Fate's Surrender (Eternal Sorrows Book 3) by Sarra Cannon (android based ebook reader txt) 📕

of power inside him being stoked and heated over and over again.

Something shifted in the energy, and all of a sudden, the stream of lightning traveled from the first dog to the second and then the third, like a chain. All three of them fell to the ground, shaking with the force of the electric flow running through their bodies.

Crash held on as long as he could, the energy draining out of him. He grew light-headed, but he could not let go until those things stopped moving.

“Crash, let it go, man,” Noah said, holding a hand toward him, but not daring to actually touch him.

And who knew what might happen if Noah had grabbed his arm. Was Crash’s entire body a giant conduit right now?

He wasn’t sure, but he had never felt anything more powerful and exhilarating than what he’d just done. He released the stream, but only because he felt like he might pass out otherwise.

With them heading to New York maybe even as soon as tonight, he couldn’t afford to completely burn himself out unless it was that or death.

And he prayed that wasn’t a choice he was going to have to make today.

He looked around and realized he and Noah had actually managed to kill all five of those things in a matter of minutes. If the Dark One really wanted them to die she was going to have to try a lot harder than that.

Just then, a giant flash of blue light went off in his peripheral vision.

“Parrish,” Noah shouted, immediately taking off to climb on top of the Humvee and search for her.

“Wait up,” Crash said, following him but taking a quick look behind to make sure those dog rotters weren’t getting up. When they didn’t move at all, he relaxed and climbed on top of the roof.

He’d just had enough time to take in the carnage of all the rotters wriggling on the ground between them and where Parrish stood on top of a city bus when something bright and fast appeared beside her.

Noah shouted out a warning, but he was too far away and too slow to make a difference.

Parrish swung her sword toward the thing at the last minute, but Crash gasped when the rotter simply reached out and grabbed the blade, pulling it from Parrish’s hands and throwing it to the ground.

Within another second, Parrish went flying ten feet onto the pavement below.

Crash didn’t wait to see what would happen next. Instead, he grabbed his gun from the ground and followed Noah over the chain-link fence.

Fourteen

The Boy

They’re in trouble.

The boy was sitting in the living room with Zoe when he felt a disturbance deep down in his core. Their panic and fear filled his heart, but he could also feel their powers rising inside them.

His own powers buzzed against his skin, and he ached to use them.

He couldn’t sit still, so he stood and paced the room, wishing he could figure out exactly how they’d made that connection before. He’d been touching Zoe’s arm at the time, and he was sure that was part of it.

Her connection to Parrish was incredibly strong for just being her sibling in this one lifetime, but the boy could almost feel part of Parrish’s power flowing through the girl’s veins. It was faint, but it was there.

That wasn’t supposed to happen when they reset each lifetime. Yes, their bodies held the DNA of the parents they were born from, and they shared that set of DNA with any human relatives or siblings, just like anyone born in this world.

But for the magic he’d created to work properly, there was also a second set of directions inside each of their bodies. It was a delicate reset each time, and every time they were ready to give up their current lifetime and start anew, he was the one to reset them.

It wasn’t reincarnation, exactly. Not the way humans here liked to think of it.

It was, in a way, less like being reborn, and more like being rewritten, over and over.

That was part of the reason none of them remembered their past lives. Only the original life remained imprinted on their memories.

It was also one of the reasons he was so much younger now than the rest of them.

He was the one to reset the spell and the seal each time, so he was always the last to be reborn. After a thousand years, it had put him a few years off from the others.

Crash was always the first to go back. Then the other three all at once, which was why they usually lived nearby or found each other first, even if they didn’t understand it. They would always be drawn together.

When they’d originally fought against the Dark One, the boy had actually been the oldest of the group. Some from their world had even called him an Ancient.

He was more than a thousand years old before they ever came to this world and had been considered one of the greatest strategists and alchemists ever born.

It was his knowledge that had allowed them to set up their recurring lifetimes here, using the fatalis stone.

He had not created the stone, of course. Only someone with power over both life and death could have created a stone like that, and there was only one person who had ever lived with that kind of power.

Her intention for the stone was very different from the way the boy had used it, though. When the Dark One created it, she had planned to use it to open portals to new worlds, like this one, and then siphon life from any beings there in order to give her and her followers life eternal.

She’d called it the fatalis stone, because it was meant to defy Fate itself. To defy death.

But sooner or later, fate comes for everyone.

The Dark One never understood that. Even now, she still fought for a way out. For a chance, once again, to control her own fate by stealing