Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
“I’m glad that wasn’t personal,” the vampire said.
With a frown, Callum tried to figure out what the hell the male meant. But whatever, he wasn’t going to ask—“What wasn’t personal?”
“You sucking me off. I’d rather it was about something else.”
The vampire turned away and went over to the shower. As he stood there, Callum braced himself for the bastard to reach up and put a hand on that fixture, just to dangle the pain in between them.
Instead, he only stared at it
“How do you see… things.” Callum focused on the showerhead, too. “There’s nothing there.”
After a pause, the vampire shrugged his powerful shoulders.
“I don’t know the why or the way, I only know the what.” The male looked back and smiled with an edge that made him seem positively evil. “Which was how I ended up in the prison camp.”
Callum frowned. “I don’t understand. You killed someone, and then saw them? Isn’t that overkill?”
Chuckle, chuckle, Callum thought to himself.
“Oh, yes, I murdered somebody.”
Callum checked his watch even though he didn’t have to. But he needed to do something other than stare down to where he had found his lover that hot August night two years ago.
“Who did you kill?” he asked.
“The male who butchered my mahmen.” As Callum recoiled, the vampire shrugged and turned back to the shower. “He came in and robbed her. We didn’t have much, but he took the mead, the pewter, and her life. Then he hid her body. I walked into our little house and I saw the image of her on the bed.” There was a pause. “She was unclothed—”
“Fuck—”
“—and I never did find her body. I think he left her out for the sun somewhere. But I knew what I had seen because I’d had the visions ever since I could remember, and they are always right.”
“How did you know who…” His mahmen had been violated, too? “I’m so sorry—”
“He marked her. On her stomach. I couldn’t think of where I had seen the pattern before—but I definitely recognized it. A year of searching later, I found him. He’d been the blacksmith until the drink got to him—and killing my mahmen was what sobered him up again. The mark was how he kept track of the horseshoes he made.” The male paused. “He was back in business when I found him, so I killed a productive member of the village we lived in.”
“What did you do to him.”
“I took a hot branding iron and I disemboweled him with it.” The vampire shrugged again. “An aristocrat who lived just outside the village threw me into the prison camp. He was fussy about his horses, and I think he cared less that I’d murdered the male than the fact that the hooves under him were no longer shod as he liked. As for the camp, at that point, it didn’t matter where I was. My family was gone. What did I care.”
“What of your sire?” Callum pushed a hand through his hair. “Were there no cousins, no one in your bloodline to defend you?”
“I never knew who my father was. It was just my mahmen and me. She was a laundress, I worked in the fields for the aristocrat who put me in the camp. It was a simple life.” The male rubbed his thumb over his eyebrow. “But the prison was good for me. I got to kill there. Often.”
Callum popped his own brows. “Just for sport?”
“I considered myself the best kind of vigilante.”
“And what kind is that?”
“I took out a lot of trash. We’ll leave it at that.”
With a nod, Callum murmured, “I actually don’t have a problem with that.”
“It wouldn’t matter to me if you did. You asked about the visions, and here we are.” He glanced to his left, to what certainly appeared to be bare tile. “He did it to get back at you for something, didn’t he. The male who hung himself here.”
Clearing his throat, Callum tried to show no emotion. “You can’t see that.”
“But this is your personal space, right? It smells like you, and all the clothes are in your style. You were the one who brought us to this place and gave us things from the garage upstairs… the stretchers, the weapons. So he came here because you’d brought him here before—probably to get away from it all, whatever all there was to get away from. But then something changed between the two of you. He returned and left his body as a fuck-you. Didn’t he.”
Callum turned away and blindly went over to the coats. He had no need for one, though, so he just rifled through the puffy-tufties.
“I’m going to go check on your friend.” He walked over to the stairwell and put his forefinger on the reader, knowing damn well he’d get the number combination for the keypad wrong if he tried to punch it in. “Are you coming? Or not.”