Brauneis Project Return

ISBN: 979-8-3509-8586-3
Verlag: BookBaby
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 1, 300 Seiten

Reihe: Project Return

Now trapped in the 'book world,' Darius must figure out what happened to Idona while still fleeing from his sire, Rafficer. A new enemy is afoot, and poor Idona is lost in a world that is very much not her own. There are more dangers lurking around every corner than she could realize. Will the two find each other again?

Amanda is the mother of two boys from a loving and wonderful husband. Sadly, one of the boys passed away in the middle of her book series, 'Project.' She and her family live in Attleboro, MA with their dog, two cats, and bunny.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brauneis, Amanda

Leseproben

CHAPTER 1
Book World The world seemed to pause as Darius’s mind raced to catch up with everything that had happened withing the past week or so: everything he had learned in Idona’s company as they had traveled about trying to fix the damage the teen had wrought to her world . . . all the time spent away, learning about the book world versus the real world . . . but most of all, learning about how things were supposed to go from here. In the original book, during the fight in the compound, Rafficer would kill Darius. The older vampire would hold Darius high up in the air and snap his neck. While it had been a week since Darius was in this position, he knew that he had left mere seconds before that scene in the book. Of course, per his current luck, all the vampires had returned in the exact position in which they originally had left—meaning Darius was already in that vulnerable spot. Rafficer’s hand was on his throat, squeezing it tightly enough to cause a normal human the inability to breathe. However, much like Darius had taken a moment to reevaluate things, Rafficer’s grip on Darius’s neck loosened as the older vampire tried to make sense of what had just happened. It was to many of the vampires around that they remembered being in an airport or some other place then blinked and now were back in the heat of battle. Knowing he hardly had seconds to lose, Darius reacted on instinct. He needed to free himself from Rafficer’s grip. Throwing his arms up and away, he knocked Rafficer’s hands free from his neck and then Darius kicked out a leg, flinging the older vampire about halfway across the room. Before his sire could catch his bearing, Darius ran away. As the younger vampire ran, he caught sight of the other vampires in the compound. Most of the vampires were standing around, confused as to what had just happened to them all. To them, people had suddenly seemed to flicker before their eyes, and a few had made their way into the other world and lived the week out in full. Some of the vampires took the same action as Darius and took off once they realized they were back, not wanting to see who would start the battle all over again. Darius could only hope that everyone he fought with got away in time. It wasn’t like they had been winning before . . . so they could easily use this chance to run away and regroup later. Hopefully. Once outside the compound, Darius very nearly stopped running so that he could figure out his next step. As he slowed his pace slightly, however, a small part of him screamed to get even further away from the compound. Rafficer was going to be chasing him down, wanting revenge or answers that the younger vampire wasn’t sure he could give. Darius needed to get as far away as possible. Now. Thankfully, he listened to that part of himself. He ran and ran, unsure of direction or even a plan of what to do, until he was finally out of steam. By then, he was about ten miles away from the compound and too exhausted to even walk away from where he stopped. Dropping onto his knees, Darius tried to quickly catch his breath. If he were in his right mind and not distracted with everything else, Darius would have taken a moment to realize that he actually was out of breath. It wasn’t a thing he should have to worry about as a vampire, and yet here he was, heaving to try and quickly get air into his lungs. Still, rather than wondering about that, he couldn’t stop from wondering; what happened to Idona? Did everyone who went there come back over here? Was everything in her world reversed back to normal? Did she remember him? Has she moved on? But most important, was she safe? Lost in thought over it all, Darius only had a few seconds to sense that another vampire was catching up to him at a rapid pace. Someone had found him. He attempted to get to his feet but failed as the other vampire caught him by the throat and harshly forced him against a tree. The pressure from the attack cracked the tree and nearly broke it. Darius’s breath was knocked from his lungs, a surprise that he barely focused on as he gasped and blearily looked at who was attacking him. Even further to his surprise, the vampire was Kathleen, and she looked more distraught than angry. “What did you do?” she angrily demanded. Darius furrowed his brow, trying to make sense of what she meant. Was she mad about returning? Or was there something else involved? Could she seriously be blaming him? And did she expect him to be able to have an answer? “What?” he croaked, unsure how else to respond. Her grip on his neck tightened as her blue eyes darkened. Darius felt her power surging over him and knew that she was trying to make him tell the truth, the same truth that he had already told her before in the other world. But she couldn’t believe him. Not that he seriously blamed her. He tried to sigh in annoyance but found the grip on his throat was making it hard to do much of anything but gape like a fish out of water. “What did you do? How did you send us back?” she snarled, her tone darker than he had ever heard before. Darius felt a chill run down his spine. For the first time in his 652 years of life, he was deathly afraid of Kathleen flat out murdering him. He had seen her kill other vampires before, so he never doubted that she could. But not once had she ever shown a history of threat toward him. “I didn’t do anything,” Darius admitted, leaking the words out as painfully as possible. And it was true. He hadn’t actually done anything to send them all back. Minnie and Sue had likely been the culprits, simply by bringing the author to the hotel room he had been in with Idona. Kathleen let out an angry hiss before pulling him off the tree, spinning around, and slamming him into a slightly smaller one. This one gave way underneath the assault. It fell backwards, making Darius stumble over the stump, and left Kathleen with two choices—to let go or fall on top of him. She chose to let go, making her recovery over the moment faster than Darius’s. As soon as he caught his balance, she grabbed him again and just simply lifted him off the ground. “How?” she asked, her voice softening in an almost defeated tone. Darius opened his mouth to answer but couldn’t come up with anything to say. After a second, her grip loosened before she slowly lowered him back down to the ground. Cautiously, Darius calmed himself and just stared at his sire’s wife. Without her actively in his face, he could look her over better and understand what drew her ire to him. After a few seconds, it became clear that Kathleen was distraught over something. But what? Something that must have been left behind in the other world, maybe? Was that why she was so upset with him? Or was there something else? In the end, Darius figured he should just tell her exactly what he remembered. “Two of the girls brought . . . the person in control of this world toward me. I guess I wasn’t allowed to see whoever it was,” Darius softly informed her. It wasn’t really an answer because he wasn’t sure that that was what had returned them, but it was the best answer he had. Kathleen sighed, releasing Darius fully and stepping away while shaking her head. Darius moved back a step, half tempted to run, but something about Kathleen’s demeanor made him want to stay, to understand what was going on. “Hundreds of years of planning, down the damn drain . . .” Kathleen muttered, walking away from Darius. The younger vampire couldn’t help but frown in confusion. What was she talking about, “planning”? “What?” he questioned as Kathleen plopped herself down on a nearby rock. She gave off a choked laugh and looked up at him. “Never thought about your secretive leader of the rebellion, did you?” she countered, her emotions changing like a flick of a switch. Darius’s frown deepened as he tried to think of what she was talking about. He thought she had been mentioning Idona’s world but now suddenly rebellion planning. His mind was slow to react. Kathleen snorted. “I’ve been planning this whole thing for so long . . . thought I had it all nailed down. The final nail to his coffin.” “What are you talking about?” Darius inquired once again, far too confused to figure it out himself. He moved closer to her as if that would give him the answer. Kathleen shook her head but kept her gaze fixed solely on him. “Killing Raff . . .” she told him. Darius stiffened, his eyes widening far past what they should have in surprise. He hadn’t expected her to say that. There was no way she could have said that. He must have heard her wrong. Kathleen huffed a laugh. “Rafficer is . . . horrid. He is a threat to all vampires and humans.” “What?” “When we were younger . . . still new to being vampires, Rafficer made a plan . . . a plan that would end all life on the planet. A plan that Rafficer has continued to slowly enact throughout the years,” Kathleen mumbled, again turning away from Darius as she became lost in incredibly old memories. Darius was still confused, his mind still trapped like three or four thought processes ago. He still couldn’t understand that Kathleen was making the hint that she had been the main vampire against Rafficer—that she was the one leading everyone into destroying her husband. “Kathleen, what are you talking about?” “Have you never wondered why...