Page 102 of Slayer

Was she calling me weak?

I wiped my nose with my left hand, anger burning through the tears. “You have no idea how strong I can be,” I growled. “Give me more if my body will take it. You let me worry about my mind.”

She hesitated, studying me, then nodded.

Only three hunter marks felt wrong when I knew Celia had five and Asher had four.

Akari dipped the needles back into the Veil Stone ink and brought them down near my elbow this time.

The moment the ink pierced my skin, I was ripped out of the room and into a vision.

I stood in a graveyard, staring down at a gravestone, and my breath caught when I saw my own name carved into it. The dirt was freshly turned, dark and raw. A priest stood nearby with a Bible in his hands, scanning the empty chairs as if waiting for mourners who never came.

“Hello?” I asked, but he didn’t see me.

“Poor girl,” the priest murmured. “No one loved her enough to show.”

Agony ripped through my chest, and I knew at once that the Veil Stone was digging through the darkest parts of me, dragging every buried fear into the light.

“Fine!” I screamed at the sky. “I’m afraid no one loves me. That I’ll never be loved. So what? Is that all you’ve got?”

I was yanked back into the room and sucked into my body so hard it knocked the air from my lungs. I looked down to see Akari already working on a sixth rune.

Six? Where was the time going?

“Stella, your ability to hold Veil Stone and process it is incredible,” she said softly. “And these runes… I’ve never drawn some of these before. I’ve only seen them in books.”

My arm from elbow to wrist was nearly covered now.

“Your body can handle more.”

Fear coiled in my gut. More? The funeral alone had nearly broken me, but I wasn’t going to let fear dictate my future.

“Do more then,” I said hoarsely. “I can handle it.”

She poured more crushed Veil Stone into the ink, and I leaned back, eyes squeezing shut, bracing myself.

Nothing prepared me for what came next. The second the needles came down on my arm, I was pulled into another vision.

I was standing in a room with my mother and Emilie. Emilie wore a red dress and held a glass of champagne while my mother stood beside her, young and beautiful, just like in the photos I had of her. The sire’s eyes glinted silver as she barked orders.

“Prepare for tonight. My coven needs to feed, and there’s a new club on Fourth Avenue I want to try.”

“Yes, ma’am.” My mother bowed to her.

“No!” I screamed.

Emilie turned to me and laughed, delighted. “Oh, darling, don’t you get it by now? Mommy is working for me.”

“No,” I said, scanning the room for anything, anything at all to kill her with.

“Yes,” Emilie hissed, suddenly appearing inches from my face. “Don’t you wonder why she covered you in runes and left you at a human hospital instead of with hunters?”

“She was protecting me,” I sobbed.

“From whom?” Emilie mocked. “She was protecting you from hunters. Just like I asked her to.”

“No.”