Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 91636 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 458(@200wpm)___ 367(@250wpm)___ 305(@300wpm)
“Aren’t you going to take your clothes off?”
“I’m used to sleeping in my clothes,” I say. “I get scared if I don’t have my things on me. I wake up over and over thinking someone might steal them from me.”
I am probably going to go to hell for this series of lies, but hell is closer than anybody suspects.
“I am looking forward to learning more about you,” he says. “It is late tonight, but there will be plenty of time tomorrow.”
Plenty of time. Tomorrow.
I lie down and pretend to sleep. I am sure my boots being on the coverlet is driving Tailor crazy, but he tolerates it. I’d feel bad, but I have bigger problems to deal with.
I wait until his breathing changes, suggesting he is asleep. Then I wait longer still, until his breathing really changes, indicating he is actually genuinely asleep. I couldn’t sleep if I wanted to. I have to make my escape before the kind of chaos that could rip this port apart forever comes knocking.
These men have no idea what they’ve brought upon themselves. They think having mated me has changed my brain forever, made it impossible for me to leave. They’re wrong. So fucking wrong.
I sneak out while Tailor is still asleep and find the port buzzing with the quietest activity I have ever beheld. People are moving quickly, silently, and definitely without wanting to rouse the port masters.
They’ve been warned.
I can hear the whispers.
When I turn around, I can see sails on the horizon. Red sails.
I run for my truck.
By some absolute fucking miracle, my cargo is on the back, the shipping container locked in place. Yes. This is going to work. Everything is going to be okay.
CHAPTER 2
Tailor
They say you don’t wake up to the smell of fire, but I do. I wake to the scent of our world burning. I look down at the end of the bed and discover that it is empty. Did that girl set us on fire? I wouldn’t put it past her, I suppose.
I pull on my clothes as fast as I can and grab all the weaponry that comes to hand.
“Sirs! Sirs!”
The vampire who tipped us off to Kita’s existence is banging at the door, thin fists creating a booming annoyance. I discover this when I fling the door open. Conroy is not far behind me.
“Where is the female? He will want to see her.”
“Who will want to see her?”
“Alexander,” he says, as if that is a name we will recognize. We push past him. Conroy and I are both much more concerned with our missing mate than wondering about our latest visitor.
“Where’s the fire?”
The answer to that question is everywhere. The docks are ablaze. A massive ship with red sails furled is anchored just off shore, and fiery arrows are arcing through the air, landing among the overly dried old wood structures of the port and turning it to tinder. The mainsail of the ocean-going leviathan is marked with an arcane fang insignia, and it is a sight that sends a chill through me because I thought I would never in life see such a thing with my own eyes. It is the mark of dark history come sailing out of the pages of old books to assault us.
“Vampire ship,” Conroy says, the lights from the burning port playing in his eyes and across his face. Smoke is billowing directly upward, turning our once proud yet hidden place into a beacon for all to see.
“Alexander,” I say. “He meant Count Alexander.”
Count Alexander is a historic figure, an ancient warrior who still lives, technically, to this day due to a run-in with a vampire when he was at the height of his conquests. He has known the world by a dozen names. He has been in every single country, redrawn its boundaries with his warmongering. He has living descendants in the tens of thousands due to his aggressive mating strategy while he was still a man.
Seeing Count Alexander’s ship in our port is like being visited by a dark god. It seems impossible that a being so powerful would show any interest in us at all, let alone come to set our world ablaze.
Alexander has no need to trade illegally. If he does, he would use proxies on top of proxies. He does not need to have his flagship dock dead center of the port where it has already spooked so many of our patrons that the other boats are gone. I look for signs of wrecks, masts sticking from the water, that sort of thing, but I think they saw him coming and fled while we were distracted with our mate.
The port is eerily quiet. I hear the crackling of wood burning, and the popping of glass windows, the occasional boom of a gas canister giving up, but there are no screaming voices, there is no panic. There is absence.