Total pages in book: 145
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138274 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 691(@200wpm)___ 553(@250wpm)___ 461(@300wpm)
Evan was pushed away, and as he fell on the floor, he tried to scream again, but had no air in his lungs: The gaping hole at his pecs was ragged as a bomb crater, and the black stains on his skin were like the blast zone around the detonation.
“You will listen to me when I call you,” came the command, “and you will go out there and do what you are programmed to do.”
“I did not ask for this,” Evan said on a rasp.
“Yes, you did. With every pathetic attempt at the weights in that gym, and each frustration you expressed about your family, and all the mediocrity you were in. You have a fucking future now. Go live it.”
Evan stared up at the horror before him, his brain refusing to process it all. “I want out—”
“Too late,” Lash said with that trademark arctic smile. “Now, get to work.”
The thing turned its back and headed over to the corner again. To finish its meal.
With a shaking hand, Evan lifted one of the guns—and pulled the trigger—
It happened so fast, he couldn’t track it. The monster was going back over to his prey—and then Lash was spinning around and snapping something out of the air. Sticking his fist out, he released what he’d caught—and the bullet hit the concrete with a chiming bounce.
Then he cast his arm in a sweep that somehow translated to where Evan was, his body caught in an explosive current that carried him end over end, as if he were a newspaper page in the wind.
He hit something so hard he was stunned into immobility.
Maybe he would die. But he feared that was a wish he would not be granted.
Lying just outside the glow of the candles, he stared into darkness… as the sucking sounds resumed.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Hours later, Nalla came awake, and for a split second, she had no idea what had woken her up. She knew where she was, though. She was in Nate’s bed, and he was—
A tortured sound rippled up next to her, and she rolled over with a flop. In the dim light thrown from the bathroom, he was asleep and facing her, and it was like he was contorted in pain: One hand was curled up under his chin in a claw, his chest was pumping up and down, and he was gripping the mattress with his other—
“No… please, no… not again…”
The voice that came out of him was a total distortion from how he normally sounded, the words strangled and vulnerable. Higher in pitch. As if he were a young.
“Nate?”
His face turned toward her, but he didn’t open his eyes. “Can you help me?”
Fishing through the covers, she took the hand that was under his chin. “Nate, you need to wake up—”
“Please take me with you…”
“Shh, it’s okay—”
“Can you get me out of here…” His head flipped back and forth on the pillow. “If you can take the needle out, you can…”
“Nate. You’ve got to wake—”
“I can’t stay anymore. She’s dead… mahmen escaped, but she’s dead… can you help me… take me… with you…”
He started crying in his sleep, the tears squeezing out of his lockeddown lids. “They hurt me… my stomach this time… help me… the humans won’t stop…”
As horror dawned on her and squeezed the air out of her lungs, Nalla tried to soothe him with touch. “You need to wake up, Nate, you’re safe—”
“Not… safe… humans won’t let us go… the men in white coats are going to kill me.”
All at once, his halting words melded with stories she had heard, of vampires taken by humans into labs and experimented on, viruses and diseases like cancer and Ebola and polio injected into them, their organs removed or dissected, their bodies violated in too many ways to contemplate.
There was no way someone dreamed of this randomly.
No way.
Trying to sharpen her voice, she said, “Nate, you’re not in the lab. You’re in your basement, under the cabin, on your property. You’re safe and you’re with me, Nalla.” She stroked his muscled forearm desperately. “Can you wake up for me? Nate, please… just wake up…”
With an abrupt spasm, he threw his head back like he was straining at a set of bars, and on his torso, the skull undulated with the movement, the ivy, and the snakes, and the—not clouds, she thought with terror. Gas. She’d gotten it all wrong. The elements of the design that she’d thought emanated to all other parts of him… they weren’t flowing from the skull—oh, God, they represented things forcing their way into the eyes and mouth, flooding, choking… bringing pain and suffering.
As he thrashed and kicked, she couldn’t stand it anymore. “I’ll take you with me,” she said in a rush. “I’ll take you out. Here, come with me…”
Her voice broke as she stifled a sob. But at least he stilled.