“Thirty seconds to drop!” Bryce’s voice bit through my earpiece.
I looked over my shoulder. The teams were paired and lined up behind us, facing the exits. I braced my weapon tightly against my side.
“Ten seconds!” the captain shouted behind me.
The main doors of the church were visible below, and the chopper now hovered in place just behind the trees encircling the building. Someone dropped the two lines on each side of the doorway, and they slithered down toward the ground.
Gina reached over and gripped my arm for a split second.
“Drop, teams!”
Sucking in a breath, I crouched alongside Gina, gripping my line, and the chopper floor disappeared from beneath my feet. Weightlessness overtook me. The rushing air blurred my sight, and the friction of the line whizzing through my gloves warmed their damp fabric.
Treetops surged closer, then branches, trunks—ground—
Gina and I hit the soil in tandem. We dropped our lines and stepped away silently, unlocking the safeties on our guns and moving into position. My peripheral vision showed the other teams landing behind us and filing toward the church. The building’s walls may have been painted once, but all that remained were thin streaks of gray on the rotting wooden boards. It was taller than I’d expected, its roof reaching far above us amongst the treetops.
Gina led the way. The back window—our entrance—was at shoulder level. Pinecones crunched under my boots, so I lightened my steps.
We reached the window. Gina eyed the windowsill—no glass left, totally busted out—and swiftly lifted herself up and through the flaking wooden frame. I waited three beats and followed suit, heaving myself inside.
I landed quietly on the old floorboards. In front of me, Gina scanned the room, gun butt against her chest. The edges of the main sanctuary were entirely dark. The altar’s giant cross loomed above us from the back wall. The window we’d entered was one of two lighting the room—crisscrossed boards covered the others, save the one Zach and Roxy were crawling through on the west wall. Dust floated through the few beams of light we had.
Must and earthy mildew filled my nose. The now-distant and barely audible murmur of the chopper was the only thing I could hear besides my clipped breathing. Most of the pews were in scattered pieces, and old hymnals were strewn between them.
I followed Gina as she crept toward the altar. We knelt on either side of it, squinting through the haze. One, two, three, four… I counted my teammates as they shifted through the darkness, covering the perimeter of the sanctuary. Everyone was accounted for. Bryce’s behemoth frame stood beside one of the massive, cracked pillars. I couldn’t see his mouth moving, but I heard the gravel of his whisper in my comm: “Team B, say the word when all four corners are covered. Team A, stationary.”
Zach and Roxy scouted the west wall, and I could see Colin and Greta securing the darkness framing the main door. I glanced above, mentally repeating my next orders. You will be the first to head up.
The vaulted ceiling was so tall I couldn’t tell where the walls ended and it began.
“Team A, have you located the stairs?” Captain growled.
“Stairs near corner of altar and west wall, confirmed,” Gina whispered. My eyes darted to the narrow staircase.
“Ground floor secure,” Zach said softly in my ear.
“Right. Team A, visually secure the stairs. Then head up. If I’ve got your bearings right, there should be a balcony beyond that,” Bryce instructed.
There wasn’t much visibility up the staircase, but the next landing was clearly far up. Some of the slatted steps were cracked… some not there at all. Gina’s gaze caught mine, and she nodded to reassure me.
“Stairs clear. Light steps, Lyra,” Gina breathed over the comm, holding my eyes with hers.
“Team A, move up,” our captain grunted.
Gina instantly responded, stepping delicately as she ascended. I left several steps between us as we climbed. My eyes bounced between her feet and the steps emerging from the dark above us.
A step groaned under Gina’s left foot, and we instantly froze. She looked back at me, a warning to be careful. I nodded. Despite my care, the same step creaked under my weight, but it held.
Cobwebs latticed between the railing and the steps. I glanced at them for just a second, and I heard a step whine and then snap—crack—Gina’s right foot was falling, and she was going down with it.
I snatched the back of her belt and threw my weight back as hers pulled me forward, my muscles straining. The broken wooden step clattered on the floor below, echoing off the east wall.
“Freeze!” Bryce hissed in my ear.
Gina’s sharpened breaths were the only sounds that followed. I held on tightly to her belt; she gripped the railing, taking most of her weight off me. Her eyes closed in relief, but only briefly. She flashed a thanks to me with a glance. All remained still.
“Team A. Secure?” It was Zach.
“Secure,” Gina replied.
“Continue,” Bryce ordered.
Gina exhaled and turned back up the staircase. Shaking just slightly, I found my breath and followed her.
We covered a few more steps, accompanied by one or two more creaks but no more collapses, and found ourselves entering what looked like an attic—not a balcony. There were scattered wooden pillars, piles of old furniture, and a window in the wall far ahead. Another glowed behind us. The windows’ light haloed above us from the opposite ends of the room, relieving the gloom just a little. We moved off the stairs and carefully tested the wooden floor with our feet.
“Next floor confirmed, Captain,” Gina said quietly on her comm. “Not exactly a balcony. It’s an attic. Moving forward.”
Something pale moved in the corner of my eye, and I jumped. The tip of Gina’s gun darted toward it. We halted. It didn’t move again. I squinted, making out a sheet draped on an old table. Inches of dust covered every surface. It fluttered again in some unseen draft.
I nodded to Gina to move forward. False alarm.
We silently passed other tables and chairs, all enveloped in cobwebs. The attic was dead quiet. We peered around, our forms casting even more shadows in the extending darkness.
“Western stairwell visually confirmed,” Zach whispered.
“Zach, Roxy, take the stairs. Hopefully you can confirm a balcony,” Bryce said.
Gina and I planted our feet and held steady. The room was motionless, soundless. If there was a redbill here, it was the quietest I’d ever encountered, that was for sure.
Our eyes continued scanning the dark. I reached up and slowly picked a spiderweb off my chin.
“Balcony confirmed,” Zach murmured over the comm. “No movement.”
Gina stepped forward, and I looked behind us for any stirring. Still nothing.
She signaled me with her hand, and I followed her deeper into the thick beams and abandoned furniture.
Thwap, thwap.
The sound tore through the silence. Gina and I spun toward it. I planted my heels to secure my stance, the slick metal of the trigger under my finger.
A sudden, bright thrashing and whirling engulfed Gina’s head. I jerked back and adjusted my aim, trying to get a bead on the cloud flailing above Gina’s shoulders—until I heard a quick, flustered cooing.
“Pigeon,” Gina gasped. She swatted at the bird, and it tumbled down to the wooden floor then bobbed off, its feathers mussed, vanishing into the gloom.
I pulled the tip of my weapon back up and away from my teammate, my hand instinctively pressing against my breastbone. My heartbeat throbbed in my ears. Holy hell…
The two of us stayed there for a moment, catching our breath. In the resumed quiet, we peered around for any other movement.
Zach spoke again. “Moving to western balcony.”
After scouting the rest of the room, Gina gestured toward the staircase. “Attic clear,” she whispered into her comm.
I watched my feet as I followed her, to avo
id kicking a table leg or brushing any dust-choked sheets. I glanced around in search of the staircase we’d come up, when Gina stopped abruptly. I nearly walked into her and quickly side-stepped. Then I saw why she’d stopped.
A figure stood directly before the staircase, blocking our only way out.
As I stared, I realized I could barely call it a figure—it was more a blanket of obscurity. No clear shape to the body. An empty space of jet black, only finding form against the slightly subtler grays of the room it stood in.
My eyes strained to trace the outlines of the figure’s shadowed face.
“Hello?” I called out, my voice reverberating through the attic, seeming to fill every jagged crack and crevice.
Silence. Stillness.
That was the only response from the living shadow in front of us.
The hair on the back of my neck rose as I felt a chill, thick and contagious. It spread down my spine, gliding through my extremities with a frigid wake. Still, I gave a small wave, beckoning Gina to follow me forward.
Thoughts tumbled through my mind. It’s not a redbill. That much is obvious. And we’re highly trained. If it’s a squatter, or some psycho, we can defend ourselves.
Not to mention, this was our only way out.
Gina stayed two steps behind me as our boots crept closer to the figure and our exit point. A few feet away, I saw a face begin to take shape amidst the darkness of its boundaries. His boundaries, I realized. And his eyes… My heart froze in my chest. Something about his eyes was so familiar, yet so foreign, that I felt my brow furrow, my mind scrambling to understand. I couldn’t make out their color from here, but there was… something about them.
I felt my body tense suddenly—some primordial instinct that somehow pieced the puzzle together and hardened before my brain had a chance to do the same.
Then his hands were on me.
And despite his impossible speed, I felt it happen in slow motion. Like an almost-lucid dream, one where I was a full participant but couldn’t respond fast enough. My gun clattered to the ground, the sound echoing off the thick, wood-slatted floor. My comm was ripped from my ear and my body was heaved over his shoulder.
In the time it took me to gasp, he crossed the room. So light and fast it felt like we were floating, then, without warning, angling upward. I saw it in a blur—the window. He was scaling the wall to the window. I regained my voice, shrieking frantically into the attic space, and heard Gina’s voice yelling back. A gunshot rang out, but the man didn’t falter. My screams grew stronger as Gina’s grew farther away, and I was plunged into empty space with only the body beneath me to cling to.
We were freefalling. As we plunged toward the ground, he made a sound—a sharp, guttural growl—and a huge shape appeared out of nowhere.
Broad wings and thin, dangling legs. An extended beak that had featured in my nightmares a few hours before. A redbill.
It swooped under us, catching us with a heavy shudder as the man straddled it.
What is happening?
I didn’t have time to ask myself anything beyond that. To think. To wonder. I barely even had time to breathe. Because a moment later, the redbill accelerated to cut through the air like a torpedo. I knew redbills could fly fast. But this—this was beyond comprehension.
The world screamed by in a blur, too fast and jumbled to be anything but a mix of faint colors and the meshing of space and time. My helmet flew off my head, and I gasped, choking on the wind. I felt the skin on my face being pulled backward. My eyes burned. And I clutched his cloak with everything I had.
Until, at some point, I realized we’d slowed. We weren’t clipping through space anymore. I blinked, willing my dry eyes to moisten enough to function. To figure out where we were and what was happening. The surrounding shapes took form just as the redbill landed with a brain-rattling jolt.
Cliff, I grasped. We’re on a cliff. My senses darted in every direction, trying to take everything in. Gray skies splayed out in front of me. Clouds rolled and tumbled in the sky, churning—matching how my stomach felt, tossing and twisting inside me. I heard the roaring of waves as they crashed into the cliff, salt spray cutting up into the air.
The man slid gracefully off the bird. The wind billowed through his dark cloak, causing it to flare behind him. He turned to me, and I remembered what I’d pieced together before he’d grabbed me. Before the power and momentum and speed swept all thoughts from my brain. My eyes flew to his face. To his eyes. Wondering if what my instincts had jumped to in the milliseconds before he snatched me could possibly be correct.
The wind swept through his dark hair, and strands of it skated across the pale, yet strangely shadowed flesh of his forehead. I gasped as my gaze caught his once more. I could see his eyes better now that we were free from the dimness of the church attic. Yes, they were blue. But not just blue. They were an icy, crystalline blue that seemed to shift and melt in his very irises, tinges of silver and gray surfacing with them. Like glacial waters, haunting and bottomless.
I knew what those eyes meant. What they were. The depth—the darkness. The shadows. I knew what they were from every story Bryce had ever shared about his past. I was reminded of them every time I saw the cane Uncle Alan still had to use—an ever-present connection to his days as a ground agent, the dangers he’d faced. I knew them from every whisper between my parents. I knew them from so many of the people who had done everything possible to prevent those eyes from ever seeing a human again.
And yet, here I was. Staring at them.
I felt it then: fear. Thick and dark, its talons sinking deep into my core. He reached out, his hands latching onto me. And for a split second, I wondered what it would feel like when he sank his teeth into me. Would it feel like his hands, the strong pressure I felt in them as they clutched me? As though his skin had melded into mine and I could no longer tell where I started and he ended… Or would it be fierce and fast, an anchoring of fangs in my flesh without warning?
Improvise. Adapt. Overcome.
The dizzy thoughts flashed through my head one after another until he jerked forward, and I felt my training kick in.
As he swept me downward, off the redbill, I prepared to roll, assuming he meant to throw me to the ground; I wouldn’t go down without a fight. Instead, my feet landed on solid rock. My fists clenched. I saw his lips part. Barely. And just when I gathered the energy of fear and anger coursing through my body, feeling it surge into the fist I was going to throw his way, he spoke.
His words rolled around us, deep and resonant, as though they’d ridden in on the waves crashing against the cliff behind us.
“Ah,” he sighed. “I always prefer to have a conversation one on one.”
Chapter 4
“What?” I croaked, staring.
Changing strategy, I shifted backward, my wobbling legs getting as much distance from the redbill and the man—the vampire—as possible. The cliff’s edge appeared in my vision as I backtracked, the sheer drop sending alarm jolting through my core, and I reversed one step toward the two creatures. But just one.
They gazed at me, indifferent and silent. The redbill turned its monstrous beak under its wing, fixing a few feathers. The vampire cleared his throat and crossed his arms.
The wind howled past us again. Sucking in a breath, I braced my feet firmly on the rock. I raised my fists to my midsection.
“Who the hell are you?” My voice cracked.
“So we’re past the stage of ‘What are you?’ Good. I don’t have a lot of time.” He pulled his cloak from his shoulder.
I blinked hard. It was really true? A vampire?
“How are you even…?” I breathed.
“I may get to that.” He flipped a hand nonchalantly in the air. “Or I may not. That depends on how you answer my questions.”
My heart punched the back of my ribs. “Questions?”
This can’t be real. There’s no way this is real.
“Yes. Questions.” He nodded, his arctic eye
s piercing me. He tapped a finger to his lips and held it there for just a moment. “How old are you?”
I looked around, turning just my head, assessing the terrain.
He snapped his fingers this time and raised his voice, the effect of it pulling the little air left from my lungs. “How old are you?”
“I’m twenty-one,” I managed, regaining as much of my composure as possible.
He didn’t miss a single beat. “What are you called?”
“Lyra—”
“Not your name, your rank,” he replied impatiently.
I instinctively flinched. “I’m…” I started, but cut myself off, clenching my fists tighter.
He was definitely going to kill me after he questioned me. Of course he would—he was a vampire. My suit covered most of my neck, but he could easily get past that. My knives hadn’t been restocked since I lost them last night. And pulse patches were too dangerous to use in tight quarters, so I didn’t have any of them on me either.
“Tell me your rank.” He crossed his arms again.
I swallowed, finding the strength to hold his stare with my own. “First lieutenant.” Why in the hell is he asking me this?
“For how long have you worked with the Bureau?” he pressed.
“Three years,” I said. I continued scanning the area, searching for a sharp rock or stick within reach. Nothing.
His eyes bounced about my frame for a moment, then fixated on my chest—on my badge, I realized. He furrowed his brow, frowning.
“Sloane,” he said.
My heart leapt again. The wind gusted against my legs, but my footing held solidly.
“As in… Alan Sloane, the director of Chicago?” he asked.
How does he know that? I licked my lips quickly and clenched my jaw.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Don’t answer him. Do. Not. Answer. Him.
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