At first, she doesn’t look like a person at all–just a body barely clinging to life. Patches of white hair clump to her scalp, singed away in jagged swaths until what’s left hangs in brittle, uneven strands.
A sour chemical stink trails with her, sharp enough to burn my nostrils, and I notice the gloves on the guard holding her, careful to not make direct contact. They dump her unceremoniously onto the polished floor, and the sound her body makes–like meat plopped onto tile–punches straight into my stomach.
My uncle strolls forward with the same leisure he’d take at a fundraiser party with colleagues.
When he reaches her, he crouches low, the leather of his shoes creaking. He accepts a glove from a guard and drags it onto his uncut hand before threading it to fist what bits of her hair remain.
He jerks her head back so we can see her face and my breath stalls.
Through the burns, the grime, the blistered skin… I know her.
Briar.
Callum’s voice rips across the space, low and raw. “You sick fuck.”
My pulse slams so hard it hurts, every instinct in me screaming to cross the room, tear her out of his grasp, and put a bullet through his skull with one of the guard’s guns.
Callum and I move at the same time. My pulse roars in my ears as we stalk forward, every muscle coiled tight, ready to tear her out of his grip.
But then Dante is there. One moment he’s seated at the table, silent as ever, the next he’s stepped clean into our path, broad shoulders squared like a wall neither of us saw coming. His hand lifts, palm flat, not aggressive but firm enough to halt us.
“Don’t,” he says, voice low, weighted. He glances back at Briar, then back at us again, and for the first time all night there’s no mask, no polished calm. Just something somber, almost regretful.
“She’s a vampire.”
The whispered words hit harder than a fist to the gut.
My boots stall mid-step, a breath locking sharp in my chest. Beside me, Callum’s posture snaps taut, fists curling tighter at his sides.
For a beat, all I can do is stare at her–at the burns, the raw flesh, the wreck of her body–and try to reconcile it with the girl who stood defiant in chasing her dreams outside campus hours ago. The girl who called me out, who smirked at my brother, who fought like hell against what her family wanted for her.
Vampire.
The floor tilts under me.
Our uncle’s lips curl into something far too pleased with himself as he tightens his fist in her singed hair, dragging her head higher until her ruined face tips toward the ceiling.
“Don’t believe me?” he murmurs, eyes never leaving ours.
I’m too shocked to think of anything. I can’t reconcile his words.
He lifts the hand he split open earlier at the table. Blood wells thick and dark from the shallow slice across his palm, spilling over the edge of his hand.
My stomach knots hard as he moves it to just in front of her mouth.
At first, she doesn’t move. Her body hangs limp, her skin blistered and cracked, with eyes shut tightly. But then her head jerks, her mouth parting, sharp fangs glinting as her body twitches in an attempt to move toward the blood. Even unconscious, some buried instinct drags her body toward it, desperate for what she needs.
My throat tightens as his words settle in me with that display.
Briar is a vampire.
The very thing that swatted me into the wall when I tried to pull it off my mother, telling me I was lucky it was full from its meal before disappearing into the night.
Ice replaces the heat that filled my veins moments before.
Uncle smiles wider, the expression cutting as glass. “You see?” he purrs, his voice dripping with triumph. “You don’t have to take my word for it. The monster proves herself. And you all were almost her meal earlier.”
The sound that leaves Callum is a raw, sharp inhale, like a man drowning. My chest caves with the same disbelief, the same recoil.
