They weren’t here to take me down. They were just a distraction.
I could still sense Haley, though the signal was getting weaker. I hoped that didn’t meanshewas getting weaker.
“What’s wrong?” Marco asked, wiping the blood from his mouth as he leered up at me. “Lose another one of your charges? Guess some things never change.”
“Too bad, really,” Draven piped in. He licked his lips and grunted. “Such a pretty little witch. I would’ve loved to have a go at that.”
The tremble began in my hands, quickly shooting up my arms and across my back. My muscles tensed for another fight, talons curling, everything inside me eager for a bloodbath.
You’re fucking dust,I sent out. All of you.
Marco nodded, finally shutting his trap and letting his thoughts come to me instead.Someday, maybe. But not tonight.
He raised his arms and pointed something at my chest. A gun, I realized. Manmade. Useless against me.
I spread my arms and smiled, welcoming the nip of those useless little bullets.Looks like someone’s got a new toy. Compensating, maybe?
You tell me, cocksucker.Marco fired off a whole mess of rounds, the bullets biting into my hide like annoying mosquitos. I plucked one of them from my chest and tossed it at him.
He hit me with one last shot in the gut.
When he was done jerking off his new gun, he stood there watching me expectantly, smoke curling from the end of the barrel.
Yeah,definitelycompensating.I laughed, inside and out, and stalked toward him, my talons itching for a chance to spill more of his blood. All of it.Got anything bigger, or is that the best you—
All at once, my body froze up on me, and a new grin lit up that motherfucker’s face.
A dozen tiny explosions tore through my insides, chewing through bone and muscle, unleashing a flood of pure, white-hot agony.
These were no ordinary bullets. None that I’d ever had the fucked-up pleasure of being shot with, anyway—not in the realms of monstersormen—which was saying a lot.
Fuck. Me.
I stumbled to my knees as my muscles stiffened. Everything inside me was turning to stone, but not because I’d shifted. Felt like I’d chugged a few hundred gallons of cement.
“Ultraviolet bullets,” Marco boasted out loud, admiring his gun. “They ignite on contact—little balls of sunshine packed into a human death machine. Say what you will about dark witches, Hudson, but they really are ingenious bitches when they need to be.”
Before I could even ask what constituted a witch’s need for ingenuity, he lifted the gun again. Stepped close.
Then he spat in my face like a fucking coward. Jammed the barrel into the spot between my eyes and...
Bang.
My world disappeared.
2
KERADOC
Evander.
The name slipped from the fugitive’s lips and right through my defenses, prodding at something that felt like a memory. Images flashed in my mind—a fae child laughing, his silver eyes alight with mischief as he bent his head close to share a secret. A father playfully wrestling with his boys in the soft grass. The scent of sweet cakes cooling on a sill…
Another time, another place. Certainly not mine.
Blinking away the odd images, I stepped down from the dais, leaving the Darkwinter witch bound to the throne behind me.
Still on his knees, the vampire-fae fugitive my guards had captured gazed up at me strangely, his silver eyes so like my real eyes. Similar too were the set of his jaw and the sharpness of his cheekbones, and the grin that tipped higher on one side than the other. It was as if we’d been cast from the very same mold.
