Ash shook off the eerie feeling as she made her way along the gravelly path toward a cottage with a faded blue door at the very back of the hamlet.
She raised her hand to knock and hesitated, her breath fogging the cold air. From inside came the soft clink of metal dishes and the rich, buttery aroma of tea brewing. Oh, good, someone was up.
Ash rapped lightly on the warped wood and waited, listening for shuffling footsteps.
The panel creaked open. An old, stoop-shouldered woman peered out, clinging to the door handle. White hair hung in disarray around a thin, brown face mapped with wrinkles. Rheumy, dark eyes fixed on Ash, distrust sharp in their depths.
“Hullo,namaste.” Ash pressed her palms together in a quick prayer greeting. “Janika, is she back?”
The woman stared at her, scraggly eyebrows drawing together, her expression blank.
Oh, brilliant. With decades of foreign hikers coming through, she’d hoped someone might speak a little English. But apparently not. And of course, her mobile translator had gone wonky the moment she entered the valley. She should’ve brought a local along.
“Nearly twenty-seven years ago,” she began slowly, “a couple came here from England. They had a baby?—”
“Nahin.”The woman shook her head.
“Look…” Ash fished out her mobile and pulled up a snapshot of her parents when they were younger, and of her, as a baby, in her mother’s arms. She turned the screen to the woman. “My parents, Charles and Emily James. They stayed in the area and knew Janika. She helped them with their baby.Me.” She tapped her chest, then the picture.
“Jani, no come. Tomorrow.”
Janika still wasn’t back?
Ash let out a small, frustrated breath and forced a smile. “Thank you.”
A little disheartened, she made her way back to the boarding house?—
“Daayan!”
The hatred in that single word made her blood run cold. Footsteps thundered behind her.
Oh, for hell’s sake!
Rough hands grabbed her arms. Ash twisted, power surging through her fingertips. Lightning crackled, striking a nearby shrub, bursting into flames. Their shouts grew frenzied. She drove her elbow back, hearing cartilage crunch, and rammed her knee into another’s groin.
Apparently, her rusty, high school self-defense skills still worked?—
A fist connected with her temple. Ash cried out, pain exploding through her skull. The world tilted and swam. She stumbled.
A coarse sack was dragged over her head, plunging her into blind, gritty darkness. More hands seized her, binding her wrists tightly before they dragged her away.
“You fucking twats,” she snarled, her stomach heaving, her breath thick and bilious inside the sack. “When I’m free, I’ll make your pyre your own bloody grave!”
Chapter
Three
Race moved silentlythrough the narrow alleyway in Bucharest as snow drifted between the decrepit buildings like lost souls. Fitting, since the demonii scourges loved hunting where desperation already had a chokehold on hope.
The cold didn’t touch him—not with his dragon side running hot. He watched the powdery flakes seep through the cracks in the windowpanes, reaching for the humans huddled inside their crumbling shelters.
With demoniis scarce, the weather did the killing for them.
A familiar icy sensation crawled over his psyche, and the inked sword on his biceps stirred in response. Race slowed his steps.
The scourges were on the prowl.
Their sulfuric stench cut through the crisp winter air, singeing his senses.
