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“Then wait for proper cover. But no longer than that – we may not have much time.” Adam glanced at Tom. “You should keep him here.”

“And you? You can’t die, but you can get hurt, Adam,” she pointed out.

He raised an eyebrow at her. “Do not pretend you care, Izzie – falsehood is unflattering on you.”

33: Where the Light Cannot Conquer

Ilay in the dark for what could have been hours or days – there was no light to judge the time by, and my tortured, battered body had stopped caring, anyway. All I knew was the sweet release of unconsciousness that came with the worst of the pain, and the brief respites from Émilie’s visits.

The cold in the shelter was unrelenting, and the chill in my bones never lessened in the suffocating blackness. Several times the slow, steady drip of my blood onto the ground would halt as it gathered and froze on the bench below me. All thoughts of fighting back had fled along with the skin and flesh now missing from my chest, stomach, and lower back. I was long beyond starving, beyond thirsty: my body was falling apart and I was helpless to do anything about it.

Each time I came round, I despaired that I hadn’t just… gone, in my sleep – feeling guilty the whole time that an idea like that would even enter into my head. But wallowing in my agony, my constant thought was that I wanted all this to be done with. If I was no longer here, Nicholas might live and there would be no ultimatums.

Oddly enough, the one thought that sustained me was the thought of his fury, which I knew would be something to behold. He would wipe all traces of Émilie and Alistair from the earth and salt the bloodied ground in my name. No more careful restraint, Nicholas would unleash it all, become the monster they feared and had named him – not for revenge, but for me.

The thought of that kind of destruction should have been terrifying, but there was comfort in the black violence of it. In knowing that after four hundred years, I was the one he’d burn the world for… But my wish to see his fury also brought the reality of his grief. That much was unbearable to think about, as my own would be if our positions were reversed.

As my mind drifted in and out, a defeated calm swept over me. My muscles seized against the restraints, each spasm sending fresh waves of pain through my flayed skin, but somehow the agony helped clear my muddied thoughts.

For as far back as I could remember, before I’d met Jonathan and begun hunting – before I’d understood the demons I saw all around – I’d known something was missing within me.

I’d found some peace in the fire of the fight, that was true. Perpetually engaged in an unending battle, I’d grown used to the burning and the emptiness… but Nicholas was the pure, uncompromising moonlight that cooled those flames. With him, I could bejust Erin– free of the burden of the death I witnessed. Quietly, he’d slipped into my life and filled the place in my heart that had been waiting.

Our differences were undeniable, but where I had one foot in the darkness, he’d stepped into the light. We shared that shadowy place in between – the place where the light couldn’t conquer. Where we could be ourselves. So, despite the reality of my situation, I couldn’t be selfish anymore. I couldn’t give up, because, for the first time, I wasn’t alone.

Thinking of Nicholas, something released within me – as though all this time I’d been holding my breath. I finally forgave him. For all of it.

I’d never forget who he’d been before: the suffering he’d caused and the lives he’d destroyed. But I understood his yearning for me had been his reason to fight for redemption. He’d always suffer – as those whose lives he’d taken had suffered first. But the balance would be maintained. It didn’t exactly bring me joy to imagine his pain, but I knew there was justice in it.

The memory of his gentle touch when we’d last been together, how carefully he’d held me despite his strength, was proof enough of his transformation. Even in our most intimate moments, he’d shown his control – as though I was precious. Breakable. His redemption wasn’t just in grand gestures but in the small moments.

I was key to that. My brief life was a grain of sand in the hourglass that was his. But he’d searched for me for so long and had been so patient… I couldn’t fail him now. Nicholas was the one person who could love me for what I was, darkness and all. And seeing the same darkness in him, I'd fallen.

The ghost of his hands still lingered on my skin. I thought back to the way he’d so reverently traced every inch of me, as though memorising something sacred. I could conjure his face with perfect clarity – the slight crookedness of his smile, the way his lilting accent deepened when we were alone. If this was going to be the end for me, I wanted his face to be the last thing I saw.

Despite everything, something fierce stirred in me. The thought of never feeling his cool touch, of never seeing the way his eyes lit up when he looked at me – it was unbearable. Worse than any physical pain Émilie could inflict.

You can survive this.

My hunter strength, the heat of resistance, felt distant and weak – like trying to grasp smoke. But even as my body trembled from blood loss and exposure, I knew for his sake, I had to get out. I took a deep steadying breath and steeled myself, the ice in my bones beginning to melt in the wake of my fiery resolve.

???

Adam was thoroughly miserable. His shirt and coat were filthy, and his already stylishly torn jeans were now utterly destroyed down the left leg, where he’d caught them on a sharp piece of protruding metal in the grass. He lay flat on his stomach, resting on his elbows with his head low, even as the grass tickled his face. He hadn’t been in a situation like this for almost a century, and it didn’t agree with him in the slightest. There was a distinct lack of dignity in crawling through the mudlike a common footpad – though he supposed that was rather the point of reconnaissance.

Heavy rain had begun only a few minutes earlier, but already he was soaked to the skin. Immortal he may be, but the cold was as keen for him as for an ordinary human, and he was soon shivering. There wasn’t much to see through the downpour, especially in the half-light of the pre-dawn, but Adam could tell Tom’s guess had been correct – the building across from him was most definitely inhabited. The sky held the peculiar grey of approaching dawn, perhaps an hour before sunrise. But even younger vampires should still be conscious, which made the stillness troubling.

The farmhouse had been built of rough-cut stone – solid, the sort that reminded him of a wartime field hospital. He pushed away those particular memories, focusing instead on the task at hand. It was a long, squat-looking building, but the two barns behind were larger and older – rough wooden structures with makeshift repairs of corrugated steel patching holes in the walls. The scale of the outbuildings troubled him – there was too much space for unpleasant surprises. The tiles on the roof of the nearest had fallen through, leaving a gaping hole for the wind to whistle through, and the wooden frame stood empty, waiting. As far as he could tell, the vampires were only using the farmhouse itself: the windows were smeared liberally on the outside with an oily-looking substance. He guessed they were also boarded up as an extra precaution.

Adam was beginning to regret his decision to come. He knew he couldn’t die, despite what he’d once told Erin – enoughpeople had tried to kill him, after all – but he was still more than a little concerned for himself. He’d sworn after the last war never to put himself in harm’s way again – yet here he was, crawling through the mud toward danger.

True, Erin was inside and needed his help, and itwasfar easier for him to sneak in during the day when the villains were bound to be asleep… but try as he might, he couldn’t honestly remember ever being quite so tightly in the grip of his own fear. The things friendship demanded of one.

Fishing in his pocket, he pulled out his mobile phone and dialled hurriedly, his fingers slipping as the rain hit the screen. Tom was waiting in the car some way back, since it had transpired the farmhouse was, in fact, several miles from the main road. It did, however, mean Erin’s friend was a safe enough distance away that he wouldn’t be seen should the vampires emerge. He picked up after one ring.

“Are you there?” Tom demanded before Adam had a chance to speak.

“A civil greeting never goes amiss, you know.”