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)
“How?”
A pause. “I didn’t use magic. I have an extra set of keys.”
“You have an extra set of keys to my apartment?” I ask.
Nope, I don’t like that.
“It’s not your apartment, Dahlia. It belongs to the guild. And right now, you belong to the guild too.”
I frown, lowering my voice as I walk through a crowd of tourists. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you are here under their control, until they deem you worthy enough to come back fully.”
I stop, stepping out of the way of the pedestrians, leaning against a shadowed wall. “What? That’s not what we agreed on, me and Bellamy. He said that I could come back to the guild if I did this one thing.”
She chuckles dryly. “You never leave the guild once you enter it. You’re in it for life. You know this. After your, you know, after your last mission, Bellamy thought it best if you were retired. You had your sabbatical, sure, but you were still bound to your duty to us. You knew what you were getting into when you decided to be one.”
“I was thirteen years old!” I yell into the phone. “I didn’t know what I was agreeing to do! My parents had been murdered and Bellamy told me if I wanted revenge, then I would have to join!”
“And you did get your revenge, didn’t you?” she says, her voice aggravatingly calm. “How many vampires have you killed over the years, Dahlia? How many?”
I don’t want to answer that. “I never killed the ones that killed my parents.”
“How do you know? You don’t. All you know is that you are doing what you were born and bred to do—”
“I wasn’t bred to do this,” I cry out. “I wasn’t born to do this either.”
“That’s not what the guild has decided. You know what they believe with natural born killers. You were chosen, Dahlia. And with every vampire you take out, you are preventing another child out there, another kid like yourself, from losing their own parents to vampires. Or their spouses. Or their own children. You’re saving people by doing what you do, and that’s why you need to keep on doing it.” She sighs heavily and I’m clutching the phone so hard I’m afraid I might break it. “You made an oath. You’re back on the job. Finish the job or the next time there will be something worse than that demon in your room.”
“Are you threatening me?”
Her sigh deepens. “No. I mean, the longer you take, the more time that Saara and Aleksi have to keep opening the portals or doing whatever the hell they are doing. You need to find that book, and fast. The last thing you want is for Bellamy to go there and finish your job for you. Believe me. You don’t want that.”
Then she hangs up.
Fuck. This is not the conversation I wanted to have this morning, not when my first class is the exam that I didn’t have a chance to study for last night because I fell asleep. Not to mention that my brain had been absolutely stewing over the events from last night.
Everything that happened between me and Valtu.
I mean, really, what the fuck was going on with my head yesterday? What made me think that I could just open myself up to him, when I’ve never been able to do that with anyone? As Livia reminded me, I am a slayer. My purpose is to kill vampires like him, and kill him specifically.
And yet I wanted to lay my soul bare to him and I don’t know why.
Is it because I knew, on some level, that he would understand me?
Is it because I feel I understand him?
He is a killer, sure. But so am I. How are we any different?
That darkness inside of me is the result of taking life after life.
Perhaps that darkness inside of him is the same.
Both of us are bad fucking people. At least he has the excuse that he’s just trying to feed, trying to survive.
What’s my excuse?
I try to push that out of my head. I need to stay focused. I step back onto the street and hurry along to class, running late now. The funny thing is, it doesn’t even matter if I fail my exam or not because this is all a ruse anyway. None of this matters, and yet I’m making it matter. I’m making it important because a large part of me wishes this was all real. I want to be just a music student falling for her professor. I want the simplicity of it all.
And you’re not falling for him, I tell myself as I enter the school. You’re not falling for your target. You’re not going to compromise your mission yet again.
But the last time was different. I befriended a vampire, Ottilie. There was nothing sexual about it. I just got too close to her. She was able to use that to manipulate me before I could manipulate her.