The Vampire Gift 2: Kingdom of Ash Read Free Page B

head.
    Some hours later, the plane starts to descend. We drop below the cloud cover. I look out my window and see the dense redwoods of the California forest.
    Home. I think. But unlike I’ve ever known it.
    I keep looking out the window until we land. With an aerial view of the forest, I can’t help but wonder where The Haven would be inside it. Can I see it from the Outside, now that I’m a vampire? Or is it just as invisible to me as before?
    Raul emerges from the cockpit. “Get up,” he barks at James and Victoria. “And behave yourselves. You’re on my territories now.”
    James rolls his eyes and gives a lazy smile. He raises his bound wrists to Raul. “You might as well release me and get it over with,” he says. “We both know Mother won’t stand for seeing her eldest in chains.”
    “After she finds out all that her eldest did,” Raul replies with a biting look, “she can decide what to do. Let’s go.”
    “No point dragging this out,” Victoria mutters. She stands after Raul eases her chains. James follows suit.
    Raul turns his head away from them to address me. “You wait here,” he begins. “I’ll—”
    But the moment he diverts his attention from the prisoners, a look passes between the two of them. Victoria reaches into herjacketand pulls out the thinnest silver stiletto. I have no idea how she smuggled it on board.
    “WATCH OUT!” I scream.
    My cry gives Raul just enough time to twist back. Victoria’s stab, aimed at his heart, instead glazes against the side of his ribs.
    Raul roars and catches Victoria’s arm. He torques it into an awkward position that makes her drop the weapon. But James is right there. He swoops down to pick it up—
    I’m out of my seat and on him in an instant. I don’t remember making the conscious choice to do so. It just happened. With Raul in danger, my instincts roarto life.
    I crash with James into the plane’s aluminum wall. He snarls at me, but I pin him there easily. He tries to fight. My hand lashes out and catches him by the throat. I feel the call of blood. His blood. I feel it pulsing through the heavy veins in his neck.
    I could crush him. The thought is distant, foreign, and strange. It’s unlike me. It’s laced with such malice and hate and, above all, desire…
    If I but squeeze, I could break his windpipe and end his life.
    Someone grips my shoulder. I hiss and jerk free. The grip tightens, and Raul turns me to him.
    “Eleira,” he says. He’s looking at me with pleading eyes. “Don’t.”
    His voice brings me back to myself. I look down at my arm, see the way my fingers are tightened around James’s throat. I see the fear in the other vampire’s eyes, the abject horror swimming behind his irises that he’s doing his best to hide.
    It’s the same sort of fear I felt when James first attacked me in the atrium. Back when I was first made a prisoner of the Soren brothers.
    With a startled gasp, I let James go. There’s a heavy dent in the aluminum wall of the plane where we’d hit.
    James falls to his knees. He sucks in air and looks at me as if I’m some feral beast.
    Raul gently brings me into him. His arms wrap around my body. He holds me tight.
    Over his shoulder, I see Victoria struggling with that velvet, silver-lined bag over her head. When did Raul manage to get that on? It feels like only seconds have passed…
    “You blacked out,” Raul whispers, as if sensing my thoughts. “The bloodlust broke through.”
    “Because you were in danger,” I say without thinking.
    “Eleira,” he holds me by the shoulders and looks into my eyes. “I won’t lie and say it’ll get easier from here. But you have to control it. Do you understand?”
    I stare right back at him. Confusion and… anger…? swirl inside me. I just saved his life, and he wants to lecture me?
    I try to twist out of his grip. He doesn’t let me go.
    “Promise me,” he says. “Promise me you’ll control it in The Haven.”
    I feel that anger rising. I