Hex stands there, his eyes glowing in an unnatural blue, his laptop tucked under one arm. He takes in the scene, me pressed against Crave, both of us clearly seconds away from tearing each other’s clothes off, and doesn’t even blink.
“We have a problem,” he announces.
I straighten my shirt, trying for dignity and failing miserably. “Yeah. You just walked in on us. That’sdefinitelya problem.”
Crave makes a sound that’s half laugh, half growl. “This better be important, Hex.”
“It is.” The warlock’s expression is grim. “Viktor.”
And with that one name, our passion fades, and we stand. Crave’s rage threads through me as if it’s my own. He takes my hand, and we walk downstairs. The whole MC is here, and none of them look happy.
Whatever Hex needs to show us, it isn’t good.
Chapter Fifteen
CRAVE
The clubhouse is still tense from Viktor’s last message when Eden stumbles into the middle of the clubhouse and collapses.
Not a stumble.
Not a faint.
A full body drop to her knees like someone cut her strings, and the scream that tears from her throat isn’t human. It’s pure Banshee, a raw, anguished death song that shatters every window we just finished repairing and sends cracks spiderwebbing up the walls.
“Eden!” Seraphine rushes to her, but I’m already moving, vampire speed carrying me across the room.
Eden’s eyes roll back, showing only whites, and blood streams from her nose in twin rivers of crimson. Her body convulses, back arching at an angle that should break her spine, fingers clawing at the concrete hard enough to leave grooves in the stone.
“Three,” she gasps between screams, her voice layered with the voices of the dying. “Three deaths. Downtown. Right… n-now. I h-hear them—” Another scream cuts off her words, and the lights overhead explode in cascading bursts of sparks and glass.
Sloane’s terror hits me from across the room, sharp and bright, her magic flaring in a burst of crimson-gold beneath her skin. I send calm surging back along the tether between us, even while something inside me braces for a fight.
“Turn on the TV,” Hex commands, his fingers already flying across his laptop. “She’s never wrong. If she’s sensing deaths downtown…”
Rogue grabs the remote and hits power. The screen flickers to life, and what we see makes my thousand-year-old blood run cold.
“Breaking news, mass attack downtown, multiple casualties, I honestly can’t believe what I am witnessing.” The camera is shaky, clearly shot from someone’s phone, but the image is unmistakable. A figure in the center of a crowded street, moving with inhuman speed. Three humans on the ground, throats torn open, blood pooling beneath them in expanding circles of crimson on the asphalt.
And the figure standing over them, fangs descended, eyes glowing that terrible red of a feeding frenzy?
It’sme.
“What the actual fuck?” Scorch breathes.
But it can’t beme.
I’m standing right here, watching myself on television commit the exact crime that will bring the Coven of Crows down on our heads with absolute finality.
The camera zooms in, and I seemy face, the angular features, the silver eyes now burning red, even the leather vest with the Eternal Sins MC patch clearly visible. The figure,me,looks directly at the camera and smiles, blood dripping from fangs that are undeniably mine.
Then it moves.
Grabs the nearest body, a young woman, college-aged, terror frozen on her dead face, and bites again. Not to feed. To turn. I watch myself force blood down her throat with brutal efficiency.
Creating a scion.
In public.
