He doubles over as if he’s in agony. Smoke leaks from him, and he flashes into a new form—a black stag much too tall for this room. His antlers rip through the ceiling tiles. Another burst of smoke, and he’s a black owl with silver eyes. He utters a half-choked shriek before he transforms yet again into a night-dark panther whose muscled shoulder gleams wet with blood.
The startled exclamations from the other shifters let me know that this isn’t a normal occurrence.
“You can take multiple forms?” exclaims a shifter next to me.
The panther snarls at him, then bounds out of the office.
“What was that?” mutters the burly shifter, and another replies, “Let Philippa sort it out. She let him into the pack. Let’s just get this one to the gym.”
They escort me to the gymnasium, a big one by high school standards. Moss cloaks the cracks in the walls, and the once-glossy flooring is stained by water damage…or maybe blood. There are tiers of stadium chairs, the hard plastic ones that you have to fold down so you can sit on them.
Many of those seats are filled by people in hooded coats. Some of them wear masks, which makes sense. I can see why people in a murderous supernatural collective might not want their identities to be common knowledge. There are probably factions here, rival groups with opposing interests. And Raoul’s sister has to keep them all loyal, docile, and cooperative.
I don’t envy the bitch.
As I’m dragged across the floor of the stadium, I scan the place for exits. The few I can see have clusters of people nearby—guards probably. Even if I could break loose, gettingoutwould be a challenge.
A wave of panic weakens my limbs and blazes a red-hot warning in my mind. I want to shout at the crowd and beg them to understand that I’m not just a vampire—I’m a dancer, a singer, someone with dreams on the cusp of coming true. I want to ask them for mercy. I want to scream with all my might, “Please,please, don’t do this. Please let me go!”
My brother and sister screamed. They begged me to help them, but I was suffering through my own transition. Their voices rise in my memory, a cacophony in my head, far louder than the murmuring of the crowd in the stadium.
I don’t scream, because some dark part of me believes that I have no right to, that if this is my end, it’s only fair. My death was delayed by a trick of fate, but it should have happened in that bedroom all those years ago. I should have died with my siblings and left my parents childless, with no Chosen daughter to lighten the guilt of the choice they made.
What hurts the most is that I never saw true guilt from either of them.
The spectators point at me and lean toward each other, whispering. I must look so strange to them, dressed in my sexy bounty huntress costume fromSidewinder, with my hair disheveled and my makeup smeared. I can feel the panther shifter’s rotten blood around my mouth. I don’t want to lick it off, and no one wipes it away for me.
My handlers drag me over to a tall metal post bolted to a small rolling platform on wheels. It’s like a stake that can be moved from place to place for convenient burning of witches or, in my case, vampires.
I’m forced to stand on the low platform, and I’m held in place by powerful hands. They lift my arms high above my head and lock the handcuffs to a bracket on the post.
My handlers back away, yielding space as three people approach.
One is Gil Leveque, one of the directors ofSidewinder. Raoul never talks much about him except to call him a misogynistic ass, but I remember hearing someone say that he and Raoul are distantly related. It never really clicked with me until this moment that as a relative of Raoul’s, he must also be a shifter.
He’s carrying a large, shallow wooden box covered with intricate engravings. His eyes rove my body, and an oily smirk spreads across his face. He likes seeing me in this state, with my arms bound above my head and my body stretched taut against the pole. Dickhead.
In the center of the trio is Philippa de Chagny, and at her other side is Raoul.
He’s visibly shaking. Each step drags as if he’s struggling not to move forward, as though his limbs are being forced to advance against his will.
“Raoul,” I say desperately. “Raoul, did she hurt you?”
His face contorts as if he’s trying to speak, but not a word passes his lips.
“We can fight them together,” I say, even though I know it’s a lie. He doesn’t seem like himself—Philippa has done something to him. And even if he was fine, the two of us against the Collective is really bad odds.
Someone reads a statement over the gym’s PA system. It’s a recap of the “crimes” I’m guilty of, with a couple false accusations thrown in for good measure.
“That’s not true!” I shout, jerking against the handcuffs. But it’s mostly true. I did kill the men in the alley—slaughtered them brutally when I could have just injured them and walked away. I did fail to pay my dues to the Collective. And I did lure, drug, and drink from dozens of human men.
No one pays attention to my protest anyway. The announcer declares that my sentence is a trifold death, which apparently means I’ll be stabbed through the heart, decapitated, and then burned for good measure. Talk about overkill. Decapitation or burning would do the trick, but I suppose they like to be thorough when dealing with vampires.
“Raoul de Chagny, brother of our esteemed leader, will carry out the sentence,” declares the announcer.
“The fuck he will,” I gasp. “Raoul?”
Again, his face twists with agony, but he can’t seem to speak.She’s controlling him somehow. A shifter thing maybe, some power related to their pack dynamic.
