Free Bound (The Divine, Book Four) by M.R. Forbes Page A

fun would that be?" She shook her head. "First, let's see what you can do with my little abomination here. She took me a long time to make, relatively speaking." The eyes flashed from black to white, and then she attacked.
    She went right for Charis, moving so fast it was more like she flashed from one spot to another. Her hand snapped forward and caught her under the chin. The force broke her jaw and threw her back against the wall over the fireplace. She bounced off and landed face down.
    I set myself while the abomination turned my direction. She had a twisted smile on her face, so similar to his.  
    "Come on," I said.  
    She hissed, one moment six feet away, the next right in my face. I tried to punch her, but she blinked to the side, and then raked my cheek with eight-inch claws. I could hear them sliding along the bone, and I felt the warmth of my blood spilling out of the wound.
    Not that she could kill me. Maybe I should have let her finish the job so we could reset again, but there was something in me that told me it would be a mistake to give up. To ever give up. I stumbled from the blow, but I straightened up to face her.  
    "You can do better than that."
    She smiled again, and her teeth grew out into fangs. Blink! She was back in my face, her teeth coming down on my neck.
    It hurt. A lot. I cried out, planting my arms against her, trying to shove her away. I couldn't get any kind of grip on her through all of the fabric, which was fast becoming soaked in my blood.  
    "Hey Virginia," Charis said. I found her back on her feet, a steel poker in her hand.
    The creature turned towards her at the same time the poker was angling in at her head. Blink! She was on the other side of the room, out of the path of the weapon. Blink! She grabbed Charis by the throat, and threw her across the room. Blink! The abomination followed, flashing from one spot to the other, bending down and raking her across the chest.
    I focused, finding the Beast's power and pulling it in. The poker rose from the ground and shot towards the creature like a bullet.
    Blink! She vanished before it hit her, appearing in front of me again, smashing me in the gut with sharp fingers. I felt them tear through my stomach and into my intestines, threatening to pull them out.
    "Daddy!"  
    The door to the room swung open, and Clara stepped in.  
    She was wearing a blue and pink dress, her brown hair pulled back into pig tails, her face angry and afraid.  
    "Clara?" Charis said. Clara wasn't real. We didn't have a daughter.
    "Let my daddy go," she said.  
    She was walking towards me, her eyes sparkling in a swirling mixture of light and fire. The abomination held my insides in her hand, but she turned her head towards the girl.
    "What is this?" Ross asked. "I made you."
    "Shhh!" Clara put her finger up to her lips. "It's a secret."
    "What are you talking ab..."
    Clara raised her hand, and the abomination vanished, Ross with it. I felt wetness at my stomach, the blood running freely now that the claw wasn't plugging the hole.
    "Fix it," Clara said, looking at the wound.
    "What?"
    "Fix it."  
    She came to me and put her small hand in mine. I felt something then. Not the touch of a child, but the touch of something else. I focused, taking in the Beast's power, and mixing it with the thread of energy I felt running through her palm. The hole in my stomach vanished.
    "Clara?" Charis was back on her feet, coming over to us. Her chest was just as torn as mine.
    "Fix it," Clara said. She held out her other hand.
    Charis took it, and her eyes changed the way I imagine mine had. A moment later her wounds were gone. She looked at me. "Landon?"
    I smiled. "The connection," I said. "Our power is here."
    In a child. A little girl. She was our daughter, but she wasn't our daughter. It was a complicated metaphor, courtesy of the Box. She had been there all along, through so many of the cycles of pain and torture Ross had forced us to endure. He had destroyed her so many