Thrall of the Vampire King (Blood Fire Saga Book 4) by Bella Klaus (elon musk reading list .txt) 📕

soul unless they’re actually dead.” I licked my lips, trying to work out loopholes that would allow him to take advantage. “When a fire user dies, they will be judged like every other non-demon supernatural on their life’s deeds and not automatically shunted into Hell.”

“Unacceptable,” he hissed.

“Why?” I grabbed a pumice stone and ran my fingers over its rough surface.

“I’m the only higher being capable of securing these souls—”

“But you let Kresnik escape from Hell, and he and the hosts of his soul are running around the world fathering babies to become vessels of fire magic.”

I pressed a palm against the tiled wall for balance and stood on one foot while I rubbed off dead skin from my sole. Hades’ magic raged but the water, the silk sheet, and the glass shower curtain cushioned its impact.

The Demon King had to be livid that Kresnik had been plotting his prison break for decades within his secure cell in Hell. I shook my head, rubbing the pumice stone around the dry skin on my heels. Perhaps if Hades focussed more on guarding Kresnik, he might never have lost his body.

“Your focus should be on Kresnik, not harmless people who just want to get through life,” I said.

“There are forces at play you couldn’t comprehend,” he snarled.

“Like?” I lowered my foot, rinsed the pumice stone, and raised my other foot.

“Kresnik is no ordinary fire mage,” Hades growled.

“I know.” My brow furrowed. Since when did the skin on the ball of my right foot get so hard? Maybe it was all those boots I’d been wearing since my arrest. I scrubbed harder, trying to restore the sole to its usual smoothness.

“Really?” he asked, his voice dry. “Tell me something, Miss Griffin, did you know Kresnik was also a god?”

The pumice stone slipped from my hands. “What?”

“He was originally Prometheus.”

“But he’s—”

“A titan? A fire god? The bastard who plucked the phoenixes bald and handed their flames to humans?”

“Wait. What?” I shook my head. Fire didn’t come from phoenixes… did it? They didn’t teach us much Greek mythology at the academy, but I’d read enough about it on Wikipedia to know the basics.

“Are you saying that fire came from the phoenix?” I asked.

“Among other fire-based beings,” Hades replied. “Prometheus found a way to not only hand it to the humans, but he harnessed the immortality of the bird to elevate his followers into supernaturals.”

“Are you talking about fire users?”

“Vampires, shifters, mages, witches… You’re all abominations created by Prometheus.”

My throat dried. “Does that mean all the Greek gods are real? Are you Hades, god of the Underworld?”

“Yes,” he replied. “And I was.”

A piece of conditioner-laden hair flopped onto my face, filling my nostrils with the scent of coconut. I stepped beneath one of the sunflower-shaped shower heads and rinsed off. Blood roared between my ears, and my heart pounded with excitement. I had met a Greek god—two, if I counted Kresnik.

“How did Prometheus become Kresnik, then?” I asked.

“After giving fire to the humans and creating a race of lesser supernaturals, Zeus stripped him of his divinity and tied him on a rock and punished him to have his liver devoured each night by the eagle,” Hades replied, sounding bitter. “Someone eventually slaughtered the bird and released him.”

“Divinity?” I asked.

“It’s what differentiates gods from angels and demons, but that’s not the point. We never saw Prometheus again until centuries ago when he tried to take over Europe with his followers under the name of Kresnik.”

“What does he want?” I asked.

“Adulation, world domination, a way to break through to the realm of the gods and exact his revenge. Take your pick.”

After turning off the water, I walked to the other end of the shower and reached for a toweling robe.

“Your worry for these people’s souls is admirable but misguided,” Hades said from behind the screen. “If you don’t help me to stop Kresnik, everybody living in this underground hideout will eventually be drained dry of their magic and transformed into a preternatural vampire.”

I stared down at my feet, reeling from the revelation. Everything Hades said made a sick sort of sense, but he was also known as the King of Lies. I’d worked with people I mistrusted before, thinking I could find a way around their inevitable double-crossing, only to end up powerless and with my fiancé under the control of a maniac.

“Bloody hell,” I muttered under my breath. This was almost certainly going to backfire. The only thing I couldn’t predict was how.

Chapter Sixteen

When I stepped out of the shower cubicle, Hades wasn’t in the bathroom. I certainly hadn’t conjured him up under the influence of last night’s thrall—my imagination didn’t stretch as far as Greek mythology, nor could I create a being so aggravating. I pulled the edges of my robe together in case there was a pile of ashes somewhere, waiting for me to drop my guard.

Didn’t he want to hear the rest of my terms?

After wrapping my wet hair with a towel, I slipped on a pair of toweling slippers I’d found beneath the marble sink and padded out of the bathroom. Sunshine streamed in through the half-mast windows, casting squares of light across the wood floor.

Kenwood House would have been a really nice place to spend a romantic break in the human world if it wasn’t for the ever-present threat of a tyrant who I had now discovered was a god. A god without his divinity.

I bit down on my lip and headed toward the walk-in closet. Had Kresnik sent Aurora to the realm of the gods in search of his missing divinity? It would explain why he’d brutally punished the woman for failing to achieve the impossible.

Someone cleared their throat. I turned in the direction of the door to find a red-haired woman holding a tray of food. Her hair covered her features, but from her slender frame, I guessed it was probably Martika, the girl from Gourmande.

At least that answered my question about Hades. He’d probably heard her coming and