Page 36 of No One’s Daughter

As real as fucking vampires.

It was beautiful.

I watched in awe as tendrils of it left her body and weaved through the air, cutting through the chaos like thread being pulled tight.

And then—

Everything in me broke and I watched as blood poured from her throat in a sudden, violent rush as a dark figure dropped from above.

A man—no, not a man—something else, folded huge wings behind him as he landed, Eve’s body discarded at his feet like it meant nothing.

Like she meant nothing.

A scream tore from my throat before I could stop it.

Davien moved instantly, turning and firing two shots in quick succession, so fast I barely registered it. But it didn’t matter because the thing was already moving toward us. A grin spread across his face, slow and deliberate, like he knew exactly what he was doing and he enjoyed it.

Enjoyed my fear.

Enjoyed me.

Fear coursed through my veins, almost stopping my heart completely, and I couldn’t stop the feeling from consuming me as my fangs elongated.

“Well hello there little darling,” he said, his tone disturbingly normal, a voice that was all too human. Too casual, too damn calm. Almost fucking pleasant.

Panic surged, terrifying and suffocating, flooding my chest, my throat, my lungs, until there was no room left for anything else.

He was going to kill me.

I didn’t want to die.

The thought hit with a force that felt physical.

And something inside me answered.

The world shifted.

Not outside.

Inside.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Davien

IT FELT AS though my limbs had been torn from every corner of my body while simultaneously merging with hers. In my eight-hundred and then some years alive, I had only ever experienced anything remotely close to that a handful of times, and I’d forgotten just how brutal the process felt. I’d been unable to ground myself, the air around us had warped, and then we were floating between the stars. It was over in the flash of a second, but my body felt its force like a punch to the gut. My muscles trembled as I lifted myself up from my knees.

​It was old magic.

​Powerful.

​The kind that was almost forgotten.

My eyes darted around the darkness, trying to find anything at all to latch on to. Anything to tell me where I was. The landscape around me looked as battered and broken by the roaring elements as I felt. There were nothing but endless fields and the night sky. Just the broken handcuffs that had once tethered me to her lay broken on the ground. I inhaled deeply, the cold, damp brisk air filling my lungs, staving the nausea somewhat as I righted myself.

Where the fuck were we?

We were in the middle of fucking nowhere.