Lured in the Crimson (Shot in the Dark #3)

Chapter 1

Sylvia

Come. I await you .

Visible puffs of breath pulsed before my lips. The endless, snow-coated woods felt infinite as I listened beyond them.

Find me. Tether me. Use me.

Trembling with the insatiable urge to comply, I clenched my fists. This voice wasn’t the intrusive, tormenting whisper of the Ancients locked in my mind. I had to strain to hear this beckon, this promise that I was worthy.

My perch was high off the ground, the sturdiest branch I could find near the top of a pine tree.

A late afternoon breeze whistled through the needles, and I shivered despite my winter wear—a thick cobalt blouse and freshly-patched leggings.

Shit. The brief distraction made me lose my grasp on the tempting murmur, and I desperately scrambled to reclaim it.

Channeling the gemstone in Veloria had been a brief, violent indulgence, but it had altered me, sharpened my senses to find more. This gem seemed to hover on the fringes of my range, agonizing.

Had Father felt like this all the time?

My usual bitterness toward his gemstone obsession gave way to sympathy.

Memories that had once been hazy came into sharper focus.

He would absorb magic in small doses, treating it like a delicate art.

Such power longed for an outlet. Between his experiments and training an ice affinity daughter, the charged magic was put to good use—and gave him an excuse to reach for more.

I shut my thoughts from him, only to squirm at the idea of how I’d tell Mother about my own quest for gemstones when the time came. If I did find her.

Would she be proud to know I had frozen a hunter solid with the power of the amethyst sliver she’d saved for me? Or would she immediately search my face for signs of my father’s mania taking root?

That didn’t matter. My desire to find her and Hazel far outweighed any fear of judgment.

Sinking to a seat on the branch, I pictured them somewhere in these mountains, braving the weather.

Mother would be fussing over Hazel’s little wings, going stiff from the cold.

My sister would be watching the robins flit from tree to tree and wistfully picture herself mounting one to ride, yearning for Elysia’s hummingbird stables.

Peeking up through the dense pine needles, I envisioned the hidden constellations.

I whispered a prayer to one in particular—the Wanderer’s Flame—that my family had traveled safely and that they had managed to escape from Elysia in the first place.

May they be warm and protected in Aelthorin, I thought desperately to the stars.

A drop of unnatural fear interrupted my prayer, and my heart skipped a beat.

Danger.

Despite every instinct roaring at me to get far away, I turned toward the warning sensation. Starkly different from the beckon of a gemstone, the prickle of a monster had become familiar over the past months.

I was alone, and something was out here.

With each passing second, the unnatural warning crept closer, and my isolation sank in.

I hadn’t meant to venture this far from the cabin we'd been staying in.

Cliff was out on a supply run. Jon had still been dead to the world, deep in sleep, when I'd sensed the gemstone and squeezed my way out of our shelter.

It was a decision I was rapidly coming to regret.

Biting back a curse, I stood slowly and searched the snowy ground below for a sign of a monster—tracks, a rustle in the sparse bushes, anything.

A terrible voice-like screech pierced my ears, and I looked up in time to see jagged yellow talons bearing down on me. Crying out, I fell backward and scrambled to gain purchase on a lower branch. Dark brown feathers flew every which way as the creature beat its wings madly.

Fuck, this thing was far too fast for something so massive.

Branches snapped behind me as the monster made another attempt to snatch me.

With every crack, I pictured my bones making precisely the same noise if I were caught in those claws.

Brimming with adrenaline, I burst out of my hiding place.

The creature was struggling to spread its wings in the thick pine.

A distorted, person-like face became visible between the twigs, and I realized that a harpy was trying to make a meal out of me. It was worse than any sketch Cliff had etched in his journal—the skin leathery and waxy, its eyes pure, irisless golden orbs like liquid metal.

But there couldn’t be a harpy here. It was too cold. This should be impossible.

The freezing air burned my lungs as I glanced all around—nothing but fir trees for miles across a landscape blanketed in inches of fresh snowfall. I couldn’t hope to outfly this monster, and finding a place to huddle would only get me cornered and clawed to death.

The harpy gave another furious screech and finally oriented itself on the edge of a branch, tensing its wings for flight while the bough bent dangerously under its weight.

As those golden eyes refocused on me, I shot upward and croaked an incantation.

Before the monster could come near me, I threw a volley of icicles downward and speared its wings.

Its flight was brutally thrown off, but it still wheeled around to reorient itself. Harpy feathers were freakishly strong, according to Jon, even sewn into clothing by some hunters as armor.

With a mighty beat of wings, the harpy launched itself at me again. I aimed for its face this time.

The same instant I released my spell, an explosion rang through the woods—no, a gunshot.

The bullet lodged through the shrieking harpy’s wing.

Its face bloomed with blood from my attack.

Two more shots rang out. One bullet hissed past me in a flash of silver while the other struck the harpy directly through its forehead.

It choked, uttering a rasp before dropping out of the air and thudding into the fresh snow below.

I let out a slow breath that pooled like smoke before me. Veering lower, I held a spell at the ready, frost prickling up to my elbows.

But the harpy did not move again.

A shadow peeled itself from the trees across the grove, moving too slowly and stealthily for an ordinary human. When Jon spotted me, he lowered his gun in relief.

I offered a weak smile. “I should have known you’d come stalking me eventually.”

“And it’s a damn good thing I did,” he answered, his voice carefully restrained. “What the hell are you doing out here alone?” His eyes skated over my hovering form, appraising for any blood staining my clothes.

I muscled down a wince, thinking of the peaceful state I’d left him in. “I felt it out there again. Like it was calling my name. I had to come check.”

“A gem?” Jon asked, some of the intensity in his gaze softening.

“You still should have woken me. This thing could’ve torn you apart.

” He crouched by the body, already preparing a small bottle of gasoline and a lighter that he always kept on him.

His brow furrowed. “What’s a harpy doing out here in the middle of winter? ”

“They stick to tropical areas, don’t they?” Although I shivered at the sight of the talons, deep gouges in the harpy’s legs caught my eye. “Wait, do you see that?”

Leaning closer, Jon pushed feathers away to make the marks more visible. “Looks like it was restrained.”

The Louisiana hunting outpost sliced across my mind's eye—those cages at the dock we'd glimpsed last month, deep in the misty bayous. Captive monsters gathered strategically at Rhett Iverson's command for stars only knew what purpose.

But that was hundreds of miles from here.

And Rhett had dropped off the face of the earth—presumed dead, from the ghastly way Jon had strung him up for the sirens to feast on.

It was difficult to pity such a wicked man, even if picturing his fate made me queasy.

With any luck, that wretched operation he'd been running withered in his absence.

Jon and I shared an uneasy look, the silent question burning between us—because if not Rhett Iverson, then who the hell would be keeping a bloodthirsty creature like this captive around here?

The two of us remained silent until the moment the harpy’s body was alight. Jon must have noticed the way I kept peering into the trees—not with the fear of getting attacked again but the hope of catching the gemstone’s call again.

“Can you still feel it?” he asked.

I schooled my expression and shrugged. “Not right now. Sometimes, it’s a whisper.

Other times, a roar, but…” I trailed off.

The area around us was sparse. Painfully ordinary trees, shrubs, and rocky soil as far as the eye could see.

None of the tell-tale signs of altered flora and fauna, like those outside of Veloria. “It’s too far away.”

My hands trembled, yearning to hold the gemstone.

I was ready. The memory of losing the previous one over a month ago still crushed my spirit: the satchel slipping from my arms underwater when that siren had dragged Jon away from the surface.

We were lucky to make it out with our lives, but I couldn’t forget the golden opportunity I had lost forever to the depths.

Was it sitting there now in the mud and silt, or had Velorian survivors salvaged and returned it to the Starforged Sanctum deep in their fortress?

Part of me felt deranged enough to consider finding out, but I could never suggest such a thing to the boys. We were lucky to have made it out alive once from that twisted village. Tempting fate a second time was reckless beyond even me.

“Anyway, it doesn’t matter right now,” I said. “I shouldn’t have come out here to begin with. Aelthorin is the priority.”

“I’m sure we’re getting close.” Jon’s encouraging voice was still steeped with concern. “The two spots we marked for tomorrow look promising.”

The idea of hunters learning to hone in on fairy villages should have horrified me, but warmth surged through my chest instead. The amount of care Jon and Cliff had put into analyzing natural terrain and available resources was dizzying.