Page 93 of Peacemaker

Chapter Thirty

Fucking Liar

And run I did.

I flew over the ground beside the master, bursting with energy and strength and life, and it was like learning to fly.

Amias had told me the effects would wear off quickly, but for that moment, I was full of power. Full of vampire power.

I left my car behind, unwilling to waste the energy inside me, the magic, and I ran. I could not wait to tear into a rifter.

I wanted to feed. Along with the vampires’ abilities came the vampires’ urges. I wanted to feed. I wanted to kill, but that was nothing new. The desire for hot blood was. But I had a new knowledge, and I understood what it would feel like to drink. I understood what it would give me. I craved it more than I’d ever craved sex or killing.

It was a different kind of bloodlust.

How the vampires controlled themselves was incomprehensible to me. Had I been a vampire, I would surely have eaten any human put before me.

I reached the city, my heart hammering hard and fast, my lungs pulling in endless oceans of air, my blood thundering through my body. I’d never felt so alive.

The city was hell.

It was not a place for humans.

I hoped Crawford had the sense to hide. To try to stay alive.

Mostly, I worried for Shane. He would not hide, not ever. Still, he had Silverlight, and if there was any hope for him at all, it was with her.

I always carried backup blades, small and innocuous when compared with Silverlight, but they would do. I yanked them from their sheaths and with both hands full of silver and vampires surrounding me, I went after the rifters.

The army of vampires screamed with the new life they’d been given, the rifters roared with rage and hunger, and it was like wading into bedlam.

When the vampires arrived, the rifters’ attention was wrenched from the humans, and from that act alone, the humans became safer.

I was tall, but the rifters—male and female alike—towered over me. It didn’t matter. I leaped and whirled and plunged my blades into brains and throats and hearts, propelled by the vampire power raging through my body.

But it was as though the rifters had to be killed twice.

They would fall, dead, only to rise again minutes later and throw themselves back into the battle. I believed it was sheer hatred driving them on. They collided with the vampires with a savagery I’d never before witnessed, their viciousness exceeded only by their rage.

And the vampires gave it back tenfold.

There was a hatred inside them—rifter and vampire alike—that no human could ever comprehend. It wasn’t something a human had the ability to feel.

I felt it, though. Dimly, but I felt it. I felt it because they did. I was too connected with them to avoid the spillover.

And it began to drive me mad.

It was simply too much for my human brain. It was too real. Too primitive. It did not belong in a human or a human’s world, and I couldn’t contain it. I also could not force it away—it was simply there.

I’d lifted a blade with the mindless intention of driving it into my tortured brain when it was twisted from my hand and Rhys stood in front of me, his eyes red, the skin of his face peeling.

“Now,” he said, his voice rough, his words thick and garbled, “you are ready.”

He was shifting, and trying with all the strength he had to maintain his form. He cried out with the effort, and all around us vampires and rifters clashed. Neither side considered running. They wanted one thing and one thing only.

To kill each other.

Still, Rhys and I were pinned, encircled, surrounded by battling monsters, sharp fangs, slashing claws, feral rage.