Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45934 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45934 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
The young woman was wearing herself out, and he knew from experience that if she wasn’t strong, she wouldn’t be able to fight off any potential threat that could come at any moment.
Crazy Lizzie had told him evil was coming.
One of the few nights he’d been alone with his thoughts, Crazy Lizzie had come to him, her green eyes almost glowing as she told him death would come, that it would take something precious, something that was needed to help stop this war they were getting closer to.
Disaster of the Otherworld were a pain in the ass, and he should know, he’d lived for over a thousand years. He wasn’t as old as Lizzie, but he was indeed old. Compared to some of the beings he’d met, he was freaking ancient.
He was growing tired of the young believing they knew better. They hadn’t seen enough of the world to even realize they were playing a foolish game.
“The books tell of nothing. You know this. We should have taken Lizzie when we had the chance.”
Alexander stopped, wrapped his fingers around Charles’s throat, and held on tightly. Charles was not as old as him. They were not true brothers, but they were from the same family line.
There were humans alive today from his line. Not all of them had been turned into vampires. He made sure they were protected. Over the years, he’d done deals with witches and warlocks alike, to provide the right protection to keep them all safe.
His human family of today didn’t know their history. Alexander had been sure to wipe his existence from any of the books. He had done this the moment he learned of the Disaster of the Otherworld threat.
To make sure his line survived, he had no choice. There was a chance some being would be able to detect the magic he had acquired but they would have to be very powerful.
With how young and weak Charles was, he still believed he had the power to breathe, and this made it easier to control him.
Charles hadn’t adapted to becoming a vampire. It was why Alexander had no choice but to keep him close. The truth was, Charles was a bane to his existence. If it wasn’t the fact he was family, Alexander would have killed him a long time ago.
Instead of killing him, he’d made sure to keep him alive, and he’d also stopped anyone else from killing him. Vampires were hunted. There were even humans who still believed they could wipe out vampires from existence, Elle’s father being one of them.
It had been a long time since Alexander had met a human with such disdain for his kind. He’d not even had to say a word, but he knew the man, Raymond, hated him. There had been a great deal of garlic placed at the meeting house, and he and Charles had been confined to the basement. Silly man.
Garlic affected the young vampires, including Charles. For Alexander, it didn’t make much of a difference. Holy Water, on the other hand, now that was a pest and would create some painful boils and sores, melting away his flesh and also stopping him from being able to heal for a long time.
“Look at me, Charles.”
The man continued to choke, but there was no air that he needed to survive, so his flaying was unnecessary.
He waited.
Watched.
And was bored the whole freaking time.
He had no desire to kill Charles, but he didn’t like the way he wanted to find the truth. Charles was a coward and believed kidnapping Crazy Lizzie and torturing her was the way to get her to tell the future.
It might work—might—but that was not how Alexander worked.
Crazy Lizzie was a friend. The closest he had to a friend.
Yes, he knew he had a horrible reputation, but that was in the past. It had been close to a hundred years since he had taken a human to be his sex toy. He no longer had a harem of women. He was alone.
Of course, the rumors about him still ran rife, and he was more than happy to keep up the falsehoods. Even dead, he had found the time to grow as a vampire. Enthralling humans, treating them as sex toys, had long lost its luster. Crazy Lizzie had seen to that.
“Rooms filled with women. Hours filled with delight, and yet, none of them are there for you, just eternal life.”
The women he’d taken had wanted something from him—eternal youth, eternal life—and he had given it to a few, but they were evil, so he had no choice but to rid the world of their presence. Being a vampire wasn’t about slaughtering and selfishness. He had a responsibility, just as they all did.
If vampires didn’t keep themselves in check, there would be chaos, bloodshed, and death. Every kind hated vampires. They were considered the vermin of the otherworld. But it didn’t stop any of them from needing their kind.