Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
Selena
The hunger was unbearable. It went beyond thirst, beyond craving—it was as if every pore in my body, every cell in my blood, was screaming for what lay up that hill.
The scent rolled down through the trees in waves, rich and ancient and intoxicating, pulling at something so deep inside me I couldn’t fight it any more than I could fight gravity.
Balthazar was right. We’d know.
Dense pine trees climbed the steep hillside, their trunks dark and slick with moisture. Thick fog moved between them, curling around the roots, drifting across the ground in slow, deliberate patterns that didn’t follow the wind. Like it was guiding us. Or herding us.
Rocco clasped my hand. “Come on.”
He led me up the hill, his grip firm, his stride purposeful despite the treacherous ground.
The going was brutal—fallen logs slick with moss, jagged rocks jutting from the earth at odd angles, mud that sucked at our boots with every step.
My calves burned. My lungs ached from the thin, cold air.
But I couldn’t have stopped even if I’d wanted to. The scent wouldn’t let me.
My heart pounded harder with every step. The smell of blood grew stronger and stronger, thickening in the air until I could taste it on my tongue—copper and something sweeter, something ancient that made my fangs throb and my vision blur at the edges.
Was Vex in this castle? I hoped he was. I hoped this was the right one and that we hadn't wasted precious hours chasing the wrong scent to the wrong ruin.
But even as the rational part of my brain tried to weigh the odds, it didn't matter.
I couldn't have pulled away from this if I'd tried.
The scent had sunk its hooks into me, and one look at Rocco's clenched jaw, Rose’s deep scowl, and Valentin's wild eyes told me none of us could.
We were moths drawn to a flame. And I wasn’t sure how this story would end.
As Rocco and I climbed higher, the dense forest began to thin.
The ancient pines gave way to gnarled, skeletal trees with bare branches that clawed at the fog like twisted fingers.
A gravel road emerged from the undergrowth—cracked and overgrown with weeds, but unmistakably man-made.
It twisted up the hillside in a series of sharp switchbacks, disappearing into the mist above.
“I guess we follow the yellow brick road,” Rocco grumbled, staring at the crumbling gravel path winding up through the fog.
I wanted to laugh but I couldn’t bring myself to. Not with the hunger clawing at my insides and the scent growing thicker with every step, coating the back of my throat like honey laced with poison.
We followed the road as it twisted up the hillside, switchback after switchback, the gravel crunching beneath my boots like broken bones. The fog pressed in closer. The trees thinned to nothing. And then the road curved one final time, and I gasped.
The castle rose from the mountainside like something born from a nightmare.
Three turrets pierced the gray sky, each one crowned with a crumbling balcony of dark stone.
The walls were massive—ancient brick blackened by centuries of weather and neglect, split with cracks that ran from foundation to roofline like old wounds that had never healed.
Vines had claimed entire sections, slithering up the walls and choking the archways, their tendrils prying into every gap as if the mountain itself was trying to drag the castle back into the earth.
A pair of iron gates hung open at the entrance, one torn from its hinges, the other leaning at a drunken angle. Beyond them, a cobblestone courtyard stretched toward the main doors—massive oak things, weathered to gray, standing slightly ajar.
The scent poured from that opening like breath from a sleeping beast.
Every vampire instinct I had screamed two things at once.
Run toward it. And run away.
I leaned close to Rocco, my voice barely above a whisper. “Do you think this is where Vex is?”
“Looks like home sweet home for a demon,” he grumbled, his dark eyes sweeping the decaying facade.
I squeezed his hand tighter as we approached the gates.
The iron was corroded, flaking rust like dead skin, but a metal sign bolted to the stone pillar beside them was still legible.
The letters were old—ornate, sharp-edged, etched deep into the metal as if burned there by something other than a craftsman’s hand.
Sanguis Keep.
Blood Keep. Of course.
Valentin scanned the grounds beyond the gate—the overgrown courtyard, the cracked cobblestones, the shadows pooling in the archways like standing water. “I don’t think this one is on the tourist map.”
He was right. This castle had been deliberately erased. Hidden. The kind of place that didn’t appear on any map because someone—or something—wanted it that way.
Rose lifted her palm, holding it out toward the castle the way you might hold your hand over a flame to test its heat. Her eyes narrowed and her fingers trembled. “Dark magic is here. I can sense it.”
A chill spider-crawled down my spine. “You mean Vex is here?”
“Possibly.” Rose lowered her hand slowly, flexing her fingers like they’d gone numb. “But the magic I’m feeling is older than Vex. Much older. This has been soaked into these walls for centuries.”
Costin? Balthazar? Lucifer. It could be any one of them.
Alice stepped up beside her, her face pale, her arms wrapped around herself. “I feel it too. It’s evil. Something I never felt before.”
Silence settled over our group. The fog curled around our ankles, thick and cold.
I looked at Rocco first—his profile sharp against the mist, his body coiled tight.
Then the faces around me—Rose, Valentin, Darius, Raven, Lucien.
People who’d risked everything to help us.
People who had no obligation to be here.
And the terrible thought I’d been pushing away since New Orleans finally broke through: not all of us might make it back.
Rocco studied the castle, his gaze tracing the turrets, the crumbling walls, the vines that strangled every surface. “You mean like when Vlad made a deal with Balthazar and sold his soul?” He flashed me a surly smile. “That kind of evil magic.”
He stepped through the broken gate, his boots crunching on the gravel beyond it. "This is where it began." His voice was low, reverent despite himself. "Where Dracula sold his soul to Lucifer. Where Balthazar brokered the deal. Where he became the first vampire."
I followed him, but my knees buckled as I passed through the gate.
I didn't expect it—one second I was standing, the next my legs gave out like the ground had been yanked from under me. Rocco caught me before I hit the gravel, his arm locking around my waist.
"Selena—"
"I'm fine." I wasn't fine. Something was happening inside me.
My blood was doing something it had never done before—vibrating, humming, singing in my veins like it recognized this place on a molecular level.
Like every drop of vampire blood I carried had memory, and those memories were waking up all at once.
I pressed my hand flat against my chest. My heartbeat was wrong—too fast, too loud, syncing to a rhythm that wasn't mine. Something older. Something that had been beating in these walls long before I was born.
This was where we came from. Not just vampires as a concept, not just a story told in academies and whispered around blood-wine. This. This soil. This air. This rotting, vine-choked monument to the worst deal ever struck.
I could feel it in my teeth. In my bones. In the hunger that was clawing at me so hard my vision kept shifting between normal and that sharp, predatory red.
Rocco was staring at me, his face tight with concern. "Talk to me."
"Can't you feel it?" My voice came out strange—thin and shaking. "It's like coming home to a place I've never been."
Something shifted behind his eyes. He felt it too.
He just hadn't let it knock him down.
No one else answered. No one needed to.
I followed behind him, staying close enough that my shoulder nearly brushed his back. “Do you think Vex knows we’re coming?”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
But I wasn’t so sure. From what I’d heard about Vex, his heart was blacker than Balthazar—if that was even possible. Balthazar brokered deals. He had rules, twisted as they were. Vex had no rules. Vex had an appetite. And creatures with an appetite always kept one eye on the door.
The sun was beginning to sink behind the mountains, dragging long shadows across the keep like dark fingers reaching for the entrance.
What little light remained caught the broken windows and died there, swallowed by whatever waited inside.
The castle that had looked menacing in daylight was transforming into something far worse as dusk crept in.
The thought of being inside after dark made my skin crawl.
I braced my shoulders and followed Rocco through the entrance. The massive oak doors hung wide open — no lock, no resistance, no barrier of any kind. As if the keep had been expecting us. Waiting for us. The way a mouth hangs open before it swallows.
A draft crawled out from the darkness beyond, carrying the stale breath of centuries — dust and stone and something underneath that smelled like death.