Chapter 434: Mythic Immortals 2
"Goddess Brandt," Nedra cried, slowly dropping to her knees next to the lycan who was as white as a corpse on the floor.
His face was badly slashed, and when she reached to pull back his collar to check his neck... he had no neck. It was severed completely—the surest way of ending a lycan. Nedra covered her mouth with a hand to stop from screaming, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the horrific sight. Zagan wouldn’t have done this. Would he?
"No, he wouldn’t," she answered in a whisper.
She got up, tearing her eyes away from the poor male who she barely knew. But he had always been kind to her. And he was so young. Hopefully his death had been a fairly quick one, but feared it was unlikely knowing what she did about the vampires’ kind.
"The Mythic Immortals," someone tsked from the doorway, causing her to gasp and stumble backward away from the unfamiliar voice.
He was tall and slender, just like Zagan, with the same pitch black eyes. She had wondered once why the vampires’ irises lacked color. The knee-jerk logic was that it was an evolutionary trait to further terrify their victims, but vampires did not evolve. They were eternally frozen.
"And let us see what page has been so carefully marked," he continued in that bone-chilling voice, his eyes sliding up to pierce hers as his long, elegant fingers flipped open the book and slowly leafed through, taking his time as he enjoyed the rapid heartbeat of his new prey. She was not the one who he was here to find, but she would be fun to toy with in the meantime.
Nedra’s hands balled into fists at her sides as she restrained herself from doing anything rash. Thankfully she had practice with such things while being around Zagan, because she badly wanted to hurt him for what he had done to Brandt and for that aloof, narcissistic smirk on his stupid porcelain face.
"Why are you here?" She asked carefully. But what she really wanted to know was how he had gotten here. It should not have been possible... unless she was truly weakening so much that the portal was visible to outsiders. But even then there would have been others wandering in first. It was impossible that the first accidental trespasser was a vampire.
The intruder ignored her. The only indication that he had even heard her question at all was the corner of his mouth tilting a little higher. He was enjoying this. Of course he was enjoying this—he was a cat pawing a mouse, hoping to get some fun in before devouring his meal.
In the ensuing silence, Nedra inwardly cursed the whole vampiric race and this one in particular with his sculpted golden locks that were parted to the side like a perfect gentleman. He was wearing a tailored suit as well, and her gaze dropped to the way his pants pooled just the right amount over his shiny black dress shoes that were without even a speck of blood on them. For monsters, they were awfully concerned about keeping up appearances, weren’t they?
"You are calming yourself with silent insults, aren’t you?" He chuckled, the falsely joyous sound making the kitchen around them feel even larger and more hollow. When her heart sped back up, he knew he was correct, and he chuckled again.
"To think your kind can laugh. It sounds so similar to genuine emotion, and yet it is still rings false. Too bad you spend centuries helplessly imitating your prey. Why not just be who you truly are? Or is it too terrifying even for you?" She asked, unable to mask the venom in her words as they spilled out into the room, filling it again with something that was at least true.
"So you fancy yourself smart and funny," he replied with the smirk frozen on his face. "Who is the helpless one here? Me? Or is it the pitiful alyko who is stuck in a false world, forced to remain the pet of a predator?" He licked his index finger, transferring some of Brandt’s blood that remained in his mouth before flipping another page in her book.
"I am not a pet," she growled, clenching her fists tighter.
"Are you sure?" He asked, his eyebrows arching in amusement before he returned his attention to the book.
The Veiled throbbed around the vampire, and Nedra itched to use it—to throw some cheap shots at him that would wipe that smug smirk off of his face. But she couldn’t kill him, and she wasn’t willing to try something that would only anger him if she wasn’t sure it would work in eliminating him as a threat. There were others she had to worry about—others that were still on the island. And she had to worry about the integrity of the island itself.
"You want Zagan. Why don’t you just take him and leave the rest of us alone?" She suggested, working to steady her voice and remove the excess fury from it.
"Oh, I will," he replied, bloodying another page as he continued fingering through the book. "But there is so much here to entertain me first. Do you know that our dear Zagan has a greenhouse of carnivorous plants?" He chuckled to himself. "Quite the character, isn’t he?"
Nedra scoffed quietly. That was one way to describe him, she supposed. But she had to give it to Zagan—compared to this creature, he was obviously quite tame.
"That is nothing compared to the containment facility of alyko," she muttered, and the intruder’s eyes slid up to hers, glistening in excitement.
"I admit that I have not had a chance to visit that part of the island yet, but it has always been well-known that Zagan was keeping a collection of alyko. So desperate to die," he tsked again, his smile widening eerily as he stared at her, flipping another page as he did without looking at it. "Why he never just waltzed into the fae dimension is beyond me. They would take care of his wish instantly."
"No one can find it. No one who is not fae," she glared at him. He was baiting her for some reason.
"You seem so sure about that," he tilted his head in mock curiosity. "Did you read that in this book?"
