Chapter Eight
SLOANE
The Next Night
The parking garage reeks of exhaust and stale urine, familiar in the worst way.
After twelve hours on my feet, another endless shift in the emergency room where I couldn’t save everyone who came through those doors, all I want is to collapse into bed and pretend the world doesn’t exist for six hours.
My scrubs are stiff with dried blood that isn’t mine, my feet ache, and my head pounds with the kind of exhaustion that goes bone deep.
I just want to go home.
My car sits three levels down in the hospital’s employee garage, and I’m halfway there when the lights flicker.
Once.
Twice.
Then they go out completely.
Emergency lighting kicks in a second later, casting everything in sickly yellow that makes shadows stretch and twist into shapes that shouldn’t exist. My pulse kicks up, adrenaline cutting through the fog of exhaustion.
It’s just a power issue. Happens all the time.
Except this isn’t just a power issue.
The air shifts, turning heavy and cold, thickening with something distinctly off. Oxygen feels displaced, breath suddenly scarce.
I pick up my pace, my sneakers squeak against concrete. My car is maybe fifty feet away, a beacon of safety in this suddenly hostile space.
That’s when I hear it.
A sound similar to fabric tearing. Or bones cracking. Something wet and organic that makes every hair on my body stand up.
I freeze.
“Hello?” My voice echoes in the empty garage, thin and stupid. Because what kind of idiot calls out when every instinct is screaming to run?
Silence answers me.
Then a manic, evil kind of laughter follows. A laughter that doesn’t sound human. It sounds sharper, hungrier, the kind of sound predators make when they’ve cornered prey.
Suddenly, three figures step out from behind a concrete pillar twenty feet ahead. Young men, maybe early twenties, wearing clothes that look as if they’ve been through a war. But it’s their eyes that make my stomach drop.
Red.
Glowing in the dim emergency lighting.
“Well, well,” one of them says, and his voice has an accent I can’t place. Old. Wrong. “Look what we found.”
My brain tries to rationalize it. Contact lenses. Drugs. Some kind of prank. But my body knows better.
My hands start to heat, from fear, from panic? I have no idea why this keeps happening.
“I don’t want any trouble,” I say, backing up slowly. “I’m just trying to get to my car.”
“Oh, we know,” the second one purrs, moving with a fluidity that’s all wrong. Too fast. Too smooth. As if gravity doesn’t quite apply to him. “We’ve been watching you. Waiting for you.”
The third one inhales deeply, and his eyes flutter closed in appreciation. “She smells… different. Not quite human.”
Run.
The thought screams through my head, primal and absolute.
So, I turn and bolt.
My exhausted legs find energy I didn’t know I had left, powered by pure terror. Behind me, I hear their laughter, followed by footsteps that shouldn’t be able to move that fast.
I make it maybe twenty feet before something slams into my back.
The impact drives me forward, and my hands scrape across rough concrete when I hit the ground hard. Pain detonates through my palms and knees. My bag tears free, skidding across the garage floor as its contents explode in every direction.
Before I can scream, before I can even process what’s happening, hands grab me, spin me over. One of them is on top of me, his face inches from mine, and up close I see what my mind was trying to deny.
His canines are too long, too sharp. Actual fangs that gleam in the yellow light.
“Please,” I murmur, my hands coming up to push against his chest. “Please don’t—” The instant my palms make contact, heat erupts from my hands like a bomb detonating.
Crimson-gold fire explodes outward, brighter and fiercer than it’s ever been, not just a glow but actual flames that burn without consuming me.
The man screams, a high, inhuman shriek, and throws himself backward.
Where my hands touched him, his shirt was smoking, flesh beneath seared black.
“What the fuck!” he howls, scrambling away.
My thoughts exactly!
I stare at my hands, at the fire dancing across my palms alive and aware. It doesn’t hurt, but it should hurt. It should be burning my skin to charcoal. Instead, it feels right, natural, as though I’ve been carrying this fire my entire life and only now remembered how to wield it.
The other two creatures hiss, their red eyes fixed on my burning hands.
“She’s not human,” one of them says, and there’s fear in his voice now. “Viktor didn’t tell us she wasn’t human.”
Viktor?
The name means nothing to me, but I file it away for later. If there is a later.
I push myself to my feet, my hands still blazing, and the vampires circle me warily now. Not predators cornering prey, but predators trying to decide if the prey might be more dangerous than they thought.
“Stay back,” I warn, and my voice sounds different, stronger, layered with something that makes the air vibrate. “I don’t know what I am, but I will burn every one of you if you come near me!”
One of them laughs nervously. “She doesn’t even know. She’s untrained. We can still—” He lunges.
Pure instinct takes over. I don’t think, I don’t plan, I react.
My burning hand comes up, and when he grabs my wrist, the flames surge.
They pour into him in a violent wave, crimson-gold fire forcing its way beneath his skin, crawling up his arm in searing veins before spilling across his chest in a web of living light.
His scream is worse than the first one. Torn raw by the smell of burning flesh and a darker note beneath it, death igniting from the inside out.
He lets go and staggers back, beating at the flames with his hands, but they won’t go out. They cling to him, feed on him, and within seconds, he’s engulfed.
“Fuck this,” the third creature says, and suddenly they’re gone. All three of them, even the burning one, move with impossible speed. I hear car tires screech somewhere on another level, then silence.
I’m alone.
The fire in my hands dims, gutters, and dies. I stare at my palms, at the faint glow still pulsing beneath my skin in time with my racing heart.
What the hell just happened?
My legs give out, and I sink to my knees on the cold concrete, shaking so hard my teeth chatter. Shock—I’m going into shock. I know the signs, having treated it a hundred times, but knowing doesn’t help.
I just fought off three…
What the hell were they?
I just manifested fire from my hands.
Fire that burns other people but not me.
“What am I?” I whisper to the empty garage. “What the hell am I?”
That’s when I feel it. A pull. It’s not physical, but something deeper. A tug in my chest that points like a compass toward… something.
Someone.
Crave.
His name fills my mind the moment before I hear the roar of a motorcycle engine.
Tires screech as his Harley tears into the garage, taking the turns too fast, too reckless. He slides to a stop ten feet from where I’m kneeling, the bike still rumbling as he leaps off.
“Sloane!” He’s at my side in a heartbeat, his hands hovering over me as if he’s afraid to touch me. His silver eyes are wild, frantic, scanning me for injuries. “Are you hurt?” His voice is rough, barely controlled. “Tell me you’re not hurt.”
“I’m fine.” The words come out shaky. “I’m… they didn’t… I burned them.”
His eyes snap to my hands, taking in the faint glow still visible on my palms. Something crosses his face. It’s not surprise, it is recognition and something darker.
Fear.
“How many?” he demands.
“Three.”
“Where did they go?”
“They ran. After I…” I trail off, looking at my hands again. “After I set one of them on fire.”
Crave’s jaw clenches so hard I hear his teeth grind.
He stands, pulling out his phone, and speaks rapidly into it.
“Rogue, get Hex to pull garage surveillance. Three of Viktor’s scions attacked Sloane at the hospital.
They fled north… No, she’s alive. She fought them off…
I’ll explain when I get there. Just find them.
” He ends the call and crouches back down to my level.
For a long moment, we stare at each other.
Then the words pour out of me, terrified and demanding. “What the hell were those things?” My voice breaks. “They had fangs, Crave. Their eyes glowed red. They moved too fast. They called me not human, but I am human, I have to be human because—”
“Sloane—”
“What the hell am I? What the hell were those things!”
The question echoes in the empty garage, raw and pleading.
Crave’s expression shifts. A war plays out behind his eyes, decades, centuries of secrets fighting against something else. Something that looks dangerously close to caring. It’s as if he can’t stand to see me like this, broken, terrified, and alone.
Finally, he speaks, and when he does, his voice carries the weight of confession. “Vampires.” The word hangs in the air between us. “Those things were vampires. Young ones. Reckless ones. But vampires nonetheless.”
My mind rebels against it even as my body recognizes the truth. “That’s impossible. Vampires aren’t real. They’re stories… myths.”
“Are they?” He gestures to my hands, where the glow is finally fading completely. “Is fire coming from your palms a myth? Is healing from burns overnight a myth? You’ve known something was different. You’ve felt it every time you walked into my bar. Every time we touched.”
He’s right.
God help me, he’s right.
“And you,” I whisper, pieces clicking into place with horrible certainty. “You’re one of them?”
He doesn’t deny it. Just holds my gaze, letting me see the truth in those too-old, too-knowing eyes.
“Yes.”
The word should terrify me.
It should send me running.
But instead, strangely, it settles something inside me.
It reshapes everything I thought I knew.
“Then what does that make me?” My voice sounds so small, almost childlike. “Because I’m not a vampire. I’m not… what am I?”
Crave reaches out slowly, every movement measured. His fingers brush my cheek, cool against my flushed skin, and I don’t pull away.
“I don’t know,” he admits, and the honesty in his voice breaks something open in my chest. “I’ve lived a very long time, Sloane.
I’ve seen things most humans couldn’t imagine.
But you…” His thumb traces my cheekbone gently.
“You’re something I’ve never seen before.
Something that shouldn’t exist. Your blood sings to me, but it also protects you from me.
Your fire burns vampires, but you’re not a hunter.
You’re… awakening, rising, into what, I can’t say. ”
Tears sting my eyes. “I’m scared.”
“I know.”
“Those things, they were looking for me. They knew my name.”
His expression hardens, the predator bleeding through the man. “Viktor. He’s testing boundaries. Seeing what kind of attention he can draw.” Crave helps me to my feet, his hands steady on my arms. “But he made a mistake. He went after you, and that means he declared war on the Eternal Sins MC.”
“I don’t understand any of this.”
“You will.” He guides me toward his motorcycle. “But first, I’m getting you somewhere safe. Somewhere they can’t reach you.”
“The clubhouse?”
He nods. “It’s warded. Protected. The safest place in the city for someone like you right now.”
Someone like me.
Someone who can set vampires on fire with her bare hands.
Whose blood glows like dying stars.
Someone who’s apparently important enough to declare war over.
I let Crave help me onto his bike, settle the helmet on my head, and draw my arms around his waist as the engine roars to life. And as we tear out of that garage, leaving behind the scene of my impossible fight, only one thought fills my mind.
My old life just died back there on that concrete.
Whatever comes next, whoever I’m becoming, there’s no going back to normal now.
The fire burning beneath my skin won’t let me.