Page 3 of Nightshade

Apparently having come to the same conclusion, Evie grabbed my hand, completely ignoring the slick blood that covered it, and we both turned and ran. Toward the bay, at first, where I knew we’d be able to lose some of the scent Grant could track us by, and more importantly, pick up new, stronger smells that covered ours up. Ocean and fish and fuck only knew what kind of horrible machinery the humans had down near the water for their businesses.

Once we got to the water, and I managed to wash the blood off my hands, I pulled out my phone and texted the family group.

I killed Barry.

Evie’s little body crashed into me, pushing me against a cement wall that ran all the way into the water, and I tensed, ready for an attack from Grant or his assholes, but there was nothing.

“The truck,” she whispered. “I saw⁠—”

I nodded and wrapped my damp arms around her, pulling her close and waiting, hoping that they hadn’t followed our scent, and were just searching the area, or better yet, leaving. She convulsed in my arms, and after a moment, I felt a new wet patch start to form on my shirt.

Understandable. Evie might be inappropriately mature for a fourteen-year-old, but she was still fucking fourteen. She shouldn’t be dealing with any of this. The fact that she’d watched me kill Barry should be the most horrifying thing in her world, but instead, that was a good thing in a long line of nightmares she’d been offered.

I clenched my jaw and held her, finally pulling my phone back out and trying to explain to Aleks what had happened. It took forever, and was too long and too much to text, but he needed to know it.

And, I supposed, I needed him to know it. I needed my brothers, Viktor’s steady strength and Aleks’s solid, quiet leadership. To get that, I needed to start by telling them what had happened.

They went to a motel that smelled like Cash and Evie. I went around back, found Evie climbing out a window. Barry was there and tried to grab her. I had to stop him. I couldn’t wait for Cash. Got Evie, and we got away, but . . . what do I do now? I can’t go back. Definitely can’t take Evie back, even if I’m willing to go myself.

I sent the text, and it didn’t even take Aleks a minute to respond.

Go back to Wildwood. Start with Henry. Prepare the pack. Tell them when we return, Grant will not be with us. Whatever it takes, Viktor and I will make sure of it. I will send Mama as soon as she can come.

And that was it. In an instant that had been almost fifteen years in the making, the whole of Wildwood’s future changed.

CHAPTER 2

Altair

These bars had held me for over a century.

I ran a loose grip down one. The iron felt warm beneath my hand, because my skin was frigid.

When a vampire was well-fed, there was hardly a discernable difference in temperature between us and an average human. Maybe we were a little colder, but it was easily waved off as naturally being a bit clammy. Poor circulation. That sort of thing.

I wasn’t well fed.

I was hardly fed at all.

But yesterday, I’d managed to get my hands on a particularly plump rat, and I’d been restless ever since. After so long with so little, even that little morsel was a feast that left me antsy and eager to do something.

Only I didn’t know what.

I’d long since given up freeing myself from captivity. The witches, when they came now, visited me in my cell. They took my blood or enjoyed my services, and slipped back out to their sunny lives.

I sometimes wondered if they ever thought of me, out there where I could hear them walking through the coven house above. What would it be like, to have a predator pinned beneath you?

What sort of predator was I, when all I’d hunted recently was unfortunate rodents that scurried across the floors of my cell?

But these witches weren’t the first to hold me captive. My maker hadn’t needed bars, only words. His command was the iron, binding my will to his.

I couldn’t resist, but a slip of the tongue had given me an opening to escape, a turn of phrase that I’d known I was interpreting wrong.

There was no way he’d willingly send me across the Atlantic in search of something new. He’d craved novelty, and each time I met potential prey, I found some reason or another to convince myself that they were as commonplace to Ivan as the khubz the baker made in the town where I’d grown up.

The soft flat breads were the same every time, with a subtle flavor meant to be filled or dipped. They were never the star of the show.

And my maker had been alive a very long time. I’d spent decades watching him feast on many sorts of humans. He’d spoken to me of wolves and fae. He’d even sucked another vampire dry, and threatened to do the same to me if I couldn’t find some way to delight him.