Page 36 of Hot Vampire Next Door: Season Five

The tingling morphs into a burn so bad, I feel like I’ve touched the sun.

Every nerve is fried. Every muscle locked up, cramping. I flail in Bran’s hold. He brings my back to his chest and holds me tightly.

“Almost done, Mouse,” he says to me.

I lose myself to the pain.

I think my eyes are squeezed shut, but I can still see the flickering twilight behind my closed lids and the twilight turns to frost until it edges my awareness.

Teeth chattering together, the heat turns cold, but the painful burn of it remains as the magic works its way through my veins, through every hollow of my body.

I know I must endure this to get to the other side, but in this moment, there is only the rawness of my body, and the persistent pain flooding every joint.

How much longer?

How long do I have to endure this torture to become who I was always meant to be?

A voice deep down at the far recess of my mind whispers: You were always you.

Like a snap of the fingers, the cold vanishes, the tingling fades, and power rushes through my body.

I suck in a deep breath, filling my lungs with fresh, crisp air.

“Mouse?” Bran says over top of me.

“Let me go,” I order and both Bran and Baspin drop me immediately.

I tip forward onto all fours, hands planted firmly on the cobblestone.

Frost spreads out from my fingertips.

My breath puffs out white on the air despite the warmth of late summer.

“Get back,” Baspin commands.

“What’s happening?” I ask, but my voice is hoarse and raw and the words are unintelligible even to my ears.

“Gods forgive me,” Rita breathes out and when I look up, I see frost channeling up her legs, up and up toward her torso.

“Get out of here, witch!” Bran shouts. “Go, now!”

All around us, fully bloomed flowers glitter with frost, then burst like broken ice.

“It’s too much power,” Baspin tells Bran. “She can’t control it.”

“No shit.” Bran reaches out for me, but hisses when our skin touches. His fingertips come away black with frostbite.

“How should she channel it?”

Baspin frowns and steps back as the frost spreads. “I don’t know. This is a first for me.”

“Christ.” Bran scoops me up in his arms. His skin pinks, then blisters, then turns black. “Hang on to me, Mouse.”

“Put me?—”

“Do not command me.” His eyes are glowing like fire, the space between his brows pulled taut with annoyance and worry. “Don’t even fucking think about it.”

“Where are you taking her?” Baspin asks.