Total pages in book: 149
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 142050 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 710(@200wpm)___ 568(@250wpm)___ 474(@300wpm)
“You… won’t…” Whestmorel wheezed an inhale. “You need… me.”
“You overestimate your necessity.”
Straightening to his full height, Lash put his foot on the male’s chest and leaned his weight forward. The suffering increased, which was satisfying—to a point.
But then that strange unease percolated up once again, and the next thing he knew, he was releasing not only that set of lungs, but the grip of his will around the male’s cardiac muscle.
Whestmorel dragged in gallons of air, swallowing the oxygen and spitting it back out in clouds that reminded one of an old-fashioned Christmas choo-choo.
For a moment, Lash went into his own past and remembered growing up in what he had thought was his parents’ mansion. There had always been a decorated tree in the drawing room standing in glittering elegance the second December arrived each year. The display had not been because the human holiday was being observed, but rather because it was just another beautiful decoration to be enjoyed.
And there had always been presents, of course.
Those had been much simpler times, before he had discovered his true sire, before he had taken over the Lessening Society from his father, the Omega, before… the last couple of decades when things had neither progressed nor regressed in terms of the war. And in other areas of his life.
If one wasn’t going forward… wasn’t that losing ground, in a manner of speaking?
Surviving was not victory. Not the kind that came with the mastery and control he had always craved.
“You must ask yourself…” The aristocrat coughed. “If you eradicate all vampires, how can you rule… over the dead…”
Lash looked out toward those skyscrapers, and then he let his stare roam over to the suburban sprawl that skirted the downtown. There was so much more that he could not see, so many homes, so many towns, so many cities.
Across the globe.
“If you kill all the vampires,” Whestmorel rasped, “who will you govern. What… will you do… if you win.”
“You don’t know my plans, aristocrat.”
He injected derision into his words, but that was just to hide the truth he abruptly found himself confronting. So involved had he been on the ground floor of the war—the recruitment, the inductions, the outfitting and arming, the to-and-fro of slayers being brought into the Society and then cast back out to him as the Brothers and their fighters sent them home—that he hadn’t considered a broader strategy.
Yes, he thought. This was the reckoning he needed, and it was about so much more than the war.
Standing over the aristocrat who had spoon-fed him the very aspirations he should have germinated within himself, he reflected on the nature of fathers and sons. He had readily stepped into the role of his sire—and there had been a time when he had expected his own son to do the same.
The fact that the great Blind King always had his progeny right by his side, in lockstep, was just one more reason to hate the male. Lash’s son, on the other hand, had fucked him off years ago.
What a disappointment Devlin had been, but that sonofabitch was too much like his mother.
Hell, for all Lash knew, the pair of them could be scheming to overthrow him right this very minute.
It was something he always worried about—
What if this emissary is actually their doing, he suddenly thought. Or someone else’s?
“Who shall you rule,” the aristocrat repeated. “And wouldn’t you like to get to Wrath. Tonight.”
As the tantalizing taunt rose up to him through the cold, blustery air, he tried anew to get into the male’s mind. And when he failed, he narrowed his eyes.
What lurked behind this offer? Was this a chimera created by his ex, something to trip him up, a play to his lust for power? Was this a plant from Lassiter? Or the great Blind King?
Lash regarded the male who lay sprawled at his feet. The rage that boiled up was no news flash. Hatred had always defined him. Except he was older now, and much, much wiser.
Even as his emotions swirled, he retained self-control.
If he lost his composure, the veil of protection he’d put up here would slip, and fuck knew what was waiting for him on the periphery of this park.
The safest thing he could do was get out of here.
Glancing suspiciously over his shoulder, Lash couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so destabilized. It was almost as if some kind of fulcrum was being established, and his energy was being drained because of it. He had been aware of this for a while, but as with all incremental changes, he’d been the frog getting boiled by inches.
Until now he was here, in this snowy city park, with his own resolutions crashing down on his head, along with a sense that there… was something else. Some other kind of alignment happening to his detriment—oh, fuck it. He was going in circles again, his mind on a loop that he couldn’t get un-snared of.