The animals were equally as quiet. Waiting, as I was waiting. The snap of a twig sounded in the distance to my left. My ears homed in on it and my head snapped to. On the heady breeze, the aroma of cooking food from the ceremony marked the last parts of it drifting to my nose. I stayed perfectly still, regulating my breathing, letting out the air trapped in my body in one long blow. I ran my tongue over my teeth, baring them a little, crouching,zeroing in on where the sound was coming from, an unusual scent filling my nose.
I leapt in the air, soaring through the leaves and branches. My breathing deepened, each sense heightening, electrifying the air and my skin as I went through it. This was it, this was me finally receiving the Light, even though I had doubted, was doubting it this moment. I released myself one section at a time, doing as Nana Ama said and not forcing it. I was letting go, becoming this other me, my body changing, contracting and expanding.
I spotted movement ahead, and came to a stop in the treetops, tracking it. Its smell drifted over me, and my body reacted on its own, sailing down and tackling my prey.
The buzzing in my ear drowned out any other noise, any other cry I might have heard, because all I could hear was the thumping pulse of its life force, even as the animal staggered from my grip. It grunted in pain and surprise as we crashed hard to the compacted earth, roots and branches snapping beneath our combined weight, but as I now was, I barely felt the sting. My fingers grabbed it, digging into the rough skin so my catch wouldn’t get away in a last-ditch burst of adrenaline. Its muscles pumped beneath me to buck me off of it, letting out a high, muffled whine of surprise. It kicked its feet as we rolled through the underbrush, connecting with something else, softer and more delicate, breaking my grip. There was nothing but my primal urge to hunt, and I pounced again, unseeing, grabbing what was there, not hearing the sound of retreating hooves.
My head tilted to the sky, my throat loosening a guttural sound as my mouth opened, my top canines disengaging in a satisfyingslide. I snapped my teeth and I dove down, the points breaking through skin that seemed as thin as paper. This blood tasted as it never had before, rushing fresh from the animal’s veins, making my vision hazy and unfocused. So delicious that I could barely contain myself, fighting to sink in farther, to drink from it. To drain it. Until it spoke.
“Ada, no!”
My eyes snapped open and I tore myself away, confusion and dread colliding in me along with the sweetest taste of blood I shouldn’t have had. An ice cube moved coldly up my spine as my vision cleared, refocusing on Hailey’s face, frozen as she stared up from beneath me, still half hidden in the brush, her face a portrait of horror and terror and revulsion as she finally saw me for who—what—I really was.
An adze.
Avampire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
My hands lifted off of her, afraid to move or hurt her.
I was horrified, staring at the girl I was beginning to like, the girl who shouldn’t have been there with her delicious hot blood on my lips and tongue, dribbling from the light puncture wounds on her neck.
She came back to life before I did, shoving me off her, hands hard on my chest. I didn’t fight back, falling on the ground as she leapt to her feet, cast one last terrified look at me, and held her fingers to the wounds I made on her neck; they came away with blood. Her breath hitched like she didn’t know whether to scream or hyperventilate. She looked around—
How had she even found her way here?
—and chose a path and ran.
I remained there, unable to wrap my mind around the fact that she was there, had been in my hands, had stopped my journey to Light. The heat that had been bubbling up in me as I prepared to feed, the Light that would have burst from me, transforming me to the form of a firefly, one of my truest forms of self, as was mylineage, shriveled up back inside of me and died. Like I wanted to do. And I didn’t think it would ever come back.
I would forever remain half human, half adze, never a whole of anything.
I stood up, failed, devastated, humiliated. How was I going to face my grandmother, who would inevitably know that I had not Lighted? That there was a disturbance on the Isle? She knew. And she would tell Elder James, and the rest of the Kin would know soon after.
Find her.
I didn’t chase her. She was no match for me. I had had her blood and was able to follow her wherever she was. I put my finger to my lips, relishing the taste of her blood and hating that I loved it at the same time. But it was so unbelievably good. It was only a taste, just like Nana always said we should have if we chose to drink from humans—if we everhadto do it. But we mustn’t.
Because if we drank from humans, if we killed them and from it became the monsters of lore, then there would be a boatful of consequences.
And yet. Maybe the consequences were worth it, if this was how they tasted. My tongue worked around my mouth, trying to get every bit of Hailey’s blood. It was exhilarating. Mind-numbing.
And overstimulating. Sounds thundered in without my earbuds to keep them back, but Hailey’s blood had opened up my senses, had opened her up to me, and I could hear everything—god it was torture—as if she were in my brain and crowding me out.
Oh my god. Oh my god. Oh my god. I’m gonna die. I’m gonna die. She’s going to eat me. What the fuck!
Now, wait. That wasn’t right. Her rambling words confused me, and I was kind of offended that she’d think I’d evereata person. I took a step in the direction where I was tracking her. I didn’t eat people.
If all of that came from just a taste—No, not a taste. It was really more of a lick if we thought deep about it. All that knowledge of Hailey’s thoughts and feelings from such a small amount. I couldn’t help feeling like I had been cheated from something owed me, something that would make me more like who I was supposed to be. The flood of emotions was about to drive me up the wall, coupled with the crescendo of noise from Hailey crashing through terrain she didn’t know, charging deeper and deeper in until she got lost and ended up at the cliff or lost in a marsh, where I wouldn’t be the only thing she’d have to be worried about. I was nearly about to chase Hailey down and—
Shit. Shit. Shit!
Hailey was louder than the tiniest ant. And I needed to get to her first before they did.
The reality slammed me into the present, into the urgency of the moment. Not that Hailey had witnessed something private, something no human was supposed to see unless given permission, but that Hailey was about to be caught by the Kin, who had held this secret of ours for centuries. Even the islanders outside the gates didn’t know about Nana Ama and me. If the Kin got ahold of Hailey, who shouldn’t have been here, who I brought, they wouldn’t let her leave.
The forest could be deadly. Hailey was not a person of the Isle. She was Mainland. She knew nothing about checking wind flowor the sky for where she was, nothing about checking which side the moss grew on to figure out which way was north, to lead her back to civilization, to the Gathering Tree, where the rest of the Kin would be. Hailey was now a threat. She’d seen too much, hundreds of years’ worth of too much. And if our rules held fast, and I knew they would if I didn’t stop them, Hailey would never leave the island alive.
