Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Rehvenge’s lips peeled off his fangs, the daggers in the roof of his mouth flashing. “I want you to stop fucking with your sister.”
For a split second, Blade gave an honest reaction: “What are you talking about?”
“You’re going to stop fucking with Xhex, or I’m going to take out my frustration with you on your little collection here—among other things.”
Besotted with his ruler, Blade leaned in so they were chest to chest, nearly mouth to mouth. Tilting his head to the side, in case his King wanted to sample his lips, he murmured, “I am doing nothing to her. You can ask her yourself—you all but live with her, don’t you.”
“In the last three weeks, at least two vampires have been found in Caldwell with their eyes taken out by a lys.”
“Mmm. Sounds like you have a collector on your hands—or someone who is making a hearty stew.”
“And last night, somebody shot at John Matthew.”
“Remind me who that is again—”
The grip on the front of Blade’s throat prevented him from going any further with the line of bullshit he was spouting with such enjoyment.
“Don’t stop,” Blade squeezed out as he rolled his hips. “You’re turning me on.”
The pressure was released not in the slightest.
“Quit framing her for trouble,” Rehvenge ground out, “and leave her mate alone. If there are any more bodies in the alleys down there, or another oopsie with a lead slug and John’s chest cavity, you’re going to wish for your grave.”
With a quick shift, Rehvenge stepped back and took his death grip with him.
Blade coughed as he dragged oxygen down deep. “What… motive. Do. I have. For that.”
“Your family has never needed a motive when it comes to her. Or do you think I’ve forgotten who put her in that fucking lab in the first place.” The King jabbed a finger across the tense air between their faces. “You people eat your own. You always have. You want me to spell out your motive? It’s what’s in your veins.”
“As if you are not one of us yourself. Or has the Brotherhood worn off on you? If that is the case, I would beware down here.”
The King leaned in, his jeweled robes shimmering as if he were covered with blood. “Try me. Please.”
That amethyst stare glowed with menace, and in the back of Blade’s mind, he thought… ah, yes. This was why the male was King—and kept that mantle. With every fiber of his being, Rehvenge relished conflict, his favorite meal, always consumed with hunger.
Evidently finished with delivering his message, the King walked for the door, that robing flaring behind him.
“My sister is nothing to me,” Blade said in a low voice. “I would no sooner waste energy upon her as I would beat a stray. Not because I am moral, but because I am logical.”
Rehvenge looked back across the quarters. “Then you better hope whoever’s setting Xhex up loses interest in their pet project. Because the shit is going to come down on you if it keeps up, and I will enjoy what I do to you.”
* * *
“I won’t be gone long.”
As Xhex made the pronouncement, John Matthew gave her two thumbs-up and a smile from his hospital bed. Then, like he could read her mind, he signed, You’re doing the right thing.
“I don’t know what I’m doing.”
Go, I’m okay. Promise.
She kissed him on the mouth, brushed his hair back—and then pressed her lips to his forehead. After a lingering look into his blue eyes, she beat feet out of his recovery room before she changed her mind. She wasn’t sure leaving John was the right thing. She wasn’t sure what she was doing meeting that guy up on the mountain. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go on that trail again—
No, she was sure she didn’t want that ascent. She hadn’t liked what she’d found up there the last time, and she had no expectation that the passage of months had improved what she was likely to cross paths with.
But if you do not start… you will never, ever finish.
Whatever.
Heading down the training center’s corridor to the left, she proceeded past the unused classrooms and punched out of the steel door into the parking area. A couple of blacked-out box vans were parked facing toward the exit, and then there was Fritz’s high-class version of a school bus—that had absolutely nothing in common with the orange-painted bread loaves that took human children back and forth to their places of learning.
She was halfway down the lane leading out of the parking area, on track to meet the first of the defensive barrier systems, when she realized she couldn’t have taken a more inefficient route. Everything was wrapped with steel as a safety precaution. No dematerializing into, or out of, the facility.
She was going to have to hoof it for a while.