Chapter 1 #2
I snatch my phone from the vampire’s hand and find a litany of missed calls from my mom and Nora asking what happened at the Windsor, if I’ve heard about Penny being kidnapped, that she is back at our apartment now, and to call when I can. I have texts from Fiona, Peter, Penny, and Sophia too.
I ignore every one of them and dial Reid. My heart hammers as it goes to voicemail. When I try twice more and get the same result, I move to push past the vampire. I need my daggers. Need to get to the docks. Forget waiting for Deacon’s return. If he failed, maybe I can—
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” the vampire says, corralling me toward the bed like a sheepdog. “You can’t leave.”
Words not to say to a hunter who’s just had everything taken from her: You can’t leave.
I pocket my phone and spy my boots at the end of the bed. “Watch me.”
But the vampire just presses his back to the door behind him. “No can do, Stag’s—”
“Orders. I know.” I slide one shoe on, then the other. “And I’m ordering you to move before you see your own entrails.”
It’s not that I can’t take this kid. Daggers or no daggers, a recently turned vamp’s no match for me. The problem is, despite everything, Deacon saved my life tonight. And I’m hoping he’s somehow saved Reid’s as well. Murdering one of his bartenders doesn’t seem like the soundest way to thank him.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” I say, even though that’s not exactly true. My aeon bloodlust means I always want to hurt. Him or any other deviant I encounter. But for the purpose of this conversation, I mean what I’m saying. “I need my daggers, and I need to get out of here.”
But I must still be half dead, because when his eyes narrow and his fangs slip out, I wonder how I could have misread his intentions so wholly. The vampire’s entire demeanor shifts like the surprise killer at the end of the movie. A nasty snarl rips from his throat. “Can’t let you do that.”
And then he swings at me.
If I have anything in this life, it’s my reflexes. In death—in oblivion—I will be catching star particles with my fingertips before they land on my skin. My hand curls around the vampire’s fist before he’s even decided where to land the blow.
What I don’t have at the current moment is my full strength.
Vampire blood will heal your wounds and injuries, but caffeine it is not.
I was minutes from extinction, and that’s not the prefight Powerade I’m in need of.
The force of the vampire’s punch sends us both flying into the duvet, and I roll to the side before he can land another across my jaw.
“What the fuck?” I screech, scrambling over the bed.
Deacon spares my life only to send his minion to slaughter me?
I’ll never understand demon logic. With the few seconds I have before the vampire corners me, I yank down a creamy gossamer curtain, slide out the iron rod, and brandish it like a baseball bat.
“That can’t kill me.” The vampire grins. “Only wood.”
Boasting as if I didn’t know that? Like he expects me to drop the weapon and clutch my pearls? Definitely a newbie. I swing like a switch-hitter and knock him clean across the skull. A grin crawls up my face when I hear his eyes rattle in his head.
“Fuck,” he groans.
My next blow doesn’t connect quite as well, and he’s able to stumble back and nab the letter opener from the antique desk behind him.
I scan the room for any wood I can find to stake him.
We round the four-poster bed like fighters in a cage match.
He swings, missing me and connecting with a down pillow. Feathers spray.
“Deacon too scared of the madness to take me out himself?” I spit.
The only benefit of this spell Dean Driscoll implanted in me is the crippling insanity doled out to anyone who kills me.
Well, that and world-shattering power. “Did he even go after Reid?” How could I have been so stupid to ask for help from—
“Madness?” The vampire asks, letter opener still raised. “That’s why the Brood’s looking for you?”
And then the moment rearranges itself in my mind. I halt, curtain rod still raised. He was there when Deacon told his crew not to breathe a word of this to the Brood. And that’s when this fresh new vamp saw opportunity. “You want to trade me to them. For what?”
The traitor smiles like he’s enormously clever. “Assume they’ll give me a fat load of cash for you. Or a brand, if I’m lucky.”
Ah. The things deviants will do to join the Brood.
Tale as old as time. “Best of luck,” I bite out before leaping across the bed in one fluid movement and taking him down to the ground.
But too easily he tosses me off of him and I land on my back.
The syrabraxa writhes beneath my skin like a snake made of razor blades. I can’t help my agonized moan.
Which is a deadly mistake.
I look up just in time to see the vampire realize I have an off switch. A long, jagged one down the center of my back. Triumph glows in his eyes, and his fangs glint in the moonlight.
He runs at me, and for the first time I can recall, I sprint away from the fight.
I clamber toward the bathroom and try with all my hunter strength to yank the door shut between us.
To buy some time until I can find wood. But his fingers wrap around it right before I can slam it shut, and we struggle through gritted teeth and grunts of exertion to bend the door to our wills until it groans and creaks and… splits clean down the center.
I barely have time to register the half door hanging from its bent hinges because of the splintered wood littering the floor. Little stakes, each shard. I lunge for one thick fragment—
But the vampire grabs me around the middle and digs his fingernails into the fresh scar on my back. I shriek in undiluted agony. “Yeah, bitch,” he growls. “Cry for me.”
He drags me back into the bedroom, moving for the iron curtain rod. I have no time to formulate a plan. If he knocks me out I’ll wake up in the clutches of Finn. Or worse, the High Thane. I’ll never be able to save Reid. I’ll be used as a conduit to break open the Chasm—
I tumble to the floor alongside the sound of wood slicing through bone and flesh and fluid. The iron-rich scent of fresh blood stings my nostrils.
Still catching my breath, I peer over my shoulder to find the young vampire on the ground, eyes vacant, soaking in a pool of his own blood. There’s a gaping hole in his chest where a wooden clock has been chucked clean through like a baseball.
“How’s that for killer aim?” Deacon offers from the doorway. When I turn to gape at him, still panting in horror and relief, he only shrugs. “Get it? Killer aim?”