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EVANGELINE

H ot, humid morning air skated over my damp skin as we crouched behind the white fence across from the compound. Nash and his soldiers waited behind the tree line, their incursion planned for after we cleared the main building.

My heart thundered in my chest, though whether from anticipation or fear, I couldn't tell. Blake pressed against my left side, while Riordan and Malachi flanked us, all of us watching the guard rotation Virgil had meticulously detailed.

For the first time in days, I was fully armed, in clean clothes and highly caffeinated.

A deadly trifecta if there ever was one.

“Three minutes until the next shift change,” Malachi whispered, “That's our window.”

Blake scoffed. “We know the schedule, asshole. Some of us have actually planned raids before.”

“And some of us have been inside this compound,” Malachi shot back, his voice sharp enough to cut. “Planning is different than executing.” The way he said executing so sharply, I wondered if—despite his earlier revelation—that was a dig about Tyberius.

I turned, keeping my voice low. “Enough. We have a chance to end this today. Save all that raging testosterone for the actual fight.”

They both had the grace to look chastened, though I caught them glaring at each other behind my back. Riordan's smirk told me he'd noticed too. Let them go, Evie, they have to work this out between them.

And if they kill each other before we even get inside?

Then I guess it’s you and me . He reached out and tangled his fingers with mine, brushing his lips over my knuckles.

Three, two, one… The guard rotation changed right on schedule. Cloaked in Malachi’s glamour, we moved quickly, using Virgil's intel to evade the security system. The lack of thralls was immediately apparent, only a handful were posted around the buildings.

“Looks like we eradicated his army,” Riordan murmured as we reached the side entrance. “Which makes this significantly easier.”

“Unless that’s where he is,” I whispered, the knot in my stomach tightening. “Out making more.”

“I’m not sensing Ravok inside.” Malachi’s gaze scanned the buildings. “But I’ll keep searching.”

Every time my foot met hallowed ground, a ripple of almost-pain traveled up my leg and into my chest, my magic jolting. A clear warning— turn back, you bloodsucking monster, you’re on holier than thou ground .

We breached the warehouse entrance unseen, the stale air inside thick with the smell of decay. We'd covered perhaps twenty feet when the temperature dropped dramatically, frost crystallizing on the metal walls as if it were the dead of winter.

The floor was stained, marred in some places by pools of congealed blood, and to my vampire senses, the smell was stomach turning. This wasn’t healthy blood, there was something wrong, something unnatural about it.

Corrupted.

But Ravok’s fecund scent was strong here, too, and there was no doubt this was where he’d created his rotting army, from Tyrell’s loyal soldiers, from strangers and unwilling victims, from members of my own family.

“Do you smell that?” Blake’s hand snagged my wrist, stopping me as he scanned the frostbitten walls. “What kind of magic does that?”

“Nothing I ever want to see,” Riordan muttered and we crept another foot, then another, weaving between the congealed puddles, the stains that looked like someone had been dragged across the floor, kicking and screaming.

My boot stuck to the floor and I looked down. Threaded through the carnage, almost too faint to catch, flickers of crimson witch magic pulsed, as if this room had once been flush with power.

Aria had been here; she’d been part of whatever horrors happened here.

“Still not getting a read on Ravok,” Malachi growled, the sound bubbling up from his chest. “But someone’s coming, moving fast. Dematerializing from building to building, from the rate of speed.”

I didn’t even have to call my power up, my magic went from a calm, still lake to a thrashing tempest, straining to be set free to chew its way through the world.

Romulus stepped out of the shadows, and the power radiating off him hit me like a physical blow to the chest. “I wondered when you'd come,” he said, his voice carrying an otherworldly resonance I'd never heard before. “I am here to greet our guests. I hope I don’t disappoint.”

His first spell caught us all off guard—a blast of pure power that sent us flying in different directions. I slammed into a stack of wooden crates, pain exploding down my spine, stealing my breath as I crashed to the floor. Through a blur of tears, I saw Blake circle around, but Romulus caught him with a sharpened whip of pure black, carving a gash through the Kevlar, across his chest.

Who the fuck was this guy?

Malachi and Riordan attacked in tandem, but Romulus's magic was unlike anything I'd encountered, taking on a whitish glow, as if he was somehow mimicking Riordan’s fire. There was a gut-wrenching crack when Riordan’s wrist snapped, his grunt of pain, the sour reek of suffering.

Romulus wasn't just stronger—he was possessed, feral for our blood. Each spell he cast carried the weight of some strange, ancient magic that made my bones ache.

I looked down at the stained, cracked concrete beneath me.

Our blood . He was spilling our blood all over the floor.

“You're too late,” he laughed, deflecting Riordan's red tipped fire while simultaneously pinning Malachi to the wall, choking the life out of him. “The transformation has already begun.”

What the fuck was he talking about? What transformation?

I pushed myself up, ignoring the stabbing pain in my ribs, the way I could barely draw a breath, and spooled up every drop of power from that dark lake I could muster. The blast was off kilter, poorly aimed, but caught Romulus in the shoulder, ripping a hole through skin and muscle, staggering him enough for Blake to make a perfect throw.

Where magic had failed, steel succeeded, Romulus grunting as the blade sank in to the hilt, his power wavering, releasing Rohr and Malachi.

My magic seethed like a horde of living flame, a hungry, smothering swarm he repelled at the last possible moment, leaving a trail of blood across his arm, flesh torn down to the bone.

But not red blood. Black .

Black as my magic.

Black as Blake’s shadows.

Romulus fixed his boiling stare on me, bared his fangs like a beast of prey, an inhumane growl climbing up his throat before Malachi launched himself across the open space—twenty feet he flew—until his hands wrapped around his former friend’s throat and they both crashed to the floor.

“Stay away from her, you fuck.”

Malachi’s face was a twist of feral wrath and violence, his voice little more than a rasp, then they disappeared beneath a writhing cloud of vapor and shimmering glamour, the edges heaving violently as they battled.

“We have to find Ravok,” Riordan hissed. “We don’t have time for this bullshit.”

“Romulus might be the key to Ravok’s power,” I hissed right back. “What the fuck did he mean, before… the transformation has begun ?”

“Fuck if I know.” Blake swiped at the blood streaming down the side of his face. “But we came here to finish this, so we have to keep searching.”

I circled the swirling mound of glamour and shadow, then Romulus burst out—tossed through the air like a doll, so close his clawing fingers brushed my nose on the way past. He hit the wall with a crunch of bone and I grinned.

“Feels like shit, doesn’t it, asshole?” My arm was already drawn back, the cold blade of my knife balanced between two fingers. With one deft move, the knife spun in a straight line toward Romulus’s exposed, pale throat…only to clink harmlessly off the stone wall as he vanished.

“Fucker.”

“He’s stronger than I remember, too.” Malachi’s split lip was already swelling, and he’d have a nasty black eye. “But he still fights dirty.”

“How can he and Ravok be so strong?” Blake picked up my knife and handed it back to me, hilt-first. “According to Eldric, Ravok should have taken weeks to recover from being in stasis that long.”

“No idea.” Malachi gazed thoughtfully at the frosted walls, the spilled blood, then shook his head. “But we need to find out.”

“This is a problem for later,” Riordan snapped. “Is Ravok here or not?”

A low shuffling hissed from outside, then the doorway to the warehouse filled with staggering thralls, some missing limbs, all of them rotting apart as they stumbled toward us, decaying bodies still driven by some overriding directive.

We drew together into a knot, Blake’s arm sweeping me into the center.

“No, I’m not getting any blood signature,” Malachi muttered. “I should be able to pinpoint his location, but…he’s either not here, or he’s shielded.”

“Iron?” Rohr suggested, pulling up his magic, casting a host of writhing creatures between us and the approaching thralls.

“Not enough iron in the world to smother that fucker’s power completely, or sever the blood bond. No, this is something else, or he’s thousands of miles away.”

“Then this is a lost cause.” Metal sang as Blake drew his blades, a shiver of anticipatory bloodlust trickling down the mating bond. “But while we’re here, we can do some clean up.”

We killed everything inside the warehouse, leaving a trail of rotting bodies in our wake. My back was stiff, Riordan’s right hand wasn’t working quite right, Malachi’s eye was swollen shut, but most of the thralls didn’t even put up a fight, and we were on our way to the next building when we found Silas, or what was left of him.

His once-pristine uniform—the one he took such pride in—was in tatters, his skin gray as death, peeling off his bones. His mouth moved, but no sound came out, so he fell to his knees, fingers scrabbling through the dirt before he rocked back on his heels, his glistening eyes pleading.

HELP ME.

Then Silas’s cracked lips gaped open and I saw why he couldn’t speak…his tongue had been torn out, the stump rotting between yellowed teeth.

I swallowed down the surge of bile clawing up my throat.

That was Dante’s handiwork, my uncle’s favorite punishment for those enemies he considered untrustworthy enough to deem such a precaution. Obviously, my father had fallen into that category when he’d tried to warn me the other day.

“Fucking hell,” Blake muttered and I blinked, trying to stop my eyes from stinging.

My sweating, shaking hand rested on the hilt of my knife, my agonized father’s gaze pinned there with such rapt hope I could barely breathe. How many times had I imagined killing him? So many I couldn’t begin to count.

But not like this. Never like this.

Not like an animal in the street, begging for…

Blood misted the air, turning the world into a haze of coppery red, then Blake stepped back and sheathed his blade, his face solemn as he looked down at the headless corpse that used to be my father.

My mate dipped his head and my throat got even tighter. “Your blade, Evangeline. Always your shield, always your blade, ready to kill your enemies, so you remain in the light.”

The prickling in my eyes turned to a burn and I turned away, taking a deep breath that reeked of death and decay.

I couldn’t look at the body when we moved, finding the next building empty, then the next.

“I’d say this is a trap, but I think this place is truly abandoned. Where would they go, Evangeline?” Riordan prodded. “They’ve obviously abandoned the compound; is there anywhere else your family might hide Ravok?”

I searched my muddled thoughts and came up empty. “Sleepy Hollow is the only other location I ever heard Silas talk about. I…they didn’t exactly trust me with the family secrets,” I finally said. “But Virgil would know. He could tell us where Dante would go next.”

Because Dante was calling the shots, now that Silas was gone.

Alistair was a decent enough soldier, but he was no leader. Ravok would have to rely on my family for housing, for weapons, for blood, since he’d been locked away for so long…who else could he trust?

But Romulus was the wild card that put all my best guesses in jeopardy, because something told me he outranked even my uncles now.

We never found Alistair and Dante, or Romulus, or any more thralls, just a few decaying bodies, their bodies literally crumbling before our eyes.

We emerged from the compound battered but alive, having achieved nothing.

Ravok was still out there, Romulus had escaped, and we’d all need to visit Sylvester when we returned. I couldn't shake the feeling that this was just the beginning. Romulus's strange power, Ravok's disappearance—his cryptic, gloating taunt about transformation—everything pointed to something bigger coming our way.

I slid a sideways glance at Malachi.

If only we could see the future, we could prepare ourselves, know which defenses to shore up, how to fight Ravok—how to beat him when he returned.

He claimed his power isn’t reliable, that it didn’t ever follow his command.

But part of me wondered if that was really true. Or, like me, he was afraid of plumbing the depths of his own power. Both because of where it originated, and because of what he might turn into, if he truly embraced what he was.