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

My gaze darted to Valentine, who thrashed from side to side within the clay. Caiman’s movements slowed as the fire spread down his arms. I cried out, but Kresnik grabbed my face, turning my head toward his.

“Your vampire lover belongs to me now. When I remake him as my obedient slave, he will torture you for weeks before I throw you into Tartarus.”

“Stop,” I rasped.

Kresnik wrapped a hand around my neck and snarled. “I have been patient with you, given you multiple opportunities to submit. Now I will take what I want by force.”

Crushing pain wrapped around my neck, bringing with it an agonizing pressure that made my head feel like it would explode. The flames that made up my face heated, and I struggled for breath.

“I can’t breathe—”

“That’s the entire point of strangulation, you stupid slut,” he hissed.

My lungs burned, my flames dimmed, and every part of my body hungered for air. Time was running out. The edges of my vision darkened, and my consciousness drained like sand falling into the lower bulb of an hourglass.

“Hades,” I whispered.

Kresnik’s harsh laugh caused my flames to flicker. “That waste of space is indisposed. Say goodbye to the life you knew, Hemera, and ready yourself for an eternity of suffering.”

I fumbled uselessly at my pockets. Gone was the solid flame dagger, the scythe lay somewhere by the four-poster, and Poseidon’s trident was lodged in Kresnik’s immortal body. Valentine was buried in clay, Caiman consumed by fire, and I had no idea what had happened to Hades.

Hopelessness settled on my shoulders like a shroud. Kresnik was about to win, and I had nobody to rely on but myself.

Letting my eyes flutter shut, I focused on driving as much air as I could into my lungs and concentrating every ounce of power into my chakras. If Sybil’s attempts to weaken my bond with Kresnik had worked, then our connection would have been severed the moment his immortal body had died.

I made my body go limp, hoping that Kresnik would think he’d rendered me unconscious. His large hand squeezed me tighter around the neck, but I didn’t fight back.

With a satisfied grunt, he laid me on the bed and fumbled with the clasp of my cloak. When it wouldn’t unfasten, he snarled and tried shoving open the cloak’s fabric.

Revulsion slithered through my insides. Was this a test to see if I was awake, or was he really trying to access something in my body, like my heart chakra?

What had he said to me earlier?

He would put me in my place and then resurrect his body. That particular sequence of words had to mean something.

It also suggested that he could no longer access my phoenix.

I breathed faster, forcing the power around my chakra to coalesce into a spinning ball, letting it pick up speed, gathering every ounce of my fury and hatred and fear. I had to get this right—to produce a flame hot enough to defeat even a genie of fire.

Round and round the power went, expanding until I felt it would burst.

“Worthless whore.” He slapped my face, but I was too far gone to register the pain.

I thought about the time I created fiery shapes with Coral, thought about Racon teaching me to turn my fingers into talons. This time, when I transformed, it had to be as a phoenix.

The mattress shifted as he slid off the bed, presumably to fetch something to force open my cloak. His footsteps creaked across the floorboards, then he stopped and picked up something that scraped against the wood—my scythe.

Caiman’s hoarse breaths rasped between the snap and crackle of the flames reducing his body. If I could reach him with my phoenix and take over the burning process, there would still be something left of him to salvage. But I had no idea how to save Valentine from the clay.

“This had better work,” he muttered under his breath.

My adrenaline spiked. I shoved the power into my meridians, shifted my ifrit form into the embodiment of fire, and surged off the mattress with my wings outstretched.

Incandescent white flames rolled off my feathers, contrasting with the genie’s crimson. The air around me rippled with the intensity of my heat, and the entire bed was reduced to ash.

Kresnik’s eyes bulged, and he floated back, his flames flickering. He was trying to escape.

With a harsh caw, I surged at him, knocking us both against the floor.

We burned a hole through the wood, landing in a marble hallway with a thud and a scattering of loose flames. Kresnik thrashed beneath me, pounding his fists at my shoulders and outstretched wings.

“Stop this,” he roared.

“Bastard!” The word came out a convoluted squawk, but triumph filled my chest.

I pecked at his fiery neck and clawed at his legs with my talons in a frenzy of fury and hate. Kresnik’s screams rang through my ears, making my fire burn hotter. Our bond might not have been severed by his death, but I would end him even if I died trying.

Minutes passed, and Kresnik fell silent, his pained breaths grating against my nerves until all that was left was the roar of my flames. I kept going, burning him with the ferocity of my hatred, searing him without mercy or restraint.

Eventually, the breathing stopped, and I raised my head, finding an orange puddle spreading across the marble floor. Instead coalescing into a fire genie, it hardened around the edges, forming the beginnings of solid flame.

My eyes bulged.

“Dead?” I squawked.

Plaster drifted down from the hole in the ceiling, along with the memory of Valentine and Caiman.

Raising my wings, I flew up into the blackened room, passing the pile of ash that was once a bed, and swept past a wall tapestry reduced to embers.

Caiman lay scorched and unmoving in the middle of the room within his burned butler armor. He must have rolled on the floor to smother the flames, because the boards beneath his body still smoldered.

The butler’s chest rose and fell with ragged breaths. He was