Chapter 2

Dylan leaned against the counter with his arms folded, studying me.

"How are things with Elias?"

I set the loaded magazine down. "Don't start."

"I'm asking a simple question."

"And I'm giving you a simple answer. None of your business."

He pushed off the counter. "You married a civilian, Clara. A professor who thinks you work late at an office. If something goes wrong out there, he can't protect you. He doesn't know the first thing about who you really are."

Dylan didn’t need to finish the sentence. I already knew where it was going.

"He makes me happy," I said. "That's enough for me."

"Happy doesn't stop a vampire from following your scent home."

"Dylan. We're not doing this before a mission."

He opened his mouth, and I held up a hand.

"I mean it."

His jaw tightened. He exhaled through his nose, sharp and short, and looked away. That was the rule. No personal arguments on mission nights. We'd both seen what happened when hunters carried distraction into the field. People got sloppy. People died.

I turned to the closet in the back room. Two sets of gear hung on the rack. Black tactical pants, reinforced jackets with armor panels sewn inside the lining, boots designed for running on concrete without sound.

I stripped off my blouse and jeans and pulled the gear on. The jacket was heavier than what I'd arrived in, fitted with interior sheaths for the daggers I'd already loaded, lined with Kevlar. This wasn't clothing for passing as someone's wife on the way home from the office. This was what I wore when I expected to bleed.

Mask next. Black fabric that covered everything below my eyes. Hunters wore them for the same reason we carried no identification. If we didn't come back, the vampires would find a body. Not a name. Not a family.

Then the scent.

I uncapped a glass vial from the kit on the table and tipped it against my fingertips. Pale green liquid, sharp enough to make my eyes water before it touched skin.

The garlic compound burned faintly as it touched my skin, masking every trace of scent.

Without it, one sharp-nosed vampire at tonight's gathering could follow my trail home. To our apartment. To Elias.

I spread the liquid across my wrists, my throat, behind my ears, and rubbed the remainder into the collar of my jacket.

When I finished, I reached into the safe one last time.

The cross pendant was small. Its silver had tarnished along the edges where my father's thumb had worn the metal smooth over years of use. He'd worn it every day of his life. It was the only thing of his that survived that night.

I fastened the chain around my neck and pressed the cross flat against my sternum beneath the jacket. The silver was cold through the fabric.

"Now we can go," I said.

Dylan grabbed his bag and killed the lights.

The drive took forty minutes through a thin, steady rain. Dylan kept both hands on the wheel, jaw set tight.

"Intel puts the girl in a holding room near the back of the building," he said. "We get in, extract her, and get out. That's the full scope of this mission."

"I know."

"The Vampire King may be in attendance. We do not engage him. Rescue only, Clara."

I watched the rain slide down the passenger window. "I won't be reckless."

"Say the rest."

I turned to look at him. "I won't be reckless. But this is the closest I've ever been to him. You understand what that means."

Dylan's knuckles whitened on the steering wheel. He nodded once.

The image hit without warning. My mother's arm stretched across the hallway floor, reaching for the front door she never reached. My father beside the kitchen table.

I closed my eyes. Then opened them.

Aurelian Ashbourne. The Vampire King. The man who killed my parents.

I wanted him dead. I had wanted it for ten years. Some nights I still rehearsed it—the distance of the shot, the angle of the blade, the exact timing of a silver bullet through the chest.

But the girl they'd taken was alive. My parents were not.

The dead had waited ten years. The living couldn't wait ten more minutes.

We parked two blocks from the gathering and approached on foot through the rain.

The building was a converted warehouse at the river's edge. Blacked-out windows, bass vibrating through the walls. From the street it looked like a private venue. The vampires preferred it that way.

Dylan signaled toward the service entrance. I dropped into formation behind him. Three paces back, right flank. We'd drilled this since we were fifteen.

One guard at the back door. Recently turned. I could tell from how he held himself. Rigid, twitchy, still adjusting to senses that hadn't settled. New vampires always seemed to be listening to a frequency no one else could hear.

Dylan stepped into the light.

The guard snarled and lunged. My dagger was already in the air. Silver blade through the ribcage. He crumbled to ash before his knees hit the ground.

We slipped through the door. The corridor inside was narrow and dim, music throbbing from somewhere deeper. A second guard rounded the corner. Dylan pinned him to the wall. Stake through the ribs, hand clamped over the mouth. No louder than a caught breath.

Two down. No alarm.

We pressed deeper into the building. The passage widened. Beyond it I could hear voices, laughter, the clink of glass against glass. The gathering was in full swing. Dozens of vampires at least, packed into whatever spectacle they'd arranged for the evening.

I stopped. Pressed my back to the wall and let a patrol pass.

My hand found the cross beneath my jacket. The silver had warmed against my skin.

Someday I would stand face to face with Aurelian Ashbourne. Not tonight. Tonight belonged to the girl behind whatever locked door she was waiting in. But the day was coming. He would answer for what he took from me.

My hand closed around the pendant.

At least tonight, I was closer than I had ever been before.