Page 1 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness

1

EVIE

Death is not the end. It’s just another beginning.

In the pit of darkness, a voice found me, the sound echoing in lyrical resoluteness. When at first I thought I was lost to eternal nothingness, I now saw a sliver of light above—a shimmering, iridescent crescent moon. Or perhaps it was a solar eclipse seconds away from totality, and I was bearing witness to Selena swallowing her solar sister before the inevitable miracle of rebirth.

I was not a child of Helia, but I was going to chase those rays anyway.

Life and I weren’t finished yet.

I was curled in the fetal position, bathed in the safety of some primordial womb. I craned my head toward the light. I stretched my legs, one and then the other. I spread my arms wide. I remembered who I was.

And I screamed. The sound that escaped me shook my bones. It tasted like freedom, like forbidden bites of chocolate stolen at the markets when I was a child and Mama wasn’t looking—decadence I’d been denied, lest it ruin my prepubescent body marked for marriage.

I got to my feet, and in the darkness, I reached my hands out. My fingers brushed against something solid, slick and damp, like moss on stone. I traced the solidness in a circle around me, still unable to see anything but the tiny sliver of light above. I was trapped inside a pit, or perhaps an empty well.

And I knew I had a choice. I could sink back into the blissful liminal space and rest for a while. I could take a new form. I could say goodbye. There was love in death, more love than I’d ever found in life.

Not yet, I thought.

And it was thatyetthat surprised me. It was thatyetthat drove me forward and had my fingers digging into the slimy walls, searching for purchase.

Maybe it was foolish—to choose uncertainty, pain, grief, and suffering. It was foolish to choose life, but I did it anyway.

The Fool tarot card came to mind as more of myself and my memories seeped through the cracks. The Fool took that first, courageous leap of faith. Number zero in the major arcana, the beginning, square one.

How exciting.

I laughed. The sound was easier without the block inside my throat. My voice was a river undammed.

With a grunt of exertion, I hoisted myself up, finally finding some protruding slab of stone to grab. My legs shook, my arm muscles spasming.

This wasn’t my body.

I was spirit walking.

As soon as I had the thought, things became slightly easier. My mind melded with the environment. I dragged myself up, one foot at a time, resisting the call of eternal rest. I imagined my hands and feet meeting sturdy points of leverage, and they did. Still, I ached, I trembled, I unleashed raspy cries.

The sliver of light was bigger now, nearly within reach.

Where was my body?

In sharp, excruciating flashes, my last moments crashed into me. Kylo’s betrayal. The sound of Idris’s skull cracking against a jagged rock. The scorch of unfathomable heat that melted the block in my throat. The truth that had dragged me into the nothingness: my parents allowing a vampire to harm Idris when he was a child and the shadows that had poured from my soul to feast on my coven until only ash remained.

The image of blood pooling under Idris’s head, his face frozen in shock, overtook my vision. My foot slipped, and the shaking in my arms became unbearable. I screamed as my hands began to slide.

If I fell, I wasn’t sure I’d climb up again. I wasn’t sure if I’d even have a choice.

I found my footing again in the darkness, but it was too late. A loud booming sound filled the cavernous space, and then all I could hear was the sound of my own scream. I remembered the shadows that had poured from me, that had likely killed my brother just as they had killed my parents all those years ago.

I lost my grip.

But instead of falling, a hand shot out from the light and into the darkness that threatened to consume me again. And then another.

Fingers circled around my wrists and held tightly. My legs dangled. There was no more air left in my lungs. My suspended body was lifted by a dark form above me, obscured by the bright light behind them, grunting and panting heavily.

As soon as I met solid ground, I scrambled away from the pit of darkness, and my eyes adjusted slowly to the world around me.