Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 116618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116618 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 583(@200wpm)___ 466(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
I seize the opportunity, releasing Goldman to launch myself at Marco. The vampire’s transformation has made him stronger, faster, but also more bestial, less tactical. I use that against him, feinting to draw his attack before ducking under his guard.
My hands close around his chest, fingers digging through flesh and bone with strength I didn’t know I possessed. Marco shrieks, yellow eyes widening in shock as my hand closes around his heart, tearing it free in a spray of dark blood.
“If I can’t kill you once, I’m going to kill you twice,” I rasp.
The organ pulses in my palm, still beating. Before I can think, before I can question, the vampire part of me acts on pure instinct. I raise the heart to my mouth and bite down, blood exploding across my tongue, filling me with power unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
Marco’s body collapses, the unnatural life force animating it snuffed out instantly. The taste of his heart, his blood, rushes through me like fire, heightening my senses, sharpening my focus. I feel invincible, immortal, truly vampiric for the first time.
I stare down at his body and grin.
And you’re going to stay dead this time.
I turn back toward Goldman, only to find him already engaged with Valtu, who has the doctor by the throat, expression cold with centuries of hate. He squeezes his throat so hard that Goldman’s neck cracks before his head comes clean off.
Across the warehouse, Dmitri has gained the upper hand against Abe, driving him to his knees. A blue blade gleams in Dmitri’s hand, poised for a killing strike.
“It’s over, Abraham,” he declares. “The gateway will open, with or without your cooperation.”
“Tell that to your daughter,” Abe replies, blood trickling from a gash on his forehead. “Tell that to your precious doctor.”
Dmitri hesitates, glancing around the burning warehouse, taking stock of his fallen allies. His forces decimated, his ritual interrupted, his carefully laid plans crumbling around him.
Then his gaze falls on me, standing over Marco’s body, heart’s blood still dripping from my chin. Something changes in his posture—a new calculation, a shift in strategy.
“Victor,” he calls, voice resonating with compulsion once more. “Come to me, my son. Your service is required.”
And I feel it—stronger than before, almost overwhelming. My body responds against my will, taking one step toward him, then another. The blood bond between us, strengthened by Marco’s heart, pulls me forward like a puppet on strings.
“Kill Van Helsing,” Dmitri commands, gesturing toward Abe’s kneeling form. “Prove your loyalty to your bloodline.”
My legs continue moving, carrying me toward them even as my mind screams in opposition. I’m vaguely aware of Valtu and Adonis shouting, of Ezra rushing to Lena’s side, but they seem distant, unimportant compared to the compelling need to obey my sire.
Abe looks up at me as I approach, no fear in his eyes, only sadness. “Remember who you are, Callahan,” he says quietly. “Not what Dmitri made you, but what you’ve chosen to be.”
I stand over him now, fists clenched, body trembling with the effort of resisting Dmitri’s command. The vampire side of me howls for blood, for obedience, for acceptance from the father I never knew I had. The human side fights back with every memory, every principle, every moment of connection with Lena, with my new friends.
“Kill him,” Dmitri repeats, impatience coloring his tone. “Now!”
He holds out the blue mordernes blade for me to take. The weapon glows in the firelight, hungry for vampire blood. My fingers wrap around it and I raise it slowly, muscles straining against my own will.
“Victor, please,” Lena’s voice cuts through the compulsion, weak but determined. “You’re stronger than his blood.”
Her voice anchors me, gives me something to cling to in the storm of competing instincts. I focus on it, on her, on the connection we’ve formed that transcends all of this.
And in that moment of clarity, I understand what I must do.
I let my body move forward, as if surrendering to Dmitri’s compulsion. One step, two, circling around Abe as if to position myself for the killing blow. Dmitri’s posture relaxes slightly, victory within his grasp.
Then I pivot, moving past Abe toward Dmitri himself. Surprise registers in his eyes a fraction of a second before my blade plunges into his chest, driving through bone and sinew to pierce his heart.
“I am not yours,” I tell him, twisting the blade deeper. “I never was.”
Dmitri stares at me in stunned disbelief, his compulsion shattered by the mortal wound. “My son,” he whispers, blood bubbling from beneath his skull mask. “My blood…”
“Blood isn’t destiny,” I say, echoing Lena’s words from earlier. “It’s just blood.”
He collapses to his knees, the skull mask falling away to reveal that face so similar to my own—the same jaw, the same brow, features that might have been carved from the same stone. For a moment, I see what might have been, the heritage I could have embraced, the father I might have known under different circumstances.