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Chapters (39)
  1. KAREN CHANCE
  2. Chapter One
  3. Chapter Two
  4. Chapter Three
  5. Chapter Four
  6. Chapter Five
  7. Chapter Six
  8. Chapter Seven
  9. Chapter Eight
  10. Chapter Nine
  11. Chapter Ten
  12. Chapter Eleven
  13. Chapter Twelve
  14. Chapter Thirteen
  15. Chapter Fourteen
  16. Chapter Fifteen
  17. Chapter Sixteen
  18. Chapter Seventeen
  19. Chapter Eighteen
  20. Chapter Nineteen
  21. Chapter Twenty
  22. Chapter Twenty-One
  23. Chapter Twenty-Two
  24. Chapter Twenty-Three
  25. Chapter Twenty-Four
  26. Chapter Twenty-Five
  27. Chapter Twenty-Six
  28. Chapter Twenty-Seven
  29. Chapter Twenty-Eight
  30. Chapter Twenty-Nine
  31. Chapter Thirty
  32. Chapter Thirty-One
  33. Chapter Thirty-Two
  34. Chapter Thirty-Three
  35. Chapter Thirty-Four
  36. Chapter Thirty-Five
  37. Chapter Thirty-Six
  38. Also by Karen Chance
  39. Connect with Me

With the words, the world shifted, showing me the other side of the coin. A cold wind swept across bare, desolate cities, stretching as far as the eyes could see. It was a blighted world I saw, a desert world, where nothing moved but the wind. It ruffled the decaying clothes on what looked like acres of corpses, which were now no more than skeletons, bleached white by the merciless sun.

I had done this, the more panicked part of me thought, staring around in horror. I had wrought this. I was a fool and should have never started what I couldn’t finish—

“It’s not too late,” the voice whispered. “There is a choice, Pythia. A decision that only you can make. Forgiveness is still possible, for the penitent. But for the stubborn, the willful, the proud, there is only death, and not just yours. Will you gamble with your world? Will you?”

The wind seemed to ask the same question, with a howling, haunting cry, like the voices of millions of ghosts rushing out of the desolate cities, screaming across the sands, headed straight at me. I screamed myself and ducked, with my arms over my head, but still they came, merging with the swirling, leaping sands. Shades with dark pits for eyes and elongated, open mouths, and bodies that battered me as they passed, yelling things in a thousand tongues that I didn’t know, and didn’t need to.

I knew what they said, knew what I’d done. But whenever I tried to explain, to apologize, to beg, all that emerged were more screams. Until even those were cut off by a river of sand, pouring down my throat, into my eyes and ears, as if they would bury me alive, all those vengeful shades. As if they would draw me down with them, until there was nothing anymore. No world, no time, no suffering, just hopeless howls.

And endless darkness because I had failed.

Chapter Four

Chapter Four

Light hit my eyes, making me blink. And wonder what was going on, because the curtains in my room were usually drawn to accommodate the vamps. The ones I lived with were plenty strong enough to endure the day, but direct sunlight gave them a headache. Like that moment in the clouds—

Had for me.