Page 15 of The Reveal (Bloodlore #1)

I walk slowly into the mouth of the alley. I don’t look back, even though all my senses are tingling and I’m as certain as I can be that I’m being watched.

I keep the same slow, careful pace even though my skin is crawling. I feel a little lightheaded from trying so hard to keep my breath even. I have to force myself to keep that pace as I go from the parking lot into the darkness of the alley.

I have to let it swallow me up, and it feels like dying.

Immediately, I regret every single decision I made today that led to this.

Not just today. Clearly, letting random people move onto the family land was a huge mistake, because they must have something to do with all this unwanted attention. I didn’t have any before they turned up, did I? Unless you count Franklin Hendry.

But there’s nothing I can do about it now.

The alley is so dark that it aches, maybe because the bricks on either side of me seem to heave a lot closer than they should. There’s a faint hint of something coppery in the air, cutting through the smoke, and I choose not to ask myself what that might be.

What it must be in vampire territory.

I break out in a cold sweat, and I’m furious with myself. The last thing I want to do is walk into a vampire den sweating like this, heart racing, like I’m offering myself up as a one-girl experience for whatever lurks within.

But what I can’t have is vampires appearing at my grandmother’s door.

That’s the truth I keep coming back to, and it’s what got me in the truck to drive out here.

It spooked me enough to find Briar lurking around in the kitchen like that.

What if she’s more dangerous than she seems, even if she’s not a vampire? What if she got to Gran?

I have to do this. I have to do it and hope that I make myself amenable enough to this vampire king and give him whatever he wants so I can make it back home.

After I die what feels like a thousand times, I finally reach the door at the end of the alley. The eyes I can feel on my back are more like daggers now, but I don’t dare turn around. I test the big steel door with significant dents in it, expecting it to be locked, but it swings open easily.

I’m honestly not sure if that’s better or worse.

I walk inside and freeze, because I’m out of the alley and I like that steel at my back, but I’m not sure where I find myself is any better.

I’m in a large, empty room that sprawls the length and width of the building. There’s a bit of light coming in from the windows, which have steel bars over them just like mine do at home. Well. These are nicer than mine. Probably not sourced from scrapyards.

I can see the river below, glinting in what little sunlight is left, and it makes me feel like I’m spinning again. The river looks too normal, and yet here I am in a martial arts school that’s actually a vampire stronghold—

But that feels a little too much like hysteria. I pinch the inside of my wrist, hard, until I gulp in more air. I force myself to take stock of where I am, especially as my eyes adjust.

There appears to be nothing in the room where I’m standing. What looks like some exercise equipment. A series of doors, all shut tight, against the far wall.

It’s empty, but I don’t feel alone.

As I stand there with my back against the steel door, I suddenly hear what sounds like a muffled command and then a great sound of stamping up above. If I cringe a little as I look up, expecting a vampire horde to descend upon me through the ceiling, well. There’s no one around to see me.

I swallow, though my throat is dry. The light is gloomy now, but I can see the only staircase across the cavernous room, and I make my way to the lowest step.

Then I slowly, reluctantly, begin to climb.

The noise gets louder, but it’s rhythmic and strange. I want to run away more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything, but I don’t. I remind myself that I can’t .

Ariel Skinner not only knows who I am, he knows where I live.

I pass the landing and order myself to keep going when I pause. I take the second flight, admittedly more slowly, and when I get to the top I emerge into something I don’t understand at all.

The first thing I see is a throng of astonishingly good-looking people, dancing.

No, not dancing, I immediately revise in my head.

What they’re doing looks violent. And dangerous. They’re all doing the same thing, they’re just doing it at an incredible speed.

An arm in the air, a complicated exchange of arms and feet. A stamp. A kick.

Like they’re mapping out fighting styles in the air.

I look past them to the single man standing before them, arms crossed and legs wide, and I know at once it’s him.

Ariel Skinner. King of the vampires.

The first thing I notice about him is his stillness.

It feels like an intense invitation.

Like a hand around my throat, but worse. More , somehow.

The second thing is the great wallop of his presence when he looks right at me.

I don’t know how else to process it. I feel it like a blow. Like the very fact of him slams into me and sends me staggering back, and I realize that it really does when I have to reach out and grab the railing beside me to stay on my feet.

I jerk my eyes away from his, and it feels harder than it ought to. I look instead at the wide expanse of the mirror behind him.

But the only thing reflected is me.

In the mirror, I’m all alone. In this actual room, however, there must be thirty vampires performing for their king, and he is scarier than all of them.

“Scary” isn’t the right word.

I can feel everything inside me shifting. Changing. Humming.

Like he’s some kind of tuning fork and my body is responding despite my best efforts.

It doesn’t help that he is, by far, the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. Ruinous seems like a vast understatement. He is almost too beautiful to look at directly.

Last night the werewolf alpha was a study in brawn. Brute force, muscled accordingly and riotously.

But this man is something else entirely.

There’s all that lean muscle, honed to perfection.

If the werewolf was a hammer, Ariel is a knife.

The kind assassins use, long and sharp and so deadly it feels like blood just to look .

His hair is black and closely cropped. He has a fierce nose and a cruel mouth, though looking at it makes everything inside of me go soft.

Soft and hot, and I don’t understand it at all.

He has his arms crossed over a chest marked in wicked-looking scars, and I can see the hint of a dark-inked tattoo that loops over one shoulder and comes around again at the opposite hip.

I don’t have to see the rest of it in the nonexistent reflection. I know, somehow, that it’s some kind of dragon. That he is fire.

I feel as if I’m running. As if I’m trapped in that alley with terrible nightmares coming in hot on my heels.

But I can’t look away. His gaze is like quicksilver, a searing alchemy that I can feel roll all through me like he’s turning me into something new.

I blink. I pull in a breath. I watch as the lines of spinning and kicking suddenly ... stop.

Like a screech, though there is no sound.

Well.

There is one sound.

My pounding, wildfire, disastrously mortal heart.

Every single one of the vampires turns to stare right at me, but the only stare I feel is his.

Wrapped all around me like his tattoo.

“Hi,” I say brightly. Foolishly. “I’m Winter Bishop. You summoned me?”