Bonds of the Vampire King (Blood Fire Saga Book 7) by Bella Klaus (reading e books .txt) 📕

the blink of an eye, Valentine impaled him through the gut with the firestone saber, and Caiman sliced through his companion. The ifrits’ flames receded before they fell naked to the ground, either unconscious or dead.

Biting down on my lip, I tried not to wince at their injuries or the weapons’ crystal blades, which now glowed with power.

A denim-clad figure stumbled into the far left of the room, bumped into the wall, and fell onto his ass.

“Brother David?” I whispered.

Caiman reached for his belt and pulled out another sword. “Who is he, My Lady?”

“One of Kresnik’s failed experiments,” Valentine muttered. “He’s harmless.”

Brother David lay on the floor, flapping his outstretched arms up and down like he was making angels in the snow. We crept past him toward the only other door in the antechamber.

Valentine paused, staring at us both with eyes as hard as amethysts. “Prepare yourself for an attack.”

Images of an even greater ambush than the one downstairs tumbled through my mind, making the room sway. If Kresnik could make Hades and his demons vanish without a trace, then we could suffer the same fate.

“Let me go first,” I blurted.

“Never,” Valentine growled.

“Kresnik won’t dare kill me if it means killing himself,” I said.

Valentine’s jaw clenched, and he jerked his head to the side. I stood straighter, convinced he knew I was right.

I placed a hand on the leather armor covering his bicep. “The worst he can do to me is make me explode, and it will take less than a few minutes to put myself together.” Opening my palm, I showed him once more the miniature scythe I’d carried this entire time. “Let me weaken him with the first blow.”

“Your Majesty has the option of using his superior speed if anything should go wrong,” Caiman said.

Without a word, Valentine stepped aside. “You had better be right.”

I pushed open the door and paused at its threshold, taking in the sight of a thirty-foot-long chamber decorated with an intricate tapestry down its left wall and a fireplace and gilded portraits on its right.

At the far end, across a wooden floor and a ceiling painted with angels, stood a four-poster bed covered in burgundy drapes.

I placed a hand over my mouth, part of me hoping that Valentine had sensed Kresnik’s presence wrong.

Muffled moans echoed across the room, reminding me of the time Martika and I went beneath the glass table at Kresnik’s behest. I glanced from left to right, looking for a dragon, an ifrit… anything that might resemble a trap but found nothing but antique furniture within an ancient bedroom.

Keeping my footsteps as light as I could, I stepped inside. When I didn’t set off an alarm, I took another careful step and then another and another until I reached the fireplace in the middle of the left wall.

“That’s it,” hissed a voice. “Suck that ambrosia from the source. Drink it, and you’ll live forever.”

Flames surged up from the pit of my belly, and I sent Valentine a silent word of thanks for making me remain in this form.

I swallowed down the regurgitated fire and continued toward the bed.

Wood creaked, making me freeze in place, my pulse flickering in and out of existence.

A low rumbling chuckle filled my ears. “You naughty girl.”

With a shudder of disgust, I crept to the foot of the bed, flicked out my scythe to its full length, and flung open the curtains.

Time slowed, then it spluttered to a halt.

Beatrice once told me a story about walking in on her parents when she was nine, finding them in bed together, and having to sit through a lecture on the facts of life and knocking before entering. It had traumatized her for years, but she could now look back at the memory and laugh.

A naked Kresnik lay on his back with his legs splayed out with the equally-as-nude twins kneeling in the middle of his mattress, bent over his erection. One of them pumped it up and down with methodical strokes of her fist as she lapped at the quivering organ, while the other sucked a testicle between her lips.

Bibi sat at the head of the bed, presumably on his face, rocking back and forth without an ounce of passion. She stared at me through dead eyes as though she was only going through the motions for the promise of his ‘ambrosia.’

My mouth dropped open. At least that explained why Kresnik hadn’t noticed us coming in through the door.

Tabby and Gabby were there, as was Bibi, but where was Gigi?

A figure flew out from behind the curtain and wrapped her hands around my neck, filling the air with the scent of burning flesh.

My eyes bulged, and I met Gigi’s dead eyes. Up close, she reminded me of the preternatural prisoners I’d seen in Kresnik’s basement, soulless and without a spark of free will.

I wrapped a hand around her wrist, trying to burn all the way through her flesh, but Valentine appeared behind her and flung her across the room. Gigi flew through the door, landing on Brother David’s prone form.

“She was a zombie?” I could barely say the words.

“Don’t be so judgmental,” said Kresnik’s muffled voice. “I’m not the first person in this room to have ever fucked a corpse, isn’t that right, Hemera?”

The other members of the Rude Girls continued pleasuring Kresnik, oblivious to the fate of their older sister.

“Why did you kill them?” I yelled.

“It was the only way I could get them to do girl-on-girl,” he drawled.

The pulse between my ears pounded louder than the music outside, and my vision tunneled so all I could see was the man I was determined to kill. My flames burned brighter, illuminating the grotesque scene taking place.

“At least now I don’t need to worry about killing anyone as I cleave through this bed,” I said from between clenched teeth.

Valentine placed a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t let him incite you to become careless with rage.”

Kresnik shoved Bibi off his face, making her roll off the mattress like a