Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112001 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 560(@200wpm)___ 448(@250wpm)___ 373(@300wpm)
The male who had drugged that woman turned around like Xhex said something to him. And those eyes of his went to the floor and traveled back up her body.
He smiled as if he were ready for another fun time.
Xhex left with the two males a mere four minutes and twelve seconds later.
Sitting back once again, she stared at the footage she’d frozen. It was of that back door by the bathrooms, the one he’d used to take the blond woman out earlier in the evening.
The one she was using to lure the males into the darkness.
She must have killed his friend, too… but where was the other body…?
No one had reported anybody missing yet. Vishous had checked that back at the Pit. But those kinds of things could take a little time to develop, depending on who the shorter male had lived with and what kind of job he had. People weren’t always missed right after they disappeared.
And if Chinless had been left for dead somewhere outside? Even if it was cold, or overcast, a vampire body would go up in flames as soon as daylight arrived, nothing but a scorched spot on the asphalt remaining.
She could always go to the location where Tohr had reported finding the male whose remains were in the morgue. Maybe there was a burn mark somewhere around there. Maybe there wasn’t.
The details weren’t the issue anymore.
The question was… what she did about herself.
TWENTY
UP UPON THE summit of the mountain called Deer, Blade stepped out of the hidden cave. Breathing in deeply, he smelled only pine trees, fresh earth, and a frigid humidity in the air that suggested snow would be coming. The cold was biting, his robing protecting him not by much, and as the gusts coming up the elevation pushed at him, his hair waved back from his visage and his core body temperature was drained.
Not that he minded.
Off in the distance, a howl crested through the night, and after a moment, a reply came from across the valley. Behind him, an animal—likely a deer, given the mountain’s assigned nomenclature—was being quiet about its movements. He tracked the thing nonetheless out of habit. Out of his own nature.
As he considered what he had done on behalf of the wolven, a rare moment of peacefulness settled upon his shoulders and he told himself to enjoy it. The sense of easing would not last, and heeding that truism, he drank the calm in and tried to hold it in his soul. Soon enough his mental torment would return.
Ah, brain chemistry.
The self was the most dangerous deceptor. This was something that symphaths knew to their core, and most others were willfully blind to, and that disconnect was why his kind were so dangerous. Thoughts and feelings were levers to be pulled by words and deeds, and the output was a product of design.
Thus why he had moved out of his quarters at the Colony.
And taken his most precious possessions with him.
Glancing back to the fissure in the rocks, he knew his kind would never find him here. For all the time symphaths spent under the ground, they detested nature. Living here? Out in the wilderness? They could not fathom why anybody of their constitution would volunteer for such a thing, even one who existed on the fringes of their bloodline.
Thus he had packed what mattered upon his body and dematerialized out from one of the Colony’s disguised entrances. The cave, with its natural spring-fed basin, had been the only place he had considered. He was well aware that it was someone’s abode, but the abandonment of the space had been clear the previous time he had been in it, the scent of its wolven occupier faded, dust accumulated on the storage trunks and the bedding platform alike.
Concerning matters of housekeeping, he thought of the finger he had drawn across the bureau in Kurling’s quarters—
Another howl sounded out to the west. And… yes, there was the other answer.
Closing his eyes, he thought of Lydia, and pictured her human-ish incarnation, with her tall, strong body, and her hair with its streaks of blond, and her eyes, those beautiful golden eyes, which were lycan-like even when she was not in that form.
Her nature was dispositive, no matter the skin that clothed her.
As he thought of the ways she had stared at him, over the short course of their vivid association, he reflected that even when she hated him, he relished any moment that her gaze was upon him. And as he considered the way she had looked at him the night before when he had returned her missing friend to her? Yes, he preferred that best, even if shock had tempered her positive regard.
In light of this, he resolved that it would probably be best not to fool himself. For all the valid, survival reasons that this remote location could be chosen by him, the truth behind his decision to camp out here was about her, not him.