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Chapter One Hundred Nineteen

CARMINE

Luna runs to the left of me, Laro to the right.

The vampires that made up the lake bridge are close enough to smell.

Their screams are down to grunts. I can’t tell how many there are.

Laro and I can handle four, maybe five. My Strega, maybe another three.

But we have no tools. No blades. No stakes. Not even a gun to slow them down.

Her blood’s power is worn to no more than a thread in my veins. The stake that throbs when I am at rest is agonizing at a full run. My right leg has started to act as if it’s not connected to my brain.

We come to a corner and turn around it. Luna’s head is back and she’s pumping her arms, mouth open, brow knotted with the effort.

She’s going to tire before we do, and she’s the one they’re after.

If Laro and I stopped running, we could hold them off, but we’d eventually be overcome.

She couldn’t run far enough in a maze, and the only exit she knows has slammed shut.

They’re closer. I hear the breaths before the screams and the fall of their feet on the stone.

“Dad.” Laro’s head is turned over his shoulder, then toward me.

He needs me to answer this. He needs me to have a plan.

We approach another T with a grate in the floor, or maybe it’s one we’ve seen already. It doesn’t matter. When we are two steps away from the grate, I grab Luna by the waist and jump. Her legs are still pumping midair before my back slams into the ceiling.

“What?” Her question is just an exhale. She’s panting from the exertion of the run.

“Stay still.” I hold her against me the way Manod held Lucia so long ago. It was the first terrifying vision of things I didn’t understand, and I’d been waiting to see it again when I should have been preparing to be it.

Laro overshoots the grate then doubles back, looking up at us as the crazed vampires reach him. But he’s not food. They flow to each side like a river, chasing a scent that has stopped running away. Some go right. Some stay straight. But they pass under us with screams of hunger.

“You…” Luna is still panting. “… okay?”

I’m not. Defying gravity takes power I am losing every second. I am straining too hard to reply. Laro stands still as the wave of vampires turns to a trickle, then the last two grunt and whine past him. One goes straight. The other runs left.

Then my relief turns to surrender. I cannot hold us anymore. I cannot even land safely. My strength leaves me and we fall. Laro steps out of the way. I curl around her as we drop onto the grate.

Our weight breaks whatever was holding the grate in place. It falls with the three of us through the darkness, and we land hard on a stone floor. Luna cries out in surprise and pain. Laro lets out an unf .

We are in a deep, dark chamber. I scrabble to my knees and reach for Luna. She opens her eyes and holds out her hands to meet mine.

“I’m blind,” she says.

“It’s dark.” I help her up.

“The shadows? Charles?”

She clings to me with hooked fingers and a gaze that looks deeply into nowhere.

“Just regular dark.”

Laro stands up to assess the situation and finds Luna’s phone a few feet away. He picks it up. “Nice brick.”

He tosses it. It clatters on the stone. The screen awakens enough for Luna to breathe a sigh of relief.

“It’s like vampire fire.” She picks it up. “All light. No heat.”

“What’s that?” Laro asks.

I heard it too. A sound as soft as two molecules rubbing together. We stand back to back, sniffing the air in wonderment at something we have never scented before.

No. I have. I riffle through the files in my mind.

This scent is as far back as my ability to smell properly.

Just as I remember the pain and humiliation in this part of my memory, a dim flicker rises.

It is a flame with no wick or fuel, cradled in the palm of a man’s hand.

I have seen this vision before—lifetimes ago.

It can’t be the same. Too many years have passed. Too many decisions have been made or put aside.

It’s a mental trick. I’m making associations with being deep underground.

Carrying Amon has broken my brain. Or Scout reminded me this creature existed and the fall through the grate unlocked the pictures.

“Beautiful one.” The voice is so deep it shakes my soul. It speaks English, but I know the voice like I know the moment of my own siring. “You came back to me.”

Words like “No,” and “Never,” and “Fuck,” crowd at the base of my throat, but can’t get through.

The hand tosses the tiny flame to the floor, where it burns between us, diffusing enough to widen its range.

The man is huge. Bald at the head but not the body.

Crouching naked, and powerful, and terrifying, his one arm resting on his knee.

A twisted stump with misshapen fingers grows from the other shoulder.

Luna’s expression changes. She can see. I wish she couldn’t. If I could have or do anything in the world, it would be to protect her from this. She grasps my arm tightly enough to hurt, but I can’t feel anything. I have gone completely numb—so deep inside myself I’m somewhere else.

Manod reaches behind him and drags something forward. It scrapes on the stone.

He holds up a simple, unadorned knife that’s almost a foot long, made of black lava rock from hilt to tip, and says, “You were looking for this?”