The monster's skin was like stone, hard marble, but Eirikr’s teeth were sharp, and though it hurt, he bit hard enough to draw blood. Golden blood, luminous in the darkness.

Tatiana had an instant to run. Eirikr was kicked in the face so hard his neck broke.

That evening, he rose.

The creature was still here, in the darkness, weeping over the corpses, demanding to know why she couldn't stop herself from killing, why she was still alive, why she was so very alone.

When he stirred, she rose, gasped, and rushed to him.

"Impossible," she mouthed, her voice so melodious Eirikr almost forgot he hated everything she was.

Almost.

Her fingers were gentle as she explored all his wounds, now closed.

"You were dead. You should be dead."

He felt dead. Everything inside him hurt. He could barely move. His brain pulsed with one need, one desire.

The gold blood in her veins.

"How!" she demanded to know.

He wasn't sure he heard, but he said the only word that would cross his lips.

"Sangui—"

Speaking hurt his throat, so very dry he felt like he'd never drunk a drop of water. Water would not quench this thirst. Nothing would.

The creature lifted her arm to her sharp teeth and bit down before presenting it to him. His mouth closed on the gash and he drank, sealing his fate.

His vision cleared. His aching limbs had never felt better. He was alive. He was reborn in the image of the monster who'd destroyed him.

The creature was ecstatic, overjoyed. She felt better. Her need to kill had passed. She spoke of the future, a future where she didn't destroy city after city, because she'd have him, and many like him, at her side.

Eirikr laughed. He laughed so hard.

"I will destroy you. I will destroy everything you cherish. You're a demon, and this earth will not have peace while you walk among us."

For a time, he did just that.

For a time. And then, when he was no longer able to, his descendants did so on his behalf. They'd changed with the time. They no longer had to hunt all of Ariadne's creatures, as some had ceased to represent a threat to the world. Eirikr had little patience for their weakness. He was irritated, frustrated to be stuck in his prison.

For fifteen hundred years, he was displeased. Then came the betrayal he should have foreseen. His kind banded together and destroyed all of his children, and his children's children.

And then he knew despair. He'd never understood that this was his fate, his end. That he'd never again smell the air. That he'd never fulfill his vow. Until now. He had no one on Earth, no one to help him, no one to care if he turned into dust. His nights were long and dark. Many a time, he wished for an end, for a death that wouldn't come, even when he was parched and decaying. He was the first of the ancients, and therefore, the most powerful. Ariadne hadn't understood the process yet. She gave him so much of the divine blood running through her veins that she turned him into her equal. A mistake she never repeated.

Eirikr had stopped counting the days centuries ago. He didn't feel the wind or rain. He ignored the small rodents who walked by him as if he was nothing but stone. He was stone.

Until…

"What's down there?"

The voice cut through his mind’s fog like thunder in a cloudy sky. Then came a burst of wind carrying a scent he recognized. His.

"Nothing you should concern yourself with," someone told his daughter.

In the darkness of his prison, Eirikr lifted his head half an inch.

A squirrel walked by, unsuspecting. Too long had passed since creatures had been murdered in this cave for the squirrel to think better of it. Swift as shadow, Eirikr wrapped his hands around it and broke its neck. He brought it to his lips and drank it dry.

“Love the hair, by the way,” said one of the girls. “Good luck getting an ombre like that in town, though.”

Chloe laughed. “That won't be a problem,” she said, pointing to her head. “Natural color.”

“Cool,” Natalie told her.

The creature watching at the edge of the Wolvswoods narrowed his eyes and then broke into a run, heading up Night Hill.

"What is she?" Mikar demanded.

It wasn't in his character to demand anything of his liege. He'd served Levi for three hundred years, since the elder had turned him, and in all this time, he'd never questioned one of his orders.

Because until now, they'd made sense.

"You call me back from a sensitive mission in Russia to babysit a regular? Fine. Your prerogative. You’re the boss. But now she outruns a killing machine and has magic fucking hair?"

Levi had entirely ignored him until then, writing at his desk, but this made him lift his head and smile.

"Magic hair?"

"Black, then silver. I don't know, man. She's definitely not normal."

"Do you think I would have recalled my right hand, along with my closest acquaintance, for the sake of someone normal?" Levi asked pointedly.

He wasn't going to say anything, was he?

"I don't get it. Just tell me this is important. It's not fun, Lev. I like killing and fucking and dancing. I can't do any of that here."

"It's important," Levi echoed before returning to his writing without another word.

Jeez. As ancient, all-powerful, noble vampires went, Levi wasn't that bad, normally, but the man obviously could be a dick.

"Tell me I don't need to enroll in the Institute."

"You need to do three things, and only three. I've already informed you of your duties; I will not repeat them."

He had. The day Levi had visited him in Moscow, he'd said he needed Mikar to watch a girl.

"Make sure she doesn't get decapitated, drowned, or burned. That's all I ask of you."

At the time, Mikar had translated that to "ensure no one kills her." Now he understood his mistake.

Mikar stilled, comprehension finally hitting him.

Levi didn't care at all about Chloe getting killed. What mattered was how.

"Oh."

Well, that certainly changed things.

"Yes, oh. Now, you better get back to work."

Mikar did as he was told, no further complaint crossing his lips.

"You've got to talk to the girl."

Levi lifted his eyes to his foreman, surprised and rather vexed. It wasn't like Mikar to question his orders at all, and he'd done it twice in as many weeks.

"You and I both know the walls, woods, and waters in Coscnoc have ears. I can't afford to."

Mikar's jaw was set. "I don't get it. What's the big deal if the conclave hears…"

"Don't. Don't speak. Don't bring attention to what you're doing."

His house was safe enough to discuss most of his business, but he wouldn't talk of Chloe out loud anywhere.

Levi was as frustrated as his second. Not being able to give him the information he needed was inconvenient, but he couldn't take the risk.

Those who were moving against Chloe were weak. They were also careful, disguising each step and hiring pawns, but they were failing because their effort was pathetic. But that would change once the world knew what Levi had gathered the moment he'd seen her.

"Listen to me, Levi. I won't be able to keep things to myself if she keeps pushing. She's a whisper."

Levi got up from his desk and faced the window, looking down the hill toward Adairford.

A whisper.

He hadn't spent enough time with her to know much about her, but it made sense from what he'd seen—from what he knew. She'd been nothing but a waitress to Charles and Michelle White, but the two power-hungry leaders had stopped their machinations for long enough to protect her. And there was also the way she'd gotten under his skin so easily, with a few well-placed words. She'd known exactly what to say to him.

Whispers were the sirens of vampires, magnetic and charming to a degree that was dangerous. They could get anything handed to them on a silver platter if they just batted their eyelids and asked. In mortal fledglings, that translated to highly popular individuals who rarely made enemies. They were often protected, cared for.

Chloe had always been precious; all born vampires were. He hadn't realized she was also a valuable asset.

Levi's fingers hammered impatiently against the closest wall.

He'd told her the truth about wanting to snap her neck. She was old enough to turn. He stopped himself only because she had no idea what she was yet. Fledglings were prepared their entire lives for the change. They knew what came before, during, and after. She didn't. In a perfect world, he could just tell her, show her the skills she had to gain before her transition. But the moment those words crossed his lips, the six most powerful families in this world would set aside all conflict and team up to destroy her before she became their greatest fear.

Five centuries had passed since a member of the seventh founding family had turned. Anyone else would have thought it was impossible. They would have thought that she was just an obscure descendant from one of the other six, somehow lost in their careful records. They'd wiped out her entire line, for good reason.

But Levi remembered the day they'd come for the last survivors, here on this very hill. He'd been in his home when he'd heard the commotion; however, he knew one thing no one else did. There had been a little boy, three years old, who was fond of swimming in the lake. His nurse had taken him outside that morning, and as every member of his family was torn apart, he swam in blissful oblivion.

Levi could have ended everything. Instead, he took the child and dropped him in front of a church.

Drowning the boy would have been smarter for many reasons, but Levi couldn't bring himself to do it.

Five hundred years without any sign, any news. He'd believed the line had died out, until he saw her, the spitting image of her forefathers down to that hair. Dark at the roots, blonde after an inch. When she turned, it would be silver.

Levi did his homework after she emerged, researching her family. The trail of bodies following her line was subtle but staggering. No wonder. The longer a born vampire took to turn, the more bloodthirsty and brutal they became. Levi had waited until he was thirty-two, and it had been a push. Her family tree wasn't complete, but wherever he could trace it, he found inexplicable, ritualistic murders. Chloe's father, at forty-nine, was a murderer and a cannibal because he had needs he hadn't understood—the need for blood and the hunt. The needs of a vampire in the body of a mortal. No doubt most of her ancestors who'd reached that age had also lost their minds. The only difference was that they hadn't been caught.