But he couldn’t afford to forget.
“Levi!” he screamed, calling the master of the house forward. “We have a problem.”
Claw Marks
Levi's famed assistant, the lethal and deadly efficient Luke, arrived seconds after Sebastian dashed through Oldcrest, his eyes narrowed as he followed the vampire's progression up the hill.
Damn, the ex-huntsman was fast.
"Did Bash lose it?" Luke didn’t
"I got there in time," Cat replied, stepping close to the surviving girl.
Luke pulled his phone out and started to organize her care; Cat heard him request Alexius, Greer, Levi, all hands on deck.
"It's all right," she said to the girl, as kindly as she could. "I'm not going to hurt you, okay?"
The girl tried to nod but ended up crying instead.
"We were…it was…beast.”
Cat wished she could tell the girl she didn’t have to say anything, but they needed answers. Students murdered at their borders? The whole world would flip. Oldcrest was one of the safest sup grounds on Earth.
“Didn't see it coming. So fast. It only moved when…the other vampire—"
Ah. So at least Sebastian had done something right tonight, though he wasn’t likely to see it that way. The girl would have been killed like her friends had he not interrupted their murderer.
Cat forced a smile. "Hush now. Save your energy, okay?"
The girl hadn't been bitten by anything close to a vampire, or even a feral werewolf. She'd been torn to shreds. Great big claw marks. It was a miracle that no vital organs had been destroyed. Her two friends were in pieces on the grass. Even Cat had issues breathing in this mess. No wonder Bash had flipped.
"I have to carry you," she said. "And it will hurt."
No way to lie about that. They didn't have a choice, though; if they left the girl here, she’d die in the minutes it took to call for aid.
The girl nodded. She was an Institute student. She understood the implications of wounds like these.
Cat was as gentle as possible, cradling her under the thighs and shoulder blades. Then she rushed forward, heading up the hill as fast as she could. Any other time, she would have brought the patient to Levi's home, but Bash would be there. For his good as well as the poor girl's, she stopped at the third house on the hill, knowing that the others would trail the scent and follow.
Six months in Oldcrest, and Cat had managed to avoid entering the Stormhale home. But here she was.
She winced, forcing herself to focus on the matter at hand. Her fingertips pressed on the two bloodiest wounds, pushing them closed as she waited. If she'd had a spare pair of hands, she might have tried a tourniquet, but then again, she had little skill as a healer.
Vampires seldom suffered wounds like these, and they healed a lot faster, so that was a considerable gap in her education.
Cat breathed out in relief when she felt a blast of air, and then a tall, blond, long-haired poser appeared.
"I got it. Well done, Stormhale."
She'd never liked Alexius Helsing. He had a terrible reputation, and everything she'd seen since entering this territory confirmed it. But tonight, she was grateful to him, and also intrigued.
She'd known he was a healer, among other ridiculous things: alchemist, scientist, philosopher. The sort of things vampires didn't care about. But watching his hands expertly examine, cleanse, and sew up the poor girl, she started to admire his way of life.
It wasn't about vampires at all. He'd chosen all these professions to help mortals, she realized.
"I'm here! Sorry I'm late," said Greer, barging in with a big box.
Blair, another PhD student who often hung out with Greer, walked in right behind her, holding a large bag. Cat took the box and bag from the witches and brought them to the healer; given her strength, the weight was nothing.
“Thanks,” Greer said, before turning to her mentor. “All right, we brought everything I could think of since you didn’t tell me much over the phone. What do you need, Alexius?"
"Anesthesia, first. We'll have to sew up a vein, too."
Greer assisted the vampire. They were a great duo; he barely had to say a word for her to pull out the right flask or instrument. Blair stayed out of the way, handing Greer whatever tool she asked for, holding wounds closed, preparing bandages and threads for stitches. Cat felt like she was watching a surgeon, his intern, and a nurse at work. The only one in the room with no purpose was her.
"Anything I can do?" Cat asked, feeling helpless.
"Fresh water, if you would,” Alexius said. “And the girl will need a bed when we're done. I don't want her to move for a day or two."
She was glad to have been given a task.
The house was still in perfect condition; Cat suspected her aunt paid cleaners from Adairford to maintain the premises regularly, even though no one had used it for a whole century.
She'd never been here, but the place was so similar to Stormhall that she had no issue finding bedding, glasses, and everything else she needed.
When she returned to the dining room table, the makeshift operating station, the vamp and witch were both covered in blood and apparently done. The girl was in one piece.
"That was amazing," Cat admitted.
Greer grinned and winked, while Alexius shrugged indifferently. Blair nodded her agreement.
"What did this to her?" Cat asked.
"Yes, pertinent question."
Levi had slipped inside the house without making a sound. Cat was annoyed at herself for not sensing or smelling his presence, but her mind was elsewhere.
On the poor girl, on the unfortunate newborn who'd found her and unknowingly saved her. Above all, on what it meant.
The girl had been attacked by a demon, that much was clear. It could have been a god, but that wasn’t their style. The massacre had been too barbaric, too unrefined. Nothing from this world could have left wounds like these and fled fast enough for vampires to lose their tracks.
A demon, here in Oldcrest, testing the borders. That was entirely unheard of, as far as she knew. Demons came in all shapes and sizes, some smarter than others. Like any other sentient creature of this world and the next, they'd been shaped by the gods. But unlike humans, their little entertainment; witches, their descendants; and vampires, an accidental creation, demons had been bred for one specific purpose: to serve them as soldiers.
Most demons, like the gods themselves, were gone from this world. Those who lingered in the shadows knew better than to show their faces anywhere near vampires and huntsmen.
So, what sort of demon was it, and what the hell was it doing here?
She couldn’t answer the first question. The second, however…
"These were demon wounds," Greer stated, confirming Cat's suspicions.
She glanced toward her mentor, who nodded.
"Oh, yes. Shadowclaws, perhaps. Maybe something worse. The victim was lucky she got away in one piece."
"Two others weren't that lucky. I just looked at the mess." Levi wrinkled his nose. "It wasn't pretty."
The alchemist sighed. “Demons have no style, no finesse. It's all gore and blood with them.”
Cat glared at the insensitive prick. She didn't think it could be possible for him to sound any more cavalier about the whole thing.
"Cat, do you know where Jack's dorm room is?" Levi asked.
She nodded. Jack, like Chloe and Cat, stayed in the right wing, along with the other students who were considered either too dangerous or too powerful to live next door to the rest of the flock. Cat was in control, but as a vampire turned only one year ago, she'd automatically qualified.
She hadn't complained. The right-wing rooms were considerably more spacious, given the fact that only a dozen students lived there.
Everyone knew where everyone was. Jack had taken the attic.
"Good. He can examine the body. Demons are his area of expertise."
Alexius snorted. "Really now? The boy calls himself a huntsman."
"That doesn't change the fact that he's nephilim. He can identify, scent, and track that thing better than us. Cat, get him, if you would."
Cat was surprised. She hadn’t realized the man leading the huntsmen here in the United Kingdom was nephilim.
Scions were the fledglings of gods; young, immortal descendants of the known divinities, such as Lucifer, Zeus, and Chronos. Technically, they could have been called gods, but there was a nuance: scions had been raised here, on Earth, or in the other mortal worlds, away from their prestigious parents. That made them a touch less terrifying than the actual divinities.
The nephilim were half immortal, children born of a scion or god and a mortal person. Cat knew one of them better than most. And she understood that they weren’t to be trifled with.
Levi was right. If Jack was one of them, he was the right person to call now.
As she moved to obey, Cat couldn't help but once again notice the difference between Levi and her family. Her parents and aunt ordered her around, no "please" or "if you'd be so kind." A simple "do it" that she was expected to obey without protest or question, even if she didn't understand the hows and whys.
No wondered she liked it here.
But the demon attack marked the beginning of the end. The Stormhales would not let her remain in a dangerous place.
Unless they would somehow profit from it.
Cat wasn’t sure what would be worse—going back home, or staying, knowing that she was only here to play a part in their schemes.
In March, right after the attack on Oldcrest, she’d suspected that there were only two options. Either her family would want nothing to do with the conflict or they would be behind it. Each passing day with no letter telling her to pack her things and go home made her feel more uneasy.
She refused to jump to conclusions yet. For now, Cat would just observe and try to understand what was going on.
And when the pieces finally fit together, she would have a decision to make.
Conclave
Bash wanted them all to go, but Chloe, Mikar, and Luke hovered around him, pretending to be "waiting for updates."