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)
The lesser followed her.
Of course it did.
Nate took off at a dead run, pounding the pavement as he went for one of his knives—no, a gun, he wanted one of his guns—beneath his leather jacket. Arriving at the curb cut, he skidded around the corner, and pointed his .357 Magnum hand cannon down the brick-faced chute.
Fuck.
The slayer was directly in front of Nalla. So any lead that went through it was going right into her.
“You don’t want the female,” Nate called out. “Come for me.”
The lesser’s head turned and Nate got a quick image of its profile, the lean bones of the face showing through its white skin, its white hair gleaming in the darkness, its eyes flashing with unholy white light.
And then everything went slo-mo.
For some reason, a knife flashed in an arc at the slayer’s shoulder level—and then the thing went for its own throat with both hands, the blade it had been holding falling to the asphalt and bouncing away. As the undead lurched forward into a bow, Nalla came into full view, and… ohhh, shit. Her face was a dead mask of composure, no fear or shock distorting her features. She might as well have been at a grocery store feeling up avocados—
The female moved so fast, she was nearly impossible to track.
She double-fisted her knife, wound up like she had a bat in her hands, and went grand slam, burying the blade in the ear of the slayer. Horrific noises geysered up as the torso jerked to the left, and she let the weapon free itself by keeping a strong hold on the hilt. Then she just took the fuck over. With a solid kick to the side of its head, she sent the undead bastard on a tumble to the ground, and as soon as it was on the pavement, she shoved the lesser onto its back, straddled its hips—
She stabbed both of the eyes.
Her aim was absolutely perfect, the tip of her weapon piercing the meat of the peepers in two quick down strokes. After that, she just stood over her prey and seemed to enjoy the show as black blood dripped off her dagger. When the arms and legs finally slowed down with their jerking and flopping, she dismounted and ended the show with one final penetration directly into the center of the chest.
As the bright light flashed and the pop! sounded out, she jumped back so she didn’t get singed by the disintegration—and the way her calm face and lithe body were silhouetted against the illumination was something he was never going to forget.
Well, he wasn’t going to forget any of it—and how fucking weird was it that, for a split second, he wondered if they weren’t soul mates: They’d both opened attacks by slitting the throats of their enemies. If that wasn’t compatibility, what was? Fuck toothpaste caps and sleep schedules.
As the flash of the lesser getting sent back to its maker faded, and there was only the smell of burnt marshmallows and dead animal, she turned to him calmly.
“Do you mind lowering your weapon? Unless you perceive me as a threat, of course. Which would be pretty ridiculous.”
Nate blinked and glanced down at his Magnum. Then he cleared his throat. “Duck for me, would ya?”
“What?”
“Duck.”
The female frowned and glanced behind herself. “Fuck—!”
As she went flat to the asphalt, he fired two bullets into the slayer who’d come out of the shadows behind her. The thing fell back like a sack of potatoes, landing with a thump, but the job wasn’t done. You had to stab them though the sternum, driving a length of steel into the empty cavity where their heart had once been, if you wanted to eliminate them.
“I’m totally not threatened by you.” Holstering his gun, Nate took out a blade of his own and looked at the female who was prone at his feet. “Not in the slightest—”
Pop!
Okay, that sound didn’t make any sense. Who the hell was shooting?
“Nate! Shit!”
“What?”
As the female pointed at his waist, he looked down and things got real fuzzy, real fast. Sure enough, there was a strange fire in his gut, like he’d eaten a ghost pepper or two, and as he put a hand over a red smudge on his Hanes t-shirt, he felt a fresh warmth and wetness.
“Do I always have to get hit in the stomach?” he muttered as his knees started to go loose.
And fucking hell, the lesser he’d just dropped had a gun.
“Run,” he croaked. “You gotta get… out of… here…”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Zsadist got to the 1075 Cedar Post Road location first. Re-forming in the darkness, he did a quick instinct check in the glen of birches, and when nothing pinged his radar, he stepped out of the tree line and stared across the winter meadow that rose to meet a two-story cottage. With the fresh snow that had fallen, the acreage was like a vanilla sheet cake.