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)
She had been required to study every species of insect before she worked with them. Aura had insisted she start when she was very young, around two or three, playing a game. Who was faster? Who could get the insect to turn away from them? Come to them? Fly away? Land on them? They would shout out commands, each taking a turn trying to get the new bug to cooperate. She’d enjoyed the game, and she became adept very swiftly.
The key was finding the way they communicated with each other. Usually, communication was through scent. Pheromones. That had been difficult to understand as a child, trying to figure out how to manufacture the right scent and send it to the insect. Aura had laughed at her a few times when she got it very wrong. It had been a good thing they were outside when they were doing their first trials. Like any child with a new toy, she’d practiced in secret on her brothers, producing awful new scents to drive them out of their rooms until her mother caught her and she got in trouble. It had been so worth it.
The whispers came next. Grating voices that preyed on nerve endings. Strangely, she remembered the voice. It triggered that long-ago memory of a child’s terror. Her chest ached beneath the white scar.
You think he will come for you, but he deems you worthless. He betrayed you once. He will again.
The voice could have scraped her raw, played on weaknesses. The memories could easily have conjured up exactly what they were meant to: hurt and feelings of worthlessness. A child’s terrible insecurities. But Safia had a brilliant ancestor—a seer by the name of Kahina. She had made certain Petru’s lifemate would be prepared this time, that the sacrifice he’d made wouldn’t have been in vain. She didn’t react at all to the voice or what he said. She was no child, and she knew exactly what Petru had done. She totally condoned his choice. She would not be trapped in the past by a trauma, hiding from the truth, afraid to face reality.
She didn’t bother to respond to the voice she knew to be a vampire. It wasn’t Eduardo. He was long gone from the world. Petru had destroyed him. Aura had shown her how he followed the trail of the master vampire relentlessly, no matter how many lesser vampires attacked him.
Petru never faltered. His injuries didn’t matter; he continued until he cornered the one who had murdered his lifemate, and he fought him without mercy. His body was torn beyond comprehension, but it didn’t slow him down. He didn’t seem to notice. He simply continued as if he were a machine, not a man. It was only after he called lightning from the sky and incinerated Eduardo’s heart that he staggered and went down. Aura had witnessed him killing the master vampire and the great hunter’s fall.
Safia didn’t falter. She didn’t look to see if Aura took up her position just as steadily—she knew she did. She counted on her just as she did the sea. Candles flickered and spat; shapes on the wall changed to greedy claws reaching for the two women. Safia merely spread the scent of the beetles over Aura and herself, covering their bodies in the pheromones so they would be part of that large group of beetles invading.
She let herself be consumed by the feel of the beetles as they swarmed into the room. What drove them? Hunger? For what? Flesh? The flesh of humans? No, Carpathian flesh and the flesh of Amazigh people. Her people. They had been fed on the living flesh of both species and craved it. Her stomach turned.
She probed further, ignoring the screech of anger as vampires scraped and clawed at the door, trying to get past the safeguards woven by Aura. The safeguards kept them out of the chamber the women were in. It sat just above Safia’s ancestors’ chambers. Safia tuned out all noise, everything distracting, becoming one of the beetles, moving like one, thinking like one, feeling like one.
Safia sought to find the one programming the beetles. She needed to have a very delicate touch. There was no doubt in her mind that the leader of the army would be monitoring this first foray into battle to see what kind of results she would get. Already she knew the general was feminine. She recognized the same cruelty and need to feel others’ pain in the torment she caused the beetles in programming them. There was no doubt it was the same woman who had led the war two thousand years prior.
Once again, she studied the beetles to ensure that they were nutritious and not at all poisonous to the bats. It hadn’t occurred to their mistress that anyone would take control of the creatures surrounding her army, and she hadn’t made provisions to protect from natural things like predators.