My uncle’s voice is booming. “The man at large—the man you want to kill—I’m sad to admit…is my nephew. Calloway Slater.”
A hundred sets of eyes meet mine, and before even a beat, the first of them is on me. I move faster, the drive of knowing Romy is just on the other side of the glass pushing me well beyond my normal limitations.
I’m faster. Stronger. Smarter. I anticipate moves before they happen and before even a moment has passed, ten men are on the floor, dead at my feet.
Two men exit immediately, running for the women, and a scream rends the air from the other room. I want to look—to check on my mate—but I know better than to spare the time. It’ll get me killed.
I move with precision and ease, working my way through the room with fast hands and an even faster knife. When Kane flips a man over in front of me and breaks his neck, I exhale.
Backup has arrived, thank God.
Rook doesn’t hold back, unleashing every ounce of his anger and strength on two vamps at the same time—quite literally smashing their heads together and managing to choke them to death simultaneously.
The room is fucking chaos. It’s bloody and violent and as vicious as anything I’ve ever seen.
And as the bodies pile up, the cowards make themselves known. They don’t challenge us—they hide.
The Wrath brothers are some of the worst offenders, along with the Council members. They don’t do the dirty work. They simply reap the rewards.
“The Wraths and the Council,” I call to Rook, who’s just felled another at his feet. “Make sure they don’t leave. Without them, all of this is for nothing.”
He nods, moving swiftly as Kane and I face our next challenge of vampires. They’re fast, but we’re faster, and the result is a bloody trip to join the other men on the floor.
Julian, the vampire who was kind to Romy, is left in their wake, but his eyes are surprisingly wide. As I approach, Kane yells to me from behind the next row of chairs.
“He has remorse! He doesn’t want this!”
With no time for long-winded negotiations, I issue my own ultimatum. “Julian, help us or die. Your choice.”
Without hesitation, Julian turns and stops the next approaching vampire in his tracks, sending him careening into the wall before smashing his skull against a metal table with a sickening thud.
It’s all the evidence I need to continue—and to let him do the same.
This fight is far from over, but I’m too deep into it to lose.
The only option left is maximum damage.
Romy
From nerves and silence to unease and uncertainty, the moment the tempo of our debut to the stage shifts, it’s impossible to miss. This isn’t the normal process, or at least, the crew working this room and standing guard at the door aren’t acting like it as they scramble and shout into the microphone radios at their chests.
An intense roar has built behind the mirrored wall in front of us, and the sounds of thuds and yells and grunts soon follow.
Girls glance between one another as one of the guards steps forward and holds a hand for us to stay.
“What’s going on?” Abigail asks, all her normal bravado reduced to nothing. At the sound of chaos and pure brutality on the other side, fear has finally reared its head.
“I don’t know,” I offer, trying to be a voice of calm. “But we should probably go back to the ballroom.”
Women scream and scatter everywhere as one of the vampires comes crashing through the mirror in front of the platform stage they’ve constructed for us to parade on and lands splayed and lifeless on the carpet in front of us.
“Oh my God!” Abigail’s shriek is high-pitched and pointed as she jumps off the back of the stage.
The whole room behind the glass reveals an all-out war between the vampires, Cal at the center of it.
But before I can fully process it, a hand clamps around my arm and yanks me backward.
A strangled gasp tears from my throat as cold fingers dig into my skin, and I look up to find a huge vampire with eyes as dark as night staring down at me.
