Rise of One (Dark Urban Paranormal Fantasy): Blood Brute - Book 1 by Dixon Reuel

Author:Dixon Reuel [Reuel, Dixon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Thunderloft Press
Published: 2020-12-14T23:00:00+00:00

*

The crowbar, cold in his hands. Rise stood on the middle of Dunsinann’s bridge again. Zombie brutes sloshed in the frantic waters below. Rise was stripped of his overcoat and wore only old jeans and a vest, his face and arms bared to the odd, yellow sky. Blaschko lines rose across his whole body, prickling and sore. Again, Elaine’s mother stood on the far side of the bridge. Gaunt and straight, as if the whole scene last time had never happened. The bridge had never crumbled. Dunsinann hung like a painted backdrop to a play. The moment Rise saw Marnie, he lifted his crowbar.

“You choose death each time you stand before me.” She smiled, her words clear despite the rushing wind and gushing river beneath. Then Marnie spat and several browned teeth rattled onto the cobblestones.

“I’m trying to do what’s best.” Rise needed to explain. He stared in disgust at her teeth. The memory of Ogrim’s dark and seeping wound flashed before his eyes. Like oil seeping out of the engine of their family.

“Then gather,” Marnie said, in a simple tone with a smug smile.

“Gather? Gather what?”

“More. You are in dire need of so many, many more.”

“You’re saying that I need to gather more people?” Rise asked, his words almost lost amid the strong wind and splashing brutes. When Marnie nodded he added, “Why? It makes sense, I suppose. But why?”

“So you won’t be alone anymore.”

Rise thought of his coven, of three plus one. Of his heart. “But I’m not alone.”

“Try to cross this bridge, then. You will fail.”

“Fail? Why? Because I am alone? I am alone right now, but Salter, Ogrim, Cypriot, they are with me, always. Summon them to my side next time.”

“Those three are not with you right now. Not even the others are.”

“What others?” Rise heard footsteps behind him. He turned and hundreds of shadows took form from the wind. The host began to cross the bridge. Slower now, so that Rise could make out their shapes. Some shadows bumped his shoulders as they ambled by; others wandered around him, like bumblebees. He realized then who they were. The lives, souls, echoes of everybody that he’d ever fed upon.

“All those whose life you have snuffed out since your first drink,” Marnie confirmed as the shadows crossed the bridge between the rearing horses on each pillar, passing by her without a single bump.

“I was young,” Rise tried to explain. “I didn’t know when to stop. There was never any instruction for me. Never any guidance. Of course I’ve killed. Out of ignorance, out of hunger. Now that we have Cypriot, I kill only out of dire, dire need.” The last of the shadows swept past and bumped him sadly.

Rise went on. “I know I’m guilty of terrible things. Things I long ago forgot, deliberately. Why must you visit me like this?”

“I was never anyone to you,” Marnie said. “Just like these quenched souls that you took from the world.”

“That’s why I cannot cross? That’s why I am alone? I’m not the only killer, the only blood drinker.

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