Chapter Eleven
CRAVE
The moment my blood touches Sloane’s tongue, reality fractures.
Not metaphorically, not poetically. I feel it, an actual tear in the fabric of existence, as if the universe itself is recoiling from what’s happening.
Her body convulses in my arms, every muscle locking rigid. I’ve turned hundreds of humans over the centuries, made them become my scions. I know what the transformation looks like. The pain, the writhing, the desperate gasps as mortality fights against the inevitable.
This isn’t that.
This is something else entirely.
Sloane’s heart stops. I feel it through our connection, through whatever bond formed when she first walked into my bar and woke my dormant Bloodfire.
One beat.
Two.
Three.
Then silence.
The kind of silence that comes before an explosion.
One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven. Eight…
Nine seconds.
Her heart restarts with a sound of thunder breaking inside her chest, and everything goes wrong in the most spectacular way possible.
Her veins blaze to life. Not a whisper of glow, but a rush of crimson-gold fire racing beneath her skin, each pulse brighter than the last. The radiance hits me with a force that makes my vision contract, not because the light hurts, light rarely can, but because a creature born from evil isn’t meant to stare directly into something this incandescent, this alive.
The shadows around my feet recoil, startled and skittering away from the glow spilling off her skin, as if even the darkness I command can’t decide whether to bow to her… or flee. Around us, my brothers shield their eyes, backing away instinctively.
“What the fuck—” Scorch starts, but his words are cut off as Sloane’s body lifts off the floor.
My arms fall away as she rises, suspended in midair by forces I don’t understand. Her back arches violently, spine bending at an angle that should shatter bone. Her limbs dangle loose, lifeless, while her head falls back, mouth open in a silent scream.
Then an orb forms, sparkling intensely around her.
It starts at her chest, a sphere of crimson and gold that expands outward, engulfing her completely.
Threads of black weave in, out, and around her, drawing something from deep within her.
The energy pulses with a heartbeat that isn’t hers, it isn’t mine, it’s both of ours, synchronized, colliding, fusing.
My Bloodfire recognizes something in the light, reaches for it desperately, even as ancient instinct screams at me to run.
The scent hits next.
Burning iron but magnified thousandfold.
It floods the clubhouse, coating my tongue, filling my lungs with every unnecessary breath.
But underneath it, there’s something else.
Something that smells of the first fire ever kindled, mingled with blood spilled on sacred ground, and a power so old it predates language.
The temperature spikes, plummets, and then spikes again, reality struggling to contain what’s happening inside the orb.
“Crave!” Rogue’s voice cuts through my shock. “What the fuck did you do?”
I can’t answer.
I can’t look away from Sloane’s suspended form, watching the light beneath her skin grow brighter, watching her body begin to change in ways I don’t have words for.
Oracle steps forward, bursting into flames, his phoenix fire flaring so intensely that his entire body becomes a translucent flame.
His ancient eyes are wide and ghostly white, reflecting Sloane’s crimson-gold orb.
He has foreseen something, his foresight powers burning into action, and when he speaks, his voice carries the weight of five centuries.
“The Crimson Dawn has awoken.” Each word lands with the quiet weight of a stone sinking into still water. “A Blood Witch has been ignited.”
“A what?” Dread moves closer, his fear projection unconsciously spreading, making the air thick with dread. If I had a heart that could beat, it would be pounding furiously.
“Blood Witch.” Oracle’s flames dance higher. “In all my years… through every death, every rebirth, every cycle of fire, I have never seen this happen. It is such a rare phenomenon. They were thought to be extinct, the bloodline all but gone.”
Sloane’s orb pulses brighter, and I feel it in my chest. Whatever is happening inside that sphere of light, it’s rewriting Sloane at a fundamental level, breaking her down and building her back up into something new.
Something dark.
“This truly is…” Oracle trails off, searching for words, “… miraculous. And utterly terrifying.”
Hades circles the orb cautiously, his necromancer senses reaching out. “I can’t read her death anymore. She’s not mortal, but she’s not undead either. She’s become something that exists between.” His white eyes snap to me. “What did you give her, Crave?”
“My blood,” I manage, my voice rougher than I’ve ever heard it. “She was dying. I gave her my blood to save her.”
“You awakened her,” Oracle corrects. “Your blood was the catalyst, but this power was always inside her, dormant, waiting.” He turns to face me fully, and I see genuine fear in his expression.
“Do you understand what you’ve done? Do you comprehend what she’ll become when the transformation completes? ”
I don’t.
But I’m about to find out.
The orb begins to shrink, collapsing inward. The light doesn’t dim, it concentrates, becoming so intense it’s almost solid. Sloane’s body descends slowly, her feet touching the bloodstained floor with ethereal grace.
The sphere contracts until it’s skin-tight, and then it shatters. The shockwave blasts outward, and every supernatural being in the room staggers. The windows that were still intact crack, walls groan, while the very foundations of the clubhouse shudder under the release of her power.
And Sloane opens her eyes.
They’re not hazel anymore.
They’re molten. Crimson and gold swirling together, a fusion of liquid metal and living fire given form and consciousness. When she blinks, the colors shift, settling into something that looks almost human but carries an otherworldly glow that will never fully fade.
But it’s what I feel that rattles me.
A connection slams into place between us with the force of a physical impact. Not the gentle pull that’s been building since we met. This is a chain forged from blood and fire, binding us together in ways I’ve never experienced.
I feel her heartbeat as clearly as my own would be if I still had one.
I feel the blood rushing through her veins, hot, alive, and evil in the most intoxicating way.
Every breath she takes resonates in my chest. Every thought that crosses her mind brushes against my consciousness, a whisper I’m not supposed to hear.
And I know, with absolute certainty, she feels it too.
She feels my hunger, my fear, my desperate relief that she’s alive. She feels the Bloodfire burning in my veins, reaching for her across the space between us, ravenous and desperate for sustenance.
This isn’t a sire bond.
I’ve created thousands of scions.
I know what that connection feels like, one-directional control, master and servant, creator and created.
This is something entirely different.
This is fusion.
Two beings maintaining separate forms but sharing one pulse, one breath, one existence, split between two bodies.
Sloane stares at me, and through our bond, I feel her confusion morphing into understanding, then bloom into something caught between wonder and terror.
“What…” Her voice emerges layered, harmonized, carrying echoes of something ancient beneath the human tones. “What did you do to me?”
I take a step toward her, and she mirrors the movement instinctively. The connection pulls us together, an unseen magic threading between us, and gravity shifts, finding its center.
“I saved you,” I say, but even I hear how inadequate that sounds.
“You changed me.” She looks down at her hands, and I watch, we both watch, as crimson-gold light pulses beneath her skin with each heartbeat. “I can feel you. Your hunger, your fear, your…” she trails off, those molten eyes widening. “Everything. I feel everything.”
“The Heart Bind,” Oracle breathes. “It’s not just lore. It’s legend. One that has only ever happened maybe once in existence before.”
“What’s a Heart Bind?” Rogue demands, but I can’t tear my eyes away from Sloane to answer.
“When a Blood Witch awakens through an Original vampire’s blood, their life forces fuse,” Oracle explains, his voice carrying the weight of forbidden knowledge.
“They become two halves of one impossible whole. His immortality stabilizes her magic. Her humanity tempers his darkness. If either dies, the survivor feels every fading heartbeat until the bond releases.”
“And we can’t break it,” Sloane whispers, not a question but a realization drawn from our connection. She knows because I know. She feels my certainty as her own.
“No.” The word tastes like inevitability. “We’re bound now. For however long we both survive.”
The silence stretches, heavy with implications neither of us asked for, but both of us are stuck with.
Then Viktor’s laughter shatters the moment.
I’d almost forgotten about him, about the battle still raging at the edges of the clubhouse. But he’s here, standing in the wreckage of my front door, and the look on his face is pure malicious delight.
“Well…” he purrs, “… this is even better than I hoped. Not only did you break the Law of Silence, Crave, but you’ve created an abomination. The Coven of Crows will have your head for this. Both your heads.”
My Bloodfire surges, but before I can move, Sloane steps forward.
The air around her shimmers with heat, and when she speaks, power ripples through every syllable.
“Get. Out!” It’s not a request, it’s a command backed by forces even I don’t fully understand.
Her blood is singing, I hear it through our bond, feel it harmonizing with mine in ways that make reality bend.
Viktor’s grin falters. Just slightly. But enough. “This isn’t over,” he says, already backing toward the exit. “The Crows are coming. And when they arrive, not even your new pet witch will save you, Crave.”
He vanishes with his remaining vampires, leaving us in the wreckage of what was supposed to be a sanctuary.
I turn back to Sloane and feel her power settling, finding its rhythm. She’s not fully in control yet and won’t be for days, maybe weeks, but the raw potential radiating from her is staggering.
“What happens now?” she asks quietly.
I reach for her hand. The instant our fingers touch, electricity arcs between us, racing along nerves and bone, lighting something deep inside me.
It isn’t pain. It’s recognition, a force snapping into alignment, the universe drawing a breath as something unfinished finally locks into place.
“Now…” I say, pulling her closer, feeling her heartbeat sync perfectly with the phantom echo of mine that now beats in my chest to mimic hers, “… we figure out what you’ve become… together.”
Because whatever she is, Blood Witch, abomination, miracle, now, she’s mine.
And I’m hers.
Bound by blood and fire.
And nothing in heaven or hell will break that connection.
Nothing!