Total pages in book: 111
Estimated words: 106107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 106107 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 531(@200wpm)___ 424(@250wpm)___ 354(@300wpm)
Maren gives her head the barest shake, mindful of the blade below it. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have fallen for an immortal anyway. And if it wasn’t for you bringing Aragon into our lives, I wouldn’t have the chance to be with my love forever.”
She turns her gaze to Ramsay and gives him the most adoring look.
He returns it back, ten-fold.
And then Abe slices open her neck.
She cries out, her hands automatically going to her neck to stop the bleeding.
I rush forward on pure instinct, trying to save her, but Thane has his arms around me, holding me back. “Let your lover do his work,” he says in my ear. “Let him save her.”
And so, I watch.
I watch as the blood flows from Maren’s neck and she grows paler, Ramsay holding onto her hand and coaxing her, as if in a reverse birth.
Then, Abe nods at Priest to step forward, just as the light in my sister’s eyes begins to dim, and a dark, shadowy fear enters my heart.
Priest takes the knife from Abe and slices open his wrist.
More blood pours.
He holds his wrist up to Maren’s mouth while Ramsay pries her lips open.
“Drink,” her husband whispers in her ear. “Drink, luv, please.”
And Maren has just enough life in her to swallow.
Thane lets go of me, but I’m holding onto him now for comfort, and we both stand there, watching and waiting and…
Maren’s eyes close.
She stops swallowing.
Crimson trickles from the corner of her mouth.
And then…
She gasps, a god awful, death rattle of a gasp.
Her eyes fly open, and for a second, they’re red, a glowing crimson, and then they return to blue as she sits straight up.
Her hand flies out to grab Ramsay, and then she leaps up straight out of the chair and jumps on him, knocking him to the floor.
She goes for his jugular, and I catch a glimpse of fangs as I laugh.
They did it.
It worked.
“Jumping Joseph!” Abe yells. “She’s a Vampyre!”
“May I be damned, it worked,” Thane says in quiet awe. “I’m going to have a sister-in-law for the rest of my life.”
“She’ll be busy trying to get her fill from him,” Abe says. “I reckon that she’ll need human blood after awhile, but Ramsay’s will be enough to sustain her for now.” He looks at me. “But you, Larimar, you’ll be able to feed off Priest, just as he’s able to feed off you. He was human once, and he will always carry that part with him.”
“I never said I would do the same to Larimar,” Priest says gruffly, stubborn as ever.
But when I walk over to him and put my hand over the blood that flows from his wrist, now down to a trickle, the expression on his stoic face softens.
And he gives in.
“Don’t make me beg to be part of your life,” I tell him.
He manages the faintest smile. “But you know I like it when you beg.”
Abe brings the knife over, holding it out like an offering. “I am ready to do the honors again.”
“The honors are all mine,” Priest says, taking the knife from him. “She is mine to hurt and mine alone. She is mine to turn. She is mine. Forever.”
He sits me down on the chair. I keep looking at Maren, at what a feral creature she’s become as she sucks at Ramsay’s neck, but he does seem to be enjoying it, and every now and then she unhooks her fangs to give him a passionate, bloody kiss, grinning at him like a young girl in love. Suffice it to say, she’s no more of a monster than she was before.
“Are you sure you want me to do this?” Priest asks, but he no longer looks unsure of himself. Instead, he seems eager.
Excited.
Eternity waits at the edge of his knife.
“Yes,” I tell him.
He presses the blade against my neck.
“Wait, wait!” I cry out, carefully. “Kiss me first.”
He grins at me and leans in for a long, deep passionate kiss, the kind that makes my toes curl.
“I love you,” he whispers against my mouth. “Always and to the end, whatever end that may be.”
“I love you,” I say back, giving him another quick kiss on his lips, the side of his mouth, his chin. “Always and to the end, whatever end that may be.”
We stare into the other’s eyes for a moment, lost to each other, hearts tangled, murmuring everything we need to know.
And then he swipes the blade across my neck.
Chapter Thirty-Five
PRIEST
“That was quite the risk you took,” Abe says reproachfully, but when I glance at him, he looks more impressed than anything.
I try to shrug, as if it was nothing, as if I didn’t feel like God himself with the future of humanity in the balance. If I had slipped, if I had turned Larimar into a monster, then I would have become the Devil instead, unleashing more of his minions in the world.