Total pages in book: 57
Estimated words: 55221 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 55221 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 276(@200wpm)___ 221(@250wpm)___ 184(@300wpm)
The climb becomes more punishing as the stairs change from a stone spiral to a concrete shaft. Back and forth. Burning and heaving, my muscles pushed to the breaking point.
I reach another landing, barely able to breathe, sweat stinging in my eyes. More. Up and up. Something tears at the back of my thigh, my hamstring. I fall, but still I climb on my hands and knees. Step after step. Fatima’s blade still clutched in my hand such that my knuckles grow bloody from scraping along the concrete.
After I’ve climbed for longer than I can remember, black boots appear on the steps right in front of me.
I’m snatched up, dangling as a vampire snarls in my face.
“You’ve kept him waiting.” He shakes me, my body flailing as I gasp for breath.
With a heave, he throws me to the next landing. I hit hard, my head bouncing against the wall as my open hand catches on the lip of the top stair. Pain rips along my arm, and I know my fingers are broken. The bones in my hand, too.
“Up.” He grabs me again and drags me down a dank corridor, the scent of death pressing on me like a weight, the barbs beneath my skin multiplying until I’m on fire all over. I retch, the small contents of my stomach splashing onto the blood-blackened floor. He doesn’t stop.
When he drops me in a heap, I’m grateful that the motion has stopped. That I can just lie here.
“My lord.” The vampire kicks me so I roll onto my back.
The Black Cavern. The same steps I was brought to when Gregor gave me to Valen. The steps where countless humans have died at the mad vampire’s hands. I stare up at him. He’s sitting on his black throne, the back of it decorated with dozens of heads on pikes.
His face is skeletal now, barely any skin left. Eyes a milky blue-white. A few strands of white hair here and there where he still has flesh on his head. Half of his bottom lip remains, bloody and trapped beneath his long fangs.
His neck is a rotting wreck, the skin gray and falling away. A corpse.
“You are late.” He points his finger, now only bones and sinew, at me. “Up.”
I get to my hands and knees, then to my feet, my body throbbing. I scan the room, looking for any sign of Valen. Nothing. He’s not here. I force myself to look at the heads, searching for his raven hair. Not there.
“What is it about you?” Gregor pulls my attention back to him. He crooks his finger, and I labor up the shallow steps until I’m standing in front of him. Then he points to the floor. I sit, my head leaning to the side, my body forcing me to rest against his bony knee. He strokes my hair, his touch like ice.
I gasp when I see him. Valen. Hanging suspended in the middle of the cavern. Crucified on a silver cross, his skin sizzling as he hangs limp, his face hidden beneath gore. His entire body is destroyed, blood and sinew, skin hanging in ribbons, bones broken and shattered.
“Valen!” I scream, the sound cut off when Gregor yanks my hair and orders silence.
Valen stirs, his head lifting the slightest bit. “Valen, I’m here,” I try to find our bond, to pick up the threads that linked us. But they’re nothing more than cobwebs that disintegrate at my touch.
“Valen has long been a disappointment.” Gregor continues stroking me absently. “His weak blood made that inevitable. I often wonder why I kept him. I think it was for the novelty of it, really. A half human mutt. So rare. But made no more valuable for its rarity. Quite the opposite, in fact.” His claws dig into my scalp. “But his disdain for the humans has been quite clear over the centuries. So what is it about you that makes him betray me? Makes him lie to me? Forces me to punish him?”
I grit my teeth.
“My lord?” Coal strides in, two other vampires at his back. “You summoned me?”
“Valen has proven not up to the task of finishing off the human command. He also failed me in Atlanta. As such, he is no longer in charge of my forces. Until a competent Dragonis successor can be found, you will lead my armies.”
Coal stops in front of us and drops to one knee, bowing his head in deference. “My lord.”
“You will go at sunset. Destroy them. Force them out of their holes, give them nowhere to hide. Bring me the head of their general.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“If you fail me, you will meet the same fate as my Specter.” His claws go deeper, digging along my scalp, separating skin from bone. I can’t scream, can only endure.
Then he withdraws and licks my blood from his fingers. He gasps, a horrid wheezing sound like a death rattle.