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As Val’s lips touched the laceration, as her fangs pierced my skin, I screamed and summoned as much fire magic as I could muster. Flames burst from my palms, burning the two vampires holding me. I had just enough leeway in their surprise—as they loosened their grips to bat out fire on their clothes—to push my hands between Val and me and shove her away. Her fangs dragged along my skin as she moved. I threw an uppercut, slamming into her jaw, but she recovered quickly and grabbed my hands, holding my fingers shut in a fist and wrapping them around me quickly. Before I knew it, her superhuman strength had me in a hold, my hands at my back, and my face pressed against a mirror she didn’t appear in. But her warm breath tickled the back of my neck all the same, her blade pressed against my side near my kidneys, and her entourage of enforcers closing in around us.
“That was stupid.” Val growled in my ear. “I told you no one had to get hurt.”
“Fuck you,” I spat, my cheek pressed against the cool glass. Hot tears spilled from my eyes. I hated her. I hated every vampire who had done deals with Lazarus. And I hated that I was so fucking terrified right now—not of dying, but of being brought back into a feeding community.
“I think I’ll save that for Cassius, our new leader, should he deem you worthy,” Val purred against my ear.
Cassius? Gods, no.How was that possible?
I threw my head back, knocking it into hers. “You’ll be dragging my dead body back to him and nothing more.”
Val chuckled darkly and drew me away from the mirror, only to slam my face against it again. The glass cracked, cutting my cheek. I watched as one of the enforcers’ eyes dilated.
I needed to stop bleeding in front of them. Gods, why was this happening?
“What do you want?” I snapped.
“Well,” Val said as she caressed my cheek with a bloodstained fingertip. “Cassius wants you as a vampire for his own coven, but he’s rightly assuming you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”
My eyes narrowed. “Why the fuck would he want me?”
Val’s fingers left my cheek so she could caress the back of one of my held hands. “Your new power intrigues him. He can sense a darkness within you even from here.” Her lips brushed my ear. “Although he’s never far. Lazarus so cared for you that it’s rubbed off on Cassius.”
Bile rose in my throat, but I swallowed it back down because all I’d be doing by throwing it up was making myself more of a mess. I hated how weak I became near vampires. Even at the bar with Willa, we’d both been terrified. Now that I was held captive by four them? My legs shook. My stomach churned. All I could think about were the times Lazarus had nearly gotten himself off drinking my blood. Or the nights spent being passed from vampire to vampire as they played poker or watched other women dance before them.
“Just kill me,” I said, knowing full well it sounded like a plea. “I’m not going to Cassius. Kill me now if that’s your fucking goal.” Some of the glass shards cut into my cheek as I spoke.
Mrak. Gods, I need you!
I called to my magic again, but with my hands balled into fists like this, I wasn’t sure if I could use it. The magical fire had always burned first as spheres in my palms. Even now, I felt the first flickers of that magic warm my skin, but nothing more.
“Believe me,” Val spat as she pressed her blade so hard against my side, I was sure she’d pierce skin at any moment. “I’d love to for what you did to Lazarus and our people. But Cassius would prefer you come willingly if you’re to be turned.”
A dark laugh bubbled across my lips. It wasn’t at all funny. Nothing about this was. “I will never join you.”
“Cassius is patient.”
“My protector is not,” I snapped. “As soon as you leave, he will find you and he will kill you.”
Val clicked her tongue. “Your protector is not in this world yet, so we’re protected from him. And if Cassius claims your soul next, your demon will be gone from this plane of existence entirely. It’s an out for you. Despite your hatred for us, our communities are innocent bubbles of happiness compared to the destruction your protector once decimated his world with. It is a better option.”
“Fuck you,” I spat. Mrak had told me the truth. I didn’t believe a single thing Val said. Nothing, nothing, in any world could be worse than the hell I’d survived for ten years in Lazarus’s feeding community.
Val didn’t waver. “Stop killing members of our coven, behave, or Cassius’s patience will wear thin. You will be hunted as you preyed on Hunter. You will be taken, and you will be forced back into his ring as a slave rather than the equal Cassius proposes you become.”
“Over my dead body,” I said, my throat raw around the words. I’d sooner throw myself off a building before going back into any of those communities. My chest burned. Sweat beaded along my brow. It felt as though I myself were on fire.
“That can be arranged,” Val said as she withdrew the press of her blade the smallest fraction. “As long as blood still flows, you can be made a vampire afterwards.”
Her withdrawal, her fleeting moment of retreat, allowed me the space I needed to move my shoulders back an inch and, with them, send a wave of fire backward at Val.
She cried out as the fire burned her pale skin. I felt her swing for me and ducked, leaving her fist to connect into the mirror my face had broken. It allowed me the second needed to spin fast, tearing my fists from her relaxed grip, and slam my fire-crested palms into her chest.
Val went up in flames immediately, screaming until her cry was cut off by flames. The smell of burning flesh filled the air and finally caused me to throw up. I heaved, bending over at the waist and spilling the contents of last night’s dinner on Dark Iron’s workshop floor.
The other three vampires shouted out and lunged for me, but I recovered fast, firing flames at them. They ducked and dodged, and we began a dance of us attacking and missing again and again. I was slowing down on shaky legs. My head spun, growing light with exhaustion and fear and nausea.
Flames licked up the tables in my shop. More designs pinned to the walls burned as fire traveled from spot to spot. Everything I’d done to regain and rebuild my life over the last year was being destroyed by my own magic.
