And my cold, dead heart senses a way out of my nightmare. A way to cure me of Lucien’s poison. If I can’t have Arabella, then I can haverevenge.
He wants Arabella’s collar. He can have it.
“My boss has the jewels,” I say. “His name is Lucien Vega, and he should still be in that brasserie where you found me. He is very strong, very powerful. If you and I—”
But the shadow has already decided on the outcome of our meeting.
He moves with impossible speed. In the blink of an eye, he is upon me, his hands about my throat. I fly backwards, the breath forced from my lungs. My spine crunches in agony as he slams me against something hard. The world spins as he tips me back. I smell fish and sewage. A cold gust sweeps my face, as cold as the ice of my heart.
We’re on a bridge. The shadow holds me over the water, my hands dangling uselessly, my feet flailing for purchase. His reptile eye glints with triumph, and he leans in close, those hideous lips of his drawing back to reveal his fangs, and I know he means to drink me dry and leave me for dead. And in my rage and pain and grief I cling to the frozen monster inside of me.
I do the only thing I can think to do.
I sink my teeth into his neck first.
Breaking his skin is like biting through steel. My fangs ring inside my skull. But the points are new and sharp, and they break through with apop. His blood pools in my mouth.
“You…” he gasps. “You are Upyr…”
He tastessublime. Better than Lucien, better than any pleasure I could possibly imagine, better even than the night I spent between Arabella’s thighs. If Arabella tasted of sunlight, then this creature is like climbing to the sun itself.
I’m aware, then, with a knowledge that has been gifted to me along with Lucien’s blood, that the vampire I drink from is not some lowly brute like Lucien but an ancient beast of incredible power.
Somehow, my bite has disarmed him. He did not realise I am newly Kissed. With his ruined nose, he did not smell me as I did him. He cries out as he realises his mistake.
He is slow and sluggish in my arms. I cling to him, sucking and gulping down the liquid ecstasy of his veins, and manage to bring my feet back to the ground. Salvation and damnation entwine on mytongue, in my gut, lighting every part of me on fire as I drink, too much and too quickly, all the things Lucien warned me not to do.
But I can’t stop.
I bargained with a devil to save my brother, but I would carve Jacob to pieces right now if it meant I could have more ofthis.
Between feedings, Lucien has explained the laws of monsters – laws that vampires must obey. Do not copulate with a human woman, because of the risk of Dhampir. Do not get caught outside in the sunlight. Andneverdrink from the blood of your kin outside of the Kiss. He said that draining a vampire of blood is one of the few ways to kill them, but it also changes your blood. You take on some of their magic, their power. And that’s more than dangerous – it is asin. If a vampire is found to have drained another, they will be executed.
No Upyr is meant to have that kind of power.
Now I know why.
Itastethe shadow’s power – the dark, heady bite to his blood that no human delicacy will ever match. I think of how easily my father and brother sold their souls to a devil in a bottle when they could have hadthisecstasy instead. His blood flows down my throat and fills my stomach and seeps into my veins. Already it’s changing me. Already his ancient magic stirs within me.
And then, the tap runs dry.
I suckle at the messy pulp of his neck – I’ve not yet learned how to make a neat bite – but only manage a few meagre drops. His body hangs from my arms – limp, lifeless. I pull back and my fangs slide from his slack skin with a satisfyingplop.
I’ve barely been a vampire for a week and I’ve already committed the ultimate sin.
Oh well. Start how you mean to continue, I suppose.
I won’t feel guilty for draining this creature who treated Arabella as his property, not even if she loved him the way I wish she loved me.
I glance around, listening to the shadows with my now superior hearing. The bridge is deserted. I fling the broken monster against the stone and shove him off the bridge.
He topples over the edge into the waters below. The last thing I see before he sinks beneath the surface is that single eye glaring back at me.
I sink down into the gutter, gasping, willing my body back under my control. My veins are on fire and I long to touch the edges of the power his blood has given me, but my ruined heart is a frigid ball of pain.
Arabella sent this creature after me.
She meant for him tokillme—
