Page 58 of Claimed By Fangs and Darkness
“Did you see someone dressed in all white?” I asked, rubbing my chest. “I think it was a man. You were standing close by when he entered the gardens.”
The women exchanged a glance.
“Before or after the attack?” one of them asked, her dark brows knitted. She swallowed, her face racked with horror.
“After,” I rasped.
Something about the way they were watching me put me in a state of unease.
I was well-accustomed to others’ subtle body language, no doubt a survival mechanism from my abusive mother. All my life, I’d encountered people who’d assumed the worst about chaos witches like me. Or mortals who simply didn’t like or trust me without fully knowing why, perhaps because I was untrusting and withholding myself. Too different to fit inanywhere, I’d spent most of my life in solitude, save Mena, Idris, and those I came to know through Celeste’s.
But I was proficient in reading people and their perceptions of me, even if I’d so often kept my distance.
The women stepped closer to me, angling their heads as they studied me.
“Where’s Kylo?” the red-haired woman asked.
The hairs on the back of my neck stood. I felt cornered.
I stood my ground, even if my instinct was to bolt. There was no way these vampires suspected thatIwas behind this. The entire clan knew who I was by now. I’d been initiated. I couldn’t betray the clan even if I wanted to, as my oath and dedication were bound by magick.
“He’s underground,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. I was practically bathing in adrenaline.
The sting of their distrust was a brutal slap in the face after everything I’d gone through to be one of them.
More than wanting to prove myself to these strangers, I needed to find the writer of that strange, taunting note.
Could born demons wield magick like that? It was rare for anyone, but especially the born, who tended to fit into neater and tidier magickal specialties that ran through bloodlines.
The magick was dark, but it wasn’t the same kind of shadow that belonged to me and the clan. I felt no connection to those clouds of darkness. They were foreign.
Whoever did this wanted it to look like a cosmic reckoning, a punishment straight from the chthonic underworld. And I had to admit, it was convincing.
I scanned our surroundings again. Nausea bloomed in my guts, the aftereffects of the adrenaline surge rearing its ugly head.
“There was a figure in white,” I said uselessly. “He was fleeing the quad through the gardens. He left a note.” I stared at theground, not finding any evidence of the scrap of paper, as the pieces had already scattered to the wind. “But it’s gone.”
Shit. I sounded crazy. I could hear it, but it didn’t change anything. I brushed a hand across my damp, hot forehead. The gravity of what had happened was slowly starting to reach through the haze. Idris could’ve been one of those piles of ash; he’d had a class in that building.
I closed my eyes, remembering every detail of my spirit walking journey leading up to Princeton’s warning.
Out of desperation, I attempted to channel through more visions, perhaps to make contact with Princeton again.
“Maybe if I?—”
A sharp boom of thunder had me jumping out of my skin, and a tendril of shadow escaped my palm.
The women charged me, fully masked and in vampire form. I yanked my shadow back inside.
I didn’t have time to process or move on anything more than pure instinct. My own gust of wind shoved them back. One of them hit the gate with asmack, crying out in pain. The other landed awkwardly on the stone path.
“I’m so sorry,” I said, backing away, hands raised defensively as I fought the urge to wield my shadows. Not in public, and certainly notnow.
I finally gave in to my most innate, cherished survival mechanism. I turned, and I fucking bolted.
My legs were jelly at this point. I could barely feel them.
I didn’t make it far before my world went dark.
