Nicole had studied Elisabetta’s self-portrait for six months, yet seeing her in modern dress, in the flesh, still made her brain trip over itself.
‘Freya?’ the woman asked in heavily accented Italian, her eyes widening in surprise.
‘Elisabetta?’
Before Nicole could relish the relief, before her hand could grasp the painter’s and tug her straight to the blood library and show her the portrait, tofinallyget the answers they’d been looking for, there was an ungodly shriek.
Every window in the studio shattered.
Nicole grabbed Elisabetta’s arm and threw her towards her father, shielding them both as thousands of shards tore clean through her pyjamas, over her back, her hair, her legs.
A few months ago, her skin would have torn clean open. Instead, it wasn’t the scratches she felt.
It was her power.
Liquid heat bathed her veins, and she barely stifled the gasp of adrenaline, ofrelief.Beneath it, something merged with her protective abilities, perhaps heightened by months of waiting.
Fury.
Nicole spun to see their attacker floating in the shattered arches, starlit glass shards knifing into the night beyond, a white gauzy dress swirling around her like a delicate mist.
Alarm morphed into confusion as Nicole gazed up at … a Banshee? Her eyes and ire zeroed in on Nicole with a soul-shredding blaze of vengeance.
Nicole thought of Estwood and the Baobhan Sìth Kyan had said was lurking around after her transformation, but as she did, a rush of warm night air brought exactly what she’d been subconsciously searching for for months.
The kill scent.
It unlocked her Empyreal like the crack of an immortal key.
In this awakened state, without the blocking tonics Dylan was still taking, the scent was electric on her tongue. It flooded her veins, her solar plexus going momentarily hot before the change bled through her, turning her incandescent with purpose.
All of it had lasted a fraction of a second.
Immediately, Nicole realised this was a Ban-Sìth, a form of Banshee with an acute awareness of death and a deadly scream. One so powerful it had cracked a sculpture at its weaker base, and Elisabetta was in its path.
Her father went to haul the painter away, but the marble centaur began to topple.
Nicole reached up to stop it, a slice of stone cutting right through her arm. She hissed in shock at the sudden arc of blood and pain, realising too late that her Empyrean strength and healing abilities were draining away as her body transformed her into something else. Into the Ban-Sìth’s natural predator. Nicole’s arms buckled, her core suddenly cramping with pain.
Before her panic could form, Verin was there, hands up to stop the sculpture crushing the others.
‘Nicole!’ her father shouted. He’d drawn his gun and fired twice at the Ban-Sìth which only shrieked in outrage. ‘Go!’
She nearly didn’t: the protective urges were so loud she would have done anything to stop him getting hurt. But when the Ban-Sìth lunged, her Empyreal’s need to hunt took over.
She couldn’t have stopped it if she wanted.
So as it unfurled inside her, Nicole embraced it and ran in the opposite direction into the manor’s maze of supernatural artwork, knowing the Ban-Sìth, intent on killing her, would follow.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kyan
THE NIGHT AFTER THE OLD BAILEY BREAK-IN,KYAN WASsummoned.
He’d been to the Wake’s headquarters a handful of times, but never had unease like this coiling in his gut.
Waiting in an enormous room more the size of a museum, Kyan scoped out the artwork and sculpture that broke up the white space and vaulted ceiling. In the centre, a partial wall had been erected to stage another painting, and before that, with his back to Kyan, stood an unfamiliar Messenger in a dark suit.
