Total pages in book: 133
Estimated words: 122946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 122946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 615(@200wpm)___ 492(@250wpm)___ 410(@300wpm)
“Excuse me?” I gasped, but he ignored me, lifting the woman back up, tilting her body from side to side as he examined her. I thought he’d drink from her again, but he just crushed her neck with one hand before letting her drop back down.
“What land is this?” he questioned, looking upon the treetops and the forest he was in the middle of.
“We’re at Great Falls Park,” I said gently, not sure why I wasn’t running. Even though I was a vampire, too, it didn’t mean he wouldn’t attack me. Not all vampires were found of one another and even fought over territory.
“I do not mean the name of the forest,” he whispered again slowly. “What land? What nation is this?”
“Oh…America. Northern Virginia, specifically. We’re about twenty-five minutes from the capital.” I wondered why he didn’t know that. What had he been doing, swimming through the Atlantic and just happened to get out here?
“America?” he voiced in disgust before looking back to me, surprised.
“Yes, America,” I said, doing my best to look at him from the waist up. “Do you have a problem with Americans?”
“Many,” he grumbled. “They are loud and rude.”
I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms. “Just because the British say everything in a flat tone and with an accent doesn’t mean they aren’t equally rude.”
“You think I’m British?” He frowned deeply as if I had truly insulted him. “Americans are just loud British people with a new inflection.”
“I may be an American, but I’m positive my people did not come from Britain,” I said, lifting my brown arm for him to see.
He glanced at me. “Long before the land was called Britannia, there were travelers upon it as well. Though wherever your people once hailed from, I’m sure the current ways of those who called themselves British or American have affected you as well.”
Asshole!
“Where do you hail from? And do they wear clothes there? Or do they prefer flashing their bodies in front of others?”
At the mention of his nakedness, he glanced down but didn’t seem bothered. “Long ago, I came from Greece. Nakedness, especially in the woods, was not abnormal.”
“Well it is very abnormal here, vampire or not,” I said, hoping he would get the hint.
“I do not know where my clothes are,” he said, looking around the bloody ground. “I do not remember how it is I came upon this land, either.”
“What?”
He moved toward the males he had killed and drank from touching the material of their clothes. “What year is it, young one?”
What in the hell?
“It’s 2020. Why?”
He began taking off the shoes and clothes from the body. “I thought I might have been dead and wished to know how long I may have been gone.”
My brain tried to understand. If he were just changed, he would have known how long he had been dead for. And he wouldn’t be calling me young one. I’d be older than him in vampire terms.
“I can sense your confusion.” He said as he stepped into the man’s jeans. They were too short, stopping at his ankles, but they did fit in the waist. “I am unlike others of our kind.”
“That I can see clearly,” I muttered under my breath, though for our hearing it was pointless.
When he put on the other man’s jacket and zipped it up, covering his abs, and he finally looked back at me. “I shall tell you more if you agree to help me, young one.”
“First of all, my name is Druella. Druella Zirie Monroe, not young one. Secondly, you can’t just steal their clothes!”
“Firstly, I am Theseus Christian Apollo de Thorbørn.” He bowed his head slightly before walking barefoot across the forest floor through the maze of bodies toward me. “Secondly, you were uncomfortable with my nakedness, so I sought clothing. Now, what is the complaint? For what good are clothes to the dead?”
“What is going to happen when the police stumble in on this in the morning?” I questioned, but he was unbothered or just slow. “They’re going to wonder where their clothes were, and after that, they will try to track them down. You’re wearing evidence.”
“Or we could destroy the bodies—”
“We? Why we?” I questioned quickly. “There is no we. I’m an innocent bystander.”
“Now that we’ve been introduced, Ms. Monroe, you would not be opposed to helping an old vampire find his way. Would you?”
There was nothing old about him. He looked like he’d just hit his thirties. Before I could ask, a twig snapped in the distance, and the rustle of leaves alerted me to a deer running deep into the forest.
“I can wait until after you finish your giant rat.” He smirked, and I felt like he was teasing me.
“I don’t know if I want to help you, Mr. Thorbørn. You are strange…even for a vampire.” I stepped back from him.