Chapter 4
The Parisian warehouse smelled of rust, damp concrete, and ozone from a sparking, rain-slicked wire.
Underneath it all was the cheap, terrified sweat of a man who knew without a doubt that he was about to die.
The vampire Devon held by the throat was one of Aleksander’s foot soldiers, a fledgling no more than a few decades old, arrogant enough to think he was a predator until he met an apex one.
“Where is she?” Devon’s voice was low and cold, like ice breaking off a glacier. The monster inside him was awake. It was not roaring but sitting in still, terrible silence, listening.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the fledgling choked out, his eyes wide with a terror that was quickly curdling into defiance. The acrid tang of fear, a scent like burned sugar, filled the air. “I don’t know anything.”
Devon’s other hand came up and seized the vampire’s left wrist. He held it as a jeweler might hold a precious stone.
“My associate is a gifted artist,” he said, his voice conversational, almost pleasant, a terrifying counterpoint to the cold fury in his eyes.
“She once explained to me in excruciating detail the anatomy of the human hand. Twenty-seven bones. A network of ligaments and tendons. A miracle of biological engineering.”
He applied the slightest pressure.
It wasn’t a loud crack, but a dense, sickening pop, like a green branch being snapped in half.
The fledgling’s scream was a high, shrill thing, cut short by a choked gurgle as Devon’s grip on his throat tightened fractionally.
“That was the scaphoid,” Devon continued, his voice utterly unchanged, as if he were lecturing a student.
“A small, delicate bone. Prone to fracture. Now, the lunate.”
This time, the sound was a grinding crunch. The fledgling’s body convulsed, a marionette with its strings cut. Another scream, this one wet and ragged, torn from his throat.
“Please! I don’t know!”
“You were one of the two who took her from the car,” Devon stated. It wasn’t a question. He had caught their scent, a trail of fear and triumph that he had followed with the single-minded focus of a wolf.
“You put your hands on her. That was your first mistake. Lying to me now is your last.”
He twisted the hand, a slow, deliberate rotation. The sound was not like twigs breaking; it was a wet, pulping series of snaps and crunches.
The fledgling shrieked, a continuous, keening wail as his body jerked, his legs kicking uselessly against the concrete floor.
“The location,” Devon said, lowering his voice to a whisper that felt more frightening than any shout.
“Or I will unmake you. I will use a silver blade, not to kill you, but to peel the skin from your bones, starting with your face. I will take my time. And you will pray for a death that will not come for a very, very long time.”
He wasn’t bluffing. The monster inside him was not hungry. It was patient and very creative.
“The old textile mill!” the vampire screamed, his voice cracking, tears streaking his face.
“On the river! But you’re too late! He’s already moved on!”
Devon’s eyes narrowed, the cold fire within them intensifying. “Moved on where?”
“I don’t know! He just needed the space for the… for the procedure.”
Devon’s blood ran cold. “What procedure?”
The henchman’s mouth shut tight. His fear of Aleksander briefly overshadowed his fear of Devon. Devon didn’t hesitate. With a final, scornful twist, he broke the fledgling’s neck. The loud, clear crack echoed through the warehouse.
The body fell to the floor like a sack of broken glass.
He spotted the second foot soldier hiding behind a stack of rusted oil drums. This one was even younger, barely more than a boy. His face showed pure, helpless terror.
Devon didn’t waste time with questions. He slammed the boy against a concrete pillar with enough force to crack the stone.
His hand clamped around the boy’s throat, lifting him until his feet dangled inches from the floor.
“What did he do to her?” Devon snarled, the control finally starting to fray, letting the raw, four-hundred-year-old rage bleed through.
The air around them seemed to drop in temperature, frosting over with his fury.
The boy was sobbing, a pathetic, incoherent stream of words.
“He made her like us! He turned her! He said it was the only way to make her truly his!”
The world stopped. The sounds of the city outside, the dripping water in the warehouse, the boy’s pathetic whimpers, all faded into a roaring silence.
The rage that had been a white-hot fire in his veins turned to ice.
The monster that had been roaring for blood fell silent, replaced by something colder, emptier, and infinitely more dangerous.
Turned.
He had taken her light, her warmth, her humanity.
He had remade her in his own twisted image. He had poisoned and violated her on a level that made a simple death seem like a mercy.
Devon’s hand tightened, and the boy’s eyes bulged.
There was a wet, final snap, and the body slumped to the floor, lifeless.
Devon didn’t even watch it fall.
He was already moving, a blur of motion that was no longer human. He was a wraith, a thing of vengeance and despair, hurtling through the city streets at a speed that defied physics.
The textile mill was a skeletal ruin on the edge of the river, its windows dark and broken. He burst through the doors, the ancient wood exploding into splinters. The air inside was thick with the scent of Kate.
Her fear, her pain, and something else.
His blood ran cold.
He found the room, a windowless, stone-walled cage. A single green reading lamp cast an eerie glow over an antique settee.
The scent of Aleksander was everywhere, a cloying miasma of madness and triumph. And beneath it all, faint but undeniable, was the scent of a fledgling vampire.
He was too late.
The realization threatened to drown him. He had promised to protect her, to be her shield, and he had failed. The four hundred years of his life, the power he had gathered, the empire he had built, all felt meaningless. He couldn’t protect the one thing that mattered.
He sank to his knees in the center of the room. The rage was gone, burned out, leaving only a vast, hollow emptiness.
The monster was silent. The man was broken.
For a long moment, he stayed there, lost in the silence of grief and self-loathing.
He had hunted, he had killed, he had torn the city apart, and for what? To arrive at an empty room and confirm his own damnation.
Then, a sound cut through the silence. The shrill, electronic ring of his phone.
He stared at it, the sound an alien intrusion into his private hell.
With a hand that felt like it belonged to someone else, he answered it.
“Devon.”
It was Luc. His voice was tight, strained.
“We found her.”
Devon’s heart, the one that hadn’t had a human beat in four centuries, gave a painful lurch.
“Where?” His voice was a raw, broken thing.
“She’s at Sophia’s compound. Devon… she’s alive.”
There was a pause, heavy with unspoken words.
“But there’s something you need to know.”