CALIX
“Fuck—”
The word tore out of me as my palm met the blade.
Pain split through my hand, sharp and immediate, deeper than anything I’d ever felt before. I jerked back, my chair screeching across the floor as it scraped away from the table. A thin line opened across my palm, then widened as blood welled up too fast, spilling over and running down my wrist in thick, dark trails.
It dripped from my elbow onto the concrete, steady and slow, pooling beneath me.
My breath caught. Being a supe had its perks, and one of them was our faster healing, which had to do with the magic in our DNA—especially being a vampire. Any cut I sustained should be sealed quickly, the skin knitting itself back together within seconds, yet this one stayed open, raw edges parted as if something invisible held the skin apart.
“It's almost tim?—”
Rack’s voice cut off behind me, but his footsteps didn’t. They echoed across the lab floor, steady and controlled, until he stopped just over my shoulder. I could feel his presence before I looked back, his gaze following the trail of blood down my arm to my hand.
Neither of us spoke for a moment. The steady drip of blood hitting the floor filled the silence.
“What the fuck are you?—”
Rip.
I didn’t wait for him to finish. My hands moved on instinct, grabbing the hem of my shirt and tearing a strip free. The fabric stretched as I wrapped it tightly around my palm, fingers clumsy as I tried to stop the bleeding.
The cloth soaked through almost immediately.
Something cold hit me square in the chest and dropped to the floor with a plop.What the fuck? Did he just throw something at me?Apparently, he wanted me to kick his ass today.
Before I started a world war between us, I looked down and saw a sealed blood bag laying at my feet. The dark liquid inside shifted sluggishly. I bent over and picked up the bag, rolling my eyes up to his fiercely irradiated abyss-violet gaze.
He stood a few steps away, phone still in his hand, shoulders rigid and tight. His brows had lowered, his mouth pressed into a thin line that told me everything his voice didn’t need to.
“I thought we agreed,” he said, each word calm and measured, “that you weren’t touching it until Syris got here.”
My ears picked up the creak of plastic as his phone squeezed beneath his grip.What's got him so worked up? It's just a bit of blood. Nothing he hasn't seen a lot of already in our lifestyle.
Shutting my eyes briefly, I drew in a slow breath, fingers tightening around the blood bag in my hand. He didn’t understand. He couldn’t. Waiting wasn’t an option. Not with E depending on me.
“E gave me a job,” I said, turning away from him, looking at the blade that just sliced my hand. “I’m going to figure out as much as I can about this thing. I can’t just wait for others.” Not when I had this rising curiosity about the weapon before me, something I’d never seen or heard of before.
I had gestured toward the blade, about to tell him to calm his ass down, when the metal responded.
A faint shimmer rippled across its surface, subtle but unmistakable, chasing the path of my movement before settling into the hilt. My breath hitched as the sting in my palm flared, heat pulsing beneath the soaked fabric.
That hadn’t happened before.
The blade had sat quiet since I brought it into the lab, unresponsive no matter how much I handled it. Now the surface shifted as if something beneath it had stirred awake.
My blood.
I stepped closer, attention narrowing onto the table. Rack said something behind me, but it blurred into the background as I leaned in.
Slowly, I raised my hand over the blade again.
The metal shimmered in response, a thin wave of iridescent color rolling along its edge before fading. I adjusted the distance, lifting my hand higher, but nothing happened. Lowering it again brought the shimmer back, stronger this time, and it spread farther down the blade.
Ignoring the eyes drilling into my back, I shifted to the side of the table, testing the angle.
The reaction followed.
