Total pages in book: 158
Estimated words: 145341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 727(@200wpm)___ 581(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 145341 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 727(@200wpm)___ 581(@250wpm)___ 484(@300wpm)
Next, he touched her brother. Siv was extremely cautious reaching out to slip into her brother’s mind. Garald seemed to be very sensitive to any energy moving around him. The moment it got close to him, Garald blocked it. It seemed to be an automatic response anytime outside energy came near him, which was intriguing.
Few things were new to him. He had seen demons. The hounds of hell. He knew the tricks of the master vampires. He had fought creatures he knew no name for. Garald was undoubtedly Lycan, and he was of a royal bloodline, but what exactly did that mean? Both Vasilisa and Garald possessed something very different in their makeup. He had thought, with Vasilisa, it was the combination of being Carpathian and Lycan, but now he realized it was far more than that.
Are you paying attention to the sickening abominations creeping closer to us?
I am always aware of the close proximity of any vampire, my lady. Have no fear. While you battle the demons, I will take care of the vampires and puppet.
The lesser vampires called out to the puppet to stop, the one Garald had named Mark. Siv could have told all of them that the ghoul was too far gone to hear anything. He wouldn’t even recognize his master’s voice. He had seen hundreds of them over the centuries, and this one exhibited all the signs of the last stages of decomposition. The skin was rotting and sloughing off his scalp, face and neck. His head was skewed to one side, his neck broken so the head bounced and flopped obscenely with every step.
The high-pitched shrieks and keening continued with every staggering step. Mark’s arms were outstretched in front of him, but the skin had split open to reveal another set of raw muscles that were eaten through with the same rot. Worms crawled through the holes in the flesh and dropped to the ground, leaving behind tiny trails of smoke in the snow.
One of the vampires stepped directly in front of Vasilisa, albeit ten feet from her. Siv knew how fast the vampires could move. They had thrown up their arms to cover their faces, but they were moving their feet in a pattern, almost like a dance, swaying in a rhythm in an attempt to hypnotize her.
“Give up his soul to us now, or we will allow the puppet to eat your brother in front of you while he is still alive.”
The vampire’s voice was harsh, grating on the nerves. Vasilisa barely spared the vampire a glance, looking down her elegant nose at him.
“You are very welcome to try to feed my brother to your disgusting puppet, but I doubt if you are able to do so. A better suggestion, if you want to live, is to move on quickly before you try my patience.”
Her voice was so sweet in comparison to the vampire’s that it was difficult to adjust to the difference. Even the vampire shook his head as if he had to clear it. He stumbled and nearly went down. All the vampires hesitated in their dancing, swaying pattern as if they had lost their way. Siv realized there were mesmerizing notes of her own embedded in her voice.
Another voice snapped them all back to attention, rapping out a harsh command. “Would you allow a helpless woman with a light sword to defeat you? One woman? The ancient and her brother are bound before you. Eat him then, Mark. He is all yours. They all are. They will make you immortal.”
That grating voice came from over Siv’s left shoulder, up high and in the distance. It wasn’t Vitus. He was far too clever to give his position away. Mars was the bull, wanting to get the fight over. To take it straight to them. He didn’t like sitting and waiting for the pawns to wear them down, not when they already had the advantage.
At the urging of Mars, the pawns surged toward Vasilisa. The puppet tried to rush forward as well but stumbled over a loose rock beneath the snow. He fell to his hands and knees. His bones cracked under the weight of his fall, wrists and ankles snapping loudly. That didn’t stop him. He dragged himself toward Garald and Siv, leaving long trails of saliva laced with wiggling parasites behind him. The trails had those same strange clouds of smoke rising into the air each place the white worms pressed against the pristine snow.
The salamander devils were creeping closer, using the snow and any other cover in an effort to escape Vasilisa’s blinding light. If they came up too fast and didn’t have cover, the light struck them, and they emitted a series of low notes that caused a slight tremor in the ground but sounded like a grumble to Siv’s ears.