Filed To Story: Cursed Legacies Series Free PDF by Morgan B Lee
Dark shadows slither across the snow, flinging fresh corpses to the side. Some tendrils wrap around bounty hunters who shout in alarm just before they go pale and drop like flies, paralyzed with horror, their eyes stuck open wide. Douglas inhales sharply when one of his nearby friends is abruptly beheaded by a blade of darkness. The disembodied head is flung hard to crack against the skull of another terrified hunter.
A shadowy figure rises out of the gathering snakelike shadows like a cold, dripping oil—a faceless, looming, all-too-familiar presence wreathed in unnatural darkness.
“Finders keepers, losers Reaper’s,”
Gideon whispers with glee.
“What the…” Asher Douglas trails off, going pale as death.
“Maven!”
Everett’s voice comes from somewhere nearby. Fear clogs my throat, so I can only reach them through the bond.
Run. RUN.
And then, even though I feel like a fucking coward, I do the same.
Screams ascend behind me, cutting off abruptly as the wraith’s ability to wield fear either leaves them frozen in terror or altogether dead. Shadows snake after me as that chilling laugh dances on the wind—the same laugh I’ve heard every time he’s broken me in the past.
I push myself hard, my boots digging into the snow. Cold stings my face and lungs, but the hot moisture from my head injury continues to drip, my vision swaying.
I barely leave the outskirts of the dying battle when Crypt appears, running beside me.
“No, stay in Limbo!” I shout at him. “It’s safer there!”
“If it is, then?—“
He reaches for me to pull me into his plane of dreams. But before we make contact, shadows explode between us, flinging me down into the snow.
I can’t see Crypt, but his hoarse scream cuts through the polar night.
Baelfire and Everett are shouting nearby. I want to tell them to run the fuck away, but before I can speak or even move, a massive centipede-like shadow curls over my body. Its dozens of tiny legs leave needle-like punctures in my skin wherever it roams, but when I try to shove it off, it’s like my hands pass through smoke. As it nears my head, I panic and struggle.
I can’t let him fuck with my head again. I can’t.
But it’s useless as his essence coalesces around me like a putrid, inky syrup. The dark shadow circles around my head, lengthening to smother my mouth, pricking my lips and jaw. The other end slides down to crawl into my ear, slinking into my head.
My vision whites out for a moment, and then I’m naked, covered in pale, wriggling maggots. A scream lodges in my burning throat as I try to brush them off—but they’re not just on my skin.
They’re inside it.
Hatching. Feasting. Multiplying.
They start to crawl out of my nose and mouth—burrowing out of my rotting flesh. I’m nothing but a withering corpse riddled with death and worms.
“Dead yet so afraid of what death brings,” Gideon’s voice mocks. “But a corpse needs a grave.”
Oxygen whooshes from my lungs as unbearable weight presses on every side, burying me alive. Dirt fills my mouth, nose, eyes—it crushes my chest until my eyes feel like they’ll pop out.
“Let’s continue our game of finder’s keepers.”
I can’t move as the wraith’s shadowy hand slides into my chest, rooting around for the heart he won’t find. What he does find are my crushed lungs, which he begins to tear out slowly.
But just as the internal pain and horror begin to eclipse my every thought, I hear it.
My matches. Screaming.
No.
Gideon’s demented laugh scrapes inside my head as if he’s trying to gut my thoughts from the inside out.
“They were never yours, broken raven. Now they’re mine.”
“No,” I rasp, desperate to get to them.
They’re mine.
I’m not letting this twisted echo of my past hurt them more.
They. Are. Mine.
All the adrenaline, fear, and darkness crashing through my veins reaches a fever pitch when my anger crests. But it feels different, somehow—less the heady buzz of death and more like…something powerful I’ve never experienced before.
Whatever it is, the next time my psyche lashes out against Gideon’s control, I break free from the horrors he’s forcing into my head. My vision clears as I roll to my feet, instinctively withdrawing the only knife I have left on me without getting a chance to look at it.
Silas is writhing in the snow beside Baelfire, both of them tangled in shadows that are sliding into their ears, mouths, and noses and warping their minds as they cry out. Crypt is motionless in the blood-stained snow surrounding him. He’s missing an arm and leg like he was being ripped apart slowly before Gideon decided to focus on?—
Everett. Who is in silent agony as the wraith delves into his mind. One of the blade-like shadows lifts in the air, an onyx-like guillotine poised above my elemental’s neck.
My vision goes red.
“No!” I scream, launching forward and driving the knife into the shadow fiend.
It shouldn’t work.
But it does.
The wraith shrieks in pain as I stab it again and again, rage rushing through my system. That strange new power burns me alive as I bury the blade deep in the wraith’s center.
Gideon screeches loud enough that my ears ring before wrenching away from the knife and dissipating, his shadows slithering into the distant darkness of the polar night.
I drop to my knees, shaking in the aftermath as the adrenaline and strange new strength slowly calm. A dark liquid coats me, and I realize it must be wraith blood.
But how?
The blade in my hand starts to crumble. I blink down just in time to see the bone knife Everett gifted me crumble away to ash.
Just like a blessed bone weapon.
What the hell?
Maybe…shit, maybe I’m a saint after all.
I don’t understand, but right now, I don’t fucking care. I crawl through the snow to Everett, who lays utterly still with ashen-gray skin. My hands tremble as I check his pulse.
He’s alive.
So are Silas and Baelfire, when I check them. Only Silas is vaguely conscious, but he can’t seem to focus on me with those beautiful crimson irises. And when I hurry to my Nightmare Prince, hot liquid dripping from my chin, I nearly choke at the amount of blood he’s lost. His beautifully marked, dismembered arm and leg are beside his body.
When I check his pulse, his head lolls to one side. He blinks several times before his eyes slip shut as he exhales raggedly.
“You’re bleeding,” he slurs.
New Book: Returned To Make Them Pay
On her wedding anniversary, Alicia is drugged and stumbles into the wrong room—straight into the arms of the powerful Caden Ward, a man rumored never to touch women. Their night of passion shocks even him, especially when he discovers she’s still a virgin after two years of marriage to Joshua Yates.