“Please, go. Please, Khristos,” she murmured, knowing the woman was lurking somewhere in the massive space she’d created with a snap of her fingers.
She would never forget how the woman had turned her tiny bedroom into this vast venue Quinn had only seen in pictures. The room had transformed—walls lengthening, the ceiling rising to stratospheric heights, pillars erupting from the ground like seeds sprouting in fast-forward.
Chunks of rock had spewed and kicked up pebbles until everything clicked into place. All that remained of her bedroom were the furnishings, minute as dollhouse furniture against the new backdrop.
Nina flew up and over the bed, her eyes narrowed, her nostrils flaring as she saw what had happened to the bedroom and Quinn. “Holy fuck!” The vampire was across the coliseum in the blink of an eye, horror on her pale face.
“Go, Nina! Take Khristos. I’m…begging,” she tried to whisper, her eyes pleading with them, her body shaking with violent tremors.
“Not gonna happen, Goddess-Lite!” she said, but her confusion about how to help, what to do next, was clearly written on her face.
A howl, a rush of furious rage, breathed through the coliseum, kicking up more wind tunnels of dust, and screeching through her ears.
The still unknown woman rose from the farthest corner like a serpent, bending, bowing, slithering upward and toward them. She morphed, changed, her head elongating, her body following suit, stretching until she was scaled, her tongue forked, slipping in and out of her transformed mouth.
A hiss omitted from her throat, sizzling and hot, swishing around the open space, growing louder, picking up speed. Her mouth opened wide again, just like it had before she’d broken all the glass in the apartment. She lashed her tongue at Quinn, a ribbon of crimson unfurled, flapping in a grotesque wave aimed directly at her head.
In those seconds, as she watched helplessly, her death imminent, she thought of only one thing—Khristos, who was as powerless as she was. He would feel the lash of that tongue if he didn’t move.
“Look out!” Nina screamed, making a run to rush the woman, only to trip over a chunk of fallen pillar and hit the ground made of crumbled rock, leaving a cloud of dust in her wake.
But Khristos refused to move anyway. He placed himself between Quinn and the warp speed of the tongue.
To protect her.
And the last thought she had just before she used all her might to pull her knees to her chest, as sweat dripping down her face and the flesh of her hands tearing when she levered herself with them and kicked Khristos out of the way was, even in the throes of battle, he was a good guy. So, so good.
Khristos fell, his head hitting the post on her bed, crumpling to the ground as the tongue rippled toward her.
There was nowhere for Quinn to go, pinned to the wall, but Nina leaped up and forward and managed to wrap her arms around the neck of the python, yanking its head to the left with a scream of uncontained fury.
Then Marty was there, like a flash of motion and sound, with Wanda hot on her heels, tearing at this woman who’d become a slithering python of howling rage. They’d reached Nina just as the grotesque python attempted to strike again and the thunderous pound of hooves reverberated, shaking the structure.
In her sheer panic, as gold-bridled horses with flames shooting from their mouths appeared out of nowhere, set to trample right over Nina and the girls, Quinn wildly wondered how many more mythological creatures were due to make an appearance.
What was next, a chariot?
Which was exactly the moment she heard more hooves. Naw. No way!
More golden horses—attached to a chariot—melted through the walls, their galloping shaking the earth. The concrete starting to crumble while the python danced, twisting, turning, mesmerizing.
The hard surface at her back suddenly shifted and her right hand began to pull away from the wall with an agonizing rip of her flesh, making her bite her lip bloody to keep from screeching. And then her right hand was free—the spike still deeply embedded in her palm.
Quinn fought a scream of unimaginable, searing pain, fought the horror as Khristos lie at her feet with the walls falling all around them. If she didn’t get to him, he’d be pummeled to death.
While madness raged around her, while every creature she’d ever read in her beloved books appeared before her eyes, she cooled on the inside. Found some strange focus she didn’t know she possessed and, with a single-minded act, began to use her right hand to free her left, yanking, tugging, loosening, fighting the dizzying wave of nausea and fear tearing her hand from the wall produced.
The spike in her left hand loosened with a jolt, a white-hot rip of agony. Quinn used that to her advantage, clawing to pry her hand free.
Almost there, Quinn, almost there! It’s gonna hurt, but pull!