Sacrifice of the Vampire (Deathless Night: Into the Dark #5)

Prologue

Talin

The threads glowed like gossamer strands of liquid moonlight, pulsing and weaving together, a luminous web of connection that breathed like a living thing. A tapestry of magic, memory, and meaning, woven across planes I'd never visited before and didn't yet understand.

They weren't just visual, though. I could feel them. Like the soft brush of fingers against my skin, or a heartbeat echoing in my bones.

And each thread carried its own unique signature. A pulse of emotion. A flicker of memory. An identity. But the language they spoke… it danced just beyond my comprehension, and for the life of me I couldn't figure out what the hell they were saying.

One thread flashed in the corner of my mind's eye.

A brilliant electric blue streak that pulsed with frantic, aching urgency.

It called to something inside me, and I turned toward it, narrowing my focus.

The signature it carried buzzed through my mind like a half-remembered name, familiar in the way dreams are just before they vanish upon fully waking.

I reached out with trembling fingers, desperate to touch the blue thread before it vanished. But the strands slipped through them like smoke. Real and not real. Present, but untouchable. Its energy left a tingling imprint on my skin. A ghost of sensation that only deepened my confusion.

Another thread coiled nearby like a serpent poised to strike, jagged and red as fresh blood.

Its energy was fractured, seething. Just being near it made my skin prickle and tighten with unease.

I didn't know what it was, only that it was wrong.

The kind of wrong that made your instincts scream run, even if your brain couldn't say why.

Panic coiled in my chest, tight and sharp. I didn't understand what I was seeing. What I was feeling. The threads began to shimmer, then twist together before they pulled apart like ripples in water, revealing flashes of something hidden underneath.

They were images, like still shots from a movie.

A plane suspended mid-fall, caught in a gray void that didn't obey the rules of time or gravity.

A vast cavern cloaked in shadow, so dark shadows swallowed everything I saw before I could make out any details.

Flickers of faces flashed in front of my eyes.

Some familiar, some not, all of them just out of reach.

I strained to see, to understand, but the harder I tried, the more everything dissolved like mist beneath a rising sun.

A glittering silver thread floated past my eyes, and suddenly everything inside me stilled.

Unlike the chaotic tangle of the other threads, this one moved with purpose.

Controlled, deliberate, it pulsed with a steady rhythm that felt like a heartbeat, like breathing, like the kind of calm I'd never known but desperately craved.

Instinctively, I tried to follow it, knowing that whatever—or whoever—was on the other end would save me.

The thread carried a signature of meticulous order, of someone who found peace in precision.

It felt like clean lines and quiet strength, like the steady hands of someone who could hold me together when I was falling apart.

But it kept floating in and out of my vision, just beyond my reach. Always just beyond my reach.

A scream clawed its way up my throat. Not of fear, but of frustration. Something was slipping through my fingers. Something vital. And like the threads, I was powerless to hold onto it.

The irony wasn't lost on me. I could see connections everywhere except the ones that mattered.

I could trace the invisible bonds between other people, other souls, but I couldn't connect to my own body, couldn't accept the skin I lived in.

How could I hold onto mystical threads when I couldn't even hold onto myself?

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe my power stayed fractured because I was fractured. Broken calls to broken, after all.

I woke with a violent gasp, lungs seizing, fingers curled as if still trying to grasp onto something. My heart jack hammered in my chest. Cold sweat dampened my skin, clinging like a second, suffocating layer.

The dream—if I could even call it that—clung to my consciousness with a razor-edged clarity that made my skin crawl.

Each twisted thread and haunting image carved into my mind with a visceral precision that left me shaking.

Unlike the usual foggy remnants of nightmares that faded upon waking, this felt more like a memory being branded into my bones, something ancient and terrible trying to claw its way through my skull.

The sensation was violating in its intensity, nothing like a normal dream.

My bedroom swam into focus around me, familiar and suddenly suffocating. Shadows stretched across the walls, made longer by the early morning light creeping through the blinds. I was wide awake, but my body still hadn't caught up.

"Shit," I whispered, pressing both palms into my eyes until I saw stars. The dreams were getting worse. Longer. Sharper. They didn't fade like normal dreams did. They followed me.

Haunted me.

I'd first sensed the threads right after Alex vanished.

A locator spell had failed me—just like everything else seemed to lately—but in the silence of the back room in Lizzy's shop, I'd felt something new.

Something strange. A tug in the center of my scarred chest, like a string pulled taut beneath my sternum, guiding me through the French Quarter like I was a marionette.

I'd followed it past shuttered storefronts to a forgotten building, only for the thread to snap the moment I touched its source.

It was Alex.

I was sure it'd been him. Until the magic went dark, and left me questioning my instincts.

And then Elias was there.

As usual, the vampire I'd never directly spoken to before was tall, quiet, watchful. All seductive dark eyes and sarcasm and something I couldn't name that hummed beneath my suddenly sensitive skin. Almost like magic, but different.

And then the explosion happened. The smoke making us cough. Glowing eyes in the dark. And then… nothing.

I shuddered. The moment still clung to me like ash.

That was two weeks ago.

And then the dreams came.

No. Not dreams, exactly. Not visions, either. Something else. Something worse.

I shoved the blankets off my overheated body and glanced down at the tank top I only wore in the privacy of my room.

It clung to me, soaked with sweat, outlining the uneven plane of my chest beneath the fabric, flat on one side where the soft curve of my breast should have been.

The surgical scar hidden beneath the cotton seemed to burn against my skin, a permanent reminder of everything I'd lost. Everything that made me less than whole.

My hand moved instinctively to cover the left side, fingers splaying protectively over the absence.

A gesture so automatic I barely registered doing it anymore.

Even alone, in the darkness of my bedroom where no one could possibly see, the shame crept in like poison, seeping through my defenses and settling deep in my bones.

What kind of mate would ever want someone so obviously broken?

Someone whose own body betrayed them before they'd even had a chance to live?

The thought twisted inside me, a familiar knife that never dulled no matter how many times I turned it against myself.

NOT that I was looking for a mate.

My fingers drifted automatically to the inside of my left wrist, finding the small crescent-shaped marks already etched there.

Evidence of too many sleepless nights, too many moments when the chaos inside felt too big for my skin.

I pressed my thumbnail into the tender spot just below my pulse, adding to the collection.

One... two... three seconds of pressure.

Just enough to sting. Just enough to cut through the fog of powerlessness and make me feel real again.

I forced myself to exhale and let go, shaking out my hand like what I'd just done didn't mean anything. Like it wasn't something I did far too often. Like the tiny marks weren't a roadmap of every time I'd felt too much and had nowhere to put it.

Grabbing my phone off the nightstand, I stumbled into the bathroom, flicking on the too-bright fluorescent light.

My reflection stared back. Wild black hair tangled around my face and green eyes sharp with unease.

Dark shadows pooled beneath them, bruise-colored bags that made me look like someone who hadn't slept in weeks. Because I hadn't.

I dropped my eyes in disgust.

The Moss bloodline was famous among New Orleans witches. My grandmother could summon lightning from a clear sky. My mother once closed a mortal wound with a touch and a whispered word. My cousins had gifts that turned heads and earned whispers of awe.

And then there was me.

Talin Moss.

The family footnote.

The one whose magic had tried to kill her before it even fully awakened.

I'd never said it out loud, but I had a suspicion that had haunted me since I was fourteen.

That the cancer, the cells turning against me, had been connected to whatever power was trying to emerge.

That my own magic had been eating me alive from the inside, and maybe it still was.

Maybe that's why I couldn't control it now.

Maybe that's why touching the threads felt like grasping at something that might burn me.

Why I was terrified to even figure out what my dreams meant because I couldn't help but wonder if they'd destroy me in the process.

I splashed cold water on my face, avoiding my own judgmental gaze. What kind of witch received warnings she couldn't understand?

A defective one, that's what kind.

My phone buzzed on the counter, the sudden vibration breaking the silence and making me jump. A message lit up the screen.

Coven meeting tonight at 8pm. Try to make it if you can.

Try to make it if you can. Not "we need you there" or "your input is important." Just... if you can. Like an afterthought. Like they'd already planned everything that mattered and remembered at the last minute to include me.

I could picture them now. My aunt and cousins sitting around the table, discussing real solutions while saving a seat for me out of obligation. The one whose power was too unpredictable to trust, too weak to rely on.

Just like the rest of me.

I leaned against the doorframe, arms crossed tight over my lopsided chest. Whatever. I'd grown used to being on the outskirts of things. Living in the shadows. Sitting in the corners of rooms where no one looked too closely.

Fragmented memories of the dream still danced behind my eyes. A snarl of threads, a face I couldn't place, eyes burning with something ancient. And a hunger that wasn't mine.

The coven wouldn't believe me if I told them. They never did.

But I had to try.

Whatever this meant… whatever the visions were trying to show me…

I wouldn't be able to figure it out on my own.