Chapter 2
Devon’s world was shattered in the blink of an eye.
He had been walking toward the black sedan, his hand already reaching for the door handle to join Kate in the backseat, when the locks engaged with a sharp click that cut through the evening air like the crack of a whip.
Through the tinted window, he caught a glimpse of Kate’s face.
Confusion shifted to alarm as she realized the man in the driver’s seat wasn’t their usual chauffeur.
“Kate!” Devon lunged for the car, but the sedan was already pulling away from the curb with a screech of tires against asphalt.
For a brief moment, their eyes met through the rear window.
Kate’s palm pressed against the glass, her mouth forming his name, her face etched with fear that would be burned into his memory forever.
Then the car turned the corner and disappeared into Paris traffic, taking with it the only thing in four centuries of existence that had ever truly mattered to him.
Devon stood still on the sidewalk outside the Council building.
His supernatural hearing picked up the sedan’s engine noise as it faded until it disappeared into the sounds of the city.
Around him, other Council members and their entourages came out of the building.
Their conversations blended into a meaningless buzz against the roar in his ears.
His phone was in his hand before he’d consciously decided to move, fingers flying over the screen as he called Kate’s number. It rang once, twice—then went dead. Not to voicemail, just… dead.
“No, no, no,” Devon whispered, trying again. This time it went straight to a recorded message:
“The number you have dialed is not in service.”
They’d destroyed her phone, of course, they had.
“Devon, what is it?” Sophia’s voice broke through his panic as she approached him to place a concerned hand on his shoulder.
“Kate,” Devon said, still in shock. “They took her, right in front of me. They took Kate.”
Sophia’s face fell in alarm. “Who took her?”
“I don’t know. The car, it wasn’t our car. Someone else, someone who knew we were here and when we’d leave.” Devon’s hands shook as he pulled up the tracking app on his phone, the one connected to Kate’s necklace. For a moment, hope flared in his chest as the GPS signal appeared on his screen.
Then he watched in real-time as the signal began moving through Paris at impossible speed; too fast for city traffic, too erratic for any normal route. Someone was driving in circles, deliberately confusing the trail.
“They know about the tracker,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper.
The GPS signal suddenly stopped moving. For thirty seconds, it remained stationary in what appeared to be a side street near the Louvre. Then it went dark.
“Devon, we need to—”
Her words didn’t reach Devon’s ears; he was already moving. His supernatural speed carried him through the Paris streets with silence and stealth. Behind him, he could hear Sophia calling his name, could hear other voices joining hers, but nothing mattered except reaching that last GPS location.
He found the necklace in the gutter beside a narrow side street, the delicate silver chain broken, the small pendant glinting under a streetlight. Devon knelt and picked it up with trembling fingers, the metal still warm as if it had only recently left her skin.
But it was what lay scattered around the necklace that made his blood turn cold.
Pieces of Kate’s clothing. Her jacket, torn and discarded.
Her blue dress, buttons missing. Her shoes, kicked off or pulled away.
The clothes she’d been wearing when she’d stepped into that car, when she’d looked back at him through the window with trust, love and the absolute certainty that he would protect her.
He had failed her.
Devon’s hands shook as he gathered the scattered garments. He could hear his own heart—every desperate, hammering beat—as if it were trying to break through his ribs. A sound that should have been impossible, but grief and terror had a way of making the impossible real.
Devon pulled out his phone with trembling hands and dialed Antoine’s number.
“Devon? How did the Council meeting—”
“Kate’s been taken,” Devon interrupted, his voice raw. “Abducted right outside the Council building. It happened right in front of me.”
Silence on the other end of the line.
Then: “Where are you?”
“Rue de Rivoli, near the Louvre. I found her clothes, her necklace. The tracker’s been destroyed.”
“I’m coming. Don’t move, don’t touch anything else.”
“Antoine—”
“Devon, listen to me. Whoever did this wanted you to find these things. This is a message, not carelessness. We need to be smart about this.”
Devon closed his eyes, forcing himself to think past the panic clawing at his chest. Antoine was right. This was deliberate and calculated. Someone had taken Kate and wanted him to know it, wanted him to find the evidence.
But who? Elisabeta was bound by Viktor’s command to stay away from them. The Council had made its position clear. Who else would dare—
The realization hit him like a silver blade to the heart.
“Aleksander,” he whispered.
“What?”
“It’s Aleksander. He was at the Council meeting, he heard Kate’s declaration, and he witnessed Viktor’s ruling. He knows we’re free, that we planned to be together forever.” Devon’s voice steeled as certainty crystallized in his mind.
“He’s the only one who makes sense. He’s been trying to undermine me for months, and he has failed. The Council sided with us; Elisabeta is bound to leave us alone. He has nothing left to lose.”
Devon stood up, Kate’s torn clothing clutched in his hands, her broken necklace burning against his palm.
Somewhere in this city, the woman he loved was in the hands of a malicious vampire who had spent centuries perfecting the art of cruelty.
“Find him,” Devon said into the phone, his voice carrying the weight of four centuries of controlled violence. “Find Aleksander, and find him now.”
“Devon—”
“I don’t care what it takes. I don’t care who we have to threaten or what laws we have to break. Find him, Antoine, because if anything happens to her, if he hurts her in any way, I will tear him apart with my own hands and scatter the pieces across every continent on earth.”
Devon ended the call and looked down at the evidence of Kate’s abduction scattered at his feet. In the distance, Paris glittered with its million lights, a city of romance and beauty that had now become a hunting ground for the damned.
Aleksander thought he was clever, thought he could take Kate and use her as a bargaining chip in his cruel game.
He was wrong.
Devon had spent four centuries honing the art of civility, learning to control the monster that Elisabeta had created. But that control had always been a choice, a conscious decision to be better than his nature demanded.
Tonight, however, for Kate, he would choose differently. Tonight, the monster would hunt.
And God help anyone who stood in his way.