Part One
THE CRESCENT
I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.
—Michelangelo
A feeling of complete and utter disaster has settled just below the surface of my conscience. I hope these new team members can help make a difference. Something has to.
—Gabriel
Edinburgh, Scotland
Old Town
Late October
Blood. Holy Christ, there’s so much of it. Everywhere. Bodies. Human bodies. Crumpled, laying in distorted ways, jagged bones jutting through ripped clothes as they lay lifeless on the cobbled stones. Against the buildings. So many. My stomach rolls, and I look away. I breathe, carefully picking my way through. It’s cold. Windy. Now the streets are barren. Where did the blood, the bodies go? I’m not here alone. I feel a presence.
It’s behind me. Hugging the shadows. So fast, I can’t tell if it’s running, flying, or scaling the walls.
Doesn’t really matter. Either way, I’m being stalked.
And it’s one of the Black Fallen.
Hurrying along the sidewalk, I slip into a narrow alley and press my back against the aged stones. A dim streetlamp overhangs the eve above, and the shadows reach long and jagged toward me. I listen closely. The air suddenly shifts, and in the next second I leap over the alley to the opposite wall. I climb, and in seconds I’m on the roof. I crouch, my fingers curled around the ledge, peering into the pitch darkness below. Waiting.
I know he’s coming for me.
I want him to.
Leaning back on my heels, I find the hilt of my silver blade that’s tucked into the back of my jeans, and palm it tightly. My eyes search the alley, the street and shadows below. Then I lift my gaze to study the jagged rooftops. It’s here. Hiding. Lurking. Adrenaline rushes through me, and I draw a deep breath—
I’m on my back, rolling away, then I lurch up and crouch several feet from the ledge.
No one is there. My blade is drawn, my body rigid. Ready.
���You’re fast,” a voice whispers behind me.
I whip around, and slash my blade.
A figure jerks back, then laughs darkly. “Almost too fast. But not quite.”
Suddenly, he’s in front of me, and strong fingers grasp my throat. I’m lifted off my feet as he walks toward the ledge. I try to slash at him with the blade, kick, throw my legs around him, but I’m paralyzed. I can’t even scream. The shadows fall onto his face, blurring his features together. I can do nothing more than stare.
“You’re powerless, my young mixed-blood,” he says. His voice is deep, his accent . . . old. “You can do nothing to stop me.” He swings me out and shakes me over the ledge. Nothing but air separates me from the stone cobbles thirty feet below. He’s using some kind of mind-power shit on me and it’s pissing me off. My gaze never leaves the vicinity of his.
“Oh. Strong-willed, are you?” he says. I can hear laughter in his voice, shaking me again. He’s only toying with me, amused. “Strength will get you nowhere with me,” he warns, and gives me another shake. “See how you’re nothing but a weak mortal now? All those powers you’ve acquired? Gone. You’d be better off to join us.” He cocks his head. “Would you?”
I try to answer, but my throat is squeezed shut.
He laughs. “Oh. Forgive me,” he says, and loosens his grip on me. “Now, what was that?”
“Go fuck yourself,” I say in a hoarse whisper.
Instantly, my throat is released, and I’m falling fast, the cobbles reaching up to me, and his laughter resonating off the stone walls, and the broken bodies along the cobbles begin screaming my name—
“Riley?”
“What?” I jerk up, my eyes fluttering open.
“You were sleeping,” a raspy, familiar voice says. “Are you all right?”
I turn my head and look. It’s Eli. Relief washes over me. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
Eli’s blue eyes narrow. Nail me to my seat. “Liar.”
I smile. “Just a dream, big guy. No big deal. Honest.”
Eli’s mouth tips at the corner. “You don’t have normal dreams, Ri.”
He’s right. I sure as hell don’t. “I just dreamed a Black Fallen kicked my ass.”
Eli sighs and closes his eyes. Frustration rolls off him in waves. “Riley,” he begins, and looks at me.
“I know, I know,” I finish. “Cross my heart, I will let you know if anything weird happens.”
His cerulean stare is disbelieving. I really don’t blame him, either.
“We’re almost there. Fifteen minutes, tops.”
I lean forward a little and glance past Eli at Jake Andorra. My new boss.
He grins. “I promise.”
The Rover pitches forward and my hand involuntarily tightens around the leather strap suspended above the door that I’ve had a death grip on ever since the vehicle left the parking lot at the airport. Our driver, Peter, is an old guy with a shock of gray hair covered by a tweed cap. Peter is clearly insane and lacks an updated driver’s license. Maybe he’s never even had one. Peter hits the gas and passes a slower driver. We all lunge forward. My stomach turns.
“Och. Sorry ’bout that,” says Peter nonchalantly in heavy Scottish brogue.
Jake chuckles.
“Ignore him,” Eli says, and leans close. His lips graze my ear, and I’m not at all surprised at the shiver it causes within me. “He likes to get you riled up.”
I glare at Jake, who shrugs. “It’s true,” he admits.
I turn away and ignore him. Eli’s right. Jake is one cocky ass. Hot as mess, but an ass all the same.
“Thank you,” Jake says.
I shoot him another glare. Mind readers suck. And I’m surrounded by them—including my immortal druid boss and the gorgeous vampire sitting next to me.
Staring out of the window, I can see my ghostly reflection in the glass. I finger my long bangs. Gone are the magenta highlights I’ve worn in my hair forever. My varying layers now hang straight in solid sheets of jet-black. Jake had advised me to draw less attention to myself. That almost makes me laugh out loud, even now. As if the inky angel wings tattooed at the corner of my left eye and the massive dragon etched into my back and down both of my arms aren’t enough of an attention grabber. I had agreed, though, to axe the highlights for now. Besides, they were work to keep up with. And they seemed to fit my lifestyle back in Savannah as master tattoo artist and proprietor of Inksomnia. Back when life was easy and uncomplicated. Greasy Krystal hamburgers and hot, melting Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Chick-O-Sticks and RC Cola. Boiled peanuts. Crabs and oysters.
Nothing will ever be that easy again.
Jake Andorra recruited me to join an elite task force known as WUP, or Worldwide Unexplained Phenomenon, a few months ago. Up until then I’d been a slayer of all things otherworldly and dangerous—until I became both of those things myself. Now everything has changed.
I study the Edinburgh skyline as it emerges through a hazy gray mist. The heavy, salty scent of the ocean—a smell that I’m very familiar with—seeps in through the cracks of the car and infiltrates my nostrils as it rolls in from the North Sea. A small slice of familiarity to keep me from missing home, from missing my little brother, Seth, or my surrogate grandparents, Estelle and Preacher. Or my best friend, Nyx. But this is my first task for WUP, and I have to give it my very best.
We’re in a steady stream of traffic as our convoy of four vehicles moves along the M8 toward Edinburgh. We’d landed in Glasgow and met up with a man named Darius, who now trails behind our Rover of Death, piloted by Peter the Insane, in another vehicle. Although Darius helped save my life once before, I don’t know him well. He’s an ancient immortal Pict warrior, and I mean ancient as in from the days of Merlin kind of ancient. From what Jake tells me, Darius is a powerhouse of strength. Mind and body. But that’s all I know. Behind Darius are two other elite WUP crew members: Ginger Slater and Lucian MacLeod. The only werewolves I’ve ever met. Like Darius, I still have more to learn about them.
In the final car are two people—or vampires, if you want to be exact—from home who were also recruited to the Scotland task force. One, Noah Miles. Eli’s best friend and head guardian of Charleston, South Carolina. A total bad-boy vamp who pushes every single limit thrown his way. Easygoing and full of southern charm, it’s almost like watching a magic show when he morphs into full-fledged fighting vampire. It’s a thing of beauty. To me, anyway. And he’s saved my ass more times than I can count.
And then there’s Victorian Arcos. Our history is so complicated it could fill a book. Even as I think about the strigoi vampire who bit me—whose DNA flows through my veins—I have to look away from Eli. A scrutinizing look from him, and I can tell he knows where my thoughts are.
I blow against the window and the glass fogs from my surprisingly still-warm breath. Outside, the air is chilly, everything a stony gray. Because I have the ability to hear things acutely miles and miles away, I have to work extra hard to tune everything out and concentrate on just my thoughts. Of who and what I am. Of what’s become of me.
I was bitten by not one vampire, but four in total. Three of those bites came from deadly, powerful strigoi vampires. One came from Eli, simply because he wanted some normal vampire venom flowing through my body. Three were courtesy of the Arcoses, including the one who now rides with us through the streets of Edinburgh. It makes things tense between all of us, and it makes me . . . special. I carry a little of each of their extraordinary traits. I’m not quite strigoi, yet there’s very little of the human left in me now. But after that dream I just had, who the hell knows how much help I can be here. What if the Fallen have the power to strip me of all my strigoi abilities? I can’t even think that way now. I have to concentrate. Fight. Stay alive.
Eli’s fingers lace through mine and he squeezes my hand. He knows me so well; he’s trying to distract me from thoughts that he knows disturb me.
Eligius Dupré. Deadly predator. Violent vampire. Fiercely loyal. And now he’s my fiancé. My sensitive, hot, kick-ass vampire fiancé. We’ve been through a lot together. He saved not only my life, but my brother’s as well. I owe him everything, and there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for him. I’m almost a completely respectable woman now. Who would’ve ever thought that I, Riley Poe, ex-gang member, troublemaking punk kid could have a degree in art, own her own ink shop, and be engaged? How’s that for crazy? We haven’t set a date yet, but I’m pretty sure we won’t even have time to think about that until matters are finished here in Scotland.
