Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 112849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 564(@200wpm)___ 451(@250wpm)___ 376(@300wpm)
Aleksi pays him no attention. He’s completely given over to bloodlust, draining the girl as he fucks her.
“Hey!” Valtu says, pressing his hand against Aleksi’s shoulder, hard enough that it dislodges his bite, nearly knocking him off the bed. Blood gushes down the woman’s neck, pooling in her collarbones, and she lets out a soft cry, her eyes looking empty.
Aleksi roars at Valtu, baring his fangs, blood spraying as he speaks. “What the fuck!?”
“You’re killing her!” Valtu yells. “You know the rules.”
“Rules?!”
Quicker than my eyes can follow, Aleksi leaps over the bed and pushes Valtu back, a hand wrapped around his throat until they float backwards through the air and Valtu is smashed into the velvet walls.
“Rules!” Aleksi sneers in Valtu’s face. “I don’t follow any rules you’ve attempted to throw down. I own this city. My city. You have nothing. You think you’re a god for creating this place? Most vampires were happiest when they could kill for their dinner, not eating while on a leash.”
Valtu doesn’t back down. He takes a moment to stare right into Aleksi’s blue eyes, breathing hard through his nose, then with a growl he pushes Aleksi off and whirls him around so that Aleksi is pinned against the wall, his forearm against his windpipe. To my shock, Valtu reaches down with his other hand and grabs Aleksi by the literal balls.
“If you don’t like it here, then don’t come here,” Valtu rasps, his eyes piercing. “Until then, you’re going to listen to the rules. These aren’t just my rules, these are the rules agreed upon by the council and by the vampires in this city. You want to break them, go ahead, but if you do it while you’re in here, then I’m twisting your tiny balls off, one by one.”
“My dear brother,” Saara appears from out of the crowd that has slowly gathered around. Like her brother, she’s naked too, and she saunters up to Valtu, running her slender hands over his shoulders. A spike of jealousy gets me in the gut, and I’m surprised at how visceral my reaction to her touching him is. With relief I notice the contemptuous look on Valtu’s face, his lip sneered in discomfort at her touch.
She rests her chin on Valtu’s shoulder, easy to do since she’s nearly as tall as he is and he’s already well over six feet. “Aleksi,” she coos, staring at her brother who squirms under Valtu’s firm grip. “We didn’t come back to make enemies. Only friends.” She leans in and puts her lips on Valtu’s outer ear, causing his eyes to flutter closed, his throat to move as he swallows hard.
Oh shit. Maybe he does like this after all.
“I promise he’ll behave,” she whispers to Valtu. “I promise I’ll behave too. For tonight, I’ll do anything you want me to do.”
Another twist of jealousy comes through me and I have to push it away to stay focused on the matter at hand.
With a grunt, Valtu lets go of Aleksi’s balls and brushes Saara off of him. He walks a few feet away, running his hands through his hair, then turns to face the brother and sister.
Only now I’m starting to wonder if they really are brother and sister because she has her arms all over Aleksi, stroking his skin much the same way she did to Valtu. Aleksi doesn’t seem to mind either. Though he looks furious at Valtu, and in a bit of pain as well, he leans back into Saara’s touch. She seems to calm him.
This keeps being all kinds of fucked up heaped on more kinds of fucked up.
“I don’t want to be inhospitable,” Valtu says to them in a deep voice. “But this is sacred ground and a safe place. The humans that come here,” he gestures to the crowd behind him, “that volunteer to be our dinner, they are promised safety. They don’t want to die. If you can’t honor that, then you can’t be in here. You’ll compromise everything for all of us.”
Damn. I had no idea this is what Valtu was really doing. I suspected that a feeding club existed, I know there are many throughout the world, but I never thought Valtu would run one. If he’s so against killing humans that he regulates other vampires’ feeding, then how is he someone worthy of being killed by a slayer? Why did the guild send me here to kill him for his past injustices (whatever they are) if he’s more than making up for them now?
Something isn’t sitting right with all of this. It never did. I’m starting to think that maybe Valtu was never my original target. Maybe Bellamy lied to me—it wouldn’t have been the first time—and giving me such a high-profile target such as Dracula himself was enough to get me interested, to make me believe I could handle it after so much time away. And maybe if Saara and Aleksi and this damn book were the real targets in all of this, maybe he thought I would get too scared or not have the confidence to go through with it.