Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 72056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 72056 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 360(@200wpm)___ 288(@250wpm)___ 240(@300wpm)
Darkness clouds my mind.
Until I know nothing else.
WAKE UP, bitch.
I’m floating. Floating on a black cloud. Where am I? Where was I?
Rogan. Rogan in his wolf form. The regal image invades my brain space.
Wake up, bitch.
My eyes flutter open.
I’m not sure what I expected to see. Rogan? Rogan as a wolf? Blaze Delacourt? My father?
I sure as hell don’t expect to see—
“What the hell are you doing here?” I eke out, my voice hoarse.
I recognize the face—the man who despises me, has despised me since he married my mother when I was fourteen.
How is he in Rogan’s penthouse? In the secret passageway?
I attempt to sit up, but my head nearly explodes. A choked groan escapes my throat. My head hits the— Where the hell am I, anyway?
“Surprised to see me, I take it?”
“What the hell did you do to me, Richard?”
Richard.
Richard Tomlinson, my stepfather. My stepfather who hates me—has always hated me—because I didn’t conform to what he thought a teenage girl should be. He favored Larissa, though all that really meant is that he had slightly less disdain for her. Larissa always did the right thing, always got perfect grades, always came in before curfew.
Always kissed the right ass.
She was the anti-Hannah.
But none of that explains why I entered Rogan’s walk-in closet, admired his awesome shoes, and ended up here.
I blink. The images are still blurred, but it’s him. Tall, gray-haired, and is it my imagination? Or are my stepfather’s eyes red?
Demon red?
I close my eyes. Must be my imagination. What the hell did he drug me with?
“Wake up, bitch.”
This time I recognize the evil voice, as slithering and snakelike as always. I inhale and there it is—that nauseating mélange of feces and decay. Richard’s pipe tobacco.
I open my eyes and try once more to rise. This time I’m slightly more successful. My body feels numb, though I can move, and I make it into a sitting position.
“Where am I?”
“That’s your question?” Richard says, his eyes still red. “Seems you might ask something else.”
Damn, what drug is coursing through my system? Since when are his eyes—
Fuck.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
“You’re a fucking demon.”
“Give the girl a gold star.” He grins. A slithery and malevolent grin.
“You evil son of a bitch.”
“Watch what you say about my mother.”
“Where’s my mother?” I demand. “My sister? What have you done with them?”
“They’re fine, Hannah. I love your mother. I’d never do her any harm.”
“Love? A demon speaks of love? You don’t know the meaning of the word.”
He shakes his head. “Demon profiling, as usual. You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about, bitch.”
“Cool it with the bitch, you condescending asshole.”
“Are you kidding? Do you know how much I’ve had to hold my tongue over the years?”
“Seriously?” I scoff. “You’ve called me every name in the playbook. My mother never believed me. Do you have her under some kind of a thrall? God, it’s all making sense now.”
“You think it was chance that I met your mother? I knew all along who she was. Who you all were, before you knew yourself.” He gives me a sleazy smile. “And there was and is no thrall. Your mother was so damned needy after your father got through with her that all I had to do was treat her a little less badly.”
Motherfucker. He’s not wrong. My father treated us all badly. But Richard mistreated Larissa and me just as much, to our mother’s blind eye. Still, he’s a demon. Demons are notoriously untrustworthy.
Once I became aware of my vampire side, I spent no time with my mother and stepfather. Big mistake. If I had, I’d have been able to sense his lack of emotion.
“You say my mother’s okay. What about Larissa?”
“Fine as well, and blissfully unaware of who I am and who her father is.”
“And I should believe you because…”
“I can’t think of any reason why you should,” he says. “But it’s the truth.”
I have no choice but to take him at his word. I’m hardly in a position to do anything otherwise, at least until whatever he dosed me with wears off.
“Why am I here? For that matter, where the hell am I? How did you get into Rogan’s penthouse?”
“Your father thinks Rogan is behind the vamp murders he’s investigating,” Richard says, “and you’re going to prove that he’s right.”
“Damned right I’ll prove it,” I say. “If Rogan’s guilty.”
“His guilt is irrelevant,” Richard says snidely. “Rogan will go down for the murders.”
A black haze still clouds my brain. I still have no idea where I am or how I got here, other than through a secret passageway in Rogan’s closet.
Does Rogan even know the passageway exists?
Think, Hannah, think. I need my brain at full capacity at the moment, and it’s not. I’m still in some kind of drug-induced fog.
The bomb threat. Rogan. He said he wanted me to come to his place to find what I was looking for. Yet I got a text from an unknown number telling me to stay away.