The Bloodline They Erased

By sunrise, every wolf in the Five Clans would be hunting her.

At 2:14 a.m., Nyra Voss was just trying to do her job.

“Man down at the old chapel on the ridge,” dispatch crackled through her radio. “Caller hung up. No name.”

“Copy.”

Nyra grabbed her medical bag and checked the lantern in her other hand. The storm had knocked out power across Saint Veil, her partner was dealing with a wreck on Route 28, and the ambulance couldn’t get through the mud covering the last stretch of road. That left her alone, climbing a hill in the middle of a storm to help somebody who might already be dead.

Eleven months as an EMT, and apparently that was enough experience for the universe to start playing games with her.

Rain soaked through her uniform before she reached the chapel. The building had been abandoned for years, its stone walls covered in moss and its windows broken out. Wind pushed through the trees, making the branches scrape against the roof.

Nyra stepped inside and raised her lantern.

The man was still standing.

That was the first thing she noticed. He stood near the altar in a black suit, his head tilted at an angle that made her neck hurt just looking at it. His pale fingers were wrapped around a silver pocket watch, and a thin line of blood ran from his mouth to his collar.

The second thing she noticed was that he had no shadow.

Nyra stared at the floor, then at the man, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. Maybe the lantern was playing tricks on her. Maybe she was more tired than she thought.

“Hello? Sir?” She took a careful step forward. “I’m an EMT. I’m here to help you.”

Her voice echoed through the chapel, but he didn’t answer.

She should have called for backup. She should have turned around and waited outside until somebody else arrived. Instead, she moved closer, because whatever else was going on, the man was bleeding.

Then she caught the smell.

Nyra stopped.

It wasn’t the ordinary smell of blood. She knew that smell well enough after months on the job. This was different, sharp and metallic, like copper mixed with the air just before lightning struck. She had smelled it before, though she couldn’t remember where. It had followed her into nightmares since childhood.

Her right palm began to itch.

She rubbed it against her uniform, annoyed by the sudden sting. “Great. Just what I need.”

The man lifted his head.

Nyra forgot what she was about to say.

His eyes were completely black. No whites, no pupils, nothing. Just darkness where his eyes should have been.

“You,” he whispered.

She took a step back. “Do I know you?”

His mouth twisted into a smile. When he opened it, his teeth were too sharp, too long to belong to any ordinary man.

“No,” he rasped. “But your kind destroyed my world.”

Before Nyra could ask what that meant, his knees buckled.

He hit the stone floor hard enough to make her flinch. The lantern slipped from her hand and shattered. Its light disappeared, leaving her in darkness with a stranger who had just accused her of destroying an entire world.

“Sir?”

She reached for her phone, but a whisper stopped her.

“Thirteen.”

Nyra froze.

The voice hadn’t come from the man.

It came from beneath the floor.

“Who said that?” she called, turning toward the sound.

Nothing answered.

Then it came again.

“Thirteen.”

Her skin prickled. She backed toward the door, holding her phone out in front of her even though the screen barely lit the room.

“Thirteen. Thirteen. Thirteen.”

“Okay. No. I’m not doing this.”

She reached for the door handle.

Something cold clamped around her wrist.

Nyra screamed and jerked backward, swinging her free hand at whatever had grabbed her. Her palm struck the man’s chest.

For one second, nothing happened.

Then a burst of white light tore through the chapel.

Pain shot up her arm. The man arched off the floor, his fingers digging into her wrist as a sound like cracking glass filled the room. His black eyes widened, and the darkness beneath his skin began to pull away. His veins turned silver, then red, as though something inside him was being dragged into the light.

“No,” he gasped.

Nyra tried to pull free. “Let go of me!”

“What are you?”

“I don’t know!”

His grip tightened once, then suddenly weakened. The last thing she saw was the terror on his face.

His body crumbled into ash.

Nyra dropped to her knees, coughing as the dust settled around her. She stared at the empty space where the man had been. Eleven months on the job had taught her how to control her panic. She had held pressure on gunshot wounds, performed CPR on a man twice her size, and called time of death on a girl younger than herself.

She had never watched a body turn to dust beneath her hands.

Her right palm burned so badly she almost cried out. When she turned it toward the faint light from her phone, she saw a symbol glowing beneath her skin. A circle split by thirteen jagged lines, bright as an ember.

Nyra rubbed at it with her thumb. The mark didn’t move.

She had never seen it before.

At least, that was what she wanted to believe.

A memory stirred, something old and buried. A woman’s voice, speaking to her when she was little, warning her about a day Nyra had never understood.

If anyone ever sees the mark, run.

Nyra swallowed hard. “Mom, what the hell were you talking about?”

A bell rang outside.

Once.

Then twice.

Within seconds, every bell in Saint Veil began to ring. The sound rolled across the mountains, loud enough to shake the chapel windows. Nyra stumbled to her feet and looked through the broken doorway.

Lights flickered on throughout the town below. Beyond the chapel walls, the forest was moving. Shadows rushed between the trees, too large and too fast to be people.

Then she saw their eyes.

Amber, dozens of them, shining through the rain.

Wolves.

Except no wolf Nyra had ever seen was that big. Some stood taller than the chapel steps, their bodies powerful enough to make the ground seem small beneath them. They were running uphill, straight toward her.

Nyra grabbed a jagged piece of the broken lantern and backed away from the doorway. It was a pathetic weapon, but it was all she had.

A figure emerged from the far end of the chapel.

He was tall and dressed in a long black coat that seemed to swallow the moonlight. His skin was pale, his movements unnaturally smooth, and his eyes glowed red when he looked toward the ashes on the floor.

Nyra tightened her grip on the glass.

The stranger glanced at her palm.

Then he dropped to one knee.

“Your Highness,” he whispered.

Nyra stared at him. “I think you’ve mistaken me for someone else.”

“No, my lady.” His voice shook as he looked up at her. “We have spent seven hundred years making certain you never existed. And now you’ve killed one of our oldest elders.”

“I didn’t kill anybody.”

He glanced at the ashes.

“Then explain why an immortal is dead.”

Nyra opened her mouth, but a flash of lightning stole her attention. Through the gap in the chapel doors, she saw another man approaching through the rain.

He was barefoot and shirtless, walking up the ridge as if the storm didn’t exist. A dozen enormous wolves parted around him without a sound. He had broad shoulders, a scar through one eyebrow, and eyes that glowed gold in the darkness.

He didn’t look at the wolves. He didn’t need to.

They already knew who was in charge.

The man stopped at the chapel steps and looked directly at Nyra through the narrow opening.

“Crane,” he called, his voice rough and low. “Send her out.”

The vampire stayed on one knee. “Thorne. The prince wants her alive.”

“The Five Clans voted an hour ago.” The man called Thorne never took his eyes off Nyra. “Unanimous. Whatever she is, she dies before sunrise.”

Nyra’s fingers tightened around the glass until its sharp edge cut into her skin. Blood slipped down her palm, mixing with the strange glow beneath it.

She spent her days saving people. She had never hurt anyone who didn’t give her a reason to defend herself. Now a room full of strangers, wolves, and whatever Crane was had decided she deserved to die, and not one of them had bothered to ask her what happened.

Then Thorne’s gaze dropped to her hand.

For the first time, his expression changed.

He flinched, barely an inch, but Nyra saw it. Something passed through his face, something that looked almost like recognition. For a moment, the wolves outside went silent.

Before she could question him, a woman’s voice came from behind her.

“She’s Hollowborn,” the woman said. “The last one. And she has finally awakened.”

Nyra knew that voice better than her own.

She turned.

“Mama?”

Mara stood in the shadows near the back wall, a matchbox in one hand. Her mother was supposed to be in Albany visiting her sister. She wasn’t supposed to be anywhere near Saint Veil tonight, and she certainly wasn’t supposed to know the meaning of the mark burning in Nyra’s palm.

A match struck.

For a brief moment, its flame lit Mara’s face. She looked terrified, but not of the vampire or the wolves gathering outside.

She was terrified of Nyra.

“I’m sorry,” Mara whispered.

Then she blew out the match.

The chapel went black.

And the darkness answered.