Total pages in book: 113
Estimated words: 107209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107209 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 429(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
“I got one,” Vero coughed. “Wait for me.”
“Take him outside,” Paxton ordered, his breath emerging raspy and rough. He coughed and then hurried beyond Vero toward the burning room.
Damn it. Vero jogged toward the stairwell and descended, taking the stairs quickly and bursting outside where Hope and Lyrica waited. He looked wildly around.
“Liam!” Hope cried out, running behind Vero to check her cousin. How she managed to tell the twins apart, Vero would never know.
The scientific medical building. That’s all they had. Cold air smashed into him, a balming relief to his burning skin.
Vero careened across the icy ground as soldiers and civilians began to pour out of the different barracks. He kicked open the door to the medical lab and ran inside, ducking his head to flip Liam over onto his back on one of the three medical tables. A sheet covered the dead human female on the first table.
The twin didn’t move. Vero reached for the pulse in the male’s neck. It pounded strong and steady. He looked to see Hope and Lyrica behind him. Good. He much preferred they stay inside. “Take care of him.”
Hope immediately reached for her cousin’s wrist.
Lyrica grabbed Vero’s arm. Her pretty brown eyes glowed, full of concern. “Be careful. You can die by fire,” she implored.
He was well aware that he could die by fire. He nodded gruffly. Nobody had ever told him to be careful before or even remotely expressed concern for his well-being. He shook off the sense of unease and ran back outside, where a powerfully rough snow had started to fall in heavy and painful sheets of near ice. Good.
He saw two of his soldiers, ones he trusted. “Guard the medical building. Don’t let anybody in unless it’s Paxton or me. Got it?”
“Yes, sir,” the first male said, immediately taking point.
“Find somebody to guard the back also,” he ordered the other guy. While there was only one door to the place, the wide window looking toward the river could easily be breached.
“I’m on it,” the soldier replied.
Then Vero ran back toward the lodge, which now had flames billowing out of the roof above Paxton’s room along with soot. He hurried back inside, ducking his head against the painful smoke just as Paxton reached him, his leg on fire, the other twin over his shoulder.
“I’ve got him,” Vero said, fitting his shoulder to Paxton’s and pulling the vampire onto it. The guy weighed a ton. “Extinguish the fire on your leg.”
“I am.”
Vero looked over his other shoulder. “Do we have everyone?”
Paxton coughed as he stumbled outside into the cool night air. “Yes, only two bedrooms and two bathrooms make up the west wing’s second level. We’d just gone to bed about an hour ago.”
Vero carried the unconscious vampire, who weighed a good three hundred pounds of solid muscle, over the ice and into the medical building. Once there, he gently flipped Collin over next to his twin on an examination bed. An angry-looking purple-and-red lump had formed on Collin’s forehead. The blast must have thrown him across his room.
Vero immediately sought Lyrica to calm himself. She stood next to Liam, looking fragile and defenseless in the wool coat. Something settled in his chest upon seeing her still safe. “You good?”
“Yeah.” She pulled a heavy blanket up over Liam’s convulsing body.
“They both took wounds to the head and have inhaled a lot of smoke,” Hope said briskly, making sure Collin was covered as well. “My guess is they’ll be out for an hour or so as their bodies repair themselves.” She gazed down Vero’s torso. “How badly are you burned?”
He shook his head. “I’m fine.”
Lyrica frowned and grabbed his hand, flipping it over to show the skin burned away to the bone. “That is not fine,” she said in a hushed voice.
Hope winced, somehow looking regal in a white nightgown with the bottom burned away and spots of soot everywhere, including on her nose and above her right eye. Her hair stood up in a tangle of curls, and the prophesy markings up her neck seemed to darken. “I agree. Let me at least put a salve on that.”
“It’s fine.” Vero sent healing cells to the damaged tissues. That would take a while.
Lyrica stamped her foot. “At least put on a glove.”
He didn’t have a glove. “I will. I’ll grab one. On my way back in,” he lied. “You two stay here. I have guards at each possible entry point.”
With that, he hustled back outside and looked at the flames reaching into the sky. The ice and fire collided right above the roofline with an ear-shaking hiss as steam blew in every direction.
Paxton stood between a group of soldiers, still in burned boxers and his feet bare as they all grabbed chunks of snow and pieces of ice off the ground to hurtle at the flames. Working rapidly, faster than any human eye could detect, they launched more ice and snow even as the skies mercifully granted assistance with sleet. Soon the fire gave up the fight and sputtered out with an angry crackle. More steam rolled into the night.