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Alistair’s words filtered into my head, but I struggled to understand the meaning, concentrating instead on Nicholas, whose fingers curled around the scalpel, keeping it hidden between his palms as he worked at the ropes. I waited for some small lifting of the pressure from Émilie’s knife at my back, ready to move.

Without warning, Nicholas sprang upward into a predator’s stance, his wrists and ankles unbound. The surprise move caused Émilie to pull away, and forgetting my pain, I spun to face her, my fist winding her in the stomach as the blow hit home. She flew back, sprawled on the dusty ground, a snarl ripping through her chest as she let go of the blade and jumped up, already running at me.

I grabbed the blade she’d dropped, but not fast enough. With her remaining hand, she caught me by the throat and lifted me from my feet. I dangled several inches in the air, trying to ignore my desperate need for oxygen and focus my attention – both of my hands were free, and she had no real way to restrain me.

My fingers knotted in her dark hair, yanking her head sideways to expose her throat. My blade cut deep – through skin, through sinew, through muscle. Blood gushed as I twisted the knife, hoping to drain the stolen strength from her veins. Her grip on my throat spasmed and released.

She staggered back, clawing at the wound with her remaining hand, dark blood seeping between her fingers. I didn’t wait for her to recover. My fist connected with her face, the crunch of her cheekbone beneath my knuckles sending a wave of satisfaction and fire through me as she reeled backwards.

Across the barn, Nicholas had rushed Alistair and was pinning him by the throat to the doorframe. The rain pouring in from outside was soaking them both, washing away some of the grime on Alistair’s face so the full extent of the damage to his skin was visible for the first time. Straining to lift his arm high enough, he emptied the remaining contents of the bottle he still held over Nicholas’s head, who pulled away with a howl as his skin bubbled and his hair smoked.

The resemblance between them was jarring as he fell back. Unwilling to let him get away, Nicholas’s face was stiff with fury as he dived back at him. His knuckles whitened as his long fingers encircled Alistair’s throat, and with no effort at all, he lifted the other vampire into the air, shaking him brutally. His neck whipped back and forth, his arms useless and slack at his sides. All at once, he fell limp. Nicholas released his grip, catching him by the upper arms and smashing him into the wall of the barn. I looked away, desperate to finish this before the taboo vampire regained his strength.

Turning my back on Émilie – who was still trying to staunch the blood from her wound on the floor – I sprinted the length of the barn, pausing under the rafters. I fumbled in the shadows for the beam that had hit Adam, which hung, now stationary, from its unravelling rope. Adjusting my plan as I went, the beam’s enormous weight was almost more than I could move. I had to work fast, while Alistair and Émilie were still distracted.

My hands trembled as I gripped the splintered wood, my muscles screaming in protest. The weight of the beam was almost unbearable, but no other genius plan sprang to mind. Bracing my feet against the churned earth, I threw my shoulder into it, letting its immense weight swing it back toward the entrance.

I held my breath, calculating trajectory and force and praying my aim was true even as my body threatened to give out. The rafters groaned ominously overhead, the old rope fibres stretching and snapping one by one.

The momentum caught, transforming the unwieldy length of wood into a deadly pendulum. As it swung forward, the world narrowed to the arc of its path – to Alistair’s scarred face as understanding dawned too late.

“Nicholas!” I shouted hoarsely at him, and he leapt out of the way in time for the cracked wood to smash into Alistair.

The force of the blow hit with the sound of splintering wood meeting bone. His ribcage caved inward with a crunch that seemed to echo in my head. Blood sprayed in an arc as bones splintered, spattering the walls and floor of the barn with dark crimson. His body convulsed, shards of the beam pinning himlike an insect to the barn wall, each desperate gasp forcing fresh waves of red to bubble from his lips.

My heart was in my throat as his eyes found me. For a moment, all I could see was Nicholas in his face – such similar features corrupted in agony. But where Nicholas’s eyes held warmth and life, Alistair’s were flat and black, his humanity long since burned away. His jaw worked silently, forming words that would never come, cold eyes locked on mine as the life behind them dimmed and he fell still.

Émilie’s scream started low in her throat, building to a sound that was half-sob, half-howl. She rocked forward on her knees, her remaining hand clawing at the dirt, her face distorted into something barely human. One moment she was crumpled on the ground, the next she was airborne – a blur of motion too fast to track. Nicholas lunged for her, but even his preternatural speed wasn’t enough.

Time stretched as her remaining hand shot toward my chest. I saw everything with crystalline clarity: the savage triumph in her eyes, Nicholas’s face contorting in horror, the precise moment her palm connected with my sternum. The crack of breaking ribs reverberated through the barn like gunshots.

The impact launched me backwards, my body arcing through space as the world spun lazily around me. For one surreal moment the rafters above filled my vision, beautiful as sunlight streamed through the hole in the roof. Each of my heartbeats pulsed loudly in my ears before a snap shook through my bones, my spine forced to bend beyond its limits.

I landed, broken in the dirt, the lower half of my bodyalready losing sensation. Numbly, I touched the sticky pool of Isabel’s blood beneath me, but was unable to summon any concern. Blessed inky blackness overtook me as time sped back up, and the barn seemed to darken. The last sound that reached me was Nicholas’s anguished cry.

36: Death Must Be So Beautiful

Tom woke with a loud gasp, flooded with a shock of raw, throbbing pain that ran the length of his right side. His eyes blinked open, adjusting to the dim lamplight. The ornate plaster ceiling above him seemed to swim in his vision, and he had no idea where he was.

Without moving his torso, he examined the room. An enormous window on the opposite wall was covered with heavy, green curtains – the only light in the room came from the lamp by the side of his head. He lay in an immense bed, and from the stiffness of his movements, it seemed someone had strapped up half his body, his arm and leg in plaster. But this wasn’t a hospital like any he’d seen before. In fact, it looked oddly like…

The sound of a door opening to his right cut the thought short. Just out of his line of sight, a figure strode into view. Isabel seemed softer than he’d ever seen her, in a long-sleeved turtleneck and loose, wide trousers – still in her customary black. Though her face was as eternally young as ever, she seemed tired, her long hair pulled back from her face in a loose ponytail,her mouth downturned. She didn’t look at Tom as she crossed the room to the elaborate writing desk in the far corner and began decanting pills from a tiny bottle.

Tom tried to remember how he’d got there. The last thing he remembered was speaking to Adam on the phone in the car, hanging up and trying to control his frustration that the cold immortal had been in no hurry to help his friend. After that, there was nothing.

“You are awake.” Isabel sounded mildly surprised as she faced the bed. “Good.”

“What happened?” Tom asked, his voice croaky.

Isabel ignored him and walked towards the bedside table. She placed three pills by the lamp and leaned across him, gently pulling up the pillows behind so he could sit up. He held his arm awkwardly away from himself, gritting his teeth as the movement jolted his as-yet-unknown injuries.

Isabel sat on the edge of the bed, the mattress barely dipping under her weight. She picked up the pills with precise movements, her dark eyes never meeting his. “Take these.”

Tom eyed the pills in her palm. “I’m not taking anything until you tell me what happened.” The words came out weaker than he’d intended, but he held her gaze. “What are they, anyway?”

“They are of my own creation. I have some skill in chemistry.” She paused. “You will be something of a new test subject, but your injuries require intervention beyond common medicines.” She indicated his strappings.

“Your bones are already beginning to knit, though I did notwant to set your shoulder until you awakened. It has been dislocated,” she explained.