Chapter 25
Sidney
Exiting the mansion proved uneventful. Vampires strolled through the corridors, preparing for their nightly routines, their attention elsewhere. We slipped past them without a glance and out into the streets of the Gilded Yard.
Our boots pounded the cobblestone in a quick rhythm, the sound bouncing between the buildings. A violin played through an open window nearby, while laughter drifted from a tavern three streets over.
Once we were far enough from the mansion, I removed my bracelet, and the illusion dissolved off my body.
The night breeze tugged at my cloak as we headed north. Zane’s shadows wrapped around us, blurring our forms into shapes that eyes slid past. Soon, Lady Lorelei’s house rose ahead, its white stone walls gleaming in the moonlight. I sneered at the sight of it.
Finn and Zane donned their disguises before we reached the perimeter wall. We scaled the barrier and dropped onto the manicured grass. Like ghosts, we moved through the garden, slipping past an elaborate fountain.
Two soldiers flanked the entrance, halberds in hand and mastiffs crouched at their feet. The dogs stiffened first, ears pricked and muzzles lifted toward us. The guards muttered to each other, shifting their weapons as they straightened. Their eyes narrowed as they followed the canines’ gazes.
A flock of birds tore from the trees, sweeping past the guards with piercing cries. They broke into two groups and raced toward the other entrances. The guards startled from the disturbance.
Finn stepped forward, shadows clinging to him. The dogs’ hackles eased, and they sank to the ground. He nodded to Zane, whose darkness spilled outward, swallowing the vampires whole.
I triggered my nullification, forcing it over both soldiers. For three brutal seconds, I held them both. My vision blurred as agony seized my skull. I clutched my head, the pressure unbearable, until I released it. Hopefully the brief loss of their power left them reeling.
Zane and Finn struck from the dark. Steel flashed, and two heavy thumps echoed. When moonlight cut through the shadows, it revealed guards dead on the ground.
With the pain receding, I moved toward the door. The rat slipped indoors first, whiskers twitching as it scurried ahead.
The kitchen stretched empty, its quiet broken only by the sharp click of mastiff nails as the dogs followed us. Shadows pooled in every corner, gathering behind Zane.
We climbed the stairs behind our small guide. At the third-floor landing, we turned left and stopped.
After we coated our blades with rupture, I opened the door.
It yielded without a sound. Inside, the air reeked of Lorelei’s jasmine fragrance.
A four-poster bed dominated the room, crystal perfume bottles gleamed across the vanity, and a lavish rug softened the hardwood.
A lantern lit the room, forgotten by the bedside.
Heavy curtains smothered the windows, still drawn to shut out any natural light.
I waited at the door with Zane close beside me, while Finn crouched under a window, the dogs at his feet.
Minutes crawled by, and my pulse hammered. What if she changed her routine?
Footsteps approached. I signaled for readiness. Finn tensed, and Zane’s shadows thickened, muting the lantern and plunging the room into darkness. The door creaked open, and someone entered, humming a tuneless melody.
I lunged, angling my dagger toward where her heart should be. The vampiress twisted aside, and my blade hissed through empty air. She clamped her hand around my wrist, nails biting deep.
The shadows released, and light returned. I pushed my nullification onto her. Without it, she could dissolve into mist or wield whatever gifts her devotees had granted.
Lorelei smiled in instant recognition, her fangs gleaming. “Little Sidney. All grown up with a death wish.”
Zane struck, but she caught the blade and tore it from his grip. She released my wrist to punch his jaw. He hit the wall, the smashing sound echoing.
Heavy footsteps thundered down the corridor. The mastiffs’ ears flattened, and a low whine slipped from one of them. Finn sprinted for the oak door. He slammed it shut, dropped the iron bolt, and then shoved a marble washstand against the frame.
Pain throbbed at my temple from the strain of magic, but I maintained my null for now. I drove my dagger into her shoulder, and the blade sank deep.
Lorelei snarled, backhanding me. The blow snapped my head aside. Stars burst across my vision.
She flung Zane away when he lunged, sending him skidding a second time. Glass shattered.
Every heartbeat was a battle to maintain my null with my head pounding. “You taught me that worthless creatures destroy beauty…” I gasped for breath. “Yet that's all I've ever seen you do.”
Zane wrestled his mask back into place, dragging the crooked eyeholes straight. Finn seized a heavy crystal perfume bottle and hurled it. The glass shattered against Lorelei’s face, and she staggered back.
“Now I've emerged from the wreckage you've created to hunt down monsters like you,” I said.
A thud rattled the door as the vampiress sneered at me.
Darkness peeled from the wall, Zane’s shadow stretched and sharpened. It lashed across the floor, hooking around Lorelei’s ankle. She lost her balance, and Zane blurred through the darkness, appearing behind her to sweep her legs out. She crashed to one knee.
I drove forward, stake raised. The weapon punched between her ribs, angling toward her heart. Before I could bury it, her hand shot out, clamping around my throat. She stood, lifting me off the ground. Spots swarmed my vision. My lungs screamed for air as I clawed at her grip.
Consciousness wavered. Dark spots flooded across my vision. But her arm trembled, and her hold weakened. The rupture from my earlier strike was affecting her. I dropped out of her hold, landing hard to the ground and gasping for air. My stake bounced across the rug.
My nullification broke, sending agony throbbing through my head. Lorelei’s skin shimmered, her form blurring at the edges. Despite the splitting pain in my skull, I threw my magic on her again in a desperate lash.
Zane’s shadow surged, pinning her down with ebony spikes. His blade followed a heartbeat later, bursting through her chest but missing her heart. Blood poured from the wound, yet she kept going, claws raking the air.
Wood cracked as the door buckled under a storm of strikes.
Finn threw his weight against the washstand, his boots skidding for purchase.
Gasping, I scrambled forward, snatching my stake.
I drove it into the wound Zane had made, forcing it deep into her heart.
Lorelei spasmed once and then went still with the glaze of death settling over her cruel eyes.
I knelt beside her corpse. For a perfect moment, I felt no pain.
A tightness I’d carried inside me for years unwound.
Tears warmed my eyes. My breath came easier now she was gone.
The jasmine and copper scent of her would never again make my stomach clench in anticipation of a sharp tongue or a calculated blow.
Blood soaked the rug beneath my knees, but I didn’t move.
“Is the bitch dead?” Zane’s voice was rough.
The sharp pain in my head returned as reality pressed in. “Yes,” I answered.
The door groaned, and its wood splintered. The barricade gave way, the washstand tipping over and knocking Finn backward onto the rug.
Shit.
The lead soldier shoved through the jagged gap, his eyes burning with fury. Halfway through the breach, Finn attacked, driving his blade clean into the vampire’s heart. The guard sagged before collapsing to the ground.
Another guard lunged in, and a sudden, unnatural wind picked up, whipping my hair across my face.
I snapped my focus onto him, and the wind stopped.
As he stumbled, stripped of his power, the nearest mastiff leaped, its jaws tearing out his throat in one savage motion.
I finished him with a blade to his heart.
Beyond the wreckage, a man charged into the room. He had to be a devotee, wearing only thin, flowing silks. Behind me, Zane was a blur of violence, his shadows lashing out to intercept two more guards trying to scale the balcony outside.
I locked onto the devotee, and he froze, his raised hand trembling.
I blinked sweat from my eyes and glanced at the second devotee behind him, who formed a dagger of crackling blue energy in his hand.
Releasing my hold on the first, I shifted my null toward the second, causing the dagger to vanish.
He staggered, turning his hand over in obvious confusion.
The first devotee shook off his surprise and lunged for me, but a mastiff intercepted him, jaws snapping around his forearm and dragging him to the floor. Finn finished him off.
Zane’s shadows curled up his arm like smoke as he slammed the second male back into the splintered doorframe. One clean strike punctured the vampire’s heart, and the body sagged, sliding down the wood.
The third and fourth devotees vaulted through the doorway.
I lashed out with my nullification, catching the third mid air and stripping his power.
As he stumbled, a mastiff lunged, sinking its teeth into his leg.
Finn drove his dagger upward beneath the man’s ribs with brutal precision, and the devotee collapsed in a heap at his feet.
The last vampire didn’t get the chance to recover. The mastiffs hit him at full tilt, their combined weight slamming him into the wall with a thud. After a wet crunch, the fourth devotee went limp.
Silence crashed down around us. I surveyed the carnage, my chest heaving and my throat burning where Lorelei’s grip lingered.
Zane approached, steadying my trembling frame. “You’re bleeding, Sidney.” He reached for my face.
“I’m fine.” I wiped the liquid dripping under my nose, unsurprised to see the smear of crimson. “We need to leave before the other guards arrive.”
Finn stood by the ruined door, scanning the dead. Do we hide the evidence?
There was no time for that. I looked at Lorelei’s body, satisfied that she’d finally met her end. No. Let them see what happens when the shadows have teeth.
The rat scurried out from beneath the vanity and climbed up Finn’s leg. After grabbing my dagger and stake, I cleaned them on Lorelei’s dress before sheathing them. Zane and Finn retrieved their weapons as well. We slipped out, the dogs at our heels.
I caught Finn’s eye. You cannot take them to the mansion.
Finn’s fingers moved quickly. I know. They will stay in the woods with Ash. I will get the kitchen staff to give me more meat for all of them.
Finn’s gaze lifted to mine, pleading, that stubborn shine in his eyes like a child refusing to surrender a beloved toy. The mastiffs pressed close, whining softly, their cold, wet noses nudging at my hands.
I rolled my eyes and gave him a nod. We crossed into the garden, and the canines exploded into motion, barreling straight into the fountain. Icy water sprayed as they splashed and pawed at each other, tails whipping, blood washing from their muzzles.
We stepped to the edge and quickly washed off. Crimson swirled away in the ripples while the mastiffs splashed, shaking water everywhere.
Shouting erupted from inside the house behind us. I ran, my mates right behind me.
The dogs froze with pricked ears before they leapt from the fountain and bolted after us. We ran through the garden and climbed the wall. Zane lifted the canines with his shadows, and we hit the street at a full sprint.
Before we entered the main road, we slowed. Finn and Zane yanked their masks off. I slipped the bracelet on, and Ilyana’s form shimmered into place.
The streets remained empty, but Zane kept us in the shadows. Our footsteps echoed too loudly. Yet no alarms sounded, and no guards emerged.
As we neared the mansion, a sensation vibrated through my teeth. I recognized the low-frequency hum from before as Finn’s power grew inside me, pulsing in time with my heartbeat. A crow perched on a fence post cocked its head, its dark gaze locking on to me.
“Hungry,” a voice echoed in my mind.
I froze. I can understand it.
“Sidney?” Zane stopped next to me.
“The world is getting louder,” I whispered, unable to look away from the crow. “And I think I’m finally starting to hear it.”
The sensation spread. A dog barked nearby, and the sound carried meaning beneath the noise. “Alert. Stranger. Mine.” A horse shifted in a nearby stable, its drowsy contentment brushing my awareness like warm honey.
“It’s not just one.” I pressed my palm to my aching temple. I turned to Finn, letting him read my lips. “It’s all of them. Every animal nearby. How do you filter this out?”
Finn stepped closer. He tapped his temple, then mimed closing a door.
“You shut them out?” I visualized a barrier.
The crow’s hunger still clawed at my mind, and the distant, rhythmic chant of the dogs Finn had sent to the woods—“Treat, treat, treat!”—ebbed as the connection stretched thin.
I focused on that fading sensation, pushing back against the noise until the chorus dimmed.
The voices weren’t gone, but they were manageable.
“I’ll need practice,” I said.
Finn nodded. Welcome to my world.
A flash of speckled gray feathers cut through the trees. Ash’s eyes glinted in the night. He made an ursine huff before disappearing into the forest.
We entered the House of the Sanguine as if everything were normal. My steps felt light. I’d finally crossed another name off the list. Carlyle would be proud—and Mathias would be next to die.
We were nearly to our room when a scream tore through the mansion. Then another. Shouts erupted in the distance, followed by the heavy slam of doors. Footsteps thundered through the corridors as the house dissolved into chaos around us.