Page 1 of Blood Currents
Prologue
Keane
The portal tore open likea wound.
Silver-black threads lashed out from its collapsing edges as I tumbled out, crashing onto the frozen ground.My knees hit stone as ice sliced through my trousers.The night air bit deep, thin and sharp.Mountains?Maybe.Pines loomed like sentinels, their outlines carved in shadow against a starless sky.
I staggered upright, blood buzzing in my ears as I tried to summon another portal.The magic came too fast—slippery, oil-slick, wrong.
Corrupted.
Just like me.
Forty-seven tiles in the ceiling.The thought dropped into my mind uninvited, familiar as a lash.My temples throbbed.I gritted my teeth, pressing my palms against my skull.
Not now.Not here.
Uncle’s treatment room didn’t exist in this forest.Those numbered tiles weren’t real.I was out.
I wasfree.
Except… I wasn’t.Not really.Not with his poison still laced through my veins, threading my magic into something broken and foreign.
I tried again for a second portal.It flared, jagged and unstable, but held long enough for me to glimpse Wickem’s towers—sharp spires bathed in moonlight.
Close.I was close.
“Portal cohesion at thirteen percent,”Uncle’s voice echoed, clinical and detached.“We’ll need to increase the binding protocols.”
I lurched forward through the trees.Wisp flickered into view beside me—my familiar, barely more than a fractured shimmer now.Her form stuttered and sparked like a dying ember.She hadn’t held a solid shape since the third treatment.Since Uncle started what he called the “deep work.”
The vampire attack.
God.
The memories surged, jagged and slippery.My hands opening portals.Vampires spilling through.Marigold—her eyes wide with betrayal.
Had I done it?
Had I meant to?
One memory told me yes.I’d summoned them with precision.Another showed me thrashing inside my own skin, Uncle’s magic controlling my limbs like a puppet master.
Which version was real?
Both.Maybe neither.
I dropped to my knees in the snow, dry-heaving.My stomach was empty, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten.Time inside that room twisted.Days bled into weeks, maybe longer.
“Subject shows resistance to memory integration,”Uncle had murmured once while I screamed.“Increase dosage.”
A branch snapped behind me.
I spun, half-collapsing, and tried to summon another portal.Nothing.Just that greasy, burning sensation in my core.Wisp flickered brighter—desperate—but only managed a faint blue glow.
“Who’s there?”My voice came out cracked and strained.
Silence.Then rustling.Shapes moved in the shadows, slow and certain.Surrounding me.
