Reaching my magic out, I try to connect to Sam.
Nothing.
Fuck.
I join my small team, which is purposefully my closest Hunter family, toward the stairwell at the end of the gilded hall. I wouldn’t be able to focus if any of them were out of my sight. Master Hull and Grace lead the way, Riot and I in the center, and Rhett behind us.
My father told me bedtime stories that included the anatomy of this castle, writing the skeleton of its rooms into my memory before I ever knew the importance of it.
We climb to the second floor, up a carpeted stairwell as wide as the streets in the city. Paintings hang along the walls: portraits of royals, depictions of infamous drainings, and the brutality that led to the Goreon empire—all on display.
We’re halfway up the stairwell when a vampire snaps into existence in front of Grace, screaming, its fangs bared and eyes vacant, and my soul leaves me.
Riot’s and my magic whips into a frenzy, gold splashing and sloshing.
Grace slashes her blades through the vampire’s neck without hesitation, and the head topples down the stairs. Her reaction time is like nothing I’ve ever seen from her.
Trust the talent you know she has, damnit. Calm the fuck down.
“Too close,” Riot whispers beside me, and I glance over at him, knowing my face is as white as it feels.
“Settle down, boys. We’re just getting started,” Grace chirps, not bothering to look back and climbs the stairs two at a time, ready and eager.
Her confidence wraps around me, and I let it, desperate to calm my racing heart. Grace has always been this way. Independent, fierce, and unpredictable.
“Yes, ma’am,” Riot says. There’s no sarcasm in his tone, and I feel his magic settle at his Heir’s words.
“Two more minutes,” I whisper as we head down a hallway, and I pick the lock into the first door. Peering around its edge, I find vampires dressed in their finest, passed out on a bed together.
I guess they partied before taking the serum.
Ducking back into the hallway, I count twenty doors behind our party and say, “Bedrooms. Clear a room and keep moving to the next until we execute the entire wing.”
We each choose a door and enter on my signal.
Six unconscious vampires are littered about on plush furniture, and one shifts at the sound of the door closing, a moan escaping its mouth.
I creep silently across the room and shove a stake through its heart.
It gurgles and jerks, eyes trying to pop open, but the serum holds them shut, and a tear slips down its cheek.
I stake the remaining five in seconds and dip back into the hallway, Riot coming out of his room beside me.
Grace is already darting through her next chosen door.
“She’swinning,” Riot whines and races to his next target.
Gods, I love my people.
I enter another bedroom, freezing in disgust. Two unconscious humans are chained to the wall with ports jammed into their thighs, a slow drip of blood falling from the attached tubes.
I cross the room and kneel before them, hand skirting to the woman’s neck and then the other.
No pulses.
I turn, rage simmering. Why even bother with the port if they’re going to drain them anyway? I guess the blood lasts longer through the port than a single-serving bite.
Anger fueling every step, I race to the lounge on the far side of the bedroom, stabbing the five vampires draped over furniture, wishing it hurt with the same pain and fear that ran through the tortured humans chained in this room. I tamp down my desire to inflict what these vampires truly deserve because that would require much more time and consciousness.
