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I spent any time I had researching the Mark. Something was happening to me and I was tired of being surprised. Hunters didn’t get more than two elements and I had four. The only one missing was lightning, and that element had been dead for centuries. If the Mark had something to do with Riley, or if it could help me in beating him, I needed to know how.

We knew the Dark Brothers were Ithreal’s descendants, but we didn’t know anything else about them. They were older than anything we knew and they were something greater than mere Warlocks. Nobody could understand why they were taking orders from a hunter. There were too many missing pieces to this puzzle, and the one piece we had, I lost.

I didn’t have the ring, which meant I couldn’t contact Serephina. Not that I thought she’d help, but it would’ve been worth a try. Riley wasn’t an air elemental and Lena was dead, but Riddley Peterson was still missing. Whether or not he was working with Riley, I didn’t know. I did know that one way or another, Riley would find a way to use the ring, and when he did, he’d know where the rest of Ithreal’s soul pieces were. He already had one. Now it was a race to find the rest.
 

Riley already had a part of Ithreal’s essence inside him, and his power was growing. I had to find a way to stop him. I needed to destroy the other soul pieces. If Ithreal was released, no book or spell in the world could help us. Even if his true form was still contained inside his hellish prison, we were no match for him. He’d overwhelmed and merged with every god he’d ever challenged, and it took the combined power of the six that remained just to trap him in his own dimension. I wasn’t a god. I was just a hunter. I could search for answers and fight forever–and I would–but at the end of the day, I was left with the same question: how was I supposed to kill a god?

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About the Author

M.R. Merrick is a Canadian writer, and author of The Protector Series. Having never travelled, he adventures to far off lands through his imagination and in between cups of coffee. As a music lover and proud breakfast enthusiast, he's usually found at the computer, between a pair of headphones and in front of a large bowl of cereal.

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