chance now to—
All hell broke loose.
A high scream cut short on a gurgle came from the other side of the mansion, and the night was suddenly full of noise and motion. Geysers of dirt exploded up, black scarecrow forms leaping free and bits of grass flying. I tugged sideways on the
Bloodhunger lit up inside every vein in my body. I
—but the curved edge just slid through empty air because the sucker dropped in midleap, clutching at his throat like he had a rock lodged in there. He curled up like a pillbug, but I was already past. I’d expected him to hit me and flung myself forward. Landed hard, sneakers digging into soft-churned earth, the left-hand
I was already in second form, Christophe’s voice echoing in my head.
The scarecrow shadows leapt at me, and I almost panicked. Fangs glowing ivory and champing, foam spraying from their reddened lips, their hair standing up as their version of the aspect crackled through them, the suckers moved in with that unholy speed. The world slowed down, the clear plastic goop that was my own super- speed kicking in hardening on every surface, the
I’d barely begun on third form. But Christophe also said that mastery lay in the first two, that if you practiced only those, you would have the essence of all of them. He took me through them every night before sparring, over and over again—
I hop-skipped forward, weight precisely balanced, and the
Because the scarecrow vampires seemed to hit an invisible force field. The bloodhunger flexed inside my veins each time, and the suckers crumbled, choking and gagging. One of them fell before I even hit him, clutching at his throat.
Looked like I’d finally become toxic to suckers. In a big way.
But if Sergej had been able to endure my mother’s toxicity for long enough to hang her in the oak tree outside that yellow house—
Dad’s yell snapped me to attention.
This sucker was more durable. He was choking as the blade sheared through his right leg, and it was a good thing I’d ducked because his claws were out and whistling through where my head would’ve been if I hadn’t been down. The touch burning inside my head like napalm in a barrel, a gush of black stinking acidic blood from the sudden shortness of his leg, I drove up with long muscles in my legs, left-hand
Sometimes suckers like certain victim types. And also, doing the sniff test sharpens your tracking ability. With the touch burning in my head, I was never wrong.
These were shutterclicks, images of bodies carried down this hall, prey thinking it had escaped and brought down so close to freedom, a collage of nasty images slamming through my head like iron dodgeballs smacking unprotected flesh.
The floor plan was clear in my head. The door was ahead of me, looming, and I left the ground in a sidekick that would have made any superhero proud. The thought that maybe if the door was locked or barred I’d just hurt myself didn’t even cross my mind, because before I got there, it exploded.
Literally
Smoke. Yellow flame crawling over the walls.
Then I was scrambling to get on my feet, because
You wouldn’t even struggle.
My mother’s locket gave a flare of painful heat, so hot I was suddenly afraid it had melted on my sternum. I let out a soundless cry—soundless because it was
Sergej grinned. And right before he blurred through space and I brought the
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
I came to in bits and pieces, lying on my back.
Dust. I smelled dust, and something like burned coffee. Dampness, the peculiar smell of something underground, like a root cellar. And spice, like carnations.
On the heels of that realization came another one. I
But . . . I couldn’t see.
I blinked a couple times. It made no difference. The same thick darkness, like a blanket against my eyeballs. I