AllFreeNovel
Share Us
At first, I didn’t even try to track where the blood flowed into my reserves. I drank until the stone softened against my lips, heating with the flesh of a living, breathing lion. His heart pulsed once. Twice. Blood spurted—but not into my mouth. Away from my pull. His heart sent the blood pounding away from me. Not to his extremities—but to the other sphinxes.
Alertness flared through them. Stone heads grinding, turning toward me. Looking at me. But when I paused drinking, their heads started swinging back straight ahead.
Oh fuck no. I sucked harder on my punctures, drawing his blood. Swinging those heads back to me. More. I want them all.
Heavy grunts filled my ears. Muttered curses. Roars. Rik wrestled the ram’s head downward, refusing to let the beast rear back and away from me. Leviathan gripped the sphinx’s spine in his mighty jaws, his claws scraping deep gouges down the statue’s sides. No blood, just stone.
The blood only came to me. If I could hold it.
Llewellyn’s gryphon shrieked and he sent me an image of the sun starting to dip below the horizon. :You’re running out of time, Shara.:
Rearing back, I jammed both hands deeply into the sphinx’s chest, letting my nails join the fight. Because it was a war now. Stone heaved against me, struggling to break free of my Bloods’ holds, trying to jostle my lips loose. Crashing boulders filled my ears, the screech of claws sliding down stone. Thuds as my smaller Blood threw themselves against the sphinx’s legs and paws, trying to keep him down.
Swallow. Again. The sphinx bellowed with fury. Shaking his head, he reared up so hard Rik’s feet dangled off the ground, but my alpha tightened his locked forearm. Twisting harder, granite muscles swelling with effort. Itztli and Xin couldn’t bite the statue, but they sank their teeth into Rik’s lower legs and added their weight to his, pulling him back down to the ground.
Taking a deep breath through my nose, I strained harder. Eyes closed, I pulled with not just the suction of my mouth but my entire body. My will. I opened my throat, throwing the floodgates of my body open wide.
Rivers of blood to rival the mighty Nile itself. Flow to me.
Gushes and torrents of blood filled me, sweeping my awareness into my Blood, a tiny stick tossed on angry floodwaters. Lighting up their root chakras, energy flowing up their spines. My energy made them stronger. Bigger. Badder than ever. I strained harder, filling each of them up. All my reserves. Stacking another layer of glowing power into them. My alpha, a giant. His fists locked on the ram’s horns. My dragon, his jaws so big he gripped all the sphinx’s throat. Squeezing, suffocating him, bearing him down beneath the full weight of the king of the depths.
Down. Down to me.
So I could feast until the end of time.
Too much. They were full. I couldn’t lay any more bricks of energy into their bones. Yet blood still raged, threatening to sweep me away.
I poured energy into my closest sibling bonds. Mayte Zaniyah. Every jungle in the world, hers to nurture and command. Plagues that made the deadliest pandemic the world had ever seen look like a common cold. Trees and ferns pushing up out of the earth in her footsteps, crowned with the rarest lilies and orchids long extinct.
Her jaguar Blood. I stacked their spines with my energy. Their cats screamed a triumphant warning in the jungle, eyes glowing like eerie lamps in the trees. They rivaled the jaguar god’s size now, and he was even bigger than Rik.
I tried to dump power to Tepeyollotl, her jaguar god, but his channel was locked. He wasn’t mine, and he was strong enough to refuse my access. I didn’t dare touch Xochitl. I didn’t know what this power would do to a child.
Gwenhwyfar Findabair Camelot, a true descendant of Guinevere, the Once and Future Queen. Her loyal knights had fought to stay free of Elaine Shalott, who’d forced Gwen to swear to never take her own Blood for over four hundred years. Sir Lancelot du Lac, the famed Round Table knight, the prize alpha of Camelot. His manticore roared with pride, his thick scorpion tail dripping venom.
Her tattooed Blood, Bors, his giant stag’s rack stretching out like the world tree, armed with barbed crossbow tips to protect her. Mordred’s golden war eagle screeched with victory, leading the charge on his queen’s next epic quest. The dark one, Merlin. Not Aima. Hungering for flesh rather than only blood. I wasn’t sure what he was and hadn’t met him yet. Though his creature soaked up my offering as eagerly as the knights.
The White Enchantress blazed with all the glory of Arthurian legends, and the clang of swords filled my head. The power of centuries of fables and lore passed down from generation to generation, becoming legend that time would never forget.
Carys Tylluan, lover of knowledge, who could see probabilities for any strategy I might devise. Her mind powered higher, driven with the ultrafast power of CERN’s particle accelerator. Her archives and databases sparking with energy. All books, all knowledge, any computation, stacked within her like my dragon’s priceless hoard.
Yet still the power surged higher, demanding release. Grunting with effort, Rik slipped backward, driven by the ram’s broad head, his feet furrowing deeply into the earth. The hell horse reared high and slammed his front hooves into the ram’s skull, knocking him back. Thudding again and again.
My trees. I shoved energy into the ground, letting their roots soak up the overage. My grotto, steaming hot enough I feared for Okeanos, though I didn’t feel him swimming. Too much power blazed through me now to differentiate between Blood bonds.
My blood circle already gleamed like fiery rubies from the ground, hundreds of feet into the air. Higher. I willed the circle to spread a dome of protection over my entire nest, using the sphinx’s blood to power it.
Redline. The strain of holding so much power made my teeth vibrate. My skull throbbed, tender plates fracturing apart beneath the shearing torque. My blood hummed in my veins, sizzling too hot. My skin couldn’t contain so much. My bones couldn’t carry the weight.
I dumped more power into the New York City Tower. My blood circle encompassed all one-hundred floors already. A full city block. Thicker. Taller. Deeper. Reinforcing the concrete and glass with sheer energy gleaming with starlight. The bone-white branches of the tree in the basement, grown with pain and blood. It couldn’t get taller, but its roots dug deeper into the soil, its trunk so thick Leviathan could curl inside.
My bones splintered. My spine burned, liquifying into molten, glowing steel. I jammed my silver nails deeper into lion flesh, hooking my fingers. Dangling against the flailing, surging beast by nothing but my nails stabbed into him.
I am Shara Isador, last daughter of She Who Is and Was and Always Will Be!
My mother is Esetta Isador! She died to have me. She gave up her name from all living memory so I could be free. So I could stand here in the shadow of a sphinx and claim my legion.
What this queen takes, she loves, and what she loves, she keeps for all time.
