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I’d seen that happen once before, and it had ended with my ex being torn apart before she’d bathed naked in his bloody remains.

She wasn’t naked now, but her normally pale and perfect skin was splattered with blood, and her clothes—a deep green riding habit with a high-collar, white lace undershirt—dripped with fluids, some of which was obviously blood, while the rest…

The rest were human remains.

Chapter

Two

My stomach heaved, but I gulped in air and somehow avoided being sick. Which was a damn good thing given every instinct I had was screaming, “don’t move, don’t show any sign of repulsion, and for God’s sake, don’t show any fear lest it unleash the demon so evident in her eyes.”

Because there was absolutely nothing human in her gaze right now.

There were many people—even to this day—who believed vampires weren’t created via magic and the sharing of a vampire’s blood, but were indeed true demons who’d simply taken over the flesh of the living—or even the newly dead—to prey on others.

Maelle was living evidence as to why those superstitions had formed.

I flexed my fingers and resisted the press of wild magic. It might ache to be released, but aside from the pall of inhumanity that currently surrounded her, there was also the magic. It clung to her like a cloak, a cloud of viscous dark purple threads that threatened violence.

If either of us tried to spell right now—if we even reached for something as simple as a protection spell—that violence would hit us.

I guess we were about to discover whether the recently boosted charms we both wore would protect us against a vampire walking the thin edge of sanity.

I fucking hope they do,Belle said,because holy cow, if she unleashed that power—fully unleashed—it could take out everything and everyone in the near vicinity.

And the scary thing is, Marie is at least her equal magic wise.If they got into a one-on-one battle, the whole damn reservation could be destroyed.Have you any sense of the other woman?

Yes, she’s upstairs, in Maelle’s aerie.

Alive?

Yes.

Which at least meant the … bits … all over Maelle’s body weren’t that other woman’s. Which of course only led to the next obvious question—whose was it? The blood was too fresh, too red, for it to have happened any earlier than a few minutes ago, and yet Belle hadn’t sensed anyone else in the club.

It’s possible that whatever happened for her to be covered in …Belle’s mental tones faded briefly as she gulped …all this stuff happened in the private rooms. They weren’t destroyed in the explosion, remember.

Because they weren’t located within the club itself, but rather underground some undefined distance away. The main entrance had been here, though, and it had used some sort of transport spell to take her customers into that area.

Perhaps that’s where the door bouncers are, too.

Unless, of course, the bits are the bouncers. There’s a lot of black threaded in amongst the other … things … and that seemed to be their color of choice.

I can’t see her attacking her own people.

And yet she all but destroyed the vampire coven because Marie broke her promise not to turn anyone else from Maelle’s bloodline—no children, grandchildren, or great-grandchildren—and you can bet your ass plenty of those she murdered that day were her people.

Maelle stopped at the base of the stairs that divided the upper platform—where the bar and the seating booths were—from the main dance floor. The chunks of flesh and the strings of muscle and veins decorating her clothing were more evident this close, and the scent of it all … Dear God, she smelled like blood and raw meat, and it was all I could do not to turn and run.

For several seconds she said nothing and did nothing, but her fingers were clenched and those darkly violent threads surrounding her pulsed erratically.

That pulse, I realized in horror, matched the frantic beat of my heart.

And mine.

Maelle’s fists clenched a fraction more, her knuckles glowing in her blood-splattered hands. Shewantedto attack. She was desperate to attack.

But somewhere deep under all that fury and violence a spark of sanity remained—and it was all that kept her from following baser need.