Page 57 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness

I wiped at my eyes. Screams and shouts hit me from all directions. With great disorientation, I managed to push back up to a crouched position. My head spun; my ears rang. The cacophony of loud voices and commotion were muffled.

A rain drop touched my lips, and instead of salt, I tasted copper.

I studied my hands. Watery crimson smeared across my fair skin. Another drop landed, the same shade of red.

The clouds darkened further, dipping from the sky and wrapping around the academic building already collapsing. Several of the students who’d been chatting or eating now lay motionless on the ground several yards away. A few people attempted to haul unconscious bodies as they fled.

The shadow-like clouds impaled the building in rapid bursts. I stumbled forward. I scanned for the source of this magick—magick unlike anything I’d ever witnessed.

Apart from my own.

The air was charged with death, and all I could remember was Princeton’s voiceless scream as the building exploded into ash and rubble.

I covered my head as debris flew in all directions.

Panting, confused, I still didn’t run. I spun around, even as vertigo threatened to make me retch. I spotted a couple of born, but they were crouched and taking cover, which made little sense if they were the ones causing this destruction.

Whoever was doing this could’ve been on the other side of the building, obscured from my sight.

I took another wobbly step. The world was apocalyptic, stained with blood and darkness as mortals screamed and sobbed.

Tears burned my eyes. How many young mortals and professors had just died? A hundred? More?

More of my hearing returned. Something prickly moved up my spine, like a thousand tiny needles. My head swiveled, and I caught sight of a figure cloaked in white slip behind a statue of Helia. The statue was poised between two buildings opposite the destroyed physical sciences building.

It had been only a brief glimpse of flowing fabric that disappeared as soon as it had been perceived.

An older human man was yelling at the students to take cover, a difficult command after an entire structure had been demolished. Nowhere was guaranteed to be safe.

Once again, I ran toward danger, toward the phantom cloaked in white.

I dodged sprinting, panicked bodies.

A few pairs of eyes met mine, and my hidden clan tattoo burned. The turned women wearing human glamours scanned my body in confusion as I barreled toward them. One of them whispered frantically to the other.

I sprinted past them both.

Helia loomed, her golden crown of sunrays dull, her eyes weeping blood.

On the other side of her was a space where students typically rested or studied on benches surrounded by shade trees and flowering bushes.

The garden was empty as I passed through.

Yet, I felt a keen, predator’s gaze on me, a sensation I knew all too well from Kylo’s obsessive stalking.

My ears pricked at the sound of laughter, almost too distant to make out. Those sharp, prodding needles were back, skating across my spine.

I couldn’t run anymore, or my heart might explode. I walked quickly through the wrought-iron gate at the back of the garden. Behind the buildings, I only saw mortals and turned running to or from this hellish scene. No flowing white robes.

A slip of paper carried in the wind, and I was quick to snatch it from the air.

What beautiful eyes you have. Play soon?

As soon as I read the deep red script, the note caught fire. I let go, and the paper was reduced to a few scorched crumbles before meeting the earth.

“Evie?” a woman asked.

I jolted before spinning around. The two turned women from before were behind me, keeping their distance as they scanned me up and down.