“Don’t,” she whispered harshly against my ear, though her voice trembled. “Don’t get closer, sweetie. They’ll take you too.”
“I don’t care!” I tried to elbow her in the ribs, stomp on her feet, throw my head back into her face—every technique I’d learned for dealing with a rear grapple. But Jules had positioned herself perfectly, her chin tucked against my shoulder, her body angled to avoid my strikes. “Let me go! Jules! Let me go, they’re killing him!”
“I know, sweetie. I know.” Her voice broke on the words. She was crying too, I realized. Her hot tears mixed with rain on my shoulder. “But you can’t stop them. Neither can I.”
The feeding sounds grew wetter, more obscene. Rowan’s hands, which had been pushing weakly against the twins' shoulders, fell to his sides. His head lolled back to the pavement.
“Rowan!” My scream shredded my throat. “Please! Please, somebody, help him!”
The alley stank of garbage and blood and rain. Somewhere, a cat yowled. Somewhere, people were living their normal lives, eating dinner, watching television, completely unaware that the world contained monsters who could drain a man dry in an alley.
Rowan’s eyes found mine across the space between us. Still conscious, somehow. Still aware enough to see me struggling, failing, breaking apart. His lips moved, forming my name without sound. An apology, maybe. Or a goodbye.
That’s when the air changed.
It happened between one heartbeat and the next: the temperature dropped ten degrees, the rain eased, the distant streetlamps flickered. A scent drifted through the alley that overpowered the garbage and blood. It reminded me of jasmine, lavender, and warm summer stones.
The twins released Rowan immediately, their heads snapping up like wolves scenting a larger predator. One of them actually whimpered. The sound was so incongruous with their previous dominance that I stopped struggling in Jules’s arms.
They dropped to their knees in the filthy alley water, heads bowed so low their foreheads scraped the ground.
“Mistress,” the one-eyed vampyre gasped.
A woman I least expected stepped from shadows that shouldn’t have been deep enough to hide within. She moved like liquid poured into the shape of a person, each step deliberate and graceful.
“Natalia?” I whispered.
She was still just as beautiful as when I’d seen her last, but in that moment, she was also terrifying. The rain made her dark skin look like polished onyx, and turned her snow white hair into a darker grey. She wore a bubblegum pink tube top and a skirt that should have looked cheap, but instead looked like she was slumming for fun—playing at being a college party girl. Thigh-high stockings completed the outfit, making her legs seem impossibly long in combat boots.
Dear god. She’s not human either.
“You stopped. How disappointing,” she said, a lilt to her voice that I had once found alluring. Now it sent shivers of icy fear throughout me. My stomach turned. She’d been watching. Watching while they fed. Watching while I begged. Watching while Rowan died.
She glided past where Jules still held me, close enough that I caught more of her scent: not just jasmine and stone but something else, something that made my body scream warnings. She knelt beside Rowan, studying him.
“This one. . .” She reached out with one perfectly manicured finger, not quite touching the blood running down his throat. “This one, I was considering having for myself.”
The phrasing made me want to vomit.Having him.Like he was a vintage wine or an expensive meal. A thing to be consumed at leisure.
The twins exchanged terrified glances. “Forgive us, Mistress Natalia,” One-Eye stammered. “We didn’t know you had claimed him.”
“I had not.” She tilted her head, hair sliding over one shoulder like water. “Not yet. But I was. . . interested. Especially when he offered to help me. And now you’ve gone and broken him.”
Rowan’s chest barely moved. Each breath looked shallower than the last. Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. I’d seen enough death in my previous life to recognize its approach.
Before I could think better of it, I spoke. “Please.” My voice came out raw, destroyed by screaming. “Please, can you save him?”
Natalia’s attention shifted to me with the weight of a physical blow. Her eyes were so dark blue they appeared black, and looking into them felt like falling into a bottomless well. “Save him? Why would I do that?”
“Because. . .” I swallowed. “Because he’s no good to you dead.”
She laughed, soft and genuinely amused. “Oh, little fighter. Death is hardly an impediment to my desires. Some things are actually more cooperative afterward.”
The casual mention of her cruelty, delivered with such nonchalance, forced bile to rise in my throat. But I pressed on. “I’ll do anything,” I begged. “If you save him, I’ll do anything you want.”
Jules’s arms tightened around me, a warning I ignored.
Natalia turned back, one perfect eyebrow arched. “Anything? Do you understand what that word means to someone like me?”
