A slow, awful realisation slid through her.
She’d thought the painting had depicted the past. It had triggered a vision of Kyan, and he’d believed it to be a dramatised depiction of the moment he killed Alexander.
Except in the painting, Kyan looked like he was losing. He was overpowered, and Alexander – so pale and demonic with his teeth at Kyan’s throat – waswinning.
Panic seethed in her stomach.
If Alexander was alive, what if the painting didn’t depict the past … but the future?
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Kyan
KYAN STOOD IN THE CARNAGE OF VERIN’SBLOOD LIBRARY Afew hours later, a cold mix of guilt and anger torquing his stomach.
Afternoon light streamed over the shattered vials of blood, splintered shelves, and mangled scientific instruments. Around him, members of the Wake’s clean-up squad worked, masked and gloved.
Someone – he didn’t yet know who – had reported the Vampire’s death to the Wake, which was why the squad had arrived. If he’d had it his way, there would be no one else here, and Kyan and Callum could inspect the place themselves.
But the Wake had got here first.
Callum had called him a mere ten minutes after the Palmers left to travel to Scotland, so Kyan had flown back to England, his mind a dark snarl of disbelief.
Now, Callum’s sharp gaze assessed the damage. Though,damagewas a pale word for the decimation of the Vampire’s beloved library.
Amid it, Verin lay sprawled over the painting of his murdered partner. He must have hauled it off the wall in his last moments.
And in his blood, he’d drawn a triskelion.
The image got Kyan by the throat. Rage followed with such intensity he wanted to break something.
There wasn’t just Verin’s blood in here. The Vampire had fought enough that his nails were coated in it, as if he’d dug deep and managed to tear the skin of the mutated Empyreal. Kyan’s gut told him this had been an Alexander kill.
But how had Verin managed to even scratch Alexander when Callum had barely managed to slow him down?
He got his answer when he spotted Elisabetta’s vial, empty and smashed.
Verin must have tried some of the goddessblood. But what had it done to him? Evidently, it had given him enough strength to make a mark on Alexander, but not kill him. And not save himself.
Because Verin hadn’t consumed enough of it? Or, because it wasn’t made to be drunk by beings other than Empyreals?
Kyan gathered his mind. Tried to think. They didn’t have long, even though Callum had Influenced everyone here who was taking pictures and bagging evidence to not report their presence.
Vultures. They were fucking vultures, combing through Verin’s life’s work, ready to pack it up and do gods-only-knew-what with it all. Destroy it? Hide it away for the rest of time? He hadn’t been able to Influence them all to leave, or the Wake would have realised someone unauthorised had been here. But this, they could do.
Behere.
‘Where are the other vials?’ Kyan asked as Callum came back out of Verin’s lab space.
‘Gone. Ours, and theirs.’
The Huntbringer sample, and the sample from Nicole’s mother’s painting.
He couldn’t form a curse vicious enough.
Kyan had called Verin after they discovered Alexander was the Huntbringer to try and see if he could separate the divine blood from Alexander’s system – reclaim it somehow. But he hadn’t answered. Evidently, this was why. That might have been their only answer to getting enough goddessblood to summon the goddess, or protect whatever Empyreal would do the transformation to kill the Wake’s leaders.
Now it was gone, which meant finding his torc was their last and safest option.
