Page 65

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN || MICHAEL

The entrance of the mine vanished down a long, narrow corridor that terminated into inky blackness. Because the darkness was nearly total and we couldn’t use flashlights, the vampires went first. Thierry took the lead, with Danny right behind him. Bryan, of course, stayed with Tobias, and I ended up in the back.

It smelled of damp earth and I could feel the crunch of gravel and hard earth beneath my shoes, but Tobias’s earlier spell had silenced the sound of our approach, so I heard nothing, save for the sound of my own breathing. The darkness swallowed us up before we’d taken more than ten steps into the mine.

Instinctive panic began to bubble up from deep within me. Anything at all could have been lurking up ahead, waiting to devour us whole.

I was familiar with the feeling. It was something that occurred on nearly every hunt—fighting monsters meant going into dangerous places with limited visibility to battle the many predatory beings that lurked on the fringes of the human world. It was an instinctive reaction, deep and primal. I had learned long ago that trying to shove it away only made it worse. Instead, I leaned into the sensation, acknowledging the fear and letting it put all of my senses on high alert. I forced myself to keep going,keenly aware of the weight of the earth overhead as we went deeper and deeper.

But warring with my instinctive, human fears, were the other feelings that surged up. Those ones were harder to fight through.

Because how could Danny have said no to me? Hadn’t he understood how difficult it was for me to ask him to give me his blood before walking into battle, knowing full well what it would have meant if I had died? I understood better than anyone what I would have come back as, and I had asked him anyway.

How could he have told me no?

It was a rhetorical question: I understood his reasoning on a purely intellectual level. The blood bond had given me the excruciating blow-by-blow details of how he’d arrived at the final destination. But having a front-row seat to the inside of his mind made it worse, not better. He had chosen his fears over believing in me.

In us.

Eventually, the ground began sloping downward, gradually at first, and then more sharply. How long had we been walking? Minutes? Hours? An eternity? It was just pitch black here, with no beginning or end, and Tobias’s spell meant that I couldn’t even hear the telltale soft crunch of earth crushed beneath the soles of our shoes. I might have been alone here, walking deeper and deeper into an endless abyss.

Empty. Abandoned. Useless.

Michael, we’re slowing down.Danny’s mental voice cut across my thoughts. The moment his mind connected with mine, I felt a flash of anguish tinged with guilt burst between us like the flash of a dying star. I knew immediately that he’d sensed the dark nature of my thoughts, and he hated causing me pain. Too bad he was so fucking good at it. He added,There’s a light up ahead. It’s probably them. Thierry is going to go cause adistraction. We’ll bring up the rear and clean up after him. Wait for my signal.

Right. Got it. Thanks.

Michael…

Now isn’t the time, Danny.

I felt him mentally turn away from me, pulling back in some way I couldn’t quite explain, given that I had never been in possession of a telepathic bond with anyone before. But it felt like he had decided to take a step back and give me space.

This was idiotic, wasn’t it? Ihadspent years single-mindedly driven by hatred and fear of the supernatural. That had lessened, gradually at first, after meeting Bryan. And then all at once, when Danny had become a vampire. But he was probably still trying to mentally catch up to everything that had changed, both within me, and between us. Everything was different now.

And I wasn’t being especially fair to him.

I suddenly wanted to go to him, to wrap him in my arms, and apologize. To reassure myself that he was still real. Still okay. Still there, close enough to touch, to cherish.

Michael, it’s time.

At his signal, I forced myself into a dead run. I couldn’t help but put my arms out in front of me—another completely human reaction to sprinting full-tilt into darkness—but after a few dozen steps, I saw what Danny had been talking about earlier. There, up ahead on the left, was a flicker of light. It grew brighter as I ran toward it.

As I approached, I heard yelling.

Adrenaline flooded through me, and time seemed to slow down to a crawl. My earlier storm of emotions evaporated into nothing. All I felt was the icy clarity of the hunt.

I pulled my machete out of its holster as I neared the light.

I burst around the corner and nearly tripped over one of the vampires. It had been a female. It was already dead. I stepped over it and took in my surroundings.

This part of the mine wasn’t a shaft any longer.

Instead, it was a cavernous space, complete with ghostly grey-white stalactites hanging from the ceiling and stalagmites jutting up from the floor, like the razor-sharp jaws of some deep-earth monster. The space looked like it had never been mined before. Perhaps the folks digging into the mountain had accidentally uncovered it in their search for gold—or whatever else they’d been digging for.

We had underestimated the size of the nest. There were at least a dozen vamps. And everyone else was already there. Fighting.

Danny squared off with a burly looking vamp ten feet ahead of me. I started toward him, my heart in my throat. He was my size. Big enough to break Danny in half.