Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
When there was no immediate reply, he looked at them one by one. “What’s it going to be, boys.”
Still no answer, so Dev shrugged and went over to that open window. For a moment, all he could see was a memory of Lyric standing in front of the drapes as she’d looked around that first time she’d been here, her blond hair so beautiful as it shimmered when she moved.
The searing pain that went through him made him wonder what she’d felt after she’d been shot. Too bad he couldn’t have taken whatever agony she’d had from her. The shit in the center of his chest was late to that party, though.
Clearing his throat, he said, “Look, I’m leaving Caldwell after this and never, ever coming back. It’s now or not at all.”
* * *
Up on the shores of Lake George in Whestmorel’s glass house, Conrahd stood over the bed and watched the male breathe. The respiration had been getting slower. Slower. Slower…
Slower.
Yet the aristocrat just would not expire. Frustrated, Conrahd checked the clock on the wall. It had been like this for hours, the lingering, on the verge.
Glancing down, he tightened the grip on the pillow between his hands.
Do it, he told himself. Just lean over the bed and suffocate the bastard. The others had seen for themselves that their so-called fearless leader had taken very ill, thus there would be no questioning of the passing.
Then he could assume power—
Outside, something moved at the sliding glass doors, and he pivoted toward the expanse of transparency that provided such a panoramic view of the water and the snowy mountains. Staring out across Whestmorel’s body, he frowned. There was a shape on the far side of one of the doors, looming like a ghost that had become corporeal—
Every bone in Conrahd’s body, every inch of his skin, all the hairs on his head and each rib in his chest, screamed for him to go.
Now.
It was the kind of calling that he couldn’t ignore.
With a quick shift, he bolted out of the room, and skidded into the hall beyond. As he realized he was running with the pillow, he dropped it and went straight for the study.
The instant he arrived, the four other males looked up at him. They were in various stages of recline on the sofas, the chair, at the hearth by the fireplace, the stasis they were in predicated upon the update that Conrahd had been planning to make.
“Do you trust me,” he said roughly.
They straightened, each of them, the three who were sitting rising slowly to their feet.
“Do you,” he repeated as all kinds of urgency pounded his heart. “Just answer the question, I will not ask it again.”
When the halting yeses came, he pointed to the hidden door that was tucked in the south corner of the room. “We go now, we leave through the tunnel, and we do not look back.”
Now, the questions bubbled up, exploding on waves of anxiety:
“Now here, whatever is going—”
“—quite apparent something is rather out of order—”
“—is going on with Whestmorel. Is he sick—”
Conrahd cut them off with the horrible truth: “We go now, because the Omega’s son has just come unto this house.”
That was when a scream rippled out from down the hall, from where the bedroom was.
“Now!” Conrahd hissed as he bolted for the secret entrance to the escape tunnel. “Stay at your own peril.”
He didn’t even care whether they followed him. All he knew was that he was going to save himself first.
And then deal with the fallout.
Whatever route Whestmorel had intented to take with the head of the Lessening Society, whatever plan that had been conceived between the two, it was clear that no good could come of it.
If they intended to take down Wrath, there was going to have to be another way.
Assuming any one of them lived to hide from the dawn at the end of this night.
* * *
When Dev left his now-former apartment, he brought the others along, the three vampires traveling with him in a pocket of energy he created. He could sense their resolve and aggression even more easily now that their physical bodies were gone and they were in their essence form: Before they’d left, he’d been surprised they hadn’t called for backup—but now he understood why as he read them with clarity.
They would sacrifice themselves to protect the greater good.
And they believed they could call for help at any moment.
He wasn’t sure the latter was true. Guess they would all find out.
What they didn’t know, and he had come to a firm resolution on, was that he was the one who was going to kill his father this night. To save the vampires, and most importantly his love, he was going to stand up to the Omega’s begotten son, and he was going to battle.