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Chapter 1
The apocalypse was nigh
Even so, I felt sickeningly optirin
All was right inSeraphihtliss was slowly recovering from the curse Daelissa tried to kill her with My sister, Ivy, had curedvirus Life onderful Now all I had to do was mail the invitations to my Christmas party and hope the world didn’t end first
Jeremiah Conroy had the Cyrinthian Rune At anyDaelissa and her fellow angels to storh it and enslave every last one of us in the mortal realm
I, for one, wasn’t about to let the apocalypse ruin the holidays
Despite the hefty stack of invitations, I couldn’t stop thinking about threenames--Ivy, Mom, and Dad Ivy still lived with the Conroys Daelissa had locked Mo in the el’s plans for world domination And Dad? He’d abandoned us to marry Kassallandra, a princess of House Assad, in the hopes of reuniting the Daemos for the war that would erupt the h a Seraphim ar Mom and Ivy home one way or the other In fact, I planned to deliver their Christmas party invitations in person when I rescued them
A flicker oftheit froone home for the holidays, so I doubted a stray frat boy had wandered over fro house Most people kept far away from this place anyway thanks to its haunted reputation
The crackle of dry leaves and limbs came from all sides at once I looked into the woods and saw flashes of gray passing between the skeletal trees Before I could turn to run back to the house, so slammed intoeverywhere as they burst froth in the ar mine to ray carabbed thehim into a tree so hard, I heard it crack The y floated out,from it for a moment before it imploded with a little pop and vanished
More ray business suits Their skin looked pallid and gray They each wore silvery hair slicked straight back Oh, and they looked identical In fact, they looked exactly like my friend, Cinder They weren’t the result of a crazy experis before Technically, they weren’t even alive I called theole machine It had been a while since I’d seen them, but I should’ve known Mr Gray would eventually come back for me The worst part--I didn’t even knohy he wanted olems didn’t so much as blink, but closed in frouns frole of these dudes before, but this tione all out I counted nearly a dozen "This isn’t exactly what I was hoping to get for the twelve days of Christht, reversed course, and plowed through two gole whistled past uns, I realized, but Lancers which fired darts used to incapacitate supernaturals "Show sorabbed my shirt as I passed I ducked, raisedoleed on my spot I’d never make it to the door in tiht, I h a , and make a run for the basement The tunnels down there connected with the school If I was fast enough, I could h school, I knew olems before I reached ht, and reached for thein the air around round beneathwhite coy appeared I extendedaether Ever since Ivy had healed ed Before, I couldn’t sense how much aether I’d drawn inside hpoint
"I’rayto block iven me, focused my will, and a fireball coalesced around the end I veered left so I’d intersect one of the golems before the other "Hadouken!" I shouted, and flicked the wand An orb of flaray h The fireball blasted into hi his suit to ash
The goles With another effort of will, I cried, "Shoryuken!" Web-like ropes of aetherial energy jetted fros The target crashed to earth in a heap Rather than give up, it began crawling forith its hands, eyes locked on me like some kind of terminator robot from the future
Thelay ten feet ahead of h bricks But it didn’t break It bent inward, stretching like rubber, and I suddenly re me how the s on this place were enchanted to preserve them for centuries I also suddenly realized why none of the s in the place had been broken despite it sitting derelict for several years before ht against olee from the kitchen in the back of the first floor I realized they h the back door an instant before lassspeed I flew over the front yard, down the driveway, and finallyto the side, I took the brunt of the blow on s, and I dropped to the ground in a heap, gasping for breath My vision flickered back to noren deprivation, I scras But the blow to my body left h a blurry haze Using it as a reference point of extreer, I ran the opposite way
The driveway intersected the road just ahead A cramp stabbed into ed to gulp a breath I looked behind ray men raced down the driveway toward me Silver darts whistled past I reached for my wand, and realized I’d dropped it somewhere between theand the tree
"Go bother Santa Claus!" I wheezed
My absent wand left rabbed it and took a right where the road passed through Greek Row and looped back doard the dorh defensive spells Shelton had given ency They were ready made, kind of like scrolls, and all I had to do was activate them I twisted round, and tapped the "run" coround and vanished I activated the spell severalEven though it ran on et I ran the spell once more, and Nookli--the name of my phone--desperately said, "Justin, please feed ray round, instantly gluing the goleolems flowed around their trapped colance The ensnare spells flickered like flash bulbs as ed reater lead over my pursuers
I saw the curve in the end of the road Saw the last two houses on Greek Row I’ve got this The gray men were fast, but I was faster Even if they dared follow ht to security and let theray men rushed out from behind the houses on either side of the road They numbered far more than a dozen I looked behind me and saw my pursuers fanned out across the road to prevent ht
"What the hell do you want?" I said,the area for any method of escape I saay out It leftinside e where the deer to consume, destroy, and basically do whatever the hell it wanted if I didn’t control it It flowed into s, and ainst er and taller Felt a tail spring frolinted on silver in the air beforeoffro I heardfrohtcould protect me from so many darts I tried to walk Tried to y crippled round closed in on le" style="display:block" data-ad-client="ca-pub-7451196230453695" data-ad-slot="9930101810" data-ad-format="auto" data-full-width-responsive="true">