Levi froze beneath her, horror echoing in his every feature, eyes widened in shock, mouth hanging. It was bad. She could tell it was bad, even in her fuzzy, hazy mind. Levi had never once looked like this. In a fraction of a second, her mind ran through every time she’d seen him. Nope. No horror anywhere.
Her eyes returned to the broken stone. Red blood. A faint scent that wasn’t any less familiar. She would have recognized it anywhere.
This was the scent of Sunday pancakes and bad jokes. Home.
‘Tom.’
She didn’t think she’d said the name in years. Not since then. After her father’s arrest, the world had opened up under her feet, and she’d turned every which way in an attempt to find her anchor, but he’d been gone. He’d abandoned her.
All the hurt she’d long buried rushed to the surface, fueling a rising rage she didn’t know where to direct. There was a man on his back beneath her knees. Him. She could destroy him. She’d feel better after, right?
No. Not him.
The thing inside her had had a presence, thoughts that never quite matched her own, until this day. Now, they were in agreement, and it had a voice. Her voice, whispering words of darkness at the back of her mind.
‘Chloe, focus,” Levi said. “You’ve unlocked a hundred percent of your brain functions, and it can be confusing, but you just need to concentrate on what’s important. The ferals. Getting out of here. You understand?”
Ferals. Yes, that rang a bell.
She could definitely destroy them. She grinned.
‘Chloe…’
She was already on her feet, running downhill. They were close. Now that her attention was on them, she could hear them, feel them.
A piercing cry resounded, and her eyes turned skyward. Ravens. All of the ravens in the message box, and more. They were following her.
She liked it. She liked them. She wanted to be with them.
Her heart became lighter, and she almost felt herself float, when a hand grabbed hold of her wrist and pushed her hard against a tree.
‘Listen to me, child,’ Levi roared.
Chloe bared her teeth. ‘I’m no child.’
‘Then stop acting like one. Carry on and you will die. For good. Not even because of the ferals, not because of the gentry waiting for you at the bottom of this hill. Because without the blood of your clan, you’re nothing but a corpse on borrowed time.’
It was hard, so very hard, to truly take in anything—there was so much to look at and listen to. Her memories. The sound of the wildlife running in every direction, fleeing from the monsters. The ferals. A fight. The moon rising in the distance. After darkness fell, the world had been shadows to her until now. Now she saw through the fog, and it was beautiful.
She didn’t want it to end. Not now. The thing inside her didn’t either. It forced her to pay attention. Not just to Levi’s words—to herself.
Her limbs had felt like they could soar, like she was stronger than anything—anyone.
Now she noticed the decline. The fatigue. How very dry her throat was, like sanding paper. Her hands, so strong a minute ago, were trembling.
‘What’s happening to me?’
‘You’re mid-transition, and you need Tom’s blood. You have a night, at most, if you save your energy. Your stunt trying to sync with your raven familiars already cost you.’
Shit.
She had no clue what he meant about syncing, but she certainly felt drained. Enfeebled, unexplainably.
‘Next time, how about you warn a girl?’ she retorted, without much heat, mainly because she didn’t have the energy to summon up the requisite amount of ire.
‘How about we concentrate on keeping you alive? You can tell me everything I did wrong if you’re breathing by dawn.’
Dawn seemed so far when night had only just claimed dominion over the hill.
Their heads snapped downhill as shadows approached.
The ferals.
Levi let go of her and turned to face them.
‘You remember what I said last week?’
Yes. No. Maybe.
Thankfully, he spelled it out for her. ‘Run.’
Oh. That.
She hesitated.
‘What about you?’
He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Don’t insult me. I’ll wipe the floor with that lot without breaking a sweat.’
She knew he could take care of himself, but she could only concentrate on what he’d once said, how one feral bite was enough to turn any vampire into a mindless creature. What if they took him by surprise? Someone had to watch his back.
She stood her ground as the first line closed in on Levi.
Until now, she’d always seen a blur of unclear movements—one moment Levi was standing to her right, then to her left, and she couldn’t detect the transition. Now, she saw everything, each of his graceful, precise moves. A leap to the first feral, his knee colliding with the side of its jaw, then using his neck to pivot mid-air, his boot kicking down three of them in one blow. The man was a machine.
A machine fighting one against a hundred.
She rushed forward just as someone leaped in the air, landing right in front of her on a crouch. Jack was still wearing a damn suit, not one hair out of place.
He watched her, his jaw tight.
Right. Her friend disliked vampires. She’d forgotten.
Chloe wondered how obvious her change had been. Did she have fangs? Was there something different in her eyes? Did he hate her now?
Jack pulled knives from inside his jacket and threw them close to Levi. The vampire didn’t even flinch as they lodged inside the skulls of ferals either side of him.
‘Let’s see if you can live up to your name, Cheetah. Get out of here.’
Maybe he didn’t hate her after all. She grinned before saluting and turning her heels away from the fight.
Leaving them was harder than anything she’d ever done, but they were both seasoned fighters, and she knew she’d only be in the way if she stayed. A liability. They might get hurt trying to help her, too.
So, she ran—at first, anyway. It soon became much harder than she’d anticipated. Chloe wasn’t much of a cheetah right now—her sides hurt, and she was out of breath and sweating like a pig.
‘I smelled something this way.’
She froze. She’d never heard that voice. Chloe hadn’t asked, but she doubted ferals talked; not in an enunciated way, in any case.
There was a very high probability that some of the gentries were after her. Old, well-trained vampires. At the best of times, she wouldn’t have had much of a chance. Right now, feeling so diminished? There was zero hope. Levi had told her to buy herself time until help came, but right now, he, and all her friends, had their hands full.
She needed to hide. But where? They could smell her, hear her. She looked around, panicked.
Then her eyes fell north. She couldn’t see it from here, but she knew the way. The path.
In a cave, protected by so many spells your head will spin just going anywhere near it.
He was insane.
Monster.
So many words. So many warnings. All cautioning her to go nowhere near the cave on the hill.
But did she have a choice?
