Chapter 1
THE RUBY
When I finally opened my eyes, Baird was kneeling beside me, his face a mask of worry as I slumped against the cabinets under the kitchen sink.
I could only imagine what he had seen—how the ruby, still clutched in my trembling hand, had dragged me under, pulling me into its relentless vortex of darkness and light.
I wasn't even sure I could explain it to him.
It wasn't like the other objects I'd touched before—simple conduits that revealed emotional imprints of the people who once held them.
No, this was different. This was alive, humming with a malevolence that felt ancient and knowing.
“I didn't go looking for this,” I said hoarsely. “I swear to you.”
Baird's thumb brushed my wrist, near but not touching the stone. “No,” he said grimly. “But it looks like it found ye anyway.”
My abilities—this uneasy “gift” I'd only recently begun to accept—had overwhelmed me from time to time, but this was different.
The power contained by the ruby had consumed me the moment I'd touched it.
It had come to me through a picker named Honey, a colorful character who found vintage pieces and gemstones for me from time to time.
The color was what gem dealers referred to as pigeon's blood—a deep, rich red with a tinge of blue, glowing from within.
When I'd opened the package he had shipped me, I hadn't noticed anything unusual; that was, until I lifted the top on the plastic case the stone had been shipped in.
Its surface seemed to pulse faintly, as though a heartbeat within it, and when I touched it, it thrummed with an electrical current that stung the tip of my finger and spread like ink through my veins.
At first, the sensation was intoxicating.
Unlike anything I had felt before. With other objects, what I saw made me an invisible bystander at best—or at worst, hurled violently into someone else's reality.
I had fought those visions, resisted the emotions they forced upon me.
But with the ruby, it was different. Its power coiled through me, heady and electric, and for a moment I felt unbound—no longer flesh and bone but something else entirely.
Something vast. I was earth. I was sky. I was no longer human.
I wondered if this was how Baird felt when the thing inside him—the part he called the beast—was given free rein.
The air around me thickened, vibrating with energy, every shadow in the room stretching and quivering as if alive. A low whisper rose in my ears, soft yet insistent, threading through my mind in a language I did not know but somehow understood.
We see you…we know you.
And I felt it too—the ruby seeing me. Not my face or form, but the marrow of my soul. It gazed into my very being, and in return, it offered me a glimpse of something limitless. But then everything changed, and what came next was terrifying.
My chest constricted. My breath came shallow and the air around me froze, as though the ruby was drawing not just my warmth, but my very life.
And then came the visions. Jagged flashes of other lives and other deaths.
An old man with brilliant blue eyes on his deathbed.
A young woman with dark hair screaming, dragged away from a child with the same dark hair.
A cottage in flames, the smell of burning wood and flesh assaulted my senses.
A handsome young man beaten and slumped on the floor in a smoky room.
Frantic screams echoed in my ears. The metallic taste of fear, sharp and bitter, flooded my mouth.
But amid the chaos and violence the ruby dragged me through, another, more crushing knowing bled into my mind.
The young woman I saw was connected to all of them.
The old man who was dying, the younger man.
And the little girl—no more than a toddler—was her daughter.
I just knew it. I felt the love that coursed through her veins for all of them, but it was not gentle, not soft or nurturing.
No, this was a desperate, all-consuming love, shot through with violence I couldn't begin to understand.
It wrapped around me like barbed wire, sharp and piercing all at once.
Then the visions shifted—jerking me into a room choked with the scent of blood.
The woman stood amid a circle of men, her dark hair matted, her clothing soaked crimson.
Their eyes bulged with terror as they cowered from her, weapons trembling uselessly in their hands.
She moved between them with terrifying speed, a predator unleashed.
The blade in her fist flashed like lightning, flesh parting as she cut her way from man to man.
Blood spilled in hot, steaming arcs, and she did not pause—her mouth found their throats, and she drank, greedily, relentlessly, until all life left them.
Vengeance and hunger fused within her, vast enough to consume the room, the night, the young woman she had been.
She was human, and then she was not. This was her beginning—an origin story the ruby remembered.
My vision slowly bled back into the kitchen—the worn oak table, the kettle cooling on the stove, the faint scent of peat smoke—I felt my chest rising and falling in shallow, ragged breaths.
But the ruby—the ruby was still in my hand.
I tried to drop it, to shake it free, but my fingers wouldn't obey.
They remained curled tight around the stone, as if it had fused itself to my palm.
Its sinister, electric thrum still vibrated against my skin, pulsing in perfect synchrony with my own heartbeat.
“Take it…please,” I gasped, holding out my trembling hand to Baird, my eyes wide, desperate. “Take it away from me.”
Baird pried the ruby from my fingers, but even as it left my grasp, a cold thread seemed to tether it to me, like part of me was still caught in its pull. I wasn't sure the connection had truly severed.
“Shh, dinnae fash. I've got it,” he said closing his fingers around the stone. “You're safe.” His voice was low and steady, a balm against the chaos that still churned in my mind. He pulled me into his arms, holding me close until I could feel the solid weight of him anchoring me, his strength defending me against the icy chill that lingered in my veins.”Tell me what ye saw, love,” he murmured into my ear, his lips brushing the sensitive edge of it.
“Magic,” I whispered, pressing a trembling hand to my chest as if to ground myself.
“The stone holds some kind of dark magic. It spoke to me, Baird—the ruby spoke to me.” My voice cracked, but I kept going.
“It said, ‘We see you…we know you,' in a language I've never heard. But somehow…I understood it. It spoke to me before it let me see.”
“Mira, lass…” Baird's voice was low, thick with worry. His strong hands cradled my face, thumbs brushing my damp cheeks. “Ye look like a ghost.” His gaze searched mine, like he was trying to pull sense from the madness I was spilling.
I clutched his wrists, needing the contact to stay anchored.
“I feel like one.” I said faintly.
“Well,” Baird replied, “I'd have noticed if ye'd died.”
“Don't joke,” I said weakly. “A fire, smoke filling a cottage, a group of men destroying everything in their path. They took her—the young woman—ripped her away from her little girl. But then I saw her later…killing those same men. She was a vampire, Baird,” I said, my fingers digging into flesh, struggling to make sense of it all.
“At some point, she was turned—and she used her power to get revenge.”
He went very still. “Did she choose it?” he asked.
“I don't think so, but I didn't see that part.” I told him.
A chill rippled through me at remembering the sequence of events.
“When I first touched the ruby, my senses…shifted,” I said, trying to explain all that I'd seen and felt.
“I could see beyond the shadows; the darkness itself was alive.
Is that what it's like for you, when you lose yourself to it?” I asked, the last part almost an afterthought.
His jaw tightened, and he took a slow breath. “Aye. Only it never feels quite so poetic as ye make it sound.”
“The ruby feels older than she is.” I said, the words uneasy as they left me.
“Older than the vision itself. What I felt wasn't a moment—it was a cycle. Death, rebirth, over and over, like the turning of a wheel that never stops. What I saw was only the latest turn.” I looked up at him then, shaking my head slowly.
“And when it spoke to me, it wasn't about her. Not really. I can feel that.” I faltered, breath catching as the words to explain slipped just out of reach—close enough to ache for.
“Whatever that voice was…I don't understand it yet. But—it knows me.”
“Knows you…” Baird questioned. “So it spoke?”
“Yes.” My throat felt tight. “It knows me.”
Baird's eyes narrowed. “Then it's not just a stone.” The silence stretched between us. “Not just a vision of someone's memory.”
I swallowed, apprehensive at speaking the truth gnawing at my gut. “No.”