Too late.
The boulder spun around.
This time, it was Vivienne’s turn to curse. Her heart raced in her chest, and she released her wings.
By all the gods and everything else she’d ever held dear, this was awful.
Theydefinitelyshould have turned back and gotten the king.
A Living Corpse
Alump appeared in Marius’s throat, and he roughly swallowed it away.
He’d seen a plethora of terrible things throughout his lifetime—arguably more than any one person should ever have to deal with—but this…
This was worse than all those combined.
Oh, gods.
His bodyguard had been right all along. He’d made a grave miscalculation in coming here. Every ounce of mortal blood in his body screamed as primal onyx eyes glistening with madness met his through the trees. His heart thundered, making a concerted effort to escape his chest.
The creature—for to call it a woman would be a disservice to every beautiful female Marius had ever encountered over the course of his life—was a living corpse.
Emaciated, grey, rotting flesh stuck to bones. Strands of once beautiful hair hung around the creature’s face, framing sunken cheeks and a long, thin nose. Dry, cracked lips that were more grey than pale rose werecoated in brilliant crimson. The shock of color was incongruous with the creature’s ashen flesh. Rags that might once have been a beautiful gown clung to the creature’s frame.
Brittle hands gripped a frail woman whose brown hair trailed in the snow behind her. The human’s head hung limply, and blood streamed down her neck.
Bile rose in Marius’s throat, and he took a step back before he even realized what he was doing. He’d been around thousands of vampires in his time, and he was used to their preternatural beauty and grace.
But this.
This wasn’t that.
Not at all.
Death incarnate took the form of the First, and it was the stuff of his worst nightmares. Never, in his wildest dreams, could he have ever imagined that this kind of horrible creature actually existed.
It did, and even worse than that, it was staring.
Directly.
At.
Them.
Its black eyes were endless pits of darkness.
Marius’s fingers curled tighter around his daggers, even though a niggling voice inside of him warned his weapons were incapable of harming this creature.
There was an otherworldliness about the First that was unlike anything he’d ever seen.
This had been a mistake. He could see that now. His magic writhed in his veins, urging him to run.
It was too late, though.
The First cocked its head, a predator assessing its prey. A longmoment passed before the vampire unfurled its fingers and dropped the limp woman.
The human let out a muffled cry as she fell.
