Page 117 of Seared Fates

The people I love are trying hard to save me, and I gotta do my bit, too.

Magic courses through me from my jacket. Not a trickle, the whole goddamn river. “Back up.”

They scramble away, Vidar coming around me as I suck in air until my lungs scream. The stream of magic is a current rushing to my horribly twisted hands—and I swear my jacket glows—as a surge of blazing purple flames bursts free, slamming against the wall like a rushing tide.

The front of the house catches fire.

Red brick becomes a blinding white, and wood crumbles into ash, my pain along with it. In this moment, I’m pure fucking power.

All too soon, my magic tapers off, the flames dying into nothing. But…there’s no normal fire. Not even a red ember, only wispy smoke.

“You’re amazing, Kai,” Vidar says as he catches me before I can fall. The pain seeping back in. “Let’s go.”

Vidar hauls me up to carry me bridal style. Sen and Rurik are the first to step into the wreckage. Lucero next, then Vidar and me, with Summer coming at our rear.

The inside is a disaster, but from the eaten-away wallpaper and brown, matted carpet, it’s been this way long before we arrived. Within the smoggy darkness that seems to hover like fog, there is a stench that invades my nose and has bile climbing up my throat.

“What the hell is that?” I gag.

“I’ve smelt some bad shit in my life,” Sen comments, moving like a panther down the hallway. “But this isn’t normal blood magic.”

It’s like we’ve waded into a chunky, rotted meat soup. The damp, cloying air thick enough to assault my taste buds.

“Keep focus,” Vidar orders, voice low. “Emma could’ve set traps.”

Vidar’s offspring fan out, clearing each of the rooms downstairs. Yet even with my normal senses, I can tell that the stairs—where the smell has coalesced into a reeking miasma—is where we’ll find our blood mage.

“What type of magic do you suspect we’re walking into, Summer?” Lucero glares into the darkness leading to the second floor.

“I…” Summer shoots me a worried glance, then looks back to the vampires. “I have no idea. Lotta magic, that’s for sure. But we don’t have time to be careful.”

Sen, Lucero and Rurik are the first up the creaking, rickety stairs. Vidar and me next, Summer at our backs.

Like before, the vampires clear the two bedrooms and the single bathroom.

Then every pair of eyes fix on the narrow hallway, leading to a white door—oddly pristine given the condition of the house. Except for a single bloody handprint.

Sen levels a look at Lucero and Rurik, an unspoken order and from the hard set of his jaw, one expected to be followed. To my surprise, they move aside to allow Sen to slink ahead on silent feet.

Lucero once said that in a vampire family, age determines hierarchy, so with me in Vidar’s arms, his eldest offspring is currently in charge.

The hallway squeezes us as we step closer, shoulders bumping, and the only sound is my ragged breathing. No bugs scuttle by, no webs clog the corners. Yet the walls are…

Moist.

I shudder.

It feels as if we’ve been swallowed and forced down the diseased throat of some great beast, heading toward its belly.

Once we’re close, Vidar sits me on the dusty carpet, my back to the sogging wall. “Stay here, and if anything happens, use your fire.”

He scans my face, as if committing my features to memory, before standing to shoulder past his offspring to the front.

My vampire. My warrior. My soulmate.

Summer stops at my side, her hand steady on my shoulder, protective as a guard dog. “I’m sorry this is happening to you,” she whispers, so softly that even in the silence, I almost miss it. “But you’re going to make it out, Kai. If it’s the last thing I do, you’re gonna make it.” Her words are forged from steel, her promise something even stronger, and despite my worry and pain, I believe her.

Without another word, Vidar wraps his long fingers around an old brass doorknob— and waits. Head tilted, listening for any signs of life.