Total pages in book: 209
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 196141 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 981(@200wpm)___ 785(@250wpm)___ 654(@300wpm)
Those thoughts are, perhaps, what inspire Kyle’s Reach to do something he has never felt it do before.
It reaches toward the vampire not just to read his emotions.
But to offer some.
A taste of Kyle’s real despair. Grief from the night he lost his family. Anguish from the loss of believing Tristan died in a pile of ashes a year ago. And the freshest agony of his childhood friend Brock being murdered before his eyes.
Brock, the bloodied face behind La-La’s fiery white hair.
The one who perhaps drew out every one of these feelings.
These feelings, offered to La-La like a gift upon the bleeding palm of Kyle’s Reach.
La-La, who tastes the offering with something other than his teeth, who suddenly finds himself flooded by secondhand misery, drowning in the sadness, consumed by the grief.
And being moved to tears.
“It’s so … p-p-pretty …” the vampire whispers in fascination, his laughter gone entirely, just a ghost of his grin stretched over his pale, beautiful face, tears falling.
Tears, falling.
From a vampire with nothing left inside to feel.
Then La-La lets go, and the vampire and the bloody man are gone, the storm swallowing them up at last.
Still sitting on the floor, astounded at what he’s done, Kyle brings his bleeding hand to his own face, finds it wet with tears.
What the hell just happened?
Did his Reach just work in reverse?
Has it been capable of such a thing all along?
Raya stands next to Kyle, towering over him, her face stern yet vulnerable, still wounded by the vampire’s cruel words to her. “I do not wish to see that one ever again,” she decides grimly.
Kyle’s gaze is lost to the racing sands through that ripped-open back door, wondering about the bloody face he saw.
It looked so much like him …
Like Brock.
But Brock is dead. How could a dead man drop out of the sky at exactly the time Kyle needed him to, saving him, with such impossible strength that rivaled a full-blooded vampire?
And how did Kyle sense Wendy at first? That cold, terrible abyss of nothingness his Reach found, Wendy, whom he swore he would never Reach for again?
Then something comes whirling back out of the storm.
Long and sharp.
Grazes his ear, inches from impaling his face.
He bends away with a shout.
It pierces Raya through her stomach, throws her backwards down the aisle.
Kyle slaps a hand to his sliced ear, turns. “Raya!”
For a second, she is perfectly still, clutching seats on either side of her, balanced in the aisle. Slowly, she peers down at what impaled her—the decorative hilt of La-La’s sword, protruding from her, the entirety of the long, curved blade penetrating her body clean through.
“What’s Thirst made of …?” asks Raya, a rhetorical note of humor in her voice. “A high-carbon steel, most likely,” she then answers herself. “But … I sense that this particular blade … may be lined with silver. However …” She grimaces. “I happen to be one of the few of us not allergic to it … Lucky me. A fact not even Tristan knows. I guess we all keep secrets.” She takes hold of the hilt. “But … it does still hurt like a motherfucker, and so …”
She begins to pull the sword out.
That’s when, with a sickening start, she discovers someone else skewered through it, behind her.
“Fuck me,” Nico groans, coughs blood onto Raya’s back, then falls against her, the blade still inside him. “Please don’t, urgh, move it, fuck …”
Raya’s face blanches with horror. “Oh god …”
Kyle moves to their side, stares down at the blade that joins the pair of them. For a moment, he can’t speak, all his words swallowed up in fear. “D-Doctor Mei??” he calls out, then realizes he can’t be heard over the storm, nor does he know where she is, or if she herself is okay, or even alive. “Doctor!!” he screams.
“Leave it in,” groans Nico, clutching Raya’s stiff back. “Fuck. Just … w-wrap it or … or something. Wrap me up b-before I …”
Kyle glances behind Nico.
Kaleb is on the seat behind him, his own bandaged face mere inches from the end of the blade.
This wasn’t an accident. La-La’s intended target was his brother. The violinist. He knew all along. This was the finale of the vampire’s sick game, starting back at the banquet hall when he took his place in front of Kyle’s chair, likely having watched with dark fascination as Kyle screamed for his brother through the bars of the cage, a game to orchestrate the end of the tragedy here on this bus—and it would have played out perfectly, had brave Nico not stood in the way.
Kyle peels off his vest, then his shirt, and starts wrapping the blade at the front and back of Nico’s wound. “Ooh, fuck, gentle, urgh,” groans Nico, “please, please, fuck …”
“Kyle …” comes Raya’s voice, worried.