Page 20 of This Ravenous Fate
“You are so dramatic. She’s probably just stuck in traffic.” Elise rolled her eyes, but her gaze drifted down to the bouquet of white roses in Sterling’s hand. Despite his nervous fidgeting, he had managed to keep the flowers pristine and undamaged.It’s a congratulatorygift, Sterling had insisted when he showed up in Elise’s room with them earlier that night.
Elise could not wait to see Thalia’s reaction to them.
“I just know this is Colm’s fault,” Sterling muttered, moving next to Elise. “He doesn’t know how to drive at night. I always tell him he can go fast because he’s driving a Saint car and everyone will understand—”
Elise scoffed, “You might as well run for office with the way you already assume the law should bend to your commands.”
Smirking, Sterling gestured to his silver Saint seal, pinned to the front of his suit, then flipped his jacket back to reveal the two pistols tucked into his waistband. “It already does.”
“Right,” Elise said dryly.
A group of white people came bustling down the street, voices loud and smiles wide while they waltzed into the Cotton Club. There seemed to be fewer Black faces on Lenox Avenue than there’d been five years ago. Now white people were flocking to their neighborhood.
“It feels less like home,” Elise muttered.
Sterling sighed. “I’m still getting used to the changes.” He eyed a Black couple while they passed the Cotton Club, white pedestrians waiting by the entrance watching them with hard glares cracking their carefully made-up faces.
Elise studied the line of cars parked along the street until she caught a familiar vehicle just at the end of the block. “Sterling, I think they’re here.”
Together, they walked down the sidewalk, Sterling walking a bit faster than Elise out of excitement. But the car was empty.
“Maybe they went inside already?” Sterling asked.
But Elise knew that couldn’t be. They had been waiting outside the club since it had opened; they would have seen Thalia and Colm if they had walked in. Elise stepped away from the car. Her heel snagged on something on her way past the alley behind her, and when she shook her foot free of it, the sound of metal hitting the ground split her focus.
Metal glinted in the streetlights as she looked down, then gasped with recognition.
A silver signet ring engraved with the Saint seal. Josi’s ring.
She picked it up, turning it in the light. As the ring slipped between her fingers, blood smeared across her gloves. Startled, Elise dropped it and it skidded across the ground, into the alley. “Sterling…” she breathed. What she had assumed were shadows spilling from the alley were pools of blood. And when Elise stepped forward, she saw an all-too-familiar face staring up at her, eyes glazed over.
A sharp breath left Sterling. He stood beside Elise, eyes wide and face struck white with horror. The roses fell from his hand into the puddle of blood. Elise could only scream as blood soaked the fair petals, Thalia’s lifeless hand outstretched toward them.
10
Layla awoke in a bed of blood. A quick assessment told her it wasn’t hers.
She did have a considerable amount of scrapes and bruises, though, many of them just starting to heal. Whatever outrageous brawl she had been in last night had slowed her healing process. Of greater concern was the memory loss; she had no idea what caused the injuries. Layla couldn’t even remember crawling into her bed the previous night.
Such amnesia was common among new reapers that were still learning to control their voracious cravings for blood. Bloodlust settled over them like a blindfold that blocked out most of their memories, so that they couldn’t recall what they had done upon waking up, high on the sensation of fresh feedings. Valeriya called them blood furies. They were what got most young reapers in trouble with authorities. A blood fury could be a death sentence, not justfor those who crossed a ravenous reaper’s path but for the reapers themselves, if they were caught. Layla’s first blood fury had led her to Elise Saint. Then, there had been an insatiable desire for Elise’s blood and a craving for the fear in her eyes as she had hunted her in the middle of the night. But now it was like last night had never happened. Her brain skipped right from picking up the box at the port to the present moment, where she sat, confused, in her bed.
The fog blocking her brain was so thick that at first, Layla didn’t notice Valeriya lurking by her door. But when she did, she straightened up, alarmed. “Valeri—”
“Do. Not. Speak,” her mentor hissed. Ice seemed to settle over the room. “You have one minute to explain why you attacked Saints—”
Layla scoffed. “I did no such thing—”
“Do not lie to me. I’m trying to protect you.”
At this, fury heated Layla’s blood. She stepped out of her bed and onto shaky legs. “I can protect myself.”
Valeriya’s glare deepened. She backed away from Layla and pushed the door open. To Layla’s sour surprise, the Saint patriarch walked into her room. It had been ages since Layla had seen Tobias Saint, but the calculating aura in his dark eyes remained. Even years later, she was still on the receiving end of his accusations.
Police and Saint guards filed into the room after him, making a semicircle that enclosed Layla against her bed. “We have reason to believe you were present during the murder of Saint associates, Colm and Thalia, as well as one young man,” Tobias Saint said coolly.
Confusion creased Layla’s brows. She steadied her quickly risingpanic with measured breaths and she clenched her jaw. “Why would you believe that?” Layla knew the sight was beyond damning. Soaked in blood, she looked like a rogue reaper.
“You have a history with the Saints. Mr. Saint has informed us that recently you were on their property, threatening the daughters,” one policeman said.
