The Dark Vampire: Last True Vampire 3 Read Online Free

best of it. She’d thought about leaving the coven. Of finding another group of dhampirs to take shelter with. She still might, someday. Each time she left the compound her hunger for independence grew. It wouldn’t be long before her uncle could no longer keep her there whether it was for her protection or not.
    The first streaks of dawn made their appearance in the eastern sky. Sunrise was an hour, maybe two, off and she needed to return home before anyone realized she was gone. She raced back through the city the way she’d come, across the rooftops where no one would notice her. When she reached the outskirts of the city she kept to the shadows and slowed to an easy jog. Miles melted away under her feet and in the space of an hour she’d managed to find her way back to the compound. Bria came to a halt just outside the chain-link fence that surrounded her home as the cacophony of frightened screams and the sounds of a fight reached her preternatural ears.
    Bria’s heart leapt into her throat. The coven was under attack. Whether from slayers or witches she didn’t know, but she didn’t have time to consider her options. Her uncle needed her. Her coven needed her. She dug deep and found that place inside of herself where fear did not exist as she searched for a weak spot in the fence where shecould circumvent the razor wire. She quickly scaled the links and vaulted herself to the other side, where she landed on her feet without a sound.
    She would fight whatever creature awaited her inside the walls of her home. To the death if that’s what it took to protect those she cared about.

CHAPTER
2
    “Helpus! Please!”
    Bria hung limp in her uncle’s arms. She didn’t share in his panic or desperation, which was strange considering she was the one who was dying.
    “My king, I implore you. Save her!”
    What if she didn’t want to be saved? True, the slayers’ attack on their coven had been both unexpected and horrific, but it had also been . . . fortunate. For her, at least.
    Her lids cracked, and through the slits of her eyes Bria made out the shape of a tiny guard station, manned by three hulking males. One held a phone to his ear, while the other two tried to calm her uncle, who shouted not at the guards but into the lens of a camera that was mounted just to the left of a wrought-iron gate.
    As though the vampire king would concern himself with one pathetic dhampir’s death.
    “She’s not healing!” Blood, warm and sticky, trickled from the wound at Bria’s throat. She’d been cut by a slayer’s blade, likely infused with Sortiari magic. She might have healed otherwise. “She’ll bleed out in amatter of minutes. My coven is yours if you save her. You have my troth here and now!”
    Let me bleed out. I want to die.
    Before the slayer’s blade had pierced her flesh, Bria had felt truly alive. There was no greater honor than to die protecting others. Wasn’t that what her father had done? He’d died protecting his family from the Sortiari slaughters. Her uncle had ordered her away from the fight, told her to run and hide. But she’d refused to cower as member after member of their coven fell under the slayers’ blades. For all of her life she’d been sheltered. Kept. A bird in a cage and made a prisoner for her own protection. Forced to sneak out under the cover of night and steal every scrap of freedom she could find. She’d lived a lifetime in a matter of hours tonight, first as she’d run through the city and later as she’d hacked and stabbed at her attackers. None had fallen under the dainty leaf-blade sword, but she’d given it her all. And her valor would be rewarded with blissful death.
    Freedom.
    Bria’s world blurred out of focus and her mind drifted. The scrape of metal grated on her ears and her uncle rushed forward, jostling her in his arms. With any luck, the vampire king’s guards were about to escort them off the property. She wanted to make a plea of her own. To beg her uncle to