Page 421 of Eight of Swords, Part Two

He tastes blood.

Won’t. Let. Go.

Riley is yelling.

The rain is howling.

Lightning strikes.

Maybe Kade should grab it, throw it back up at the heavens.

But to do that he’d have to let go and he will… not… do that.

Lachlan’s body goes rigid.

His bones snap.

And then the fight leaves him, and Kade can feel it.

His heart breaks clean in two.

The world ends.

It ends.

Here.

High.

Wet.

Cold.

Miserable, it ends.

Lachlan Tanner is dead.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

It’s raining the night he dies.

And the death comes quick, he knew it would.

How many lives has he ended? Countless. He knows when it happens, it happens fast. Sometimes it takes a while to get there, but once you tip over, it’s never more than thirty seconds.

Death pulls up, up, upside down from the rainy, dark roof of that tower into the night sky, falling, falling, falling upward into inky black that slowly becomes swirling shades of colour until the darkness is burned away by flaming coral, a forest of wildfire and oceans of lava on all sides.

He lands heavy on hot, jagged ground.

He breathes ash and heat, chokes on it.

He stands with effort, upright once more.

And when he looks around at this barren wasteland of fire, he sees himself right there in front of him.

It’s like Lachlan, but not human.

It’s a demon.