The females hug each other goodbye, unaware of the vampire watching them from not that far away, before they disperse in different directions. I wait only a heartbeat longer before slinking through the shadows in pursuit.
Sariah glides effortlessly through the empty streets, humming a low, throaty tune that carries towards my hypersensitive ears. She rounds a corner and another one, and I prepare to emerge from the night like a devilishly handsome predator and sweep her off her feet, quite literally.
However, when I catch up to her, the alleyway is completely empty. She’s nowhere to be seen.
Huh?
How the fuck did I lose her? I was two steps behind her the whole time.
I whirl around, scanning the alley, but nothing’s amiss. There are no hidden passageways where she could have disappeared, no intersecting streets.
Did she go inside one of these houses?
Does she have a lover around here waiting to pleasure her until the crack of dawn?
I grit my teeth at the thought.
Nobody should please that little pixie in the near future besides me.
As I stand and sweep my surroundings for any sign of her, a sharp pain explodes in my neck. I gasp and grab my throat, a thin stick jutting out from my skin.
What the…
My thoughts turn sluggish, and I sway on the spot, unable to hold my weight any longer.
My knees hit the gravel just a second before my whole body goes limp, and I can’t even feel the gravel under my cheek.
“Oopsie, handsome. You okay there?”
I strain my eyesight to stare unfocused at the figure grinning widely from above me.
She’s a blond vision wrapped in starlight and exuding a danger I did not see fucking coming.
“It’s not nice to stalk beautiful, defenseless ladies in the dead of night, you know?” she tuts in a singsong voice.
“It’s not safe out here, pretty boy.”
My tongue is heavy as lead in my mouth, no words forming properly.
All I can manage is an undignified “oomph”.
Her tinkling laughter wraps around my confused brain, and I can’t hold on to my consciousness any longer.
Chapter 4
Aimee
Swirlsofblackpourfrom my fingertips, circling the training hall’s floor before converging back into my palm, forming a caliginous poniard that’s as sharp as it is wicked. I curl my fingers around its crossguard, gauging the lightweight heft and how it feels in my hand.
I’ve reached a point where I can will my shadows into taking different shapes of weapons, and I’m trying my damnedest to find the one that feels like an extension of myself.
But nothing sticks.
My disappointed sigh reverberates in the chamber’s silence as loud as a brass bell, and I loosen my fingers, allowing the shadows to dissipate into plumes of inklike smoke.
Nothing feels even remotely like Killian’s dagger did.
Kadirah.
