Prologue
“Ameelliaa.” Her voice crackled through the forest in a low-pitched tone, piercing, chilling, turning my blood to slush. “Ameelliaa.” The sound of my name was sung, manic, rising in crescendo like a hellish lullaby.
I was going to die. Horribly.
I ran, my hand grasping frantically for the blade I didn’t have strapped to my side, as if checking it hadn’t magically appeared. It hadn’t.I was so stupid, why didn’t I bring my blade?
A serpent’s tongue lashed the dark sky. The wind didn’t howl, it screamed. The storm was a good thing; even keen vampire hearing might not be able to hear the sound of my footfalls beneath the forest’s roar.
Run.I was fast, faster than your average human, but like the most heinous of nightmares, my legs were stone and moved as if I weighed five hundred pounds.
Hope pinched through the terror. Maybe this was just another nightmare. Maybe the predator behind me wasn’t Sarah at all, but a dire creation of my haunted, fucked-up head. I could feel the wind. I could feel the dead ache of my legs. And eventhough I couldn’t see her, I could feel the cold prickle of her presence down to the marrow of my bones.
It felt real. Too fucking real. Hope fizzled like drops of blood on a candle’s flame. With wind-whipped eyes, I searched wildly into the dark for somewhere to hide. Shadowed limbs loomed all around me. Urged by the winds they rattled, they swayed and shifted, looking like skeletons coming to life. Down the incline, through the trees, I caught sight of a cemetery, its tombstones perched out of the dark like stacked tarot cards.
The Joker. The Tower.The Death card.
With no better choice in sight, I hurtled down the hill. I leapt over a felled trunk, my feet tangling, and I almost lost my balance. Branches appeared from the darkness and slashed across my arms and cheeks, stinging like a swarm of bees. Chest heaving, heart thumping, I pushed blindly on.
That’s when I heard it behind me. A snap, then footsteps closing in. A high-pitched screech tore through the forest like nails on a chalkboard. As if Sarah was playing with me, trying to increase my terror. Panic shuddered through my body as I twisted my head back to look for her. It was a mistake. My bare foot hit a rock and the forest tilted. The earth rushed at my face, the breath barreling from my chest as I slammed down.
This can’t be happening. This can’t be happening.
Terror propelled me forward, and scrambling to my feet, I took off running again. Karson’s face appeared in my mind’s eye. I would never hold him, never feel his arms around me or his soft lips against mine again. I wouldn’t get to tell him I loved him one last time.
The trees buckled, limbs twisting and coiling into clawed hands. Red-hot horror burned through me. It was as if?—
As if they were alive.
They slashed at my arms and legs. I bit back a cry as one sliced my arm. Blood flowed, dripping to the gray earth beneathand splattering like tea leaves in a grim, portentous witch’s reading.
A branch snapped close behind.
Panic roared through me.
The footsteps of a gaining predator.
God no, please no.
I opened my mouth to cry out for help, but the sound mimicked a trapped kitten.
She was right behind me. Her breath, as hot as razor blades, tore at my ears. There was no point in running anymore. I’d die tonight, but I refused to die running. Dread smothered me as I lurched to a stop and swung to face her.
She stood a few feet away, her fire-colored hair billowing in the wind. Her skin, flawless and pale, was stark against the night. The vampire was stunning to look at, but her usually blue eyes glittered black, swelling with hunger and rage, stealing her beauty.
Her nostrils flared.
“Amelia.” She spoke with the voice of a silk-wrapped blade. “I finally found you.”
“Sarah, don’t,” I whispered, dismayed by the tremor in my voice. “You don’t have to do this.”
She smiled and fangs as sharp as a knife’s edge glistened in the dark. “Tick-tock, tick-tock,” she taunted, in time with the thundering beat of my heart.
“Please, just listen to me.”
“There is nothing you could say that I want to hear,” she seethed, fury burning red in her eyes, where I saw my own reflection, small against the horror of the night. “He killed my brother, and now I will kill you.”
“He didn’t?—”
