Page 169 of Remnants: Disruption
Damien, instead, gestures to the drink cart beside his desk. “Would either of you like something to drink?”
He looks at me and winks. “Not you, of course.”
If Arya hears his aside, she doesn’t acknowledge it. She continues to stare at Damien like she also sees the wrongness of it all.
The heresy in his existence.
An affront to the old gods.
“No,” she says, and Damien simply shrugs.
“Pity,” Damien says, huffing out a petulant sigh. “I was hoping to draw this out, but I suppose we’ve all got places to be.”
Something slams into my chest. I didn’t even see Damien throw it. Or shoot it.
Except it’s not right. It’s not the normal pain.
“Oh,” I whisper and my legs give out.
Arya is beside me in an instant, her eyes full of fear and shock.
And then rage.
“The fuck did you do to her?” she hisses, staring behind her at where Damien is.
But I can’t see him. I only see the woman before me. The angel that I so desperately needed.
“Cassandra Alta is weakest when she is in this fleshy version of herself. It’s a true shame that this is the prettier one.”
Shadows erupt from everywhere and, if I could speak or really do anything but stare up at her, I’d be stunned by the power.
By the magnitude.
“Interesting,” Damien’s voice doesn’t hold the same smugness. He does sound a bit more nervous. “I had not expected you to be stronger in such a short amount of time.”
“What did you do to her?” Arya’s voice sounds warped in the smoke monster she becomes. The darkness itself like a living, breathing force. A blackness that eats all other blackness.
“My lovely assistant shot her with the annoyingly rare emerald coated silver bullet. Emerald, as you may not know, is now considered the rarest element on the planet. I wonder who we have to thank for that.”
Arya’s darkness thickens and I can’t even see her now. I can feel her though.
Oh, I can feel her.
“It’s fascinating what Aether will do to the body of a vampire. This fluid is truly spectacular.”
“A vampire?” I hear Arya say and, God, I wish I could tell her.
She deserves to know the truth from me. Not from this malignancy.
“Oh,” Damien’s voice now holds mirth. “She never told you? Your beau is the last vampire.”
The silence stretches for what feels like eons.
“Well,” she says, and I feel the current shift.
Like she’s gathering power she shouldn’t.
And I can no longer really hear my own heartbeat.
