Bonds of the Vampire King (Blood Fire Saga Book 7) by Bella Klaus (romantic books to read TXT) 📗

give anything to see him again, and I wished the ground would open up and take me to him.

The earth rumbled beneath my talons, accompanied by the sound of stone twisting and grinding and cracking. Blinding light filled my vision, making me stumble back with my wings outstretched.

Blinking away my tears, I gaped at a three-foot-wide fissure in the ground, which spewed out crimson and green and indigo light.

My heart somersaulted, and my chest swelled with warm jubilation. I’d bloody done it. Without a backward glance, I pulled back my wings, and tumbled forward into the void, and into the unknown.

Chapter Four

This time, waking was a slow process, with a confusion of sounds ringing from ears that seemed to be everywhere and nowhere at once. It was dark, but the hurried footsteps, screaming voices, sirens, and distant traffic told me that it was likely daytime, and I was certainly not alone.

I tried opening my eyes but couldn’t send the commands to the muscles of my face. All I felt of myself were a few stray meridians and chakras trying to re-form.

If I had lungs, I would have blown out a weary breath. The impact of landing from the Realm of the Gods must have scattered my flames further than the impact of Kresnik’s bomb. It was a good thing I’d landed as a phoenix. Otherwise, I’d be dead or mangled or both.

It took several minutes to gather my flames from countless locations and pull them back into my energy body. As my pieces glided into place, screams filled the air, accompanied by the hiss of water. The sound reminded me of ironing over a dampened cloth.

I rolled to the side to find a row of firefighters in black uniforms and yellow helmets standing behind rectangular shields. Several feet behind them were a line of police officers in riot gear, holding transparent round shields, staring at me through the plastic visors of their helmets. They stood behind a cordon of two parallel rows of metallic frontier barriers filled with sandbags.

White police vans were parked behind the officers, and behind those, I caught hordes of reporters and people holding smartphones and glimpses of a vast park, which could be anywhere in Great Britain.

My beak parted to let out a groan. This was beyond a disaster. They’d never seen anything supernatural, let alone a phoenix.

A jet of something cold and foamy landed on my back, making me squeeze my eyes shut as the substance evaporated on contact with my flames, releasing the acrid scent of burned chemicals.

I shifted onto my back, stretching out my restored limbs, making sure to curl my talons to check that they felt alright, shrug my wings, and search for stray pieces of phoenix debris that hadn’t yet returned to my body. It felt like I was intact, but how the hell was I going to get out of this situation?

“Everybody evacuate,” bellowed a voice over the loudspeaker. “The disturbance is on the move.”

A helicopter swooped close, making me flinch.

“Get back, or you’re all under arrest,” the announcer yelled.

I exhaled a long breath, wondering if it contained the same crew who had captured footage of Kresnik and me flying to Trafalgar Square.

Sharp beeps pierced the air, and I opened my eyes again and turned to the source of the noise. Several feet beyond the rows of emergency services personnel surrounding me, a massive crane hoisted Kresnik’s dragon form several feet in the air. Thick straps wrapped around his scaly belly and chest with his twisted limbs and broken wings hanging limply at his sides.

My beak parted to let out a shocked breath, and I bolted upright, making the firefighters and police scream.

A gunshot rang through the air, and a bullet shot through my belly and melted between my legs into a pool of rubber.

“Hold fire,” shouted the voice over the loudspeaker. “Employ hoses.”

Jets of water hit me from all directions, sizzling on contact with my flames. I raised my head to the sky, looking for signs of enforcers, reapers—any kind of representative from the Supernatural Council, but found only clouds and a plane blazing a chemtrail across the sky.

Bugger. It looked like I was handling this all alone.

As I leaped into the air, the humans peppered my body with bullets, which felt as insignificant as flea bites—mildly irritating, but with potential consequences if I didn’t stop these attacks.

An even more powerful jet of water hit my tail feathers, making me lose altitude. Screams tore across the park, and the onlookers screamed and scattered.

“Stop,” the amplified voice shouted.

“As if!” I screeched back.

I soared high over the cordons, over the rows of fire-fighters, police, and the crowd of people holding recording equipment. The crane that carted Kresnik’s unconscious carcass rumbled down a two-lane road bisecting the park, followed by the truck taking him to goodness knows where.

The rooftops of Kensington Palace lay on my left, its grounds surrounded by armored green vehicles. To my right stood Marble Arch, giving me my bearings. I was back in Hyde Park, heading toward Notting Hill.

An annoyed caw slipped from my beak. How considerate of Kresnik to hitch a ride and ruin my descent so I’d fall unconscious in the heart of London. I hoped the scientists dissected him before he regained consciousness.

Cars on Bayswater Road swerved into each other, people fell off bikes and walked into the road, and the buses ground to an abrupt halt. This was chaos.

Instinct told me I should duck behind the trees and shift back into a woman to minimize the number of people seeing my phoenix, but common sense said that the images people had shot were already all over social media. I needed to run before the enforcers caught up with me and the Council sentenced me to death.

It was time to disappear, but where?

A dark figure raced toward me from below, clad in a reaper cloak. My heart somersaulted, and I peered down to check that he wasn’t carrying a scythe.

“Mera.” Valentine pulled down