I couldn’t imagine how they changed, but looking out from them, the world was covered in a red haze that accentuated the tiniest details. It gave the room an eerie quality I liked.
It wasn’t just my vision that had been altered. Every one of my senses was magnified: I heard a deer breathing quietly in thicket far away, a bat’s wings beating through the night air, and a tiny ant as it scurried to an underground destination. And even though all these events were occurring at the same moment, I had the ability to separate them, almost as if I were slowing time, if not stopping it.
I had become a God.
I curled my lips. “Mother. Father. I don’t think I thanked you for coming out for my transformation.”
“We w-w-wouldn’t have missed it, Eve,” Sable said and glanced at Erik hesitantly.
The sound of my former name felt as though she had pressed a cross to my forehead. “Don’t call me that. Ever. Call me…” I twisted my lips in thought. “Alarica. It means ‘noble power’. Appropriate, don’t you think?”
“How do you feel?” Boaz asked.
I moved my gaze to Boaz and slowly looked him up and down. I moaned and licked my lips. “I feel—omnipotent.”
Boaz fed off my bliss. “It’s incredible, isn’t it? We are going to rule the world.”
“We?”
“Of course, love. I fulfilled your dream. You and I together, doing whatever we want forever. With the power between us, we will be unstoppable.”
“It wasn’t my dream, love,” I said. “It was Eve’s.”
Boaz’s jaw clenched tight, but he controlled his anger. “No matter. You will realize that together we are more powerful.”
I chuckled. “You really have no idea, do you?”
Boaz raised an eyebrow, Erik stood in a defensive position, and Sable backed up toward the door.
“I don’t need you,” I said.
Boaz took a threatening step toward me. “Let’s not forgot that it was I who gave you this power. It can just as easily be taken away.”
“Don’t threaten me.” With a thought, I sent him flying backwards into the wall. He smashed against it and fell to the ground in a crouching position.
When he looked up, he too had transformed himself into the true monster he was. His face was suddenly translucent. Black blood veins appeared behind his transparent skin. His blue eyes lit up like cold fire, and inside, his black pupils swelled from the darkness within them. They bulged outward as if the evil were trying to escape, but he shook his head once, and his pupils receded back to their original size.
Erik bolted for me. I grinned and stopped him with only a hand gesture. I then raised him to the ceiling and held him in midair. This new dark magic was so easy to control. I had only to think it, and my desires became a reality.
A stream of vulgar profanities spewed from Erik’s lips.
“Rot in hell,” I said and then flicked my wrist toward the window. He smashed through the glass and flew into the frigid air. His cries pierced the night until they were cut short by his body hitting the ground below. I scanned the room for Sable, but she had already fled.
Behind me, I sensed an object flying toward me at an incredible speed. I turned around and caught it a fraction of a second before it plunged into my stomach. I turned over Boaz’s dagger in my hand. It was the same one that had pierced Eve earlier.
“I’m disappointed, Boaz. You turn me into what you desire, but now you want to destroy me?”
Still in a crouching position, with one hand on the ground, he growled, “Not destroy, but you need to be taught a lesson on who’s boss here.”
He rushed me and slammed into my body at full force. The weight of his body against mine threw us both into the wood headboard, splitting it in two.
I whispered a command, one in an ancient language—that of the first demons who roamed the earth before man. Boaz looked at me, surprised. In response to my magical command, the wooden frame bended and curled tight, trapping Boaz inside. I had already moved away and was standing on the other side of the room. I laughed at his predicament, but my laughter was cut short when Hunwald grabbed hold of the back of my calf. I cried out and jerked my leg away, throwing the wolf from me.
Meanwhile, Boaz had freed himself. “Very creative. You know more than I thought, but it doesn’t change things. You will submit to me.”
I smiled serenely, folding my hands in front on my lap. “You can’t make me, and I’m not just saying that to be dramatic. There is absolutely nothing you can say to make me ever submit to you. But if you submit to me then maybe, just maybe, you might get out of here alive.”