Chapter 2: The Darkness Answers

The darkness answered with teeth.

Something slammed into the chapel doors. The old oak shook on its hinges, and dust fell from the rafters into Nyra’s hair.

Then it happened again.

Claws scraped against the wood. Whatever was outside wasn’t trying to get in quietly. It was tearing at the doors like they were the only thing standing between it and its next meal.

Nyra crouched, trying to see through the darkness. Her knees landed in something soft and gritty.

Ash.

She pulled her hand away and wiped it against her uniform. The remains of the man she’d touched were scattered across the floor. She still couldn’t wrap her head around what she’d seen, and now she had bigger problems than figuring out how a person turned into dust.

Her fingers brushed against something cold.

The silver pocket watch.

Nyra picked it up and shoved it into her jacket. She didn’t know why she wanted it, but leaving it behind felt wrong. Besides, she needed something to hold on to that wasn’t shaking.

“Mara.” Her voice cracked. “Mara, light another match. Right now.”

No answer.

“Mom?”

A hand closed around her arm.

Nyra nearly screamed, but a familiar smell stopped her. Lavender soap and pharmacy cough drops. It was the smell of scraped knees, childhood fevers, and her mother checking her forehead in the middle of the night.

“Mara, what is going on?”

“Don’t say that word,” her mother whispered against her ear. “Not here. Not in front of them.”

“In front of who? The wolves trying to break down the doors? The vampire calling me royalty? You need to start explaining.”

“Crypt stair. Behind the altar. The third stone from the left lifts.”

Nyra stared into the darkness, trying to make out her mother’s face. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what a Hollowborn is.”

Mara’s fingers tightened around her arm.

“Not now.”

“Then when?”

“Not ever, if I can help it.”

Nyra pulled away. “You can’t keep saying things like that and expect me to just do what you tell me!”

The doors shook again. A hinge shrieked, and something struck the wood hard enough to make the whole chapel tremble.

Across the room, a phone screen lit up.

The blue light caught the vampire’s face. He was still kneeling, holding the phone to his ear, his red eyes fixed on Nyra.

“Silas,” a man said through the speaker. His voice was smooth and calm, like he was sitting comfortably at home instead of listening to something trying to break into a chapel. “Tell me what you see.”

Silas swallowed. “Elder Vane is dead, my prince. Ash. And the mark is on her hand.”

The voice on the phone went quiet.

Nyra couldn’t see Silas clearly, but she watched his shoulders stiffen as he listened.

“Then listen carefully,” the man said. “Bring her to me alive and unharmed. If a single wolf so much as breathes on her, I will hold you responsible.”

“And if she refuses to come?”

“Persuade her.”

The call ended.

Silas stood, and two figures stepped out of the shadows behind him. One was a pale man with a shaved head. The other was a woman with a silver braid running down her back. Both wore black, and neither seemed bothered by the destruction happening around them.

“Ansel. Brigid.” Silas nodded toward the doors. “Take care of it.”

They moved toward the entrance.

Nyra leaned closer to her mother. “Who was that?”

“Someone who should never have known your name.”

“I didn’t give anyone my name!”

“No,” Mara said. “You gave them a body.”

Before Nyra could answer, the doors burst inward.

Rain and wind rushed through the chapel. The first wolf came through so fast that Nyra barely had time to move out of its way.

She’d seen wolves before. On nature shows, in books, and at the Bronx Zoo during a fourth-grade field trip. Those wolves had looked almost harmless compared with the creatures charging through the chapel.

These were enormous. Their shoulders came nearly to Nyra’s chest, and their teeth looked capable of breaking bones without much effort. Black, gray, and rust-red fur was soaked through by the rain.

The first wolf struck Ansel in the chest. They crashed through a wooden pew, sending splinters flying across the floor.

Brigid disappeared from Nyra’s sight. One second she was beside Silas, and the next there was a wolf yelping near the altar. A growl shook the chapel. Something hit the floor, followed by the wet sound of blood splashing against stone.

“Mara, come on!”

Nyra turned to grab her mother’s hand.

There was nothing there.

“Mara?”

She spun around, searching the shadows. No footsteps. No movement. No familiar voice telling her to calm down.

Her mother was gone.

A small object lay on the flagstones where Mara had been standing. Nyra bent down and picked it up.

A matchbook.

The cardboard was gray, and the blue lettering was unmistakable.

VOSS FAMILY PHARMACY. SAINT VEIL. OPEN LATE.

Nyra stared at it.

Twenty-three years of packed lunches, curfews, birthday dinners, and her mother reminding her to call when she got home. Twenty-three years of believing she knew the woman who raised her.

And Mara had vanished in the middle of a fight as if she’d done it a hundred times before.

Maybe she had.

A growl sounded behind Nyra.

She looked up. One of the wolves had turned toward her. Its amber eyes settled on her face, and its lips pulled back to reveal rows of teeth.

“Okay,” Nyra whispered. “I’m leaving.”

She ran.

Nyra vaulted the altar rail and landed hard on the other side. Pain shot through her knees, but she ignored it and dropped to the floor. Her hands moved over the stones, searching for the one Mara had described.

First. Second. Third from the left.

She pushed.

Nothing happened.

“Come on!”

She pressed harder, scraping her nails against the stone until they split. The wolf’s claws clicked against the floor behind her. Nyra shoved at the third stone again, and this time it shifted with a low grinding sound.

Cold, damp air rose from the opening.

A narrow staircase disappeared beneath the altar.

Of course there was a secret staircase. Why wouldn’t there be?

Nyra dropped into the opening and pulled the stone back over her head just as something heavy landed above her. The impact sent dust into her eyes. She fought the urge to cough and held still, listening to the chaos overhead.

Growling. Crashing wood. Shouting.

Then everything stopped.

Not gradually. One moment the chapel was full of snarls and fighting, and the next there was silence.

Nyra pressed herself against the wet stone wall. Her heartbeat was so loud she was sure somebody above could hear it.

Footsteps crossed the chapel floor.

Bare feet against stone.

Slow. Unhurried.

“Crane.”

Nyra recognized the voice immediately. The man with the gold eyes.

“I asked you to send her out.”

Silas answered from somewhere above her. “Thorne. And I declined. You’re a long way from your lake.”

“Where is she?”

“Gone.”

“Don’t lie to me. I can smell her. Fear and lantern oil, and something I’ve never smelled in my life.”

There was a pause.

“Something that shut my wolf up on those steps. Nothing shuts him up.”

Nyra covered her mouth with her hand.

He’d felt something when he looked at her mark. She hadn’t imagined it.

“Kneel to her all you like, Crane. The vote stands. She ends before sunrise.”

“Lucien will burn your lake for this.”

“Lucien can try.”

“Kael,” Silas said, lowering his voice. “You have no idea what you’re hunting.”

“I know she turned one of your Seven into an ashtray with her bare hand. That’s enough of an idea for me.”

Nyra squeezed her eyes shut. She hadn’t meant to kill anyone. She hadn’t even known what she was doing. Yet every person who saw the mark seemed to know more about her than she did.

Kael’s voice grew colder.

“Seven hundred years ago, my family helped put her kind in the ground. I’m not going to be the Thorne who lets one climb back out.”

The silence that followed felt worse than the fighting.

Then the footsteps stopped directly above Nyra’s hiding place.

She could hear him breathing.

A faint sniff followed.

Nyra didn’t move. She tried not to breathe too loudly, not to shift her weight, not to think about the fact that a man who could command those monsters might be standing on the other side of a single stone.

“Sunrise,” Kael said quietly. “That’s how long you’ve got, sweetheart. I’d make it count.”

His footsteps moved away.

Nyra waited until her lungs burned before she finally let out the breath she’d been holding. Her hands shook as she pulled out her phone and turned on the screen.

Thirty-one percent battery.

No signal.

She checked the time, then shoved the phone back into her pocket. Sunrise was only a few hours away. She had to find her mother, figure out what Hollowborn meant, and somehow stay alive long enough to do both.

Five clans had voted to kill her without even knowing her name.

That was the part she couldn’t stop thinking about.

She’d spent her life helping people. She’d never asked for a title, a throne, or any of the other things the vampire had called her. All she’d wanted was an ordinary life, and now it seemed like everyone in Saint Veil knew a secret about her except her.

Nyra switched on her phone’s flashlight and started down the stairs.

The passage opened into a low stone crypt. It looked older than the chapel above it, perhaps older than the town itself. Water dripped somewhere in the darkness, each drop echoing through the narrow space.

She moved the light slowly across the walls.

Then she stopped.

Every inch of stone was covered in carvings.

Not names or prayers. Circles.

Hundreds of them, overlapping from floor to ceiling. Some were deep and clean, while others looked as if they’d been hacked into the rock by someone desperate to leave a mark before they ran out of time.

Every circle was split by thirteen jagged lines.

Nyra looked down at her palm.

The symbol beneath her skin began to burn again.