Updated! Part Thirty-Five is up! Things are getting tense. Here’s a little excerpt to sink your teeth into:
Everything was going to change tomorrow, for better or worse.
It would never be the same.
Adrian was ready to fight. The sense that they had been moving closer and closer to something monumental had grown steadily for weeks, and now it was nearly at its apex. He felt an electric energy running through him, prickling from the inside out. He was veritably shivering with it. The hairs on the back of his arms and neck wanted to stand on end. He felt like he couldn’t fit into his own skin.
Only a few hours from now, it would be upon them. Nothing was certain, and he still felt entirely helpless in the face of the deeper evil that they would face. He had no real plan for that. He was rudderless, yet he could not ever remember feeling so ready for a fight in all his life.
The times he’d faced off with his father as a youth, he’d been totally outmatched. The gap had closed a little over the years, but never enough. He’d never come close to winning. The last time they’d fought Dracula had subdued Adrian with little difficulty, slashing him down to the bone. Past the bone, actually. His heart had been quite literally visible to him, shuddering and naked in his breast, his ribs snapped like so many twigs, layers of muscle and fascia slashed apart. Even his guts were exposed, blood pouring from him in a river of red. His own father had done it to him.
That blow had solidified everything. Adrian had known all was truly lost when he’d felt his father’s claws stroking his bare heart, as if considering whether or not to kill him. That wasn’t the act of a sane person.
His hand went to his chest, where the massive scar marred his flesh all the way down to his hip. It had never fully healed, even when he’d begun to drink real blood again. He didn’t know that it would ever heal. Maybe he didn’t want it to. He could never let himself forget.
It had been unfathomably painful, but he was left alive. Why?
Dracula knew Adrian would never let his genocide go uncontested. He was no fool. He was forcing Adrian to confront him. To stop him.
Continue Reading ‘Deliverance’ Part Thirty-Five