Page 85 of The Lunatics

It was dark in the summerhouse. Michael and I must have been more wiped out than I thought to have slept the entire day away. Or maybe we really did share exhaustion through the bond. I needed to talk to Mom again, hammer out more of what to expect. However long I’d slept, it wasn’t enough. I was still bone weary, crushed beneath the weight of…

I shot up in bed. That wasn’t exhaustion I felt. It washer.

She sat in the rickety chair in the corner of the summerhouse, flipping throughVoguemagazine. Her long legs were crossed at the knee, her lifted foot idly kicking the air. She was clad in the height of fashion: spiky black heels, sequined shorts, a diaphanous top. The bright pink of her manicured nails flashed when she turned the page. Her skin was a rich, golden brown that looked like it had been recently kissed by the sun, and her thick hair cascaded in a gorgeous spill all the way to her waist, so black that at certain angles it flashed the jeweled blue of a raven’s wings. Her dark eyes were heavy lidded, and the brows that arched above them wereperfectly plucked. She smiled as she read on, her glossy full lips the same shade of pink as her nails.

She was stunningly, breathtakingly beautiful.

The most terrifying thing I had ever seen.

Her eyes snapped to mine without warning. “Oh, good, you’re up,” she said, her voice lilting and musical. “Can you believe they’re trying to bring Day-Glo back into style?”

I stared back at her, frozen in terror.

Her eyes widened. “Oh, no. Don’t be afraid. I’m not here to hurt you. If I wanted you dead…” She shrugged.

If she wanted me dead, I would be dead, and there wouldn’t be a damn thing I could do about it.

“Layla?” Michael asked, pushing himself up. “What’s happen—”

“No, no. None of that,” the vampire said, waving her hand in his direction. The power that rolled off her delicate fingers was staggering.

His eyes glossed over and he turned to stare into the distance with a dull, stupid expression. A wall went up between us. The bond didn’t snap, but I wasn’t sure that this was any better. I could sense him, but I couldn’tfeelhim.

I grabbed his shoulders. “Michael!”

He didn’t react. It was like he’d gone somewhere else, far, far outside my reach. I dropped my shield and tried to snap him out of it with my power, but instead of finding him, I crashed up against a wall of… nothing. If not for my small, lingering awareness of him through the bond, it would be like he wasn’t even there.

Just like that vampire in the alley.

I let him go and faced the monster that sat in the room with me, a sinking suspicion opening in the pit of my stomach.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “He’s fine. Just thralled. I’ll release him when I leave.”

Vampires weren’t supposed to be able to do this to us. Werewolves were immune to the threat of being captured within a vampire’s gaze and turned into a mindless, empty shell of themselves. But here Michael sat, evidence to the contrary. And there she sat, absolutely stunning, proving that her glamour worked on us, too. How? Was she so old that the rules didn’t apply to her? Had her power grown to such proportions that our own was useless in the face of it?

“Did you thrall that vampire in the alley?” I asked.

She waved a hand in the air, bracelets clacking. “I did. But we’ll get to that in a minute. We have more important things to discuss first.”

A tear splashed down my cheek. I couldn’t help it. Thisthinghad murdered my birth parents. Probably my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins, too. Did I have siblings? Did she kill them? The stink of my fear filled my nose. There was no need for her to hold me in thrall, not when my terror kept me pinned here.

She sighed. “I meant what I said. I’m not here to harm you.”

I just stared at her.

She frowned. “How much do you remember?”

Please don’t make me remember.

Unbidden, screams filled my ears. The metallic tang of blood singed my nose. Carnage. Chaos. My vision swam. I saw broken bodies strewn across the ground. There, in the middle of it, a creature of pure evil ripping the legs off a wolf twice her size.

She grimaced. “Pure evil? That’s a bit much, don’t you think?”

Oh, Goddess.She could read my mind.

“Only when you project like that.” She sighed again. “Look, I spent decades trying to reason with your birth pack. Decades, Layla. I cleaned up their messes. I even protected the Sahtú from them when the alliance broke and they turned on their former allies.”

“Why?” I croaked. Like Gia said, the vampire virus fucks people up. Turns them into monsters bent only on bloodshed.