Total pages in book: 97
Estimated words: 92612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 92612 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 463(@200wpm)___ 370(@250wpm)___ 309(@300wpm)
“Don’t speak his name.” He snarls, his fangs bared as he glares at me. “Insolent pig. I’ll enjoy watching the high lord gut you.”
Not a smart move on my part, mentioning the vampire king’s son. I’ve only heard whispered rumors from other prisoners about him—that he was killed, that no one knows exactly how. The elevator doors open.
He shoves me forward, his grip still tight as my limbs flop around, my body torn with the searing pain of everything. Everything. It all hurts. Inside and out. Plowing forward, he passes through two large doors, guards on either side. They don’t even glance at us as we pass.
Inside, the air chills even more, the cold rattling my teeth. The smell hits me again, this time somehow worse. I gag, but my stomach is empty. There’s nothing inside me anymore. I retch all the same, spit flowing in a string from my lips as we move into the king’s cathedral. The high black walls are polished to a sinister glow, light from a dozen huge chandeliers bouncing all around to illuminate the bodies.
Hundreds of them, each impaled on steel spikes that rise from the floor in an orderly pattern.
I try to look away, but they’re on either side. So many people, some of whom I probably know. I might remember. But I don’t focus on faces. I don’t focus on anything. I retch again as the smell of decay eats its way into my mind. For the first time in a long time, I choose to close my eyes.
Voices murmur somewhere nearby, the echo flowing off the stone and muddling through the gore to reach us.
The guard doesn’t let up, dragging me along as my body rebels. I dry heave again as my feet squelch through rotten entrails and chunks of skin and hair.
“—isn’t something I’m interested in entertaining.” Gregor’s voice.
How do I know Gregor? How—
“We still need enough of them to feed on.”
I go still, my heart frozen. That voice. I recognize it.
“I don’t care about keeping cattle!” Gregor roars. “I care about vengeance! I am owed their pitiful lives, every last one! There will never be enough death to repay what they’ve stolen from me!”
The guard stutter steps, then regains his balance and keeps going. People are on my left and right. No, not people. Them. The dark cavern is full of vampires, all of them focused on Gregor at the head of the room. He’s atop a dais, more bodies spiked on either side of him. And standing a few steps below him, his back to me, is a man. Not a man, I remind myself. I can’t take my eyes off him, the blackness of his hair, the pale skin of his hands. A monster.
The guard throws me down at the base of the stairs, pain bursting at my knees as I fall to the side. Someone beside me grunts, and I force myself back upright onto my aching knees.
“Vince.” I grab his arm and pull him toward me. He’s so light now that even I can lift him, the two of us huddled against each other as the wolves crowd around.
He grunts and opens his eyes, the whites gone yellow as he stares ahead.
“Vince.”
A sharp pain cracks through my skull, and I fall forward again, my cheek smashing onto the stone step.
“Silence, dog,” the guard growls.
I lie there for a moment, the pain paralyzing me.
The room is silent. I let my eyes close only for a moment. The slightest second of respite. And then I open them again and force myself back to my knees.
“My son.” Gregor’s voice is a furious hiss. “My beautiful son. They will die. All of them. I will wipe them off the face of the Earth. They must die.”
“They will. Just some sooner than others,” the monster on the steps says. Valen, his name is Valen. I remember him.
Gregor sighs.
My hazy vision clears somewhat, and I can see the vampire high lord. Sitting on a black throne, his hollow eyes almost glowing in the low light. Gaunt, white skin, blue veins like rivers flowing beneath his pale flesh.
“Washington?” Gregor asks.
“Gone,” Valen says. “Not a single human left alive. I made sure of it.”
The third prisoner, the one in tattered fatigues, moans and covers her face. The guard slaps her so hard in the side of the head she falls to the floor and doesn’t move.
Gregor drums his long fingernails on the arm of his throne. “They’ll run now. Little pigs running and squealing. Filthy beasts. Hunt them down. Drag them from whatever stinking hole they crawl into. Kill them as they killed my son. Kill them all. Spare no one.”
“With the government collapsed, the plague will kill them even quicker. No help from any quarter, they’re low on supplies and what little cooperation with each other they had to begin with has already evaporated.” Valen sounds almost bored. “If that doesn’t get them, your armies will.”