Total pages in book: 153
Estimated words: 141492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 707(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141492 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 707(@200wpm)___ 566(@250wpm)___ 472(@300wpm)
Focus, Petru demanded firmly. If you do not, we will lose everyone.
He couldn’t blame Safia. She was losing her beloved father. She had known they would suffer losses. He couldn’t comfort her, not when he was fighting for his life and the lives of the rest of her family. He had to get her to concentrate on helping him. He needed her.
We must take down the generals now. Have you found their weakness?
He couldn’t lose Safia at this crucial point. Gwafa was hanging on long enough to allow Benedek to recover the parts of himself keeping Gwafa’s replicas moving through the battlefield fighting demons and vampires, but they would be going down very soon. That would be a good thirty men gone.
One of the vampires coming at Petru from the sky ripped at his back with the claws of a grizzly, tearing through flesh and muscles before he could spin around and rip its throat out, flinging it away, whirling back fast enough to slice through the second vampire rocketing through the sky straight at him. The bottom half of the body dropped away from the top half, and black blood poured to earth, scorching the ground below.
Petru followed the torso as it tumbled, slamming his fist through the chest wall and extracting the heart. The first vampire desperately tried to retrieve his throat through the onslaught of spinning spears that were still coming toward Petru from the direction of a small group of trees. Several pierced the vampire’s body as he tried to outrace Petru, who was in pursuit.
The sword flashed again, cutting through the back of the vampire’s neck, beheading him. The head fell forward, and black blood poured out in all directions. It was acidic, and everywhere the blood splashed on him, it burned through skin to the bone. He tore the heart from its chest and threw both hearts toward the clouds, calling lightning at the same time to incinerate them and then the bodies.
There was a rush of adrenaline when fighting now, a by-product of the scars forming on his soul from so many kills. He felt a predator’s joy rising in direct proportion to the number of vampires he was tearing through. That wasn’t a good sign, and he pushed the emotion away. It hadn’t done much good for Aura to give him blood when he was already bleeding from so many wounds again. He parried the spinning spears and smacked a lightning whip down on the tree in which he was certain the vampire was hiding, allowing the tail to curl around the limbs and trunk.
Seven of Gwafa’s men had gone down, and through Safia, he could feel the glee of Lilith’s generals. Rupert reported to Lilith, although he was having difficulty controlling his mount. The beast had two heads and swung them continually, his large body shaking with rage as he pawed the earth and stomped. Rupert was forced to divide his attention between the battlefield and the pack leader.
Lilith hissed her anger at him. Settle him down. Can’t you control him? He’ll give your presence away before we’re ready. All the hellhounds will stampede if he does.
Eight more Gwafa replicas died on the battlefield. Three were mortally wounded. Lilith’s triumph was so tangible it could be felt throughout the valley.
Petru waited a heartbeat for Safia to pull out of her grief enough to get the hellhounds settled. It took only a few seconds, and the packs calmed to the level they’d been before. She’d timed the lead hellhound’s response to Rupert’s reprimand. The demon general clearly considered himself superior, lording it over the three generals when their hellhounds subsided after his did.
These demons have few places one can harm them.
Petru was aware. He’d studied them through Safia even as he ran the battle. He’d hoped she would see something he hadn’t. He hadn’t found a chink in their armor. Lilith had designed them as near to perfection as possible. Even if he managed to penetrate the armor plates on their bodies, he hadn’t detected a heartbeat. He had no idea where to find the heart in order to rip out the organ to kill them.
He stilled inside, waiting, even as he flew at the tree, spinning swords to block spears flying his way. Safia hadn’t sounded defeated. She was onto something.
The spears were wobbly, not at all as they had been. Petru’s opponent had been shaken by the lightning whip. At the last moment as Petru approached the tree, he disappeared, coming in from behind. He was bleeding from half a dozen places, and he’d deliberately left the scent of his blood everywhere.
Ancient Carpathian blood was tantalizing to the vampire—a temptation the undead would never be able to resist. Petru circled the tree fast, winding up the trunk, splashing droplets of blood along the blackened tree branches and outer leaves, just a few feet from the splitting trunk.