Fuck a duck in a handbasket.
The odds were not in my favor, even if their primitive artillery didn’t work. I was as good as dead.
They just kept popping up like deadly moles.
More. Andmore.
I couldn’t catch my breath.
But damn if I didn’t unholster my guns.
Fuck these bitches.
I wouldn’t go down without fighting.
“Gwen!” Bel shouted in a fury, his rage—literally—shaking the hill next to me. “Climb, goddammit! I’ll kill them.”
I quickly looked up, then back down.
Bel was off his horse, already climbing down with his immense speed, merely a dark blur on the ridge.
The vampires charged—no time to climb.
Iscreamedin pure panic. I was going to die.
My fingers started to squeeze the triggers.
I jerked hard in place as blood hit my body so fiercely I flew backward into the air, chunks of gore slamming against my skin hard enough to bruise—and quickly heal. I grunted brutally, my breath rushing from my lungs as my back slammed into the ground. I stared up at the sky through a mist of blood coating the breeze, and lay there in complete shock and sucking in blood-sprinkled air. I still held tightly to my guns, though.
A blood-covered face stared down at me.
My horse.
“What the frick just happened?” I mumbled dumbly. Then I felt it. The gem in my necklace was cooling down, having heated hard enough to burn between my breasts. I repeatedly blinked at my horse. “Oh. That happened again. I’m not a fan ofthat, my friend. It keeps happening, you see. Someone tries to kill me, and boom, they turn to mush. It’s very messy—and not very sportsmanlike, to be honest.”
King Belshazzar’s face instantly hovered over mine, blocking my view of my horse, his face clean of any gore. He glared hard into my eyes, growling, “You didn’t climb, Gwen.”
I laughed—a bit maniacally. “I’m alive, though.”
His black eyebrows furrowed deeply, and he grabbed under my arms, hefting me to my feet. He held me protectively inside his embrace, crushing me against his chest as he rubbed at my back briskly. “Calm down, little one. It is all right.”
I blinked against his chest, my words muffled. “Nothing about this is all right, Bel.” I holstered my guns with shaking hands and slipped down out of his hold—escaping him easily thanks to the slick blood on my person. I unclipped the clasp on the necklace and yanked it out of my shirt. I grabbed his left arm and placed the necklace in his hand. “I am not wearing this anymore. Not until I get the truth from you.”
Four individuals far above observed us, each one of them shocked and repulsed from the view down below them—it was heinous.
Bel shook the necklace in front of my face, the gem gleaming in the sun. He snarled, “You are fucking wearing this! It was made just for you, and it has saved your life twice now.”
The vision of him digging in sand that sparkled like diamonds as a child flittered through my mind, a scene I shouldnothave been able to see—gifted to me by a fucking gemstone!
“Bel, I’m not wearing it again until you tell me the goddamn truth!” I bellowed, shoving my hands up into the air, done with the bullshit. “I’m waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for you to tell me about Ota’ano, and you haven’t done it yet!All I keep doing is waiting!”
His features closed down in an instant, shuttering all emotions. It was the king who stared down at me now, not my lover. He stated evenly, “It isn’t time yet, Gwen.Youare choosing for it not to be time. I think you know that by now.”
My nostrils flared. I took a step back.
King Belshazzar nodded his head once, curtly and pocketed the necklace. “When you’re ready for the answers, you know what to do. You’ve had plenty of opportunities, and you never took them.”
His words punched me right in the gut.
