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)
And these vampires were going to help him by dealing with the lessers who came to his sire’s defense.
He would handle Lash—
Arriving at their destination, he made them all corporeal once more—and he was intrigued by the rustic location. It wasn’t a dark alley in the shitty part of town, it wasn’t some hidden induction site, it wasn’t even a place of worship where the fucking converted sucked up to their master. Nope, it was a plowed lane leading to a glass house perched on the side of a mountain—and his father did not own the property.
His dark mark would have stained the very molecules of everything on the site.
No, for some reason, Lash had come here.
As the vampires shook off the travel spell, Dev walked forward through the snow. The great concentration of evil was on the far side of the structure, so he cut around the fringes, finding his way by stepping through branches and the accumulation of drifts. Soon enough, a vast frozen lake was revealed, and then he joined up with a porch that ran the breadth and length of all that glass.
He made sure Lyric was nowhere near his thoughts.
His father would sniff her out immediately—
The open sliding door, way down at the end. Yes, that was where he needed to go.
Except then he paused. Glancing back at the males behind him, he recognized they were ready to fight, but he had a sudden awareness that he couldn’t shake.
And that was when he saw the shadow. Off to the side. An angel with gossamer wings and long black-and-blond hair.
As if a memory block was being lifted, Dev suddenly remembered that the entity had been at the apartment the night before. In the far corner, as unseen as he himself had been.
And there was a message being sent to him now, an urgent warning.
Turning back to the vampires, he looked them over. And then he opened his mouth—yet what happened next had nothing to do with him.
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Dev heard himself say in a voice that was not his own, as if he were a channel for the communication. “You have to go.”
The arguments were swift and sure, aggressive and angry. But then he locked eyes with Lyric’s brother.
“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Dev said in his own voice now. “This is a family matter between me and my father.”
Because it dawned on him, sure as if the conviction had been placed in his brain by that other entity: He might not survive this. So he couldn’t protect these mortals if things went badly.
In which case, he’d be responsible for the death of Lyric’s own blood.
“No,” he said abruptly. “I was wrong to bring you with me.”
Before they could make even more noise, he extended his hand, bundled them up safely, and sent them off. What had he been thinking anyway—other than respecting their need for vengeance because it was what motivated him.
Dev glanced back at the angel. The shimmering apparition put its hand on its chest, and inclined its upper body in gratitude.
Then that other voice wove its way into Dev’s head. If you give all you have, all that is within you, your destiny and everything you wish for will come true.
And then the angel disappeared.
In the aftermath, he took a couple of deep breaths—and after that, he approached the aperture, his heart starting to pound… especially as he arrived at the open sliding glass door and looked into a bedroom.
His father was as he had always been, tall and strong, with blond hair that was currently tied back. No clothes of leisure tonight. Lash was wearing a black ceremonial robe as he stood over a male who was straining on a bed as if in a seizure, the mouth open, the face twisted into a mask of horror and pain, the limbs of the body sticking straight out from the torso as it levitated off the satin sheets—
His father looked over with a sharp jerk of the head.
And then he actually did a double take. Which was a rather… human?… response.
Mortal, was more like it.
The vampire was instantly forgotten, cast aside across the space to crumple into an oozing mess of black blood and gore in the corner.
At which point, Dev squared off at the evil.
Lash.
The Omega’s son.
His sire.
In an effort to block any intrusion into his mind, Dev kept the titles circulating over and over again in his thoughts. If he was successful in redirecting his every conscious awareness back at his father, there were no weak points to get inside, no chance of infiltration and manipulation.
“The prodigal son returns,” Lash said in a low voice.
“Hello, Father.”
There was a moment of sizing up, on both sides. And then Dev stepped into the house, making sure that he was hyperaware of his surroundings, ready for anything.