Page 3 of Vicious Prey
I don't turn around. I don't have to. Ellis is lounging near the small mahogany table, looking too comfortable for a man who should've learned better than to make himself comfortable in this room. He's wearing that ridiculous leather jacket, the one he bought specifically to annoy our father, and his fingers tap a frantic rhythm against the wood. He was the one who was supposed to be the heir, the one who was too soft for the family business and too loud for the family's secrets.
"And you look like a smudge on my furniture," I say, my voice smooth as aged whiskey, masking the sharp edges of my hunger. "Did you come here to offer critique, or are you just bored of haunting my peace?"
Ellis snorts, a sound like dry leaves skittering over pavement. "Your peace has worse conversation than the laundry room. At least the machines don't spend all day staring at the masonry." His eyes flick toward the door, then back to me. He's pretending to be casual, but Ellis has never known how to make fear sit still in his body. "There's a party downstairs. Adaro's got the crystal out. The church delegates are here, smelling of incense andself-righteousness. They're eating your favorite salmon canapés while they talk about you in the third person."
I tighten my grip on the empty blood pouch. The church. They've been sniffing around the perimeter for weeks, looking for their gathered divinity while my family smiles and negotiates the price of my soul. It's a dance we've performed for generations, but the music's getting faster. I can feel the tension in the air, a hum in the wards that suggests the leash is about to be tugged. My family's always been good at selling things that don't belong to them.
"They want to see the prize," Ellis continues, his eyes tracking the movement of my hands. "They're talking about stabilizing the asset. That's church-speak for putting you in a smaller box with more locks. You should see the woman they sent. She looks like she's made of starch and cold steel. She's already measuring the dimensions of your future."
"I've got no interest in their guest list," I say, though my skin's starting to itch with the proximity of them. I can feel the weight of their expectations pressing against the stone of the tower. "Let them drink their wine and discuss my utility. I'm sure Adaro's enjoying the attention. He always did like an audience for his cruelties."
Ellis stands up, his image blurring slightly as he moves toward the window. He was always the sharper of us, the one who poked at bruises until they bled. "He's not just enjoying it, Cain. He's selling. He's going to hand you over to them like a pedigreed hound. Tonight. Before the sun comes up, you'll be on a transport to the Cathedral. And you're just sitting here, counting bricks like a child waiting for a bedtime story."
I turn my head then, my eyes locking onto his. The blood magic under my skin flares, a sudden hot pulse of red that makes the air in the room vibrate. It's an old, wild power, the kind that doesn't care for porcelain tea sets or mahogany tables. Theempty pouch in my hand shrivels into a black husk, consumed by the heat of my irritation. A thin line of crimson light arcs from my fingertips, scorching a dark mark into the wood of the table.
"Don't," I say, my voice too even. "Don't tell me what I'm doing. Don't stand in my prison and make the mistake of thinking I've misunderstood the furniture."
Ellis stares at me, and for a second, I see the fear in him. Even Ellis, the only person who still visits this tomb and speaks to me like I'm something other than an asset, is afraid of what the tower's made me. The realization lands colder than the synthetic blood ever could. I'm the nightmare they built, and now they're afraid of the dark.
"Right," Ellis whispers, his voice thin and cutting like a winter wind. "I'll leave you to your masonry. Just remember, Cain. Preservation's just a fancy word for rotting. You're not a secret. You're a corpse they forgot to bury."
He vanishes before I can respond, the air where he stood remaining cold and hollow for a long moment. I'm alone again with the silence and the chemical smell of the blood. I close my eyes and try to steady my breathing, pushing the flare of magic back down into the marrow of my bones. My mind drifts, unbidden, to the two pieces of myself I've already found and lost.
My beautiful little witch Soren always brought the smell of ozone before a storm, the feeling of warm magic pressed against my chest, and a sharp, ringing laughter that could cut through any ward. I remember the witch's heartbeat during our stolen rests, a frantic, living rhythm that made my own stillness feel like a crime. Then there's Ira, the exorcist, the only man I ever willingly submitted to, the one who understood that protection was a duty, not a cage. I found two of my three, and I lost them both to my family's greed, my own cowardice, and the cruel timing of a world that doesn't want us to be whole.
But there's a third pull now. It's been tugging at my blood for weeks, a persistent, low-frequency vibration that I've tried to ignore. It's not romantic yet. It's survival, need, and old magic orienting toward the missing piece. It's a hollow space in my soul that matches a shape out there in the city. It's coming from a place that smells of stale hops and cheap spirits. If I stay here, I'll be sold to the church and drained of everything that makes me Cain. If I leave, I might finally find the piece that lets me breathe.
I stand up and walk to the window. The guard's at the end of the hall. Two minutes. I can hear the click of his shoes and the wet rasp of his breath. I open the heavy latch, the stone cold and unforgiving against my palms. I've spent centuries being an ornament, a commodity, a preserved secret. Tonight, I think I'd rather be a disaster.
I don't climb down. I don't have the patience for grace. I drop.
The air rushes past me, a sudden, violent freedom that knocks the breath from my lungs. I hit the ground harder than my healing body likes, the impact jarring through my knees and up my spine with a sickening thud. The grass is damp and smells of clover, a sensory shock after the sterile dust of the tower. For a moment, the world's just pain and wet earth. Then the alarm bells start, a high, silver ringing that cuts through the night like a blade. The tower lights flare, sweeping across the grounds in hungry arcs.
The first guard meets me near the rose garden. He's young, barely a century into his immortality, and his eyes are wide with a mixture of duty and terror. He raises his hands to cast a binding spell, his fingers trembling. I don't give him the chance to find his courage. I reach out with my mind, grabbing the blood in his veins and pulling. It's a sharp, brutal burst of magic, a command that his body can't ignore. I feel his pulse hitch, then stutter under the weight of my will. He collapses like a marionette with its strings cut, gasping as his heart rhythm fails.I don't stop to see if he's breathing. I don't have the luxury of mercy, and the part of me that was raised by monsters doesn't care if he dies.
I run toward the perimeter, my boots slipping on the damp earth. The scent of woodsmoke and exhaust is getting stronger, drifting over the stone walls of the compound from the city beyond. I can feel the ward at the edge of the property before I see it, a shimmering curtain of impure magic that smells of burnt hair and sulfur. It's a jagged, ugly thing, designed to recognize my family's blood and reject everything else. To me, it's a wall of living fire.
The second guard catches me just as I reach the gate. He's older, a vampire who's served Adaro since the turn of the century. He knows exactly what I'm capable of, but he's more afraid of Adaro than he is of me. He doesn't hesitate. He lunges, his claws extended, a snarl ripping from his throat. I dodge the first swipe, the air from his movement whistling past my ear like a whip. I grab his wrist, the bone crunching under my grip, and slam my palm into his chest. I channel every bit of my hunger and my rage into the strike, a physical blow backed by a century of suppressed power.
He hits the stone gatepost with a sickening crunch that echoes through the trees. He stays down, his eyes rolling back into his head. I look at him for a heartbeat, wondering if I should feel something: guilt, regret, a shred of familial loyalty. I feel nothing but the cold wind and the desperate need to be gone. The tower didn't just preserve me. It emptied me of the things that make humans weep.
I step into the ward, pain immediately catching on my skin, dragging at my clothes, trying to pull the blood out of my pores as if it can filter the impurity out of me. I scream, but the sound's lost in the hum of the magic. I push forward, my vision blurring into a kaleidoscope of red and white. My skin beginsto blister under the assault of the impure energy, and my blood feels like it's boiling in my veins. One step. Two. The world becomes a screaming white light that threatens to swallow my consciousness.
I stumble onto the pavement of a quiet side street, gasping for air that doesn't smell of magic and ancient dust. My skin's raw, my clothes singed, and the hunger in my gut's a living thing, clawing at my insides. But I'm outside. The silence of the tower's gone, replaced by the distant hum of traffic and the rhythmic thumping of a thousand living hearts. The air's oily and thick with the scent of humanity, and it tastes like the most dangerous thing I've encountered in years.
The city's disorienting. The lights are too bright, flashing in neon pulses that hurt my eyes. The noises are too sharp: the screech of tires, the distant sirens, the chatter of people in the shadows. It's a sensory assault that makes my head spin. I lean against a brick wall, my breath coming in ragged hitches, my hands shaking so hard I have to tuck them against my sides. My mind's screaming at me to go back, to find the familiar safety of my room, the predictable cruelty of Adaro. Freedom isn't a triumph yet. It's a panic attack masquerading as a destination.
I need blood. Real blood. The synthetic forgery's worn off, leaving me weak and trembling, my senses heightened to the point of agony. I can feel the life force of the city all around me, the heat of the people in the apartments above, the pulse of the late-night walkers. I could take someone. I could feed until the shaking stops and the world slows down. But the pull in my blood won't let me. It's orienting me north, dragging me toward the heart of the dive bars and the grit, toward a specific vibration I can't ignore.
I start walking, my movements stiff and awkward. Every time a car passes, I flinch, the glare of the headlights feeling like a physical blow to my retinas. I'm a ghost walking through a worldthat moved on without me. I pass a small shop with a sign that saysSoren's, and for a second, the air around it tastes like cinnamon and old paper. The witch's magic punches through me, a familiar, warm weight that nearly brings me to my knees. It's a tether, a reminder of the man who once tried to save me. I want to stop. I want to pound on the door and find the man with the reddish-orange hair and tell him I'm sorry for being a coward. But the pull's stronger, a fundamental alignment of my soul with something I haven't yet met.
I follow the vibration, as the streets get narrower, the buildings older and more scarred by time and neglect. The smell of stale beer and cheap whiskey starts to drown out the exhaust. I stop at a corner, my heart, the one that hasn't beaten in centuries, feeling like it's trying to remember how to move. The pull's coming from a building with a neon sign that flickersGabriel's Bar. The G's burnt out, leaving it asabriel's, a stuttering blue light in the dark.
It's a dive bar, the kind of place where people go to disappear or to be forgotten. I stand outside, my shadow long and jagged under the streetlights. My skin's still stinging from the wards, and the hunger's a dull roar in my ears, making the world feel distant and unreal. I look at the door, the wood scarred and the brass handle tarnished by a thousand desperate hands. Whatever's waiting inside is the final piece of the puzzle. I can feel it, the celestial hum that threads beneath the stale beer and cheap spirits, a note of pure gold in a world of grey static, and it pulls at every broken piece of me.
I put my hand on the door. Behind me, the tower's already gathering itself to hunt. Ahead of me, the missing piece of the bond waits inside a bar that smells like rot, liquor, and exhausted miracles. I've lived too long to trust anything that feels necessary, but my blood doesn't care what I trust. It only knows where it belongs.
I push the door open.
