Pari would visit me when I stayed with Sebastian at his townhouse. She had an advantage over the Society now, one she could not share. He taught her everything to know about vampires, their abilities, how they fought, and most importantly, how she could work around their strengths. The truth could have saved so many lives, but Father would not hear of what he did not discover himself.
I swirled my brush into the deep green, working to awaken life now. Olivia read on the settee. Mother worked on her cross stitch. Pari sharpened her dagger.
And with the flipping of pages, the pulling of thread, and the swift grinding of metal, it was still too quiet.
And my heart fell with the first tremor.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Muffled shouts drifted through the air like ghosts of a war already lost. I couldn’t register the words. The breeze curled around my neck and lifted my hair like withered hands; it was softly dying, far too still for what marched along the horizon. My feet were paralyzed on unstable ground as I stood on the balcony, looking beyond the blue dark, what was bathed in silver as the bloated moon hung high.
They broke through the distant tree line. Hundreds. Thousands? My heart stuttered as I looked upon what was born of Alaric’s silence. His army surrounded the manor, and they quickly descended upon us.
I fell back into my body with a jolt.
“Charlotte!” Pari was shaking me with wild eyes. “We need to get them to the safe room.”
I blinked a few times, turning around to see Mother clutching Olivia’s shoulders. For the first time in a long while I saw something other than disdain draped over her seraphic features. Fear.
I nodded absentmindedly, unsheathing my obsidian dagger. Each step grew heavier, like wading through a dream. I entered back into the sitting room shrouded in a fog I couldn’t escape. Society members poured through the halls, some broke off to enter various rooms including this one, guarding the windows as the army neared closer. One was moving slower than the rest, he wasn’t as frantic as the other hunters. He moved with purpose.
He stopped before one of the floor length mirrors cloaked in a white sheet. With one swift motion, he tore the sheet off and tossed it aside. The glass dulled, the reflection swallowed up by an unfolding dark. An eternal abyss devoid of any light. And out stepped newborn after newborn.
“Run.” I didn’t even hear my own voice, but everyone else did as they followed my eyes.
As we tore down the halls, I spotted several other members tearing the sheets off of the mirrors, several more newborns coming through. We’ve had far more vampires within the Society than ever expected.
The air grew thicker each step we took down the spiral stairs. The stone damp with moisture. The ground trembled above us as explosions set off throughout the expanse of the property. The stairs to the safe room were well hidden and deep underground. Elsie was already there along with several other staff members. Olivia clutched my arm as I turned to leave with Pari. Her eyes welled with tears.
“It’s alright, Olivia. I have to go.”
“Why do you have to go? You can’t fight with them.” Her lip trembled.
I took in a shaky breath, one that I wasn’t able to expel fully. This night would fracture my world leaving behind irreparable damage. And I have hidden long enough. “I’m going to end this.”
Her eyes widened as my mother’s narrowed. I looked to Elsie as I passed by her. She reached out squeezing my hand and giving a sharp nod, her vibrant green eyes on fire. Her son was up there.
The secret entrance to the safe room stairs was tucked away within one of the smaller sitting rooms, of which a couple members guarded the entrance, quickly dispelling of any newborns that tried to pass. The sheets still covered the mirrors in here.
I slammed the hilt of my dagger into the glass with a strangled cry. Pari quickly caught on and did the same to another mirror as I took care of the last two.
As we went to leave, a hand grabbed hold of my arm.
“Miss, you cannot go out there. You must go back to the safe room.” It was one of the members guarding the door. I didn’t recognize him. He must have been new.
“Let. Me. Go.” It was the most forward I had ever been—apart from with Sebastian and Alaric—the most rude too, butwe couldn’t waste any time. The longer this went on, the more deaths stacked up, the heavier the weight grew upon my chest.
“Let her go,” Pari said curtly, both our eyes narrowed on the member.
He looked to his partner for backup, though he only shrugged. Adam. He had been with the Society for years. He knew me well, which included all of my oddities. Perhaps my reputation has finally proved to be useful.
The member let me go, shaking his head in confusion.
I held in a breath as we stepped out into the hall. Bodies littered the floor, some Society members, a lot of newborns. The members were highly trained. The newborns, though stronger than humans, couldn’t have received as much training as the Society demanded, and it was evident in their erratic, uncoordinated movements.
They were humans once. Their lives were taken. And Alaric hadn’t prepared them enough for war, leaving them to fall quickly. They were just disposable numbers that could always be increased. Alaric’s newborn army far surpassed the total members we had, but one member could take out three newborns within seconds.
And all I could see was people dying. My hands were coated in warm blood, forever staining my skin, though I hadn’t even lifted my dagger once. Pari took down any newborn that got in our way. And it filled my hands, spilling over onto the floor, soon to drown me.
