Total pages in book: 182
Estimated words: 165649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 663(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 165649 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 828(@200wpm)___ 663(@250wpm)___ 552(@300wpm)
But I can be your shelter, a refuge all the same.
As Ferro dropped into the woods, he was surrounded by an oppressive feel of utter gloom. Airless, stifling, even suffocating, the farther he drifted into the interior, the heavier the oppressive force surrounded him. There was no doubt that Sergey as well as other vampires had invaded the forest to the point that nature could not fight back against such an abomination.
The vampire was unclean. Anything it touched withered. Blackened. No vegetation could remain alive and thriving near it. Everything about the vampire went against nature. As Ferro drifted through the trees, he noted that many of the trunks and branches were twisted into macabre shapes and already blackened in places.
Dark sap ran down the deadened bark, like rivers of blood, to pool at the exposed roots. Birds, tree frogs and lizards were caught, held and died slow, ugly deaths in the thick acid-filled sap. Ferro, like all Carpathians, was a keeper of woods, of nature. The sight of a once-beautiful forest with the animals and fowl reduced to such a state was difficult to witness.
Sandu, Benedek and Petru moved through the depressing woods as well, sizing up the dark, twisted trees, noting every position of the crows and owls that prowled the twisted branches with beady, shiny eyes, searching for any movement that would trigger their instantaneous response, a warning to their masters.
Ferro gave thought to what Elisabeta had revealed to him. The Malinovs wanted to take over leadership. Theirs had been a total power play. They were brilliant generals, ambitious and driven, and had the discipline and patience to carry out their schemes. Sergey did not have the genius of his brothers when it came to planning battles. The vampire knew if he was going to have a chance to defeat the prince of the Carpathians, he would need Elisabeta.
What had Sergey developed to cope with his brothers and their arrogance, even as a child? Sergey would have to be cunning. He would be crueler, because his brothers had been cruel to him. Merciless because his brothers had been merciless to him. He would want to dominate. He had shown those traits in his dealings with Elisabeta, in the way he treated her, even though she was the one to get him through those long centuries, and he needed her.
He had stolen her when she’d been a child and he had already been a fully grown male Carpathian hunter. He had known what he was doing. He had planned the abduction carefully. He couldn’t possibly have known what Elisabeta was capable of—the defeat of his brothers. Did he give her credit for that? Or over the centuries did he convince himself that he was really the one with the genius? Of course he thought himself the genius.
Ferro circled back around, moving to the outer area of the woods, back toward the lake, keeping to a very slow, drifting pace. It took a great deal of patience to stay almost still when time was a factor and the vampire would be coming soon, but he had honed that trait in centuries of hunting and had it in abundance.
He doubted very much if Sergey gave Elisabeta any credit for defeating his brothers. The vampire was vain. He would believe that he was the true genius in the family. He had slivers of all of his brothers and the high mage. No one could defeat him. He was desperate to get to Elisabeta only because she kept his body from decomposing so rapidly and kept his emotions intact when she was around. She’d been his constant companion and he was used to her company.
Sergey would tell himself all kinds of things, but deep down, he would be panicking, because all the things he could access before, like those slivers of his brothers’ genius, or the high mage’s spells, he could no longer reach. He would know, on some level, that without Elisabeta, he would not have access to the things that would allow him to rule.
Yet even without any of those assets, Sergey was a cunning, cruel master vampire in his own right. He would be a vicious fighter. He had defeated more than one Carpathian hunter in battle. That had nothing to do with Elisabeta. Having skill in battle didn’t necessarily take genius. Sergey was willing to fight when he believed he could win, or when he was fighting for his life. Simply because he wasn’t what he appeared didn’t mean he was going to be easy to defeat in a battle, and it would be foolhardy to dismiss him as so.
There was little moon, just a sliver, and the black clouds moving across the sky hid even that most of the time, so the lake’s water mostly appeared dark and shiny. Out of the oppressive stillness of the woods, Ferro felt a breeze. The draft tugged at the surface of the lake, creating ripples across it so waves lapped at the shore. It looked and even sounded like an idyllic scene, until one felt that ominous decay creeping out of the forest and hovering so close.