Monstersarereal.
And they’re standing between me and the things that want me dead.
“Keep them away from Sloane!” Crave’s voice cuts through the chaos as he moves in a blur, so much faster than my eyes can track. One moment, he’s near me, the next he’s across the room with his hand through a vampire’s chest.
He rips out the creature’s heart.
Crushes it.
Moves to the next one.
This is what he really is.
More vampires flood in through every entrance.
So many.
Too many.
And they’re moving withpurpose.
In the center of the main room, Dread stands like a statue, and the air around him feels like a vacuum. It presses in on me, heavy and suffocating, as though all the oxygen has been stripped away and replaced with pure, choking fear. My lungs burn when I drag in shallow breaths, my skin crawling as if something unseen is brushing against my thoughts. Panic coilstight in my chest, and I have the horrifying sense that if I meet his gaze, he’ll see straight through me.
The vampires that step within ten feet of him freeze mid-stride.
Their eyes go wide, too wide, mouths opening in silent screams as their weapons slip from nerveless fingers. They’re not seeing the clubhouse anymore. I can tell by the way their bodies fold in on themselves, the way terror steals their breath. They’re somewhere else. Somewhere far worse.
A shudder rips through me when I realize what Dread is doing.
He’s showing them their worst fears. Not imagined horrors, not threats, but truths their minds can’t survive.
One vampire drops his weapon and bolts for the door, screaming like an animal being skinned alive. Another collapses to his knees, clawing at his own face, tearing flesh and sobbing as if he can rip himself free from whatever nightmare has him trapped. I press a hand to my mouth, bile rising, my vision blurring as dread—real dread—seeps into my bones.
Because if this is what he can do to them…
I don’t want to know what he could do to me.
I take off, trying to get away from the fear he is projecting, and I spot Hex. He hasn’t moved from his laptop, and that somehow unsettles me more than the blood and fire. His fingers fly across the keyboard, fast enough that they blur, but the screens aren’t normal anymore. They glow. Symbols crawl across the monitors, runes, pulsing with an eerie blue light that makes my skin prickle. I don’t understand what I’m looking at, only that it’s wrong in a way that feels deliberate.
“Jamming their communications,” he says calmly, like he’s commenting on the weather.
“Crashing their coordination protocols.”
A chill skates down my spine. I don’t even know how the supernatural communicates, but he does. The implications land heavily, my breath stalling in my chest.
His eyes lift from the screens and glow the same unnatural blue. The overhead lights surge violently, bulbs flickering as power roars through the room. I flinch, ducking instinctively while electricity arcs through the air with terrifying precision. It doesn’t strike at random. It chooses. Vampires convulse mid-attack, bodies snapping rigid as smoke curls from their skin before they collapse in smoking heaps.
I don’t move.
I can’t.
Fire and claws feel like chaos, but this… this feels like complete coordinated control.
And that might be the most frightening thing of all.
Hades stands near the hallway leading deeper into the compound. The moment I see his eyes, my stomach drops. They’re completely white, rolled back in his skull, and something inside me recoils hard enough to make my knees threaten to buckle. This isn’t the kind of power I’ve seen from the others. This is wrong in a way my every nerve recognizes.
When he lifts his hands, the temperature plummets. The cold slams into me so fast I gasp, breath fogging the air as frost creeps across the floor in spiraling, unnatural patterns. My fingers go numb, my chest tightens, and it feels like the room itself is holding its breath, waiting.
