Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
“Valtu,” Solon warns him.
I try to pry his grip loose but I’m losing consciousness now.
“Valtu!” Solon yells, and now he’s at us and he’s trying to put himself between me and Valtu. “You’re killing her.”
“Maybe that’s what she deserves!” he cries out. “I don’t know who she is, she’s nothing to me! It was all a fucking act!”
Solon pushes Valtu back enough that his grip loosens and I don’t know how much time I have before I’m dead.
“My heart,” I rasp against his hands. “My heart will always find yours.”
He stills, his grip softening further. “What did you say?” he asks in horror.
Remove the glamor, I say to Lenore inside my head. Please, let him see. I am too weak to remove the spell myself.
My eyes close and everything turns cold and black, my body going limp as I’m pulled under, my feet still dangling above the floor.
Everything turns fuzzy as I hear Lenore whispering frantically the words of a spell, over and over.
“What are you doing?” Solon says to her.
All is black now.
“My heart will always find yours,” I whisper again. I believe it. And when I drop dead here at his hand, when the glamor is finally removed, he will finally see.
I love you.
Please don’t let this kill you, Valtu. I should have told you the truth.
As my heartbeat slows and slows and I slip into that black void I’ve faced so many times before, I feel the glamor rise from me, like someone’s lifting a wedding veil from off my face.
“Oh my god,” I hear Solon’s voice.
I hear Lenore gasp.
And Valtu lets out the most heart-shattering scream.
The last sound that Dahlia Abernathy will ever hear.
Chapter 24
Valtu
Mina.
Lucy.
Dahlia.
She’s in my hand, my fist around her throat, the life leaving her eyes for the third time as long as I’ve been alive.
I instinctively let go and she collapses to the floor of the kitchen in a lifeless heap and I’m screaming, the sound being ripped from the depths of my chest. I’m just useless, frozen, a shell of a person, paralyzed by the sharpest horror I’ve ever felt, a hook around my heart, tugging and sawing until there’s nothing left of me.
But there is something left.
She’s lying at my feet.
Not breathing.
I drop to my knees, the paralysation giving way to panic.
No, no, no.
This can’t be.
But it is.
She’s lying there in front of me, her neck bruised thanks to my grip, the rest of her skin milky pale. That nose, those lips, that hair.
It’s like a dream where you’re trying to remember who someone is in it, their face always changing, and then when you see that person the next day, it all slides into place like puzzle pieces.
Dahlia is Lucy and Mina.
She always was from day one.
But why didn’t she tell me?
Why is she a witch, a vampire slayer on top of it?
Why did she come back into my life only to die again, this time at my hand?
Because I killed her this time.
Just like I killed her the other times.
The children in her womb were a product of me.
This is my fault, too.
“No,” I sob, pulling her toward me. I feel for a pulse on her neck, too panicked to stay in one spot for long. I twist around to look at Solon and Lenore. “Call Doctor Van Helsing!”
But Solon only kneels beside me, feeling for a pulse on her wrist, her neck, then finally puts his head on her chest, his expression grim. He doesn’t even have to do all of that. We’re vampires. We know when someone else is dead.
The silence is deafening.
“No!” I scream, pulling her up and cradling her in my arms. “No, this can’t be happening, this can’t be happening!”
I look to Lenore. “I don’t understand!” I scream until a sob tears through my chest. I close my eyes, the tears pouring down my face.
Dahlia is my one true love.
Mina/Lucy had found me again, found my heart again, just like she said she would and I…I…
“I don’t understand either,” Solon says softly. “Why was she trying to kill you?”
“She wasn’t,” I whimper. “She would never. She loved me.” She was just hidden so well. Even when I was drinking her blood, she always felt hidden from me. I couldn’t get anything from her but feelings, and the feelings were that she truly loved me.
“She said she didn’t know,” Lenore says. “I’m so sorry Valtu, I just saw she was in disguise and she was a slayer. I didn’t know she was…”
I stare at her through my tears, her face blurred. I’m so angry at Lenore right now. So angry. But that will do nothing.
“What did she tell you?”
She looks pained, pressing her fist to her mouth and wincing. “She said she only learned last night that she was reincarnated. She only remembered then.”
I think back to last night. When?