from that injection, I’m surprisingly doing alright. He wasn’t all that focused on me.”

“Good,” I said. “I’ll go get a first aid kit, so we can at least get them bandaged up.”

When I returned, Orion had joined the others. I handed Ayla the kit and sat down beside him.

“It’s really over,” I whispered.

“Yeah. You did it,” he said. Not even the pain could stop his grin. “Owen would be proud.”

Despite everything that had happened, the mention of my father brought a smile to my face.

A loud hissing noise coming from behind us interrupted our moment of peace. Black tendrils snaked out from Raxael’s limp form. As they spread across the floor, the concrete cracked beneath them, caving in toward the demon lord.

“Get down!” Ayla yelled.

I turned around to shield Orion as a pulse of black smoke and green light boomed through the warehouse. The windows shattered, and the ground shook like an earthquake beneath us.

There was a long stretch of silence, but I didn’t dare move. As quickly as the air exploded outward, it sucked back in, as though the world had exhaled and was now drawing in another breath.

With a nauseating squelch, Raxael’s corpse began to shrink in on itself. Folds of flesh converged and fused together like a vile imitation of a child rolling Play-Doh into a ball.

When everything stilled, only a strange black orb, covered in spikes like those on Raxael’s body, remained at the center of the cracked floor.

My curiosity got the better of me, and I started walking toward the orb. It was about the size of a baseball, textured with the rough exterior of Raxael’s form, and it pulsed like a beating heart. Lines of green glowed beneath the surface, as though bright veins ran through it.

Orion called out for me to stop, but I ignored him. I needed to know what it was.

Whispers followed me to the orb, drowning out his warning. The closer I got, the louder the whispers became, until they were an intense, cacophonous presence buzzing in my ear, chanting in time with the pulsing of the orb. I couldn’t make out any human words from the guttural, demonic whispers in my ears, but I knew the orb was calling me somehow.

I continued forward, drawn in by the whispers.

What did they want?

Riley Collins.

My name broke through the whispers as I stood before the orb. They were calling out to me directly now, chanting my name.

They needed my help.

And I needed them.

I had to get closer—nothing else mattered. The sound of my own name thrummed in my ears as I leaned down, reaching out my hands for the orb.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Don’t touch it!”

Orion’s voice rang out in my ears, but I couldn’t stop. Just as my fingers hovered above it, only a few inches away now, someone slammed into my side and knocked me over.

I blinked back groggy confusion. The room spun like I’d just been through a night of heavy drinking, and I couldn’t quite focus on anything.

Orion dropped what was left of his tattered leather jacket over the orb, then knelt down beside me. He dragged in heavy breaths.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Shame filled me as he waited for my response. With the wound on his shoulder, he was in no condition to tackle me, but he had done it anyway.

Why had I tried to touch an unknown demonic artifact? I knew better than that.

“Riley?” Orion pressed when I didn’t respond.

“I’m fine,” I said, rubbing my forehead. “What was that?”

“I was going to ask you the same thing,” he said.

“It was like you were in a trance,” Ayla said.

I shook my head to clear away the last of the strange whispers. With the orb hidden, they were weaker than they had been, but they still echoed faintly through the dark corners of my mind.

“I couldn’t help it. It’s like it was calling to me,” I said.

Orion and Ayla exchanged a worried glance.

“What was it saying?” she asked.

“Just my name.”

“A talking fleshy ball that tries to make you touch it,” Ayla muttered. “That’s not creepy at all.”

“What should we do with it?” I asked.

“Normally I’d say we should take it to Ed Moran, but I’m not sure we’ll have that option,” Orion said.

“Unless we go back to Haygrove.”

The others looked at me like I’d grown a second head.

“We killed a demon lord, and that orb is proof of it. If we go back to Haygrove, we might be able to convince the Council that we can kill the rest.”

“There’s no way we can convince Marcus to back down.”

Celia’s voice surprised me. I wasn’t sure when she woke up, or how long she’d been listening.

“I agree,” Orion said.

“Well, if not the Council,