A wall of wings and reaching hands blocked my path.
I skidded and slashed wildly at Rafe, opening a thin bloody line through his waistcoat. He hissed and reeled, more surprised than hurt.
I ran again. More branches snagged my clothes, so I took the knife to my skirts and cut them free, then ran out of the brush and across open asphalt peppered with weeds and spindly trees. I’d lost my shoes but I had no time to care. The station platform lay ahead, its one-thousand-foot facade of windows beacons in the night.
I had to get back inside. It needed me.
My heart raced along with my bare feet on the cracked road.
Get back behind the white line…
Something in the sky screeched. Rafe maybe. Maybe not. Out here, I was prey. The white line… I just had to make it over the line.
Smoke swirled ahead. It coalesced between me and the station’s lights. A black figure grew from the smoke. A phantom. Soul suckers. Screamers. The VG had many names for them. They didn’t bother the vampires. Why would they? It was souls they fed on. They’d bother with me.
I had nothing to fight it, just my knives.
The phantom’s outline wavered, grew, and straightened. It had seen me. No… nothing would stop me from getting back. Not Rafe and not that thing, pulled from one of the otherworlds and dumped into this one.
I ran harder, knives locked in my fists.
The phantom unleashed a horrid wail that shook my soul in warning. Then the train hit it. The iron engine made of fire and smoke annihilated the phantom, blasting it into pieces. I slowed to watch the iron beast thunder on. It roared and whipped up dust, tainting the air with the ashes of a dead world. When the train had passed, the platform waited just a few strides ahead.
I stumbled over the iron tracks, breathing too hard, heart trying to hammer free of my chest.
A phantom’s scream cut through the new quiet.
It wasn’t gone. Or maybe this was a different one.
And now it was pissed off and moving in fast.
I twisted, stumbled backward, my little knives out like they could protect me, and stared into its hollow, hungry eyes. If I died here, more than my life would end. The station would end, and I could not allow that to happen.
The phantom stopped a few strides from me. Its torn outline swelled as it turned itself into a churning storm of blackness. I had the platform at my back, its edge against my shoulders, but I needed to climb up and over that edge to reach the white line, and there wasn’t enough time.
Gods, it was really over.
I’m sorry, Kensey. I tried. I tried so hard… but in the end, I was just a little girl in a silly dress, playing with monsters.
Wings and sparks filled my vision. I blinked, noted the pretty shimmer on the leathery membranes, and realized, with gut-dropping dread, that Rafe was here.
Most vampires were unnaturally spawned by their queen and therefore soulless. Demons were not.
Rafe roared at the shadow. His wings opened to their full span and his tail lashed—its spiked prong a weapon. He seemed more beast than man.
The phantom rushed in and tore through him.
He staggered and almost fell against me. Smoke flowed from his skin, dragging some vital essence, and then the phantom soared into the sky, vanishing among the stars.
Rafe toppled forward, dropped to his knees, and fell facedown across the tracks, one wing flapping, then falling still.
Silence had never sounded so complete.
“Rafe…?” I dropped beside him, avoiding his wings so as not to further hurt him, and brushed his hair from his face, tucking it behind a horn. His eyes were open, his lips parted. He wasn’t breathing. But he’d be okay… He was always okay. I’d known him since he’d found me outside the line, toddling off somewhere like silly humans did, and he’d brought me back onto the platform, back to safety. “Our secret,” he’d said, his finger pressed to my lips. I hadn’t been so scared of demons after that. He’d been a constant, like Gerome, but facing his motionless body, I realized I couldn’t lose him too.
“Rafe?”
His cheek felt cold. He was never cold. He was smiles and motion, laughter and lust, and now he was… dead? “No…”
He was always all right, and he’d be all right again too—if I could get him across the line.
I hooked my arms under his and dragged him off the tracks before a train could truly finish him off. Heaving and shoving at his dead weight, I propped him against the platform wall and scrambled up and over its edge. Reaching down, I got a grip around one arm and tried pulling him up, but his wings flopped, lodging him beneath the platform’s lip. Reaching even farther, I looped an arm around his waist, but his weight slipped and pulled me over the edge. We both ended up in the dirt. No, no, no… Sanctuary was right there! Tears wet my face, tears for a pest of a demon who should never have taken me outside the white line. What had he been thinking?
“You idiot creature.” I thumped him on the arm and then rested my hand on the same spot, stroking away any hurt. “Why!”
This was too much. It was all too much. Lilith, the dead vampire, the phantom… Lilith had killed Felipe in my station. The VG would not forgive that. Was everything falling apart? Was it all over?
I ran my hand down Rafe’s limp wing. I had to leave him to get back inside. He was just another demon, and the station was more important than any individual. “I’m sorry—”
“Miss Lynher Aris,” a stern male voice declared.
I looked up, straight into the cold eyes of a vampireguard.
“Come with us.”
They were everywhere, spilling down the tracks and coming in fast. Hands gripped me under the arm and hauled me onto the platform, finally behind the white line. It took four of them to heave Rafe’s awkward body onto the platform too. Under the station’s flickering lights, his skin looked gray, his left wing bent at the wrong angle.
“Is he dead?” I asked, but nobody was listening. “Is he dead!”
They ignored me. Cold, rough hands pulled me in through the station doors. The guests looked on, so many they had to jostle each other to see.
Etienne pushed through the crowd and pulled up short, his face stricken. I shook my head. He’d panic and try to contact Kensey, putting my brother in danger. That could not happen.
My reflection ghosted the hallway mirrors. At first, I thought the glass was cracked, but it was me who was broken—my dress torn, legs cut up and bleeding, hair pulled and yanked, and the tracks of tears staining my face. The VG, the Dark Ones, my staff, everyone—they all saw me. The real me. Just a girl. In a dress. Playing with monsters. And now everything would change.
Chapter 8
Night
Three VG accompanied me to a room I’d never seen before. It didn’t have windows, just a single chair and a white-tiled floor with a small drain in the middle.
They dumped me in the chair but left me unrestrained. My only way out was through the one door behind three vampires, two males and one female, each one as cold and uncaring as stone. Their black-and-red uniforms were spotless. One I’d seen before: Caine. He didn’t have his sensible friend beside him. He’d seen me defy Ghost, seen me kneel to Ghost too, and now that fake Ghost was very dead, his heart eaten in a public display should’ve been impossible. There was no coming back from that. It didn’t matter that Felipe Berger wasn’t the real Ghost, or perhaps they didn’t know either, which meant I was in for a whole world of hurt for failing to protect their infamous overseer.
I waited, time stretching on. It would be day soon. Kensey would be waiting. I’d never missed a day before.
“You must think us fools?” the female asked. Broad-shouldered and with cropped bloodred hair, she looked as mean as her black-and-red uniform suggested.
I lifted my chin. “You need to let me go. The station must—”
“You’re not going anywhere.”
“You can’t keep me here.”
She folded her arms. “By
all means, try to get past us.”
Caine straightened, suddenly invested. He wanted me to fight so he’d have an excuse to tear my throat out.
In my torn dress, knees all banged up, it was difficult to maintain the act that I had any power here. “If you hurt me, the station will react.”
“Maybe, but the rules don’t apply to some, do they? And you’d still be dead.” She came forward and crouched to my eye level, like this was just a friendly discussion. “Ghost was killed on your watch, Lynher Aris, and as you so often say, everyone here has sanctuary. That makes his death your responsibility. So, would you like to explain how a demon was able to rip out a vampire’s heart in your so-called sanctuary?”
“I don’t know.” The only way it could have happened was if the station had allowed it, but exposing such a huge loophole would put everyone at risk.
“Give her to me…” Caine said, leering. “I’ll make the bloodbag spill her secrets.”
The female smiled, but it was out of place on her hard face and full of bright, perfect teeth. “Do our kind have sanctuary here? Because if we don’t, we’ll see these premises burned to ashes like every other human stronghold.”
My heart fluttered. “They do—you do.”
“So, how then—”
“I said I don’t know.”
Her hand shot out and her iron fingers wrapped around my throat. The mark on my arm stayed quiet. She wasn’t hurting me so much as threatening me. A twitch, though, and I’d be dead. How fast was the station? Usually, my mark would have started fizzling by now. Maybe something was wrong with it and that was how Lilith was able to kill the vampire?
“Do you have an affinity for demons, Miss Aris?”
“No.” I held her gaze as her charm probed my thoughts for a way inside.
“You were seen with one prior to the overseer’s death. An incubus known to frequent the ambassador’s rooms. You were then discovered outside, next to his body. Did you think to perhaps dispose of any incriminating evidence beyond the white line, where sanctuary does not apply?”
Then Rafe was dead? It hurt inside like it had hurt when a vampire had appeared at the reception desk and told me Gerome was dead. It hurt like something vital had been ripped out of me. My thoughts tried to collapse in on themselves and bury me under grief, but I couldn’t let them see me broken.
“No. Rafe is…” I licked my lips, and her gaze fell to the movement. “This is a waste of time. I didn’t do anything. My job here is to make sure the station runs smoothly for everyone, including the vampireguard. I serve you as I do all Dark Ones. What happened was a travesty, and I’ll see it’s dealt with—”
“The little human thinks she can deal with this?” She laughed and turned her head, seeking Caine’s attention. His eyes glowed, losing all pretense of humanity. Twin curved fangs glinted from behind his smile.
“Maybe if your Ghost hadn’t killed a succubus, we wouldn’t be in this situation,” I said. “Perhaps that’s why Lilith was able to kill him, because the station deemed it fair. I really don’t know. I’m human, as you pointed out. Why would I know anything? I have guests to see to, trains arriving, and many Dark Ones wondering why they aren’t being entertained. The overseer made a mistake and paid for it. We should all move on, including you. Isn’t that what your queen would wan—”
I didn’t see Caine move or feel his teeth plunge into my neck until I was already crushed against his chest, my neck bent at a painful angle. Power flared through my veins, lighting me up with ten thousand volts of Night Station backslap that was more than enough to kick Caine in the mental nuts.
He howled and threw me down.
I staggered to the far side of the room, as far away from them as the walls would allow, my vision misting, thoughts spinning. Caine had bitten me. Cold shivered through my veins, racing toward my heart. I dabbed at the wound, and my fingers came away wet with scarlet blood. My stomach flipped, shock and fear trying to hold me down.
A fifth figure stood in the room, his cane at his side.
“Leave.” He didn’t shout, didn’t growl, but the VG scattered, closing the door behind them, trapping me with a monster worse than them.
I clamped a hand over my bloody neck and stared at Jack.
Venom tingled, plucking on my frayed nerves and smoothing them out so everything seemed perfectly fine. The venom also worked to clot the wound so I wouldn’t bleed out, which was convenient, seeing as I felt like sitting right where I was.
I slid down the wall, thoughts swimming.
Well, that proved a theory. The station did protect me fast enough to see one of them off, but not fast enough to stop a bite.
Jack came forward, so tall now that I was on the floor, looking up at him.
“You are in a very dangerous position, Miss Aris.”
“I know, Jack.”
“My name isn’t Jack.”
“I know that too,” I slurred and then realized I’d maybe said too much. My hand shot to my mouth to seal in the secrets. “Is Rafe dead?” I mumbled, and my heart hiccupped. That damn demon had been a nuisance my whole life. I’d wished him gone a thousand times, but now that he was, I wanted him back. I was going to cry again, for Rafe, for Gerome, for me. I wasn’t ready to be a host. It wasn’t meant to happen yet…
The real Ghost crouched in front of me, his eyes impossibly kind. He had to be the real Ghost for the VG to scurry away like they had. I wanted to fall into his arms and weep. That was the venom. It made humans pliable, made them weak, and made feeding from them so much easier.
“You are very nice to look at.” That seemed like the wrong thing to say too, but I couldn’t imagine why. He had looked quite delicious sprawled on his bed, buck naked. My mind hung on that image, finding it fascinating but also important, as though I’d missed something while seeing him stripped of all his pretty lies.
Ghost pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to my neck. “Hold this here.”
I obeyed because he’d asked so nicely. “My brother will be missing me…” Oh, that was bad. Very bad. I didn’t have a brother. I couldn’t. “I don’t want to speak to you. You’re one of the bad ones.”
“That”—he took my hand and straightened, gently lifting me with him—“is the truth.”
I liked his eyes, as deep as they went, two pools into worlds I didn’t know and didn’t want to. Then I remembered all the lives he’d stolen, and the children he’d raised to feed his army, and the queen he served, sitting at the center of a nest of monsters somewhere far away, and I plucked my hand from his.
“When this venom wears off, I’m going to make you wish we’d never met, sir.”
Then the venom pulled me down to where the hurts all went away.
Chapter 9
Day
Most people didn’t wake up from a vampire bite. It sure felt like I shouldn’t have. It was day, and sunlight streamed in through my window. My window. I blinked and jerked upright. I was in my bed. During the day. How? My torn dress lay over the back of the vanity chair. Oh gods, someone had undressed me and brought me from night to day. Please let it not be the murdering asshole… Shit, I’d said some things—Kensey!
I threw off the covers, tossed on some clothes, and dashed from the room.
“Kensey!” What if Ghost had found the key in my dress? What if he’d brought me here and found Kensey? What if he knew everything? The resistance, the lives we saved in the day? I tried the library, found it empty, then tried the old reception, now moth-balled and dusty.
“Damn you, Kensey. Where are you?” I ran into the ballroom, with its dust-sheet-covered piano and scattered furniture, and there he was, standing by the window, draped in sunlight, talking to Etienne, the pair a hair’s breadth away from each other. Relief turned to rage. Etienne was here? “Did you bring me here?”
Etienne stepped away from Kensey as if he thought I didn’t already know they were lovers or wanted to be. “I-I—”
Kensey grinned. “Lyn
her, you’re awake.”
I ignored him and went straight for Etienne. “You can’t be here.”
Kensey held out a hand to stop me, while Etienne shrank back. “Calm down, okay? I met him at the door. I told him to come through with you. He wasn’t going to, but I asked him. I needed to know what happened, and I’m glad I did.”
My brother reached out to touch my neck. I batted his hand away and touched the small bandage there instead. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
“It’s not nothing.” Kensey’s tone made me feel small again. “What the hell, Lynher? You asked the ambassador to help you? What were you thinking?”
“I told her about the succubus and she volunteered. I didn’t know she would kill him like that.” I dropped into a sheet-covered chair, sending clouds of dust into the sunlight. “Does the VG have her?” I asked Etienne.
“No, I don’t think so. They demanded the visitor book and all the files and—”
“You gave it to them?”
“Of course he did,” Kensey answered for him, his lips twisting at my tone. “He did a good thing bringing you here. You’re both safer here.”
“I have to go back.” I leaned back in the chair and sighed. “It’s a mess, Kensey. And the train is tonight. And Ghost… Ghost is not dead. He’s…” I touched my neck again. He’d handed me his handkerchief and helped me to my feet. What had happened after? “How did you find me?” I asked Etienne, hating how small and weak my voice sounded, especially in front of him. My brother knew me. He knew I wasn’t the woman I pretended to be, but to Etienne, I was the infallible hostess. That act was over. He’d seen the VG march me in, seen my tears too.
He swallowed, glancing between my brother and me. Kensey nodded, urging him to answer, and it irked me some more that Etienne would defer to my brother over me. “The guest, Jack, summoned me to his room. You were on the bed, out cold, bitten. I didn’t know what to think or what to do… but he said I should… look after you.”
I groaned and buried my face in my hands. Jack knew about Etienne. Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he assumed Etienne was my assistant like everyone else did. What else did Jack know?
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