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)
He kicked viciously at the vampires on the ground and they crawled hastily out of his way before stumbling to their feet. Sergey stood in front of the web, his guards by his side, and waved aside the dangling strands of the web. One master vampire moved up in front of him and another dropped behind him. The other two flanked him on either side.
Ferro could see why the entrance was so large. It had been deliberately made that way so it was safer for the vampires to pass through when their guardian was in a feeding frenzy. He drifted closer, Sandu, Petru and Benedek closing ranks so they were in tight formation, almost on the very heels of the master vampires. They had to time their entry so the vampires wouldn’t feel them, yet be close enough that the guardian wouldn’t, either. They couldn’t stir so much as a drop of air and had to move in perfect sync with the vampires as they entered the lair.
Nothing smelled as bad as a vampire’s lair. When many vampires shared the same lair, the stench was overwhelming, even to the most hardened of Carpathian hunters. They might not feel emotion, but they had a heightened sense of smell. They were predators, and like any predator, their senses were acute, no matter what form they took.
The passage may have started out narrow, but over time it had been widened, and now three grown men could easily walk side by side down the steps hewn out of the dirt and root systems to the floor below. Someone knowledgeable in engineering had designed and fortified the underground fortress. There was a series of smaller rooms to the front that presumably housed victims the vampires kept alive to feed off of for long periods of time.
As they floated past the rooms with the open doors, the brethren could see evidence of captivity, the chains and smears of old blood left behind with echoes of screams still encased in the dirt of the walls and flooring. There were no prisoners, and hadn’t been for some time. Either Sergey hadn’t been using this lair for very long, or he had abandoned the practice of keeping his food alive and close while he worked at retrieving Elisabeta.
The hallway ended abruptly, spilling into a large circular room cut out beneath the forest. The vampires had made an effort to make it comfortable, even somewhat livable, with chairs for the master vampires on a raised dais and more scattered around for the lesser vampires following them. The pawns sat on the floor, not yet worthy of a chair.
Ferro and the others exchanged notes on the master vampires entering the room with Sergey. Two of them were cousins of the Malinov brothers. Cornel and Dorin were often seen with their five cousins when they were young, preferring to stay in the background. They were quiet but skilled hunters, a force to be reckoned with from early on when they hunted vampires. Still, it shouldn’t have been a surprise when they followed their cousins and made the decision to turn. The members of the Malinov family were close and they believed themselves superior to the Dubrinsky family—those who ruled the Carpathian people.
The Astor family had always followed the Malinovs. As children, Georg, Fridrick and Addler had hung around them, and when they were first learning to hunt, they followed the direction of one of the older Malinov brothers. They had all been good hunters, although unlike Cornel and Dorin, the Astors were on the flamboyant side. At times they had gone so far as to act in theaters in various countries, choosing small stages where they could perform, be stars, and then when they had gotten enough accolades to pander to their vanity, they would stalk any critics and drain them of their blood, sometimes killing their families slowly in front of them first. They needed attention constantly, and following someone like Sergey had to be difficult for them. Georg and Fridrick had been killed recently by Tariq and the others in their fight against the vampires, but Addler had survived.
Addler was a smart, colorful vampire, very reminiscent of the man he had once been. Unlike the others, he kept himself looking fairly decent, even though there were no humans to fool. He wore a suit with a purple shirt and black stripes. Ferro could see that his once handsome face would appeal to modern women. He had always been a good hunter, even as a young man, a careful student of the Malinovs, and apparently, he still was.
The fourth master vampire was one who, again, didn’t surprise Ferro all that much. He hadn’t been related to the Astors or the Malinovs but he had grown up with them and, as children, it was reputed that where they were, he was. He was called Ambrus Balog. In Carpathian culture they took names suited to the times and whatever region they lived in. Often they kept their childhood name, given by a parent, for sentimental reasons, but even that could change if it wasn’t suited for the country where they were residing. Ambrus liked his name and continued to use it.