Still, his presence moved me beyond words. He had no business interfering with my life, not after all those years of ignoring me. His attempts to protect me were irritating. What was he doing here? After all the years he had abandoned me and left me under the care of his best friend, Lyle Hudson, he seemed out of place in this world-my world. The sight of my father still confused me. He was speaking to the stranger gripping my arm. “Get her out of here!” My father, Aiden Claremont, was pointing toward the exit. As I weaved through the chaos surrounding me toward my beloved, someone grabbed my arm and pulled me back. Fearing for his life, I stumbled forward. I looked around and gasped at the sight of him ripping the heart out of a vampire from the Maslen clan before moving on to breaking the neck of a hunter poised to attack him with a stake. The mere thought of losing him made breathing a struggle. The sight was sickening, but despite my mortification over the sheer magnitude of death surrounding me, my prime concern was Derek Novak. A few lucky ones were killed with stakes driven through their hearts, but most were shot with the hunters’ bullets, uniquely engineered to mete out death on the vampires. He was only one among the many vampires present in those tombs-one among many dying excruciating deaths by those fatal gunshots. A fiery bullet hit a vampire about seven feet away from me, who screamed in agony as he burst into flames.

Gunshots were being fired all over the place. A surge of horror rushed through my body as I scoped my surroundings.

A castle of sand by bella forrest