Fighting back

Fighting back


Chapter 169

Ruby’s POV

It was pain like I had never felt before in all the twenty five years of my life,  it was nothing but pure agony that made the previous blow to the back of my neck feel like a child play. 

I felt his thick claws sinking right into my chest as he began to dig for the very core of my power. At that point, hanging there in the middle of the air and smelling the musky smell of my own blood as it dripped to the floor, I just decided... this wasn't how I wanted my story to end. I didn't want to die like some victim, dangling in the air like a piece of meat while a monster wore my husband’s face and laughed at how weak I was. 

Amidst the blinding pain of those claws sinking deeper and deeper into my chest, my mind sharpened as it went into a desperate type of overdrive as my survival instincts took over completely.

Without even giving it a second thought, my hand flew down to the deep slit on my gown where the special gun was strapped tight against my thigh. My fingers wrapped around the cold metal edge of the gun as I pulled it right out of the leather holster with a jerk.

I didn't have time to aim for a perfect shot so without wasting any more seconds, I had it pointing right at his chest with the barrel pressing hard into the black fabric of his expensive suit. 

A dead smile made it onto my lips as soon as Tautia noticed what I was about to do. I saw the flash of recognition and then confusion in those familiar blue eyes, but before he could even make a move to swat the weapon away, my fingers pressed sharply on the trigger.

The blast was so very loud,  as it echoed through the empty hall and shook the very foundations of the room and even the recoil of the gun was so violent it nearly snapped my wrist back.

I watched as Tautia went flying several feet away from me, the impact of the specially madebullet hitting him with the force of a bomb. I could finally take a deep breath as his hands left my neck and the sudden loss of support sent me toppling to the ground in a heap and as I hit the floor hard, the air was knocked out of my lungs for the second time tonight.

Cough. Cough. Cough. I doubled over with my hands flying to my bruised neck as I took in oxygen greedily, it was now i felt just how tightly he had been squeezing the fuck out of my neck.

But even as I struggled to just breathe, I made sure my eyes were still fixed on Tautia. He seemed to have been blasted into many pieces with his body parts flying in different directions across the floor and it now looked like little bricks from an explosion. 

I hadn't been aware of just how powerful the gun's force was, but I realized right then that I should have had him blasted away since the very beginning of setting my eyes on him, that would have sped things up a lot in my favour, and also Thane was right, the gun was indeed powerful enough to slow him down even if it couldn't kill a shadow user of his level. 

As I sat on the cold floor, gathering what little strength I had left in my shaking limbs, I watched as the body parts that had been blasted into smaller pieces began to slowly make their way toward each other on the floor.

It looked like I was starring in horror movie as I watched the parts dancing like little earthworms on the floor, twitching and sliding across the polished stone to head back to the rest of the body that was already forming again. 

It was starting from the legs up with the muscle and bone knitting together with a wet, squelching sound that made me want to gag right there on the floor. 

I needed to come up with a plan, and I needed to do it fast before he was whole again. With my eyes still locked onto him, I pushed my body up, stumbling on my feet as my legs began to tingle with a sharp pain as though I was losing the blood supply to them. 

I hurriedly dragged myself toward the huge double doors in the distance, kicking my high heels off in the process so I could move faster asd also bunching up the heavy, blood-stained fabric of my red dress in my hands so I wouldn't trip over myself.

With my heart still thudding hard in my chest, I finally reached the entrance and tried to force the huge doors open with all my weight. But I was left in total surprise as my hands just seemed to go right through the strong wood. It was like I was pushing my hands into a deep pool of water, and then there was a strange thick resistance that pushed back against my palms. That meant even this room isn't real. 

‘’I am stuck in an illusion… how do I get out..’’ I mumbled to myself, my voice shaking as I racked my brain for anything that could help me. I remembered that Lucas had made mention of something like that before back in the vampire realm but right now I could not seem to recall the details and Tautia’s body was almost complete now. All I knew was that there was a way out, and I needed to figure that out fast.

‘’I must say, I really underestimated you, ahah!’’ Tautia laughed out, the sound of his laugh filling the empty room as his face slowly filled up and knit back together. I noticed now that he didn't have Thane’s face on anymore, maybe the illusion had slipped during the blast and had now revealed his true features. As annoying as it sounded to even admit it to myself, he still did look good but that didn't stop me from wanting to erase that smug smirk off his lips for good.

My flames slowly began to form on my palms again as I struggled to balance on my left ankle. It felt like it was dislocated seeing as there was this stabbing pain shooting up my leg every time I shifted my weight even an inch. 

I didn't even bother to say a single word back to him and instead i sent a pair of massive fireballs straight at him with toss of my wrists. 

Tautia was quick, rolling out of the way in a flash making my fireballs miss his head by only a few inches and the fireball connected in a loud blast with the far wall, scorching the surface, but the wall just shimmered for a second and then came right back to its initial look without a single scratch or burn mark. 

I didn't in all seriousness want to hit him with that first shot as I also partly wanted to check if my flames were hot enough to break through the barrier of the room itself. I had my answer now... it couldn't. 

In the next second, Tautia was racing my way, his shadows falling out of his hands and sharpening into jagged spikes as they flew toward me like black spares. I was quick to dodge out of the way of the flying spears, feeling the wind of them whistle past my ears as I sent my flames flying in his direction again. 

Since he was a bit closer to me this time, he couldn't get out of the way fast enough. The flames went connecting straight to his chest, with quick movements, I reached hurriedly for the gun again, my fingers fumbling with the grip. I raised it and fired another shot at him with the boom of the weapon making my ears ring.

This time he was fast to dodging the main force of the bullet, but he wasn't all the way out of the path of it as it still caught his arm and half of his body, 

While that destabilized him again and sent him flying back and implanting him hard into the blurry wall, I didn't wait for him to recover or start knitting himself back together. I raced straight at him across the floor, ignoring the pain rfrom my dislocated ankle as I gritted my teeth and pushed through it.

‘’Arrrrhhhhhhh!!!!’’ A loud, raw growl made it out of my lips as I called every bit of my flames to the surface with everything I had left in me. They answered my call instantly. 

In the next second, all that was in my field of vision was a sea of orange and red flames. With one single command in my mind, the fire rushed at Tautia while he struggled to his feet. Before he could even summon his shadows with his one free hand to defend himself, my flames swallowed him up completely, trapping him in a swirling cocoon of fire.

‘’Urrrrhhhhhh!!!!’’ I growled out again, the sound tearing at my throat. I felt every single nerve in my body strained to the breaking point as I pushed my body harder, increasing the intensity of the flames until the air around the coocon began to crack from the heat. 

Even as Tautia struggled against the cocoon he was surrounded with, hitting the walls of fire hard with his shadow tendrils, he couldn't make his way out.

A dark feeling of satisfaction danced through my veins as I heard his muffled screams of pain coming from inside the fire. I could hear the high-pitched squeal of his shadows as they burned.

I stood just a few feet from the coocon with my chest heaving as I watched it all happen with a gaze of steel and for a second, I thought the fight was actually over. But I forgot one tiny detail…