Chapter 46
EMBERLINE
The moment everything clicked felt less like relief and more like a wolf closing its jaws around our throats.
The moment the words left my mouth, I knew—I fucking knew—I was right. That abandoned island was, in retrospect, Giovanni’s most obvious hiding place, but I’d been distracted by the traces of DiSangue magic at the scene, by my own suspicions about Rocco, by underestimating my uncle. Again.
“Isola della Cenere,” I repeated, louder this time. “He visits at least once a week. Says he goes there to think.” I shook my head, hardly believing my own stupidity. “There’s an old human abbey, but it hasn’t been used in decades. I think there was a fire.”
Nico’s jaw tightened. “I’ve heard that place is haunted. I don’t know of any other vampire besides your uncle who’s ever set foot there.”
“Exactly,” I shot back. “Too isolated for civilians to easily reach. Too ruined for vampires to care. And Giovanni…” I dragged out an infuriated breath. “As far as I know, he’s made regular visits my entire life. Always said… it was his secret place.”
I wanted to slam my face down on the kitchen table.
How could I have been so blind? How could I have forgotten such a strategic location that checked literally every box?
Dante didn’t speak. His eyes weren’t on me or Nico. They were somewhere else entirely—and deep with those blue depths, twin flames burned.
I took another look around the burned kitchen, some deep, instinctual fear chilling my blood.
I wasn’t a fool, and I wasn’t blind. The new scars. The excessive damage inflicted with cruel purpose. The Overseer had done something to my husband, and now he was fighting tooth and nail to keep himself together.
“Dante,” I prodded softly. “What are you thinking?” His gaze snapped to me, sharp, alert… then instantly shuttered, the fire in his eyes going out.
“That the island should have been the first place we checked,” he muttered. “But we were too focused on seeing enemies where there weren’t any.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Nico breathed. “As it turns out, we have more enemies to worry about than we’d thought.”
Dante’s mouth curved. “I suppose I’ll have to wait until my brother arrives to hear about these new enemies?” Then he shook his head. “Don’t answer that question, I already know the answer.”
I wanted nothing more than to lock my husband in a room and demand answers. But he was as stubborn as I was, and backing him into a corner wasn’t the way to get him talking.
“We should all be together,” Nico explained, “only because it’s… complicated, and we need to put our heads together on this one. As soon as Rocco’s gone, Gabriel’s coming straight here, then we’ll go over what we found.”
“And the Basin?” I asked, adrenaline already racing through my veins. “We can’t wait on this, not with what we know.” At Dante’s sharp look, I added, “We’ll tell you everything, I swear.”
If Lord Blackwood was involved through Rocco’s backdoor dealings, securing the Basin was imperative. I was more terrified of Blackwood’s motives than my uncle’s, if that was possible.
“And then, if we’re in agreement, we’ll go tonight.
” Nico glanced over at Dante, as though he was still on the fence about his reliability.
I took my husband’s hand. Together. We were all in this together.
After a long look at our joined hands, Nico finally went on, “Recon only to start. But if the Basin is there…”
“Oh, it is,” I said, mentally working through all the security protocols my uncle would likely have in place. Guards, magic… a few nasty surprises.
“I say we take the relic out of there,” Nico said, surprising me. “I have a safe place we can hide it, somewhere even your uncle’s spies don’t know about.”
Then Dante squeezed my hand. “Isola della Cenere,” he pronounced the name like a death sentence. “Fine. Let’s go find this chunk of magical rock.”
“Holy gods. What the fuck is this place?” I whispered beneath my breath.
Isola della Cenere rose from the mist, a jagged silhouette of crumbling stone and half-dead, skeletal trees.
We’d dematerialized to the shoreline and ended up in water to our knees, miscalculating because the whole damn place was like some kind of shifting, ephemeral landscape of murky water and permanently spooky fog.
Thanking the gods my feet at least touched, I slogged up onto shore, water and gods-knew-what squishing loudly inside my boots. So much for stealth.
The atmosphere stank of limestone, heavy with the lagoon’s usual brine, thick with a presence that pressed moistly against my skin, then beaded up. The kind of dread you don’t see so much as taste, like a sourness that clung to my tongue, no matter how many times I swallowed.
“Tell me you feel that,” Nico muttered, his shadows snaking around his ankles.
“Oh, I do,” Gabriel said grimly. “Maybe there’s something to all those rumors.”
Dante hadn’t said a word since we’d left Venice, but the faint shimmer of heat curling off his skin told me he sensed the threat more than any of us.
Now that we were here, he would barely even look at me, and every time I touched him, he yanked away, but not before I felt the unnatural temperature of his skin.
Gabriel and I shared another look, his gaze narrowed on his brother.
More than the rest of us, this unnatural place was affecting my husband… or whatever was inside my husband. After tonight, we had to sit down and hash things out. Stage an intervention.
“Stay alert,” Gabriel said. “Fuck knows what’s waiting for us.”
According to legend, the island had been abandoned after a fire burned down the abbey, but nature hadn’t reclaimed these ruins so much as consumed them.
Vines strangled what remained of pathways.
Cedar trees grew at unnatural angles, their bark split and blackened, like something was rotting them from the inside out.
We stayed close, shoulder to shoulder, Nico’s black shadows spilling out around us in a torrent, churning into the white mist with every slow, cautious step.
The old abbey’s facade was broken, empty rose windows gaping like hollow eyes, one tower fallen in a long line of ivy-covered stone. Sick, spindly cedars shoved up through the ruins, nothing but skeletal shapes outlined by the pale mist, like ghosts trapped inside a cursed prison.
“Gods, I see why your uncle likes this place so much.” Nico’s swagger was replaced by a cautious prowl, his pale eyes constantly picking through the indistinct landscape, searching for threats in this emptiness.
We passed a toppled part of a wall, and I paused long enough to notice markings carved into the worn-down limestone.
Runes, of some sort. The markings were sharp. Clear.
Added far later than the abbey was built.
Dante stood frozen in place, studying the carvings, mouth pinched in concentration, hands fisted at his sides. Ripples of heat shimmered in the air above his wide shoulders, and a single word escaped his lips.
“Fossa,” he whispered, a shudder rocking his body.
I went to take his hand, but he jerked away. I pressed my fingers into my palm, the tips burning, as if I’d just shoved them into a live flame.
“Dante, what are these markings? Can you read them?”
“I can’t read the language, but I know where they came from.”
“From the Overseer?”
“No, not him,” he was breathing erratically, frantically kneading his chest with his knuckles, “From the Overseer’s witch. These are… witch markings. Binding markings.”
An ache tore through my chest at that edge of hysteria in Dante’s voice. I’d never heard him this frantic, but I recognized that fear. That was how I felt every time I thought about drowning. The kind of terror that wasn’t logical.
This was the kind that left you mindless. Vulnerable.
“We’re going back to Venice and making a new plan,” I decided on the spot. “Coming here was a mistake. We have to…”
A low growl skated through the ruined stone. Not an animal. Not quite vampire.
We all went still.
“Get behind me, Ember. Movement to our right,” Nico breathed, drawing a knife with one hand, a gun in the other. “At least four targets, but it’s hard to be sure.” Black as night shadows spilled out around him, covering the ground, clearing the air around us.
Enough to see what was coming, and I couldn’t decide if that was good or bad.
I squeezed Dante’s arm, still frozen, hair obscuring his face. “We’re getting out of here, just stay close.” Ridiculous, given he was twice my size, but I wasn’t even sure he’d heard. He was digging his fist hard into his sternum, as if he was trying to force something out.
I didn’t know what to do, how to pull him out of this fog, and just as I met Gabriel’s eyes…
They emerged from the shadows like fears dredged up from my worst nightmare.
Vampires… except they weren’t.
Remnants of clothing flowed around them like the mists cloaking this island, pale and translucent, tattered ends floating on an invisible breeze. I swallowed. Like the veils of the Underworld.
Their greyish-white skin was smooth as porcelain, broken only by some sort of wounds, as if they were knit together by a dark patchwork of seams. And their eyes… their eyes glowed like they were fueled by fire, burning so brightly, it leaked out of every opening.
“Have you ever seen anything like this before?” Gabriel hissed from the side of his mouth. I couldn’t stop staring, couldn’t control my heart rate, couldn’t fucking think around my horror.
“No,” Nico said, at the same time Dante grunted, “Yes.”
“Then now’s the time to start talking, brother.” Out of us all, Gabriel remained the most composed, body tensed in a low crouch, weapons ready. Even Nico was off his game, shocked at the four macabre things circling us.
Dante still wasn’t moving, and I shifted to my left, covering him.
“We called them the Ashbound. Legati alla Cenere,” he finally rasped in a voice so hoarse, I barely understood him. “Creatures born of fire. Made from vampires who died by burning, then resurrected through blood magic.”