Total pages in book: 120
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113936 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 570(@200wpm)___ 456(@250wpm)___ 380(@300wpm)
Yet as he halted his forward progress, he heard what he recognized as the Jackal and Mayhem speaking. The codes weren’t working… up on the first floor, where they were… the passcodes were not working in the stairwell.
How he could hear them from so far away, he had no idea. And though he was now in a form other than his vampire one, his mission had not changed. He still had to infiltrate the prison camp, and save the wolven, and find Apex.
But how—
The crack in the building’s foundation was not large, just four inches or so wide, running at an angle from the seam of the brick siding to the concrete wall that was underground. It was not the kind of thing he could have fit his hand through, much less his body, yet he knew it was his way in.
The viper in him was not going to have a problem with the squeeze.
As he slithered through, somehow his serpent side knew the path to go, finding and following the routes that had been created in the concrete due to the exposure to the elements and neglect of the structure—and then abruptly, he was out of the compression and into the open, slithering along the floor at its intersection with a wall.
Halting his forward progress, his viewpoint swung back and forth, the viper moving its head around as if it knew he wanted to orientate, the red wash over everything not compromising his visual acuity.
He was inside the private quarters of the head of the guards.
And yes, there was Callum, over on a bed, tied down and unmoving—and past him, at the door that came in from the rear parking lot, the head of the guards was dragging an unconscious Apex inside, the male’s dead weight something that with her physical strength was not a hard graft.
She was speaking, her mouth moving, but Kane didn’t listen to any of it.
It didn’t matter what the bitch said.
As Apex’s boots cleared the door, the reinforced panel slammed shut and locked itself. And then she stood over the former prisoner with a smile that was vengeance personified.
She didn’t see the attack coming. And Kane trusted his other side to do what it knew it could. With a sudden burst of speed, he was at her leg, and he shot up her calf and thigh faster than a blink.
The first strike went in right at the juncture of torso and leg, because Kane told his other side that that was the most effective circulatory access. The female screamed, or at least a loud noise emanated from her. And then she pointed the gun in her hand right at his head—
The popping sound of the discharge was loud as a lightning strike and Kane flinched inside his other skin, assuming he had been wounded and would be in immediate, debilitating pain.
Except, inexplicitly, the female was the one who was somehow hit by a bullet coming from a different direction, her arms throwing back as she arched and stumbled, her own gun firing into the room as it swung out to the side.
Kane’s viper took it from there. In a split second, the snake sped up the female’s torso and wound itself around its prey’s throat, the constriction quick and deadly. But she didn’t die from strangulation.
The bites were one after the other after the other, the fangs penetrating her face as she screamed and bled.
As the snake head went down repeatedly, the venom being injected again and again, Kane just let the attack happen.
And when her visage began to melt away, the flesh and bone going liquid, the eyes sinking back into the skull, before they, too, disintegrated… he was perfectly content with the outcome.
* * *
From Apex’s vantage point on the floor, he let go of the gun he’d taken out of where he’d hidden it inside his crotch and rolled onto his side so he could watch the hideous death happen. Though his head was throbbing and his vision iffy, he’d managed to retain enough awareness to get that one shot off into the chest of that evil fucking female—and now he had enough mental acuity left over to watch what appeared to be a massive black snake turning that female into a pincushion.
Kane. In his other form.
With the immediate threat neutralized—or soon to be denatured, as the case was—Apex focused on the bedding platform. Taking a deep breath, he meant to stand up, but he didn’t have the strength to get on his feet. Fine. He’d crawl.
Dragging himself across the floor, he hoped that viper knew the difference between friend and foe because the damn thing was about to have nothing else to chew on. The female’s head was totally disintegrating.
As Apex came up to the bed, he pulled himself up and—