Page 131 of As Above, So Below

“Ves, where are you?”My name on his lips and the worry in his voice could bring me to my knees.

“I need a minute.”My response is short, clipped—all of my attention on the vampire laying still upon the ground.

She rolls over, laughing.

“The little fae has a bite,” she taunts as she lifts herself from the cobblestone. “But I bet it won’t feel as good as mine.”

She lunges, hands outstretched, and a wall of shadow shoots up between us, severing her hands from her wrists. Her scream cuts through the night air, echoing along the buildings that line the river. The wall of shadows vanish, and dark tendrils whip from my feet, wrapping themselves around her neck. She collapses to her knees, screaming.

“What is this?” Her voice is frantic as she clutches her arms to her chest. “Who are you?” The words turn into a pained sob.

I move toward her silently, my innate thrumming excitedly within my chest. It wants to feed. I clench my jaw with the effort to keep my shadows restrained.

Incapacitate, not kill.

The tendrils of shadow tighten, snapping her neck and she slumps forward. Her body falling with a thick thud once again. Keeping my distance, my shadows rip her wings from her back, launching them into the river. Rolling her over, they pry open her mouth and two glinting fangs fly onto the stone, landing near my feet.

She’ll wake up in a few hours in dreadful pain—onthisside of the veil.

Heaving a sigh, I rub my brow.

“I’m at the easternmost bridge near the edge of the Twilight Mire district.”

“Are you alright?”His worry is palpable and it buries itself in my chest.

“I was being hunted by a vampire. I have—”

Immediately, a blinding flash of white light causes me to recoil and cover my eyes. Lowering my hand, Ryc comes into view, approaching rather quickly.

I blink. Jaw agape.

He’s alight wielder.

I stare, barely breathing, at the beautiful, graceful, lethal creatureseveral yards away. The fae bound to me is so wholly opposite of everything I am—why Nektos has decided for our paths to be entwined, I’ll never understand.

Shaking my head free of the thoughts, I force myself to breathe. And blink again. He sees the crumpled body lying less than five feet away, how my dress lies in ruin, me standing barefoot in a puddle of crimson blood.

In a moment that feels like an eternity stretching within a heartbeat, our eyes meet, and everything begins to feel right in the world. A strange contrast to how wrong the entire night has felt without him.

It’s him.

It’s always been him.

Somehow.

He shouts something, something I don’t quite understand. Fear streaking through those beautiful gold eyes.

The ground rushes to me, talons puncturing my shoulders with a steel grip and sharp pain. A pressure builds at the nape of my neck before there’s a tearing pop followed by white-hot agony. A glass-shattering scream tears from my throat, cut short as my cheek and my jaw meet the cobblestone.

Reeling from the blow, the pain in my neck subsides.

Only to be replaced with a firestorm ofdesire.

The weight on my back vanishes along with the talons and fangs embedded in my flesh. And I gasp for air, pushing myself to my hands and knees. Scrambling to my feet, Ryc tears the vampire’s head from his body, letting both fall to the ground.

I gape at the blood pooling at his feet, under his well-polished black dress shoes. Wide-eyed and trembling, I clutch at my neck as I step forward.

“No… no! What have you done?” I cry, panic and fear causing my voice to grow shrill. “You’ve sent him straight to Kassil!”