Pure Destiny (PureDark Ones #12) - Aja James Page 0,40

as knee-jerk reactions to some small slight. She was so bloated with her own self-importance and arrogance that she never suspected the most dangerous enemy within—Lilith.

Medusa had no end game. She simply wanted to wreak havoc and pain upon the world that abandoned her.

Unlike Lilith.

But her goals were her own. She would never reveal them. They weren’t destinations to be reached; she would never be “done.”

There was no end. There was only the infinite middle. Only the strongest, the cunningest, most invincible mattered in the grand scheme of things.

Lilith thought back to the human ingredients that finally meshed with the Creature’s.

It was sheer luck that she found it in the database at Columbia University Medical Center. The samples from one Ava Monroe Takamura, contributed to research toward finding a cure for her father’s Parkinson’s Disease.

She was the only human subject that successfully absorbed the serum Lilith created in one of Medusa’s labs years ago. A serum that was derived from a genetic material dubbed Genesis, which was portentously taken from the Tal-Telal, who was the Creature’s sire.

She’d never thought to reverse the injection—to take the human’s genetic material and combine it with the Creature’s. Her focus had always been to create stronger humans for Medusa’s army, not weaken Immortals with the subpar human gene.

But in this case, the missing human ingredient would make an Immortal stronger than all others. How ironic.

Lilith licked her forked tongue from her subject’s clavicle all the way to his forehead in one meandering swipe.

Mmm. He tasted delicious. She wanted him to wake up and play.

But his body was still recovering from its near-death experiences, the endless days of remaking. He needed rest, his cells in the process of rebuilding.

For now, she would count her blessings, take stock of her gains.

What was better than possessing an earth-bound dragon? Having not one but two of them in her arsenal. Supposing that Benjamin followed in his dear papa’s footsteps. With her own Hydra form, they would make three.

Not since a long-forgotten time had three earth-bound dragons existed at once. They would be gods on earth. And she would rule them all.

Lilith couldn’t wait to begin.

*** *** *** ***

It takes fifteen seconds for an object of their combined weight to fall and splatter to their bloody, bone-shattering deaths from a fifty-story building.

Give or take.

That’s what went on in Sophia’s head as each second stretched into infinity.

With her eyes tightly shut, she felt almost weightless. Her arms wrapped tightly around Benji and Dalair, her face tucked into the little boy’s chest. His small arms had wound around her neck, and one of Dalair’s steely arms held both of them in a relentless grip.

Though she was approaching imminent demise at over one hundred twenty miles per hour, Sophia felt no fear. Incredibly, she was completely at peace.

A blanking calmness pervaded her. The same tranquility she felt before the last battle that ended the Great War when she had been Ninti. The opposite of the ravaging fury that consumed her before she unleashed devastation upon ancient Egypt and Persia as Kira.

Perhaps it was because she had Dalair in her arms this time. Whatever happened, they would be together. Her only sadness and regret were for Benji.

She squeezed her favorite little person tighter and willed numbness and peace into his body and soul. The way she’d willed it into Inanna moments before. The way she’d protected and strengthened the souls of hundreds of Pure warriors for the battle that won their freedom millennia ago.

So, when a giant metal claw descended like the hand of god from out of nowhere and clamped around the three of them, putting an abrupt halt to their rapid downward trajectory four seconds into the free fall, Sophia jolted with shock.

Had she splattered on the pavement so soon? Was she dead? Because it really didn’t hurt like she imagined it would.

When she opened her eyes and looked up, she saw a helicopter hovering above, a thick steel cable extending from its belly to the claw that cinched them. They were being steadily reeled up into its bowels. Dalair used the arm that wasn’t wrapped around Sophia and Benji to grasp the cable and steady their dangling weight.

Surreal.

Even though Sophia should have been used to the danger and “excitement” that came with her day job as Queen of the Pure Ones, she rarely got to see action up close and personal. Up until recently, before she graduated from university, she’d been a relatively normal human teenager on the cusp of