Total pages in book: 109
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 103719 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 519(@200wpm)___ 415(@250wpm)___ 346(@300wpm)
Like the balloon in a comic strip, bobbing over their head.
As a mewing sound burbled up between them, Blade catalogued his prey. The scientist in the white coat had sweat running down his bloated face and bubbling over his upper lip, and his heart wasn’t so much beating as flickering, the pulse at the carotid artery a tremble that was oh-so-close to the very thin skin of the throat. The features of the face didn’t register very clearly; then again, there were other details that were a tastier meal for his mind.
“H-h-how did you get in here,” the man stammered.
Blade smiled and did nothing to hide his fangs. And what do you know, his victim’s wide stare locked on them.
“You have bigger problems than my entry.” Blade inhaled again, and leaned in so close, they were practically kissing. “And speaking of penetration, pity I don’t have more time. I’d enjoy getting to know you. Inside and out.”
Whimpering now, the sound high-pitched and repetitive. Like the squeaky toy of a dog.
“Unfortunately, time’s ticking,” Blade continued. “Oh, and don’t be complimented, by the way. I have very low standards. I’m positively indiscriminate about who I’ll fuck.”
Moaning. A weaving on the man’s feet, as if the hyperventilating and the inefficient pump of his cardiac muscle were causing him to pass out. “Where did you come from…?”
Blade stared into the black holes of the man’s pupils. “Hell.”
With a jab of his fist, he gored into the abdominal cavity with his gold knife, feeling the organs give way like fabric, the energy created by the contraction of his shoulder and arm muscles transferring down the hilt, through the blade, and into the loose bundles of the digestive system.
The gasp was right by Blade’s ear, like a lover coming, intimate and just for the two of them.
“Look at me,” he whispered as he eased back while leaving the knife in place. “Dr. Randall Hertz, look at me—that’s it. That’s right. Now, listen carefully. Your legal address is One-Oh-Nine Prescott Lane in Charleston, South Carolina. You have a wife, Susan. You have two children, Martin, who goes by Marty and is named after your father, and the other one is Mary. The idea to go with M names was your wife’s.”
Those eyes got wider as that face got even paler.
“If you give me the codes to the cages in the experimentation unit, I won’t leave here and go directly to your house and slaughter the three of them wherever I find them.”
“Please,” the man breathed. “Please, don’t hurt my—”
“You have tortured and killed males and females here. You have taken them from their families. You have injected them with drugs and subjected them to experiments for the last ten years. You have left this fucking shithole and gone home to your fucking mate and your young while they have suffered. You’ve slept like a fucking baby in your goddamn bed, and filled your belly, and enjoyed all the creature comforts during your breaks—while those in the steel cages with the wires and the IVs and the motherfucking implants and electrodes suffered. So considering all that, I’m presenting you with an opportunity to save your family that you do not deserve. Give me the codes.”
It was, of course, all bullshit.
The first thing Blade had done when he’d come up behind the man, spun him around, and submitted him against the corridor’s wall? Burrowed into that brain and retrieved the codes.
But that was the difference between vampires and symphaths. A vampire would have gotten what he needed, slit the throat, and gone along his way. A symphath? This emotional exchange was a feeding that was necessary. He consumed the surges of emotion, lived for the flares along the grid, hungered for that priceless instant before death rendered this man nothing but a wind-down of biological functions.
“Give me the codes,” he prompted.
“S-s-s-seven-twenty-two-nineteen-eighty-one. T-there’s only o-o-one.”
Blade smiled. “Your birth date. How cute. But not very safe. You should have gone with something more unusual, and used a few of them. What if someone infiltrated this facility with an eye toward destroying what you’ve worked so hard for.”
Down at the gold knife, Blade’s hand was getting coated in warm, fresh blood, the tide lazy because of a lack of pressure and the erratic heart rate. It was almost like he’d come inside the man, his ejaculate making a reappearance.
Abruptly, he had to steady the scientist by wrapping an arm around the small of his back. As if they were waltzing. “Randy, let me ask you something.”
Moaning. Fluttering of the eyes. Like the dying man was in ecstasy.
Blade gave him a little shake. “Randy, did you honestly think one of us wasn’t going to come for you? After all these years, and all the different sites, did you really not think that, sooner or later, we were going to find you?”