Lucien was already moving. I heard the rustle of the backpack, the zip of a jacket. When I turned back, she wasdressed, Lucien close at her side—blocking the wind, blocking everything that wasn’t her.
Then the scent hit me.
Blood. Rich, ancient, and overwhelmingly powerful—rolling down the mountainside like an invisible tide. It flooded my senses, drowning out the pine and the damp earth and the cold. My fangs punched through my gums before I could stop them, and a hunger unlike anything I’d ever experienced ripped through my gut. Not the manageable ache of needing to feed.
This was something primal. Something feral. Every instinct I had screamed at me to hunt, to feed, to tear into whatever was producing that scent and drink until there was nothing left.
My hands trembled. My vision sharpened, colors bleeding away until the world narrowed to shades of red and shadow.
What the hell was happening to me?
I glanced at Selena. Her eyes had gone wide, her lips parted, her own fangs descending. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth, her body swaying slightly, fighting the same pull that was tearing through me.
Rose had gone pale, her fingers gripping Valentin’s arm, her breath coming in shallow gasps. And Valentin himself was rigid beside her—nostrils flaring, a vein pulsing at his temple, his hands balled into fists at his sides.
Every vampire in the group was being hit. Hard.
Darius frowned, his silver eyes darting between us. “What’s happening to you?”
Lucien stepped closer to Raven, instinctively putting himself between her and whatever was affecting us. Alice hung back, watching with wide, wary eyes.
They couldn’t smell it. They couldn’t feel it. This was for us. Only us.
Valentin looked up a steep hill that disappeared into the mist, his jaw clenched against the hunger clawing at him. “It’s upthere.” His voice was strained, barely controlled. “Can you smell it? It’s overpowering.”
The castle. The blood was coming from the castle.
Dracula’s fortress was calling to its children. And every drop of vampire blood in my veins was answering.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Selena
The hunger was unbearable. It went beyond thirst, beyond craving—it was as if every pore in my body, every cell in my blood, was screaming for what lay up that hill. The scent rolled down through the trees in waves, rich and ancient and intoxicating, pulling at something so deep inside me I couldn’t fight it any more than I could fight gravity.
Balthazar was right. We’d know.
Dense pine trees climbed the steep hillside, their trunks dark and slick with moisture. Thick fog moved between them, curling around the roots, drifting across the ground in slow, deliberate patterns that didn’t follow the wind. Like it was guiding us. Or herding us.
Rocco clasped my hand. “Come on.”
He led me up the hill, his grip firm, his stride purposeful despite the treacherous ground. The going was brutal—fallen logs slick with moss, jagged rocks jutting from the earth at odd angles, mud that sucked at our boots with every step. My calvesburned. My lungs ached from the thin, cold air. But I couldn’t have stopped even if I’d wanted to. The scent wouldn’t let me.
My heart pounded harder with every step. The smell of blood grew stronger and stronger, thickening in the air until I could taste it on my tongue—copper and something sweeter, something ancient that made my fangs throb and my vision blur at the edges.
Was Vex in this castle? I hoped he was. I hoped this was the right one and that we hadn't wasted precious hours chasing the wrong scent to the wrong ruin. But even as the rational part of my brain tried to weigh the odds, it didn't matter. I couldn't have pulled away from this if I'd tried. The scent had sunk its hooks into me, and one look at Rocco's clenched jaw, Rose’s deep scowl, and Valentin's wild eyes told me none of us could.
We were moths drawn to a flame. And I wasn’t sure how this story would end.
As Rocco and I climbed higher, the dense forest began to thin. The ancient pines gave way to gnarled, skeletal trees with bare branches that clawed at the fog like twisted fingers. A gravel road emerged from the undergrowth—cracked and overgrown with weeds, but unmistakably man-made. It twisted up the hillside in a series of sharp switchbacks, disappearing into the mist above.
“I guess we follow the yellow brick road,” Rocco grumbled, staring at the crumbling gravel path winding up through the fog.
I wanted to laugh but I couldn’t bring myself to. Not with the hunger clawing at my insides and the scent growing thicker with every step, coating the back of my throat like honey laced with poison.
We followed the road as it twisted up the hillside, switchback after switchback, the gravel crunching beneath my boots like broken bones. The fog pressed in closer. The trees thinned to nothing. And then the road curved one final time, and I gasped.
The castle rose from the mountainside like something born from a nightmare.
