Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7) Read Online Free

It’s you who’s to secure her body once the treble is initiated, if need be, to choose the celebrant who will be blessed to partake in the nectar of her marrow.”
    “No. I won’t do it.” Logan doesn’t wait for him to finish.
    Demetri tilts his head thoughtfully to the side.
    A flash of lightning ignites through the window and fills the room with a dull rainbow of color. Rain pelts the stained glass, first slow and methodical then hard and biting. It’s as though Demetri’s anger has successfully channeled the weather phenomenon brewing outside.
    “Then you die.” Demetri nods into his revelation. “You’ll be inflicted with a choice new body piercing.” He briefly holds up the knife. “If you’re still living by nightfall, I’ll have you siphoned by a brood of thirsty Counts—an especially rabid group—they have an all-out carnal desire for the taste of human blood. They seem partial to the cry of a Celestra.” He drills his eyes into me, burning through to the deepest part of who I am—the part where I stow my father and all of our best memories while we were still able to build them. He reverts back to Logan. “Robbing you of your lifeblood would bring them a profound sense of joy and accomplishment.”
    Tell him you changed your mind, I say.
    I won’t let them gain pleasure from watching me torture you. I would never hurt you.
    But they would, and they will. Even if you die, you won’t stop what’s coming. Logan, please. They’re going to do this to me anyway. I beg of you don’t leave me.
    “Are negotiations underway?” Demetri lowers his chin.
    “They’re done,” I say, straightening. “He’ll do it.”
    “Logan?” He looks over my shoulder at him.
    Logan tightens his grip around my waist, touches his temple to mine. Forgive me, Skyla.    
    “Your answer?” Demetri broadens his shoulders with a sense of false accomplishment.
    “Consider it done. I’ll be her Elysian.”
     

Chapter 4
    Tenebrous Woods
     
    “Come.” Demetri offers me his hand, but I refuse.
    Demetri is complicated, like a puzzle with too many pieces—none of them interlocking. He wants every part of my mother, while he aspires to kill her daughter. There is no rhyme or reason to the things he does. Love and hate are one and the same to a monster like him.
    Logan and I rise to follow him out of the room, but Demetri pauses, touches the water globe with a swift stroke of his finger, igniting the creature inside into a spasm of fear.
    Figures. Not even an attention-deprived worm welcomes his affection.
    “Isis,” he whispers, the soft sound of the S reverberates unnaturally.
    Demetri leads us out into an ornate hall, black-and-white checkered floors stretch for miles in either direction. Long mahogany doors line the corridor. Probably a Celestra soul locked in each one. If there wasn’t a binding spirit dousing this place with its ironclad vice, Logan and I could do something—we could help .
    “You’ve traveled two years into the past.” Demetri says it causal as if it were common for small talk to center around time travel. “Or, what is it you kids are calling it these days? Light driving?”
    I make a face.
    Chloe originally called it light driving. Chloe is the one who should be down here. Her wickedness should be repaid in full measure by becoming the sole resident of these haunted halls. God knows she’s got enough Celestra in her to qualify.
    “What’s with the time delay?” Logan squeezes my hand as he asks. I shoot him a look for fraternizing with the enemy, even though I was sort of curious myself.
    “Reserves are terribly low,” Demetri is quick to spill. “The faction has instated a treble until each year’s needs have been met, and here we are, two years later, thirsty as ever. I’m afraid we’ll need to devise a clever scheme to replenish the supplies.”
    He expels a wicked grin when he says the words “clever scheme” and it incites me to believe he’s already mastermind