Free The Pentagram Child: Part 2 (Afterlife Saga Book 5) by Stephanie Hudson Page A

in a place like this and in sight of the damnation to come. What should have been a simple act created an eruption so immense I fell backwards landing on my buttocks. The second my tears had touched the ground it sent a shock wave across the canyon floor and straight towards the Titans. I watched on in awe as the rumbling floor rippled until it centred the Volcanic Gods and then…
    BOOM! There was an explosion of black ash that went up in a mushroom cloud as though a nuclear bomb had just exploded. The world around them started to split and branches of cracks spread out like growing fingers reaching out for safety. They finally stopped just short of where I remained frozen in the dirt.
    I tasted the dust on my tongue from being unable to close my mouth in shock. And this didn’t change when the ground erupted outwards and the Titans started to fall through Hell’s outer crust and into the mantel below. Just as the dust cloud started to settle I could clearly make out the bodies of Titans as their lava forms were being consumed by liquid metal.
    It burst out around their reaching limbs like chrome death dealers trying to drag them back to the core of the earth. One arm at the very last second reached up and out, erupting free from the ground closing around it. Then I looked on as first the molten metal consumed it, diminishing its fiery veins before the ground sealed around its elbow.
    The Canyon floor calmed and when the last of the dust settled all that remained in the vast space was one giant metal arm. It rose up like a monument to what could have happened on this day. I got up from the floor and just as I was straightening myself a great cracking sound echoed in the desert valley. I flinched as the cooled metal shattered from around the arm but left in its place one of black statue limb instead. One whose fingertips were reaching up to the Earth above, one I thankfully now knew it would never see again…
    And all from an honest tear shed in Hell.
     
    I woke from the vision coughing out more blood I couldn’t afford to lose. But for some reason what the fates had shown me had restored some of my strength…enough anyway to raise my head from the pool it lay in.
    Was that all it took to stop the Titans, one of my tears to fall at the mouth of Tartarus? Or was this all a trick and something that could never happen? If anything it left me more confused than before and questioning not only if the Titans had already been released or if I was even human?
    I decided to go one step further and raise my body as much as I could with how battered and cut up it was. Having every old injury afflict me all at once was what I could only imagine was like being hit by a car, one that felt the need to back up and roll over  me a few times just to make sure.
    It made me not only curse being a clumsy human being but also being one that was obviously a magnet for danger. My hands shook as I used weakened muscles to push myself up to sitting and the only benefit to this painfully slow movement was that I hadn’t alerted Alex to my conscious state.
    He was stood near the altar as if waiting for a sign or something to happen. I could still see Draven’s essence floating there and obviously waiting for the rest of him to come back. Well I could sympathise as I was waiting for the same. I just needed him to come back to me now and bring back the proof I needed to know he couldn’t go through with releasing the Titans. No life on this Earth was worth more than the billions of people combined. I didn’t want to die by any means but knowing what sparing my life would mean wasn’t something I was willing to accept.
    “Come on, what are you waiting for?” Alex snapped down to where Draven had been lay and I frowned as my suspicions were confirmed. He was waiting for something. He looked like a man possessed or one jacked up on drugs. He couldn’t keep still and it was more than just anticipation that had him biting at his fingertips and