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CHAPTER1
Itry not to hold my breath as I activate my Sight.
It’s only been a day, but already I’m feeling back to my full strength. And I’m getting better about using my Sight. I have more control this time. I can feel it. Cain promised me that the more I practice, the easier it will be, until it’ll be like flicking on a light switch. I’m not sure if it’ll ever bethateasy for me, but already this is a lot better.
Remember to breathe,I think to myself, and I inhale. Cain told me that was important, keeping my breathing deep and even. If I hold my breath and then have to start gasping, that might take me out of the vision. Sight can be kind of like meditation that way.
Cain sits on my left-hand side, Raven on my right. I can’t feel them right now, but just knowing that they’re there makes this easier. We’re all entering the Sight together, just like Cain and Raven did the first time I saw them using it.
While we’re in the Sight, I can’t talk to them. I can’t sense them in the usual way, and they can’t sense me. But I can sort of feel them in a different way. It’s like I can feel their spirits. I just know, even if my usual senses can’t latch on to them, that they’re here with me. We’re all seeing the same thing.
Roanac.
Just as we suspected, he’s not wasting any time now that he’s taken my blood to become more powerful. I still don’t know how I survived since his ritual was supposed to kill me, but that seems to be the only silver lining to this entire mess.
In our joined vision, we can see that Roanac has left his stronghold. He’s traveled and gone to a remote island. I’m not sure where in the world it is, but it’s secluded and without people, and on the small side. I can feel the magic in the air of this place. It’s an island made up of rocky, moss-covered crags and surrounded by a raging, icy sea. Not very hospitable. But the stones that rise up from the earth seem to vibrate with magic. Even through the vision, I can sense it. I can’t even imagine what it must feel like for Roanac, who’s actually in this place rather than just sensing a diluted version of it through the Sight.
I’ve never been in a place that had this much magic before. I watch with Cain and Raven as Roanac stumbles onto the island, collapsing into the ground. He seems to be in pain—his skin is rippling like something is moving underneath it, and I would shiver with revulsion if I could feel my body.
Between the magic the mage Alexei gave him and now my blood, Roanac’s body seems to be struggling to hold all of the power now inside him. He yells, no, screams in pain, his body contorting. It looks horrible. His body is changing, growing even more inhuman. The bones inside of him seem to be strengthening, lengthening, a few of them turning into spikes. His muscles bulge and twist until it’s sickening. His skin turns that awful blue-black like when you get a bruise, except it’s all over and seems to be permanent.
He looks, well, sick. Like he’s on the edge of dying. And yet he also looks stronger than ever.
Roanac screams in agony as his body transforms, but then to my horror I see him begin to laugh. Like he’s happy with this transformation despite all the pain it brings him. He’s looking forward to all of this new power he can access.
Even though I can’t feel my body, I do still feel odd. As if Roanac’s pain is so great that I can feel an echo of it in myself even though I’m currently incorporeal. Or projecting my spirit as my body stays on the couch? I’m still not sure how this whole Sight thing works.
He seems to be relishing this pain, this process. What kind of sick individual does that?
Out of the mist, perhaps from a portal, comes Donovan and a few others, probably to check on their master. Anger twists viciously in my heart like someone’s turning a knife in it. I’m still going to kill him. I’ve vowed it. I can’t wait, and I hope I get to do it myself. He’s living—for a given value of ‘living’—proof that vampires are all nothing but greedy, cowardly animals.
Roanac roars in pain again, and I can almost feel it rippling through my body. I’m jolted out of the vision, and I blink, coming back into my body. I feel off. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but my body doesn’t feel quiteright.
I rub at my chest, where my scar now lies. Fuck. I don’t know quite what’s going on with me, or even how I survived Roanac taking my power from me since that should’ve killed me, but I just have to push through it. I’m not going to let myself be stopped, not when we have to take care of Roanac.
“You okay?” North asks. He hands me a glass of water and checks on my scar.
“I’m fine,” I promise him. “Roanac stole a lot of my blood. Of course I’m going to feel a little like shit for a while.”
North gives me a stern look. “You need to tell us if you don’t feel okay.”
Cain and Raven come out of the vision and North hands them water as well. “The bastard’s getting stronger,” Cain says. “He’s going to be powerful enough to level cities soon. I haven’t felt that much magic in one concentrated place in ages.”
We all exchange worried looks.
“We’re not going to let that happen,” I promise the men. We’re going to stop Roanac, no matter what it costs me.
CHAPTER2
The showers in this bunker place that we’re using as a modified safe house aren’t as nice as the shower in our old safe house. It’s a big room with clanking pipes and it makes me feel like I’m in some military place rather than in a proper home. The men told me that this was some sort of rich people escape bunker from the Cold War and had been forgotten about and abandoned, so it’s a last-ditch safe place until we can get to something more permanent since, thanks to that fucker Donovan, our original, better safe house is now a known location.
He could theoretically open up a portal to it, and we can’t take that risk.
I can’t wait for this all to be over and for us to be in a proper home again, all four of us safe and okay instead of worrying about each other constantly. But at least for now, I can take a shower.
And fuck, does the hot water feel good.
It’s my first shower since waking up, and it feels amazing to get properly clean. I want to scrub my body as much as possible. As if I could really scrub the feeling of Roanac’s violations off my body if I just used enough soap and tried hard enough. I hate what he did to me. He cut open my body and ripped a lot of the power and magic in me away from me. It wasmymagic, my blood, my body. And he just took it from me like I was a rag doll.
