Bloodfire Rising (Eternal Sins MC #1)

Chapter One

DRAVEN ‘CRAVE’

Millenia Ago

My hunger wakes like a blade sliding between my ribs.

Below us, the village breathes.

Laughs.

Lives.

Every heartbeat is a weakness I can taste from the roofline where my coven waits, bodies coiled, fangs ready. There is no hesitation in me, no restraint, only the knowledge that once I step forward, the night will remember my name.

The moon glistens, bright and full above the thatched roofs, painting everything in shades of silver and incoming death.

The perfect kind of hunting light.

The kind that makes our prey think they can see what’s coming.

But they can’t.

No one sees us coming.

Beside me, Nyx shifts, and the darkness moves with her.

My sister’s gift of bending shadows like living things, making mortals see their deepest fears manifest in the corners of their vision, is truly remarkable.

She grins at me, her fangs gleaming, her purple eyes as dark as the void between the stars.

“Are you ready, brother?” Her voice is barely a whisper, but my sensitive ears hear her well enough.

I don’t answer. The beast inside answers for me, a low growl vibrates through my chest, causing the leaves around us to tremble. A slight breeze lifts through the air, carrying the sweet scent of our hunt below.

Seventy-three heartbeats.

Seventy-three pulses of hot, sweet blood pumping through fragile human bodies.

The scent of blood is thick and intoxicating, making my mouth salivate. My hunger grows to an uncontrollable and intoxicating thirst, my fingers clenching onto the thatching of the roof, the straw buckling and falling to the ground with my strength.

“Easy, Draven… our time approaches near. Calm yourself,” Moros warns, and seeing as he can see all possible endings and future outcomes, I somehow stem my urges, if only for a moment.

My fangs draw out farther, a hiss escaping me as I hold myself back.

Nyx places her cold hand on my shoulder, her grip tight.

A warning to keep myself in control. “Soon, brother… soon.” Her purple eyes meet mine, the only tell that gives her away when her shadow work comes into play, and somehow, they are the only thing that manages to calm me.

To ease that insatiable hunger that consumes me.

The six of us have been hunting for centuries.

We were born this way.

Made from pure evil.

The first.

The Originals.

My reflection is gone and has been for as long as I can remember. When you’re born of evil itself, the light eventually stops remembering you.

“Now,” Khoas the First finally growls.

A slow smile crosses my face, and I feel it flow through me.

I let my hunger take hold as the six of us leap into the air with all our might above the city.

The clouds feel like another version of home, but right now, I don’t want to soar, I want to ravage.

And through the mist of the darkened sky, my coven and I begin our transformation—bones cracking, our bodies reforming, feathers erupting from our skin as I shift into the form that gave us our name.

A murder of crows.

The Coven swoops, descending on the village like a black plague, our cries splitting the night air. Humans stumble around the village, confused and terrified, ducking for cover behind carts, hay, or using each other as human shields.

They think we’re just birds.

They’re so wrong.

We swoop as one, a storm of black wings and hunger—the wind tears against our feathers, the world below pulsing with perfect heartbeats. We scream our arrival, with harsh, grating cries that taste like blood not yet spilled.

The villagers look up, small faces bathed in moonlight, eyes wide, throats pulsing with life.

We feel their fear before we smell it. The air thickens, sweet with panic.

We dive, faster, harder, the night roaring around us.

The others hit the ground, and the change rips through them.

Their bones crack, feathers burn away with smoke and fire, claws stretch into hands, their beaks split into mouths made for feeding.

Screams ripple through the village, only building our excitement as they begin their frantic escape.

The chorus of our crow caws twists into manic, evil laughter.

Their screams rise to meet ours, and together we sing the song of the hunt.

I land in the village square and shift back, feeling my spine elongate, my wings collapsing into arms, and my beak splitting into a face that once belonged to something almost human.

Almost.

The farmer nearest me freezes, his primitive mind trying to process what his eyes just witnessed.

I move before his scream can form, so fast his eyes track from side to side as if he’s processing the pace of my movement. My fingers close around his throat, and I lift him off the ground as though he weighs nothing.

Because, to me, he does weigh nothing.

The hunger roars through me, demanding, all-consuming, while his pulse hammers against my palm, rapid, panicked, and delicious. His eyes bulge, and I finally see my reflection there, in the terror flooding his pupils.

A monster.

Pure and simple.

A low, menacing smile crosses my lips. His entire body shakes as he begins to plead in a language I am unfamiliar with.

But all it does is ignite me. As the screams intensify around me, my eyes narrow in on the vein pulsing on his neck, the musical pulse hums through my body, a calmness washes over me, my teeth descend farther, and with every fiber of my being, I bite down into his neck.

I don’t even hear the screams when my eyes roll back into my head when the euphoria hits.

All the noise, all the chaos, all the death surrounding me is drowned out as my body is overcome.

My other hand grips the side of his neck, my long nails ripping his throat open while adrenaline surges.

Blood runs down my body when I savage his jugular.

The warmth, the way his life force rushes into me and fills the void that never truly stays satisfied, is intoxicating.

I drink deep, feeling his struggles weaken, his heart slowing.

The Bloodfire inside me—that ancient hunger born the moment I rose from darkness—sings.

Until the melody stops.

The farmer in my grip stills.

I’ve taken too much—I always take too damn much—but I don’t care because the hunger demands everything.

Letting out an animalistic growl, I drop his corpse to the ground and snap my head up to see the rest of my coven in their frenzy.

Nyx weaves through the screaming villagers, and shadows peel away from walls, from corners, and the spaces between heartbeats.

They take shape, twisted, horrific shapes pulled from nightmares.

A woman runs from a purple-eyed shadow-beast that isn’t real, but her terror makes it real enough.

She trips, falls, and I watch as Nyx descends on her, shadows wrapping around them both like a shroud.

I grin while watching Nyx attack her prey, ripping her throat out like the animal she is.

Thanatos tears through a group of men with farmers’ tools, his laugh echoing off stone walls.

They try to fight.

Humans always try to fight at first.

He catches a pitchfork mid-swing, snaps it like kindling, and drives the splintered end through the wielder’s chest. Blood sprays in an arc, painting the dirt black in the moonlight, then he takes after them, latching onto their necks, one by one, using lightning speed.

Erebus simply touches people. That’s all it takes. Where his fingers brush skin, life stops. Not death, something worse—erasure.

The shepherd collapses, but there’s nothing left behind, no body, no scorch, no evidence he ever existed. Just empty space where a man used to be, but from the erasure, he captures their Bloodfire.

Bloodfire. The essence that makes blood sing.

The life force that pulses through every living thing, carrying magic, memory, and the spark of existence itself.

It’s what keeps hearts beating and souls anchored to flesh.

For mortals, it burns dim and steady, a candle that flickers out when their time ends.

For supernaturals, Bloodfire is an ancient force, stronger and more enduring than any mortal flame. But in some, it surges higher, powerful enough to separate them from others entirely.

We don’t know why.

Some are just lucky that way.

And some, like Erebus, can harvest it. Strip it from the dying and claim it as their own, adding stolen Bloodfire to their inferno. It’s the ultimate violation, not just taking a life, but consuming the very essence that made that life real.

And somewhere in the chaos, in the screaming darkness of the village massacre, my Bloodfire roars in answer.

Moros stalks through the village center, and everywhere he looks, people see their deaths.

They stumble away from visions only they can witness—throats being torn out, bodies being drained, futures ending in blood and darkness.

Some collapse from the terror before we even touch them.

Moments later, their visions become reality as my coven comes through to take their lives.

And Khaos the First, the eldest, he doesn’t move at all. He stands in the center of the carnage, and reality bends around him. The air thickens, the ground cracks, and mortals who get too close age decades in seconds, their skin withering, their bones turning brittle, when he drains them.

This is what we are.

This is what we’ve always been.

Predators.

Grinning through the chaos, I savor the destruction I’ve wrought, the taste of death still warm on my tongue, before moving to the next. A woman clutching a child. Her wide eyes are full of tears as she begs in some language I do not know.

They always beg.

But I have no mercy.

It’s who I am.

I lunge forward, grabbing her by the hair.

The child breaks free, and the woman screams as she dangles.

The child runs, and something in me, something that recalls being newly made, remembers the taste of first darkness, and that something wants the chase.

Needs it. I toss the woman to the side, her body cracking with the force of my throw as I turn for the hunt.

I let the boy get twenty paces before I move.

One stride. Two. Three.

The boy never makes it to four.

Time loses meaning when you hunt like this. Could be minutes. Could be hours. All I know is the red haze, the warm blood coating my throat, and the screams that eventually fade into silence. My Bloodfire burns so hot I feel it in my veins, glowing beneath my skin like molten lava.

When the hunger finally recedes, when I’ve had my fill and more, I stand in the center of the village to survey the site.

There are bodies everywhere.

There is blood soaking into dirt that will never grow crops again.

The smell of iron and death is so thick I could drown in it.

Nyx appears beside me, shadows still writhing around her, living pets that never stray far. Blood stains her lips, satisfaction deep-seated in her eyes. She doesn’t speak. She doesn’t need to. We’ve done this dance a thousand times.

She watches me hunt.

I leave her the final scraps.

A perfect system.

The rest of the Coven regroups.

Thanatos wipes his blade clean on a dead woman’s dress. Erebus looks bored, mass slaughter is just another Moon’s Eve. Moros studies the corpses, an artist admiring his work. Khaos remains motionless and completely indifferent to the death surrounding him.

“They’ll tell stories about us,” Nyx croons, her voice carrying an edge of dark amusement. “They’ll say a murder of crows descended and wiped out an entire village in one night.”

I look at the carnage.

At what we’ve created.

At the evil we’ve spread.

“Good,” I say. “Let them fear our darkness.”

Because that’s what we are. The darkness. The night made flesh, born from evil, returning to evil, existing in the space between where all human hope goes to die.

This is who I am.

A monster.

I am born to crave.

And I love every second of it.