Total pages in book: 101
Estimated words: 97229 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 97229 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 486(@200wpm)___ 389(@250wpm)___ 324(@300wpm)
I don’t know what possessed me as I got up and wrapped myself in a robe on my way to the huge, bolted door, hauling it open with all my strength before I marched out onto the landing.
“Katherine!” Hans called. “Katherine, come back here. We aren’t finished talking. There’s plenty more to say.”
I didn’t look behind, just gave it everything I had. I dashed downstairs as quickly as I could, and fuck knows how I did it, but I reached the kitchen before he caught me. I tugged the kitchen drawers open one after another, looking for blades, because if he wasn’t going to bleed me to death, I was going to do it myself, and it would be his choice then. Lose me or give me his blood.
I had a blade in my hand when he stormed in and snatched it from me, lifting me up from behind as it clattered onto the floor.
It was like I was possessed, screaming and kicking out at the frustration.
And the pain.
“STOP!” I said. “I’M NOT DOING THIS AGAIN, HANS! I’M NOT! I’LL DO IT MYSELF IF YOU WON’T DO IT FOR ME!”
“Shh,” he soothed, and dropped to the floor, holding me tight on his lap as the sobs hit me. “This is impulse running wild. It’s natural. It’s fear. It’s all right.”
The trapdoor was well and truly open now, as was the grief. I screamed in his arms as the full force hit me. I was there, watching him hanging, butchered, hating every second like it was a lifetime. Broken myself along with him.
“Let it out,” Hans whispered, and rocked me, and I felt insane, but it didn’t matter. I spun on his lap to face him, barely able to see through my tears.
“Don’t risk it again!” I told him. “I can’t stand it. I don’t want patience. I want to be with YOU. I don’t give a shit about sunrises, or walking through sunny meadows, or how I’ll be seeing everything in the fucking darkness. I don’t fucking care!”
We sat in the quiet, him holding me as I struggled to get control of myself. It was hard. It was a war raging inside me, and I was on the edge of tumbling straight back under the trapdoor, but I wouldn’t let it. I had to be here in the present.
“Oh, little one. Your commitment is divine. But–”
I shook my head, I wasn’t interested in buts.
“I’m sure,” I insisted again. “I don’t give a shit how scared my body is, it can fuck off!”
He smiled a little at that. “Your soul really is shining through now. It’s beautiful.”
“Good,” I said, somehow managing to control the sobs. “Make me a vampire then. Fuck my body, and fuck patience, too.”
I expected him to fight me again, but this time his argument didn’t come. He brushed my hair from my face, and then he said the words that would seal my destiny.
“All right, Katherine, I’ll make you a vampire.”
“Really?” I asked him. “You’ll do it?”
He nodded and pulled me up with him as he got to his feet. I watched mutely as he headed to the other side of the kitchen and took down a phone from the wall.
“Time to call Edwin,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-eight
“You’d have really slashed your wrists on the kitchen floor, wouldn’t you?” Hans asked when we were in the back seat of the limo.
In any other universe it would have been a crazy statement, but the driver didn’t so much as shoot us a glance.
“Yes,” I replied.
Hans nodded. “That’s quite something. It really is.”
I chanced a smile, loving how his face looked in the orange glow of the passing streetlights through the window.
“Yeah, well. If I so much as hear the word patience one more time, I’ll be doing it again.”
He laughed a little. “I’ll try to hold back from saying it.”
“Please do. It drives me mad.”
He squeezed my knee. “I’ve gathered that much.”
So, here we were, on the journey. My journey into the realms of the transition as Hans called it. I was going to die a mortal death and become a vampire, and I had no idea how that would truly feel – losing the life in the body you’ve always known.
“Not fantastic,” Hans said. “As I’ve told you, the body fights, even when the soul doesn’t want it to.”
“Mine can fight all it likes, I still want to be a vampire.”
I got another smirk from him.
“We’ve most definitely ascertained that.”
Even under the nerves and the tension of earlier, I was alive with excitement for what lay ahead. I felt the calling getting stronger with every mile we travelled. Who’d have ever thought that the place I’d run away from like a scared little puppy would be the place my soul would once again call home?
That’s what it felt like as the limo passed the Welcome to Herefordshire sign. Home.