Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 93727 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93727 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 469(@200wpm)___ 375(@250wpm)___ 312(@300wpm)
The next few minutes were an impossibly loud blur. There were three men in the hallway, and two of them opened fire as soon as Erik had dropped the first. The Vampire behind me was the embodiment of precision. Without even looking at him, I knew the grace with which he moved as he aimed and fired, keeping his body between me and the hallway behind me.
I was a little less precise. I took out the first man and the second, but the third came out too quickly, and I felt a bullet graze the meat at my hip, just below the edge of my vest. It took four shots for me to hit him because I’d automatically jerked when the bullet grazed me, and it messed up my aim.
The hallway behind where I stood was much longer than the one before me, and Erik was firing twice as quickly as more men streamed out of the rooms. He stumbled, and his back brushed mine before he was steady on his feet again. I barely registered the feeling before two more men came out of Uncle Dalton’s room and the spare room next to it.
They weren’t all coming at once. While Erik and I stood in the center of the chaos, they were strategically sending out one or two at a time.
I swallowed hard as one of the men got a shot off as he went down. It lodged somewhere above our heads.
Then, Beau and Ambrose were there. I could hear their voices from the other end of the hall as it quieted. In seconds, they were beside me, and Erik had his hand on my shoulder as he covered my back and we made our way toward Uncle Dalton’s room.
By the time we were finished, my ears were ringing, and I could barely hear a thing.
I stood in the center of my uncle and aunt’s room, barely able to catch my breath.
“Safe room?” Erik asked, looking at the walls.
“It’s not in here,” I gasped, shaking my head.
“Where is it?” Ambrose asked as the sound of a rifle shot filtered in through a broken window.
The thing about the safe room was that I’d been taught since I was old enough to understand words that it was not to be shared with anyone. Not my teachers, not my doctor, not the police, not the fire department, not my priest—if I’d had one. Absolutely no one outside of Uncle Dalton, Aunt Halle, my mom and dad, Ian, Grant, and Seamus could ever know where the door to the safe room was. All of our lives could depend on it.
So it took me a moment to form the words because everything inside me was screaming not to.
“Downstairs,” I rasped, leading the way.
Adrenaline was coursing through my veins as I stepped over bodies and carefully peeked over the railing to the stairs. There was no sound coming from down there, but that didn’t mean anything. Someone could’ve been hiding.
Erik passed me and hurried down the stairs first.
It didn’t feel good to be proven right when automatic gunfire came from the media room to the left of the stairway.
“Motherfuckers,” Beau spat as he took the stairs two at a time. He reached Erik just as he’d dropped down behind the railing. Thankfully, between the two of them, the shooting stopped.
“You can let go of me now,” I told Ambrose through my teeth. His hand felt like it had burned a hole through the skin of my arm.
“Sorry,” he said quietly as we followed the others. I turned off lights as we moved through the house, going out of my way to make sure that we weren’t lit up like a fish tank for anyone outside to see.
When we reached the center island of the kitchen, I had to force myself to reach beneath the counter and press the minuscule button.
“And turn and go up to the open door boldly, and knock to the echoes as beggars for roses,” I said, knocking twice, then four times more.
“What?” Beau asked. “Are you quoting Robert Frost?”
I didn’t have to reply because the end of the counter began to swing inward from the floor. As soon as it had swung parallel to the counter above it, Aunt Halle’s head came into view, her eyes filled with fear.
“Rosemary?”
“Sometimes during the day I will look at the house and the house will look at me, and the house will weep.”
“Yes, it does,” she whispered back.
“I can feel it,” I told her hoarsely, my throat tight with tears of relief.
“Oh god,” she replied. “Come on, boys.”
Aunt Halle climbed up the ladder first, her eyes widening when she saw the Vampires with me.
“Daniel’s family,” I told her, putting my hand on her shoulder so she wouldn’t rise into view of the windows. “Stay down there for a sec.”