Total pages in book: 72
Estimated words: 65871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 65871 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 329(@200wpm)___ 263(@250wpm)___ 220(@300wpm)
“I am always going to know where she is. What she is thinking. How she is feeling. I am aware of her in ways nobody else ever could be aware of her,” the vampire says. “I could make her my thrall, my puppet, my pet, my slave. Do you understand, Alexei? I leave her enough free will to say and think things like that so she remains amusing to me. That is what the gods do, is it not? Create entities with just enough self-determination to be of interest?”
Of course he has a god complex. Living forever will do that to you.
I know when I am in the presence of a dangerous creature, and there is nothing more dangerous in this world than this vampire. An ancient megalomaniac with nothing to lose and everything to gain. He could snuff out our line in an instant if he so chose.
He acts like a patriarch, but I sense his cruelty keenly. Whatever interest he has in our line, it is not benign.
“I cannot wait to see what young she bears you, Alexei. You were a beautiful baby.”
He has forgotten something. A true god is a creator. Dom is not a creator. He is an infective agent, a curse crawling on the planet’s face. He will never know the embrace of true eternity. He will be standing on the world when it ends.
For a moment, I feel sorry for him. He, like all of us, is lost in a search for meaning, and it is harder for him because everything is ephemeral. Even the very vampire progeny he makes are taken from him. Anya wounded him when she killed his son. He is demonstrating that pain now, showing us a fraction of it.
“What do you say, Alexei?”
I clear my throat, and lean into his metaphor.
“Men are not great because they are made by gods. They are great because they exist in spite of their capricious cruelties.”
There is a brief pause in which he does not respond, then there is a smirk and a nod of acknowledgement.
“You’re not going to submit, are you?” He says the words thoughtfully and perhaps even sadly, as if he is being forced to confront a reality he does not want to deal with.
“No. I am not.”
“Then I am afraid neither one of you can ever leave this place. You are a liability to yourselves and to the… Aaargghhhgghh!”
We never hear the end of his little speech, because the room bursts into a kind of light that forces both Anya and me to close our eyes to avoid having them burned out.
This is a weapon that the pack has been developing. Giving us time to work before letting us know where Anya was turns out to have been a significant tactical error. We have not all been sitting around waiting. Many of my pack are incredibly intelligent, and with an aim to turn their intellect toward, they have become rather dangerous.
Vampires do not like sunlight. Ancient vampires can tolerate it, but what just exploded in this room contains enough UV to kill a hundred of them in a single explosion. It’s designed to incapacitate, and it does so brutally.
Dom is screaming. I imagine thousands of years have passed since he last felt pain. By the sound of it, he’s finding it very unpleasant. That’s likely because his skin has melted off, his eyeballs have bubbled away to nothing. He cannot see and he is a shambling mass of bare, dead flesh rotting visibly.
“You will all perish for this!”
His cry of furious rage heralds not our deaths, but the arrival of the pack.
They were behind me. Of course they were.
And they are no longer on defense.
The sounds of vampires dying echo through the concrete walls, mixing with the blind rage of Dom, the ancient who imagined we had entirely failed to evolve.
“Anya,” I say. “Do what you do.”
I drop Anya, and in an instant her dress is shredded as she takes her wolf form.
She is the one wolf among us capable of biting whoever she wishes. She has already taken in the curse. I want her agile. I want her able to defend herself. And I want her to do all the damage she needs to do in order to work off the rage she has accumulated.
We kill, the two of us. I have my weapon, and she has her teeth. Bright ultraviolet bursts accompany a cacophony of undead demise as the pack finally hunts the way it was designed to.
We eradicate every single vampire in the building, with the exception of Dom. He will take more killing, and I have no desire to put him out of his misery just yet. He has made us suffer, and he will suffer too.
When we are done, she shifts back into her human form, all her naked, beautiful, soft female glory. I wrap my arms around her, pick her up and kiss her deeply, properly, the way I can now that we have taken our vengeance the way we need to.