Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
“What kind of gun do you like,” he said as he refocused on the locker’s click-click-bang-bang contents.
“One that shoots.”
“Picky, picky.” He took out a .357 Magnum. “We are kind of old-fashioned around here.”
“How so.”
“None of that autoloader bullshit.”
“I don’t even know what that is.”
Cocking a brow, Callum tossed the gun into the air while the guy was working the favorite-jacket’s buttons—and he wasn’t surprised when a hand whipped out into thin air and caught the grip on the fly. Only after a steady hand was already locked on the weapon did the vampire look down his arm—and as he stared at what he’d caught, he frowned.
“Not your type after all?” Callum murmured. “Or just checking the weight.”
For a moment, the male didn’t move. But then he seemed to snap out of his astonishment. “Ammo.”
“Right here.” Callum tossed a suede bag across, the bullets inside chiming on the fly. “But you won’t need any of this.”
The vampire hooked a palm around the satchel and buried the loose load in the outside pocket of Callum’s jacket.
“Aren’t you going to check what’s inside there?” Callum murmured.
“I trust you.”
“You don’t know me.”
Those eyes narrowed. “You’re afraid of me. You’re not going to fuck this up because you’d don’t know what I’m capable of.”
Callum blinked. A couple of times. Then he shrugged. “I also don’t like blueberries, harmonicas, or cats. Is there anything else we need to discuss?”
“You said I won’t need a weapon.” The vampire looked down at the gun. “Why.”
No reason to go into that right now, he thought. “I’m coming with you, remember?” Callum put up his palm as those strange eyes refocused on him. “And it’s not your decision.”
“I’m not saving you.”
“I wasn’t aware I’d asked you to. And you know, you’re kind of a dick, no offense. Were you like this before?”
The vampire checked the Magnum’s cylinder. Gave things a spin.
And then he pointed the hand cannon right at Callum’s frontal lobe. On the business end of the trigger, there was absolutely no expression on the male’s face, the only outward sign that there was anything unusual going on a slight twitch of the right eyebrow.
“Boom,” the vampire whispered. As if he had overheard the conversation at the fire pit.
Justlikethat, the male dematerialized out of the cave.
Callum sagged and lowered his head. As he patted around for his cigarettes, his hands shook, and he ignored that. Even when he dropped the first coffin nail he took out of the pack.
Just as he lit up, Apex barreled into the den, looking like he was prepared to break up a bar fight—or a glory hole.
“Shut up,” Callum growled. “And he just left. We’ve got to go get him. Here.”
He tossed over something that spit out bullets. Who the fuck knew what it was. Then he took a couple guns for himself and prayed that what he grabbed in the way of extra ammo fit anything either of them had.
Stalking past the vampire, he knew he should have dematerialized right away, but he couldn’t concentrate. He needed some fresh air, along with the nicotine.
And as he rounded the cave’s passageway, he thought… he was going to lock up those fucking guns as soon as he got through what was left of this night.
Assuming he made it through, that was.
What the hell had the Gray Wolf brought back.
CHAPTER TWELVE
As Kane re-formed for the third time in a row, it was into a thicket of undergrowth, the vines and bushes clawing at the someone-else’s-pants he had on as his body once again became corporeal. Breathing in through his nose, he—
“Finally.”
Setting off in a northeasterly direction, he followed the scent of concrete, rot, and vampire, and with his target identified, he moved with a deadly purpose, crushing the weeds under the boots he’d borrowed, shoving branches out of his way instead of moving around them. As he went along, he had the strangest sense of bifurcation, as if he were watching himself from a distance even though it was his own legs churning, his own heart pumping, his own eyes scanning the environment for threats.
In the back of his mind, he knew something wasn’t right. But he kept going because he couldn’t worry about—
Dearest Virgin Scribe, he hoped he ran into guards.
With the thought occurring to him, he felt his fists curl up and his shoulders flex. The urge to fight was so natural, it didn’t even dawn on him that he had never before, not once, looked for conflict in anything. Especially of the physical kind.
If only he had felt like this the night Cordelhia had died.
“Focus,” he muttered as his head whipped to the left.
There was nothing but shadows that didn’t move, the ambient light of the night sky neither highlighting nor obscuring anything.
His other attempts to get downwind of the prison camp’s new location had been an inefficiency he’d had to tolerate. He hadn’t been conscious enough to track the location as he’d been driven away from the abandoned hospital, and walking directly up the road they’d escaped on was just volunteering for a bullet to the chest. The best he could do was triangulate through this scruffy forest of—