Free The Vampires' Last Lover (Dying of the Dark Vampires Book 1) by Aiden James, Patrick Burdine Page B

you.
    “I’m grabbing your coat,” said Armando, “and your slippers, too.”
    Huh?
    “Where in the hell are you taking me?” I shouted at him, or at least I shouted at the spot where his voice emanated from. I couldn’t see his face—just the outlines of his long fingernails guiding me along, as if I lay upon an invisible raft drifting through the air.
    “Some place safe.” Another voice, this time Garvan’s, sounded from my other side, calm and assuring.
    I couldn’t see him either, although I was certain he was there due to the now-familiar cinnamon scent.
    “A place not far from here,” he continued.
    “A place where everyone else is waiting anxiously to meet you!” added Armando.
    Incredible panic overwhelmed me, and I tried to look back at Peter, still snoring in my bunk bed. Some protector he turned out to be that night.
    “Ah, chérie, do not be alarmed,” Garvan said to me. I felt no less terrified. I tried to move my arms and legs and couldn’t do it. I could barely feel anything from my neck on down to my toes.
    “In just a minute we will reach our destination,” Garvan continued.
    I remember how this announcement confused me. I tried to picture what campus locale was nearby. Even considering the ultra-quick movements I’d seen from both vampires previously, if they planned to carry me out the window at our present drift, we might make it to the Alumni Center if we were lucky.
    However, once we cleared the window and hovered some forty feet above the ground below, they both took firm hold of my arms and shoulders. Everything suddenly sped up. Sped
way
up. It was as if we had been shot from a cannon into the sky. We flew so fast that the lights below became a streaming blur.
    It wasn’t long before the lights disappeared and the air around us grew even colder. Then, as quickly as Garvan predicted, we reached our destination.
    We slowed down dramatically as we approached a cave deep within the Smoky Mountains. I guessed that we were five to ten miles east of Knoxville by the tall cedars and eastern pines that stood near the cave’s entrance. A roaring fire glowed from within the cave. We floated gently above the ground, and Armando released me and knelt on the ground in front of me, placing my fuzzy warm slippers on my feet. Garvan gently guided me the rest of the way to the ground.
    My legs felt weak, and it took me a minute to catch my breath after such a frightening and exhilarating experience. I was surprised to find myself dressed in my parka, which covered much of my nightgown. I marveled at how the two had put it on me while we flew through the air, and without me being aware of this fact.
    Unlike the other night, both men—make that vampires—were dressed entirely in black, and each wore a leather trench coat that hung below the knees. Their boot heels crunched against loose gravel just outside the cave’s mouth.
    “You are now ready to meet the princess and the rest of her entourage!” Armando proudly announced. “Right this way, if you please!”
    He motioned for me to walk through the entrance, while Garvan joined him behind me. I could feel them withdraw as I stepped through a narrow passage that opened to a fairly large room. An immense fire burned within a large stone ring near the room’s center, and in front of it stood a tall female flanked by a slightly shorter male on her right, and a petite female on her left.
    “So we finally meet, Txema,” said the taller female. “Come closer. Let me have a better look at you, my cousin.”
    “Cousin?”
    I was confused. How could this pallid woman be any relation to me? I looked at her closely. She stood almost as tall as me with the same build. Her shoulder-length dark brown hair flowed the same way mine did—even with the same slight widow’s peak atop my forehead. Her eyes were greener than mine, like sultry emerald coals. They were similar to Tyreen’s eyes, only brighter and unearthly in their glow.
    Her lips were full