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“Saint—” I started, unable to comprehend why he even thought that.
“Let’s go.” He turned abruptly and started stalking down the darkened hall.
I went with him before he breached the barrier of time. We took the steps and cleared the dilapidated house floor by floor, and even though I knew there was little to no chance of Samuel playing house above the ground level when there were clearly no blinds or drapes to block the sun coming through the broken windows, I covered every inch with Saint just so he’d be sure.
“His scent is stronger in the basement,” Saint muttered as we went back down the splintered steps and into the dank sublevel.
“He smells different to me.” We turned and followed the maze-like hallway deeper into the house.
“Me, too.” Saint shook his head in frustration as we cleared each room we came to. “It’s weaker somehow and yet…” Weapon in hand, he opened the last door, and we both fell silent.
The room was pitch black, and my thermal vision picked up on a form in the corner, and the shapes extending up the wall looked to be…arms. It was a person, but the heat signature wasn’t nearly warm enough—
“Shit.”
“It’s…him.” Saint aimed his weapon at the shape. “Drop the barrier.”
I snapped back my power and slammed my hand toward the wall, flicking on the light, and a second later, Saint lowered his weapon.
“What the fuck?” he whispered.
I moved to Saint’s side and stared in open-mouthed shock at the sight before us.
A woman lay slumped against the cinder-block wall, her arms held above her head by steel handcuffs around her too-thin wrists. All of her was too thin. Emaciated was a better word. The color of her hair was indistinguishable for the blood in it, and what had once been a nightgown covered her body in tatters. And her neck…
“Gods, her neck.” I moved to her side, but Saint was already there, moving faster than I’d ever seen.
“Her pulse is barely there.” His fingers rested above the jagged unhealed bite marks at her throat.
“Her temp is low, too.” I reached up and snapped the chains above the cuffs, the metal crumpling easily under my anger at how brutally the woman had been treated.
Familiar footsteps pounded down the hallway. By the sound of it, our brothers had found us.
“Could you assholes give us a little warning before—” Zachariah’s words cut off behind us. No doubt he’d seen the woman.
“She has Samuel’s blood,” Saint said, crouched next to the woman. “That’s why I smelled him.”
“A human?” Dagon asked, edging past Zachariah into the room.
Cassandra was next. “I could have tagged along faster if you’d turned yourself into a horse and let me—”
“If you want to ride me, you’re going to have to ask me a lot nicer than that,” Talon fired back, his voice trailing off as he brought Cassandra inside. “What the hell is going on?”
“Samuel has a feeder—” I started.
“She’s a vampire,” Cassandra corrected, pushing her way forward to crouch on the other side of the unconscious woman, her gaze sweeping over her. “Newly turned. I’d say she’s no more than a few days out of transition.”
“And hasn’t fed,” Saint noted. “Her temperature would be up, and these bite marks would have healed if she’d fed.”
The woman’s—female’s—eyes snapped open and her gaze flew around the room, wide and terrified.
Then she saw Saint.
And she screamed, scrambling as if she could somehow get farther into the corner. The sound would have shattered glass had there been any in the room. It was the stuff of nightmares, horror and panic compressed into a single shrill cry.
“She thinks he’s Samuel,” Dagon said.
“Saint!” Zachariah snapped.
