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)
The trouble started when he reemerged and made sure the bolt-hole was secure. As he stepped out of the garage, he caught the scent in the air.
Blood.
And it was one of his own.
He tracked the scent into the woods a couple of hundred yards, and he found the slaughtered wolven just off the side of the trail. Sinking down on his haunches, he closed his eyes briefly… and then scented the corpse’s fur.
Vampire.
Not a human poacher.
It was definitely a guard, but how in the hell had they found this place? There were thousands of square acres, and they just happened to show up here? Bullshit. Glancing back in the direction of the garage, he wondered where the tracer was. A piece of clothing? Or had they done something subcutaneous to the prisoners that they didn’t know about?
With a shaking hand, he touched the still-warm flank and whispered an incantation to the Gray Wolf to see the male safely to the sacred grove. Later, he would come back and take care of the remains—
The sound of two males talking floated over on the breeze, and he had to make a decision: Stay armed and on two legs to track them… or increase his senses and ability to travel.
He had no choice but to keep going with the weapons.
Dematerializing up about three hundred yards, he re-formed behind a large pine and was goddamned grateful he knew every tree on the mountain. When that got him closer, but not in range, he moved forward once again—
And got too close.
As his corporeal form reappeared, he was right next to two guards, both dressed the way the ones at the prison camp had been. The fact that the males were on his land at all, killing his kind, felt like a condemnation of what he and his two cousins had done when they’d framed Lucan at the demand of the elders.
They should have known better.
Now wolven were dying because they’d brought the prison camp to the mountain.
His other side demanded expression, but he choked down the pounding fury in his veins. Taking out a laser-sighted handgun, he turned off the red beam and leveled the muzzle. In the moonlight that filtered down, he aimed for the one on the left.
When he pulled the trigger, he willed the bullet to go into the plane of the male’s cheek, and sure enough, as if the lead slug were remote-controlled, it entered just under the eye. The sound of the discharge got the attention of the guard’s partner, but the amount of time it took for him to get out his gun and try to triangulate where the attack had come from was too long.
Callum picked him off like he was a tin can on a fence post.
As the guard joined his little friend in perma-repose, Callum went dead still, stopping his breath—he would have stopped his heart if he could.
There were more sounds up ahead.
It was too dangerous to dematerialize—if there had been other guards within any kind of sightline to the pair he’d killed, he might get popped himself.
He was silent as he shifted through the pines, grateful that with the harsh winters, there wasn’t much undergrowth to trample on.
His wolven side would have been much better. But again, he couldn’t leave the arsenal behind.
Why the fuck hadn’t he kept more provisions on the mountain?
Because it had always been a peaceful, protected place.
Except for the human poachers, of course—and they were easy prey, very different from a professionally trained and armed force, trying to get their prisoners back—
Callum.
Just as he heard his name, his boot landed on a dry stick, and the cracking sound was loud as a mortar going off.
And when he turned his head to see who had called for him, a bullet hit him square in the chest, knocking him off his feet.
As he landed on his back, he tried to lift his weapon so he had a chance at defending himself. His arm wasn’t working—and every breath was like getting stabbed in the sternum. Turning his head to the side, he coughed blood and thought…
Wow, so it ends here.
He’d always known he’d die on the clan’s land—he’d never once anticipated living into any kind of old age. Still, it was a shock to realize that what had seemed like something far off in the future was happening right this moment.
He was dying.
He supposed that he should be thinking of his family, from his parents, who had long since passed, to his hundred or so siblings that had been born, lived, and died, over the last two centuries.
Instead, the only thing on his mind was his vampire.
Would his predator come to this spot sometime, after his soul was gone from his body, and see him lying here?
They had had so little time—
The approach of his killer was mostly silent, but not completely so, confirmation, not that he needed it, that whoever had put a bullet in him was not well versed in working their way through a wooded environment.