Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 118860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 594(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 118860 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 594(@200wpm)___ 475(@250wpm)___ 396(@300wpm)
Tomas inhaled, taking in the scents of the woods, brush and flowers. The abundance of vegetation on the forest floor had its own smell. He noted that the thick debris was crawling with insects—far too many of them, as if they had been disturbed. When he urged Kinta to fly as low as possible so he could sweep along the ground to find definitive traces of the master vampire’s passing, the dragon did so with reluctance. He preferred fighting from the air. Flying low meant both rider and dragon were within reach of an inventive vampire’s attack.
Just ahead, the trees shivered slightly. There was no wind moving across the forest floor, yet the roots of the trees trembled.
Kinta, there is a trap just ahead. Keep moving but don’t continue forward. His piercing gaze quartered the area as his dragon made a circle just in front of the group of trees.
The trees they were weaving in and out of were closer together than many of the others, the branches intertwined. It would be easy enough for a shifter to race along those branches.
Why is Justice going through the rainforest at a snail’s pace, using the ground and trees rather than taking to the sky and covering ground much faster? He posed the question to his dragon and his brothers. If he has a destination in mind, he certainly isn’t going the quickest route available to him.
His brothers were used to communicating back and forth even during a battle. It was Mataias who answered first. Perhaps he is merely reacquainting himself with freedom.
He knows he is hunted, Lojos ventured. He could be playing a game of cat and mouse.
Tomas thought that over. Honing his skills? Finding the undead, leading us to them and setting a trap. Is it possible he can persuade the undead to do his bidding? Benedek could use his voice to compel the undead.
He knows we travel together, Mataias said. Having the undead take on our appearance could be a tactic to throw us off.
Tomas shook his head. I doubt that. He knows we are ancients, riding the edge as he was many centuries before he was forced to sacrifice himself. He had to have gone mad being alone so long in the depths of hell.
But he wasn’t alone, Lojos reminded. Lilith stole a Carpathian child centuries ago, and it was confirmed she was taken below. She grew up with Justice protecting her. They spoke Carpathian together. Several have heard them.
But she is not his lifemate, Mataias pointed out. There is no saving us without a lifemate, no matter how strong we are.
Tomas knew that was the truth. They could only keep their honor for so long. The longer they lived, the more they evolved into something else. He thought of it as if they were becoming a beast—one living for the joy of battle. A vampire felt a rush when they killed while feeding. Vampires got high from the fear they induced in their victims. The crueler they were, the more depraved, the more of a rush they got from tormenting those they preyed on.
Tomas knew there was scarring on his soul, not just tears and holes a lifemate could repair when they bonded together. This thick scarring was different, and nothing removed it or the results of living far beyond their time. He had gone from not feeling emotions, not seeing in color and hearing whispers of temptation for hundreds of years, to sudden silence. Not even the whispers were there to plague him, and he found the silence far worse. That lasted several centuries. And then came the need for battle. The rush and joy he experienced engaging in a fight to the death with the undead. Did that make him a monster?
With those newer feelings, and he’d had them for the last couple of centuries, he worried about his ability to be a decent lifemate, especially if his woman was born outside the Carpathian species. What was he offering her? She would be forced to give up her identity, her very humanness; she would have to die to be reborn Carpathian. It wasn’t a pleasant process. He’d witnessed it more than once, and it was extremely disturbing to him.
All the time he was contemplating why Justice might associate with vampires instead of slaying them, he was assessing the trees and terrain around him.
Allow me to get to the ground, and you appear to fly away, Tomas said. You know what to do. Kinta was very adept at fading away, becoming like a soft violet smoke or fog drifting through the trees, impossible to see despite his bulk.
The ground is a trap, the dragon reminded Tomas. As are the trees ahead. You said so yourself. Kinta believed in an all-out war. He didn’t want Tomas on the ground when he could better protect him from his back.