Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
“I can smell him,” comes another voice.
From the alleyway between the bakery and the corner store across the road, someone approaches. Bald, beady eyes, his long arms swallowed in the sleeves of his flowing red robe. His feet move so stealthily beneath his robe, it looks as if he’s floating across the street as he slowly approaches, the fingertips of his hands tapping upon one another, like an alien super-villain with an evil scheme in the oven.
Elias, who has never seen Salazo before, is flooded with debilitating nightmares at the sight of him. It’s painful to Kyle to feel his proud boyfriend’s confidence crumble so quickly.
“Inside the foul building,” says Salazo in his odd voice and fake dialect, stopping some distance away, warily gazing at the church with his unblinking eyes. “My golden boy.”
Not letting go of his brother’s neck, Lazarus turns his scary eyes onto Kyle. “You know, even after your grievances against me and my family, I am still more than willing to bring you into our numbers. You showed great promise in a short time.”
“This is how you convince me?” asks Kyle with a gesture at Drake. “The way you treat your own brother?”
“I can still see the exhilaration in your face when you drank my blood,” he goes on. “The power pulsing in your veins … in your soul, as you took flight over the sands with me … I saw the life in your eyes. Have you ever felt it before? You loved it.”
“Not when I realized the cost,” Kyle retorts.
Lazarus flicks his eyes away. “So it’s some pious reason that makes you hold back? Boring. Let me tell you, life experience is what you lack here. You’ll see after many more years of life how fruitless it is to cling to such flimsy ideals as right and wrong. Out there in the wilds, there is no such thing as virtue. Only predator and prey. Blood, life, quick deaths. That is the most honest that one will ever be with themselves, when one finally gives up the ridiculous, tired game of civility and suppressing oneself for the sake of making others happy. Such tedium.”
“We cannot get my pet back,” worries Salazo from the side as his spindly fingers drum along his lips. “He’s in the church.”
Lazarus lets out a ghastly sigh. “It’s just a fucking building, Salazo, a pile of wood and stone and glass. No spiritual power compels us not to enter it.”
“No,” hisses Salazo, shaking his head. “I do not trust it.”
“Fuck it,” grunts Lazarus, tossing his brother aside by the neck, then heading for the church.
But he only makes it a single step.
Then lets out a laugh.
Kyle turns toward the church—and is horrified to find the chief at the front window with a rifle aimed at Lazarus.
“Do you see this?” asks Lazarus, peering back at Drake, at Salazo closer to the road. “I am tempted to call it adorable. The last time I was shot with a gun … when was it? A decade ago? Didn’t feel a thing. I don’t even remember the human’s name, but I felt such great satisfaction when I tore his head off and put it on a spike. It took nineteen days for the head to rot.”
“It could be a holy gun,” whispers Salazo, nervous.
Lazarus smirks. “Blessed by the Pope? I’m so honored.”
“Not another step!” shouts out the chief from the window, rifle aimed, finger on the trigger.
“Lazarus, stop!” cries Kyle. “Salazo doesn’t need a fucking pet! Just go back to your cave and—”
Gunfire cracks through the air.
Lazarus flinches backwards, startled for half a second.
Then the vampire’s screams fill the night sky like a banshee cry, rippling out.
Even Drake appears shocked, eyes wide as he rushes over to his brother, who writhes in agony on the ground as smoke swirls out of the gunshot wound in his stomach, hissing under Lazarus’s anguished cries. “What the fuck!” cries out Drake, at a total loss, as he tries to bring any comfort to his brother. He looks over at the police chief in the window, confused, a pinch of betrayal in his eyes, then to Kyle. “What in the fuck??”
Kyle stands over Lazarus, aghast. “Silver,” he chokes out, realizing it. “S-Silver bullet.”
The next instant, every distant shadow seems to move. By the buildings across the street. Through the leafless trees in the park. More vampires. Over a dozen of them, emerging, coming into existence, so many more than Kyle had feared, the whole family. Maybe twenty. Or thirty. Had their numbers increased since Kyle left the Devil’s Mouth? Were there other families? Other caves? Have they united?
The chief is already aiming again. “Not one of you comes any closer!” he calls out. “I’ve got a lot more where that came from! Stay back, all of you fuckers!”
Kyle spins around, cold hard dread settling in his stomach. They’re surrounded. Vampires slowly closing in. Salazo and his beady, paranoid eyes. Elias’s heart races as he tightens his grip on his silver club, trembling. Drake crouched on the ground with his moaning, tormented brother, the bullet lodged in his stomach torturing him worse by the second.