Page 68

“Let me go!”I said again and tore a swath across the darkness, seeing a brief gleam of moonlight before the blanket descended again, healing itself.

“Not until we’ve had a chance to talk.The other will wait—”

“He won’t!”

“He is underground in the Circle’s HQ, is he not?”the voice sounded reasonable, which only made me more furious.“That is where the portal was, not out in the street.He will keep—”

“Don’t tell me what he will do!”I roared and knew he felt the power behind it.Power that I was going to run through quickly because the so-called “god” that Jonas’s boys had dragged back was pathetic, and I’d only absorbed half his strength.

“Cassie—”

“They’ll find him!”I said, lashing out again and seeing daylight just ahead.But when I ran toward it, it healed up again, and when I swiped a hand through the space where it had been, it was gone.

“Perhaps it is better if they do,” the dark-haired man’s voice returned, and this time it was flat, judgmental.“You are not riding this much power; it is riding you.Let it go.”

And just like that, I felt some of it leave me.Not a huge amount, but noticeable.He was drawing it off!

“You’re feeding off me.”I couldn’t quite believe it.What was this creature?Not a god—

Vampire.

Master.

Powerful.

The words floated through my brain, but I couldn’t concentrate on them.Powerful!He wasnothingto me!He was as weak as they all were!And yet he dared—

“Yes, I dare,” the voice came again.“For you, for all of us, I would dare a great deal more than this.Come back to us, Cassie.Fight!I know you’re in there; I can feel your conflict, your pain—”

“Get out of my head!”

And then I felt it again, a power draw: stuttering, imperfect, nothing like what I could do.

But effective.For a moment, it made my head swim, made me stagger, made me confused.

What washappening?

“I am drawing off some of the excess to give you a fighting chance,” the voice came again, echoing around the darkness.“But I can only do so much.Our connection is flawed, and I do not have the resources I once did to help me.No, not by half.”

Family, I thought.He’s talking about his family.I almost asked where they were and what had happened to them, then wondered what was wrong with me.

I didn’t care where they were!

“Don’t you?”The voice challenged from another direction, causing me to whirl around.“You don’t want to hear about Marco, then?How he died fighting for your court with a sword in each hand, facing down a god?He looked like the gladiator he once was, if only for a moment.I saw a flash of him right before I felt the agony—”

“Stop it!”I said because I suddenly felt it, too, a sharp, hard pain right under my breastbone, as if someone had shoved a sword through me.

“Or Fred,” the voice continued relentlessly.“Who I also saw, although he wasn’t mine.Marco was looking at him, ordering him to flee ahead of the danger when he wouldn’t himself.I saw him grab up several of the children, as many as he could carry, and turn toward the door.I saw his face right before fire took them both.”

“Stop it!”I was sobbing, although that didn’t make sense.What was this sorcery?What was hedoing?

“He tried Cassie, even knowing it wouldn’t be enough.He tried—”

“Shut up!”I screamed, grabbing my head.The room was spinning like a mad carousel, faster and faster, but he didn’t shut up.And his voice was coming from everywhere now.

“I felt the rest of them, emancipated as they might have been, but still my children, my creations, myblood.I loved them as if they were my own flesh, and I felt it when each of the bright stars in my firmament went out.I felt it here,” I heard him beat his chest with a fist, but couldn’t see it, couldn’t see him, couldn’t see anything but blurred darkness as I spun ever faster.

“Stop this,” I whispered this time, disoriented and in pain, although I didn’t know why.