Chapter 171: CHAPTER 171

I didn't give her the satisfaction of a response. I raised both hands and let the light loose, a blast aimed straight at her chest.

It connected, giving me a huge blast of satisfaction.

She staggered, surprise flickering across her translucent face, and for a beautiful second I thought this might be easier than I feared.

Then she straightened up and looked at me with eyes that sent fear through my soul.

She put her hands forward and I was already gearing up for whatever was on her end and she hit me back with a wall of darkness that knocked me off my feet and sent me tumbling across the dead grass.

There was nothing that could have saved me from that.

My body hurt only for a moment, my wolf doing the work of keeping me in smooth shape.

I got up and fired at her again, more aggressively this time.

And of course, she fired back. The collision of light and dark shook the ground and sent wolves on both sides scrambling.

Around us, the battle had continued. My wolves were still fighting, still dying, the turned creatures still pouring in and the other wolves who had aligned with Zyrell were still pushing with equal strength.

But I knew the one I was fighting was the key to ending most of the battle

So I threw another blast and she deflected it with one hand, the other already gathering darkness for her next hit.

I didn't let her finish, I threw a large beam at her which she deflected but I didn't mind because lots of turned wolves behind her got the brunt of it.

"You've gotten better since last time," she said, almost impressed. "Makes me wish we could have worked together, but you're too proud for your own good and hell-bent on following a goddess that's playing with your life."

"I don't like her that much either Zyrell but you don't see me destroying human lives just to prove a fucking point! I'm not proud, I just value lives, human and wolf. You're the one who's using this whole incompetent goddess thing as a cover for your true intentions."

"Well, you got me there," she chuckled, "I do want to be a goddess, what's wrong with that?" She shrugged and then she fired at me.

The darkness hit me in the stomach and I doubled over, gasping.

Seeing that I was down, she rushed to me, her feet gliding as she pressed her power further, breaking my defence and throwing me to the ground.

She didn't even let me get up, she just kept hitting me with that thing, the dark power, over and over again.

Each hit felt like I was being flayed, inch by inch.

My screams were cut off and on by her firing at me again and again.

But suddenly it stopped.

Panting, I stopped crying and allowed Red to heal me.

When I lifted my head up, a scream leapt out of my throat.

My hands shot forward with a beam of light as I saw Zyrell's eyes had turned to black again and she was using the half-turned wolves to fight Stephan.

Over a hundred of them surrounded him and she just stood there, hands spread out and controlling their movements.

I began firing at the wolves but for each one I killed, ten replaced it, and I could see Stephan was getting weaker by the second.

"Attack her instead Luna!"

"What?"

"It's me Caleb, I just felt a power wake up inside of me now and I'm just having a lot of good ideas. She is vulnerable when she's controlling the wolves so attack her!"

"Oh my goodness Caleb, you're right!"

I don't even know how I didn't think about it earlier but as Stephan whimpered in pain, I turned my blast to her.

It hit her square in the chest, blowing her off the ground and she rolled in the grass.

"Thank you, Kitten."

"Don't thank me, I'm hiding away in the Bunker!"

"I'm sorry I –" his voice was cut off as a proper wolf attacked him and I shook my head, mostly at myself.

This wasn't the right place or time for all of that.

I fired at Zyrell again, but she was taking everything in, breathing in, getting up, again and again.

It was as though she was acclimating to my light, drinking it in.

Her face was scrunched up in severe pain but there was no real impact.

Was she super healing?

Mine took at least a minute, she was healing seconds after.

What's worse, the blasts weren't sending her toppling anymore.

Shit, what am I supposed to do now?

"You're a strong child," she laughed, "but a child regardless. Now let me show you what you learn from two hundred years of messing around with power."

I stopped firing, confused because nothing was coming out of her fingers.

It took me a second to realise what was happening.

Images flooded my mind and while I was still trying to understand why I was having these memories, she started throwing her dark light at me again.

The pain collided harshly with the ones happening in my head.

My mother's body on the road, the angle of her neck, the birthday cake scattered on the asphalt.

My father in the woods next. Pushed into my mind with the same brutal clarity. Him on his knees, blood pouring from wounds I could count, looking up at his brother with an expression I would give anything to have never seen.

I knew these weren't my memories because I wasn't there that day but they were so vivid, so real that my body reacted as if I was watching it happen right in front of me.

"Get out of my head!" I screamed, throwing a wild blast of light in her direction.

She dodged it easily because I couldn't aim properly when my vision was split between the real world and the horror movie playing inside my skull.

She was fighting me with dark energy AND flooding my mind with images at the same time.

Cruel but fucking effective as I crumbled to my knees in a swarming feeling of defeat.