Destroyer Rising Read Free Page A

into our palms, and Beth twitched.
    Alan took her left hand and the world fell
silent.
    “No one can hear us now,” I said. “Tell me, what is
this?” I nodded at the book.
    Beth frowned at the glowing tome. “Koda said it’s the
Book of Blood.”
    I froze. “To unlock the Book that Bleeds?” But Koda
had said nothing. Had he found it? Was this the key to the Black
Book? “That's a lost text. That book is legend. It can’t be real.
It was mentioned in the Black Book, but I never thought ... the
Book of Blood … it’s like a key or something, right?”
    “Yes,” she said.
    No one spoke again until Beth broke the silence.
“Koda said to unite it with the Black Book. That’s all I know.”
    I spun around to the wall. Below the shelf was an
ancient trunk, warded against all who were not bonded to it. Only
Zola and I could see it and open it. Beth leaned forward to keep
her hand against the silence charm.
    When I turned back to the table with the Black Book
in my hand, Beth sucked in a breath.
    “That's it?” she asked.
    I nodded and ran a hand over the rough leather. I sat
the book on the table and leaned back. Beth frowned and tried to
pull away from it.
    “I'm sorry,” I said, leaning forward and shifting the
book to the opposite edge of the table. “I didn't realize how much
it was bothering you.”
    Beth let go of Alan's hand and held out the golden
book. I slid it from her grip and gasped. The golden glow swelled
and brightened until it felt like it might burn my hand. I shouted,
and dropped the book and the silence charm as a thousand voices
burst to life inside my head. They still screamed, even so far from
tragedy. I whispered “quiet” over and over again as the voices
created a horrible screaming silence all their own.
    Sound rushed back into the room.
    Alan stood beside me as the cacophony relented. “Are
you okay? Is it the souls?”
    “Souls?” Beth asked.
    “You don’t have to tell her that,” I said through
gritted teeth.
    Alan continued as though I hadn’t spoken a word. “The
souls of those who died at Gettysburg attacked Vicky, the little
ghost.” He paused and frowned. “Attacked may be the wrong word, but
they swarmed her. Damian took them away.”
    “How do you ‘take’ them ...” Her brow creased and she
trailed off.
    “Yeah,” I said. “I have some extra voices in my head
now. Sometimes it’s worse than others.” I cringed at a sudden lance
of pain before taking a deep breath.
    “Better?” Alan asked
    “Yes, thanks.” I turned my focus back books. “No
sense waiting.”
    Before Beth or Alan could say anything else, I
grabbed the Book of Blood and slammed it onto the Black Book. It
slowly sank into the Black Book, and instead of the rough leather
and terrible sense of foreboding, a nightmare sat in its place.
    “By the ...” Alan's voice trailed off. We all stared
at the leather tome. It wasn’t black. It wasn’t golden. It was a
mottled, scaled mess that dripped a constant thread of blood.
    I picked it up carefully, half expecting it to kill
me on the spot. Horror warred with fascination and I cracked the
book open. Pages turned, and nothing came to kill us. I suppose
Koda would have warned us if it was deadly simply to utilize it,
but then again he hadn’t told me he had the Book of Blood.
    “The Book that Bleeds ... bleeds?” I asked, watching
a trail of blood drip from the book’s spine. It didn’t leave a mark
or a stain where it fell.
    “That’s the creepiest thing I’ve ever seen,” Beth
said.
    I watched the blood and ground my teeth together.
“I’ve seen it before.” I looked at Alan and then back to the book.
“It’s like Vicky in Cromlech Glen, when she was first ... when she
...”
    I didn’t have to say it. Alan and I knew Vicky’s
story, and I was willing to bet Beth did too.
    I flipped through the pages. “There’s more text than
there was before.” I flipped through another chunk of the book,
finding one of the last pages I