Page 4 of Taming His Vampire Mate

I felt, simultaneously, as if I might fly away or sink into the earth forever. The pressure grew, like one of those awful carnival rides that spins until you’re pinned against the wall.

But I must not have been truly pinned, because the next moment I collapsed to my knees, gasping.

Were my bones breaking? My skin splitting?

White light exploded behind my eyes, and then—nothing.

Was this dying? After eight centuries, was this how it ended? Darkly ironic that doing the right thing would bring about my demise.

But if Poppy’s magic was going wild, why wasn’t Ethan stopping it?

Then the light resolved into images.

I recoiled.

Magnus, my maker, was right there. Close enough to touch. Thick iron chains, inscribed with blood-red sigils, bound him. Weak sunlight streamed into the stone room from somewhere above. He was lying in a marble sarcophagus.

Decay and mildew surrounded me. Dampness. The feeling of a place sealed off from time.

A tomb, I realized.

But Magnus’s face was the same. Barely thirty when he was turned, ashen blond and almost angelically beautiful.

Then, as Poppy continued the spell—I somehow knew she was still casting—raw power surged through the vision.

Magnus’s silver eyes snapped open.

He thrashed, roaring as smoke rose from his skin, as though the iron was burning him. That should have been impossible. Only silver weakens vampires.

The sigils flashed scarlet, painfully bright. One by one, they shattered.

And then Magnus vanished.

Next came a parade of faces. Dozens. Hundreds. Most I didn’t know.

But then I saw one I did.

My twin brother.

Nicolas was standing in a partly finished basement with a single bulb overhead, casting everything in a mix of glare and deep shadow. He was holding a pale, middle-aged man in his arms. But it wasn’t the embrace of a lover. His face, identical to mine in every way, was buried in the man’s throat. And the man was letting out low, strangled noises, like he wanted to scream but couldn’t.

As if he’d been hypnotized into complacency.

My stomach heaved at the sight.

The man’s eyes went flat and lifeless, and all the tension drained out of him at once.

My brother pulled back and dropped him like a sack of trash. The body fell at his feet, lifeless and unmoving. Nicolas’s mouth was stained red. And there was nothing human in his eyes as he peered down at his victim, only mildly interested in the life he’d just taken. Then he pulled a cloth handkerchief from his leather jacket pocket and dabbed at his lips, as though he’d just dined at a Michelin-star restaurant.

“No,” I whispered, horror and grief surging through me.

It was impossible. My brother was dead. I had killed him myself. His body had burned to ash.

For that matter, Magnus was dead too—killed by a coven of witches centuries ago.

Which meant Poppy’s spell hadn’t tapped into fate. It had tapped into something else. Maybe I was seeing a vision of the underworld. A place of torment, not peace.

Though unlike Magnus, Nicolas seemed perfectly content with his fate.