Page 90 of Of Flame and Fury

“Do you think you’re headed the right way?” I ask.

“I don’t know. There’s no way to tell.” Gemini’s body quakes as maliciously as the earth. “Destiny told us to head up this side of the gorge, and that’s what we need to do.”

The ground once full of mud dries to dust. I choke on it and blink several times to clear my vision. My eyes fly open despite it all when I catch sight of the steep hill we have to climb. There aren’t just boulders spinning downward but whole uprooted trees sliding in every direction.

Gemini leaps, racing the length of a large birch and using the slapping limbs to catapult him over the next course of tumbling wreckage.

The side of the gorge dismantles the faster the realm decomposes, turning more perpendicular as pieces drop away. I couldn’t possibly maneuver this on my own. Thank God my brave and agile lover is carrying me, and I don’t have to climb this alone.

“You’re going to have to climb this alone,” my brave and agile lover tells me. “I can’t carry you.”

“What the fuck, Fate?” I shout.

“I got you, baby,” he tells me. “I just need my hands free to get us out.”

I duck when more shit comes flying at us. “Can’t I just hang on to your neck or something?”

We’re going to die, and Gemini chokes back a laugh. “We all know you can’t hang on to me, love.”

I cough up the cloud of dirt caking my throat. “I will if the other choice isdeath.”

“It’s all right,” he assures me when I curse some more. “We just got married. You’re not getting rid of me yet.”

More rubble rains down. More evidence that we’re going to die. The good Catholic Agnes told me I’m too stubborn to die. True. And my mate is too loyal to let me.

“Okay, I trust—”

My words turn into screams when Gemini throws me ahead of him. I flail, plummeting to my death when he catches me,and tosses me again!

This continues. I suppose it must. This is Johnny’s last chance to get Celia. His last opportunity to prove he can reign as a shapeshifter and that he belongs among the most feared beings on Earth. He can’t waste time keeping up a realm he doesn’t need.

I don’t get used to Gemini’s technique. I’m losing my voice, shrieking each time I’m thrown and fall. Gemini is working it, avoiding the ruins of Johnny’s world and scrambling around the mess to assure he catches me.

My surroundings are a horrible mix of bleeding colors and commotion. Gemini snags my wrist and clutches me when a large section of rocks breaks away, and I almost fall from his reach. I’m sick to my stomach, choking on garbage that has no business in my mouth.

“I don’t know how much longer I can keep this up,” I admit.

“You don’t have to,” he promises. “Last one. Try to hang to the edge, and I’ll push you through.”

I’m launched in another revolting jolt. The sky clears into a brilliant light. I stretch my hands, reaching when I think I see something I can cling to. I feel it, fasten myself to it, and just about hurl when I realize I’m gripping a Nyte by the head.

A gaping maw, with rows of freakishly large human teeth, makes up most of her face. I say “her” because one dangling boob is slapping at my right cheek, and the other is swinging back and forth, caressing my head.

“Taran, it’s dead.Dead,” Gemini hollers over my screams. “They all are.”

I’m not sure what he means until I look down. Poking through what remains of the side of the gorge are body parts. Heads, torsos, and limbs, you name it or think it, it’s there. The remains of Johnny’s Nytes we killed.

“We’re out of time,” Gemini says. He grips my ass and shoves me upward. “Climb!”

I wish I can say I didn’t cram my foot in the Nyte’s mouth to help me up or hook my hand into her lady parts for leverage. But I did, and would do it again, dammit. The manor is coming apart, and my sisters need me.

I stretch my right hand up and into the white light. I feel around, gripping a hard surface slippery with dust. Gemini clasps my foot, levitating me through and into Genevieve’s quarters. I drag my body across the floor in the time it takes Gemini to leap up and land in a crouch in front of me.

The residence is abandoned. I rise carefully, trying to catch my balance. Just as in Johnny’s realm, the alarming quaking continues, and everything is coming apart. I scan the area, my senses overstimulated from the bedlam.

I jump and bump into Gemini as the chalk circle I crawled through expands and swallows our way out. “How are we going to get out of here?”

My lover lifts the couch and flings it through the window, striking another leech Nyte sliding down the glass. “Come on,” he says.