Chapter 5 Red Flags and Black Coffee

Elena stood perfectly still under the concrete awning of the science building. It was three hundred yards away from the student union coffee shop [local].

To a human, the distance would render the crowded cafe completely silent. To Elena, the world had no such boundaries.

She leaned her shoulder against the damp stone, tilting her head slightly. She filtered out the roaring engine of a passing campus shuttle. She tuned out the clinking of porcelain mugs and the hiss of the espresso machine.

Then, she found it. The distinct, rhythmic thump-thump of Maya’s heart. It was a sound she could already isolate from thousands of others.

Beside Maya's steady pulse was another heartbeat—faster, sharper, vibrating with the defensive spike of adrenaline.

“...Elena Vance gives off a massive, flashing red flag,” Nadia’s voice cut through the distance, crystal clear in Elena’s ears.

Elena didn’t flinch. Her expression remained frozen, a beautiful, tragic mask. She closed her eyes as Nadia listed her anomalies. No umbrella. Unblinking eyes. Freezing cold skin.

Every word Nadia spoke was a blunt, undeniable truth. Elena was a predator. She was unsafe. For seventy years, she had known exactly what she was, but hearing a human vocalize it—hearing the raw fear in Nadia's voice as she tried to protect her friend—sent a sharp, phantom ache through Elena’s cold chest.

“She’s not a predator, Nadia,” Maya’s voice drifted across the foggy quad, wrapped in a soft, fierce defensiveness that made Elena's breath catch. “She was just... guarded. When we shook hands, she was practically trembling.”

Elena’s hand clenched into a fist inside her coat pocket. Maya was defending her. Maya, who had every reason to run, was making excuses for the monster lurking on the edge of her life.

“Promise me you’ll keep your guard up,” Nadia pleaded over the distance. “...There is something profoundly wrong with Elena Vance, and I don't want you getting caught in her crosshairs.”

Elena opened her eyes. The hazel rings around her irises had completely vanished, replaced by a bottomless, midnight black. Nadia was right to warn her.

If Elena had a shred of humanity left, she would open her phone, drop Professor Harrison's class, and catch the first train out of this university town. She should leave Maya to her safe, warm, mortal life of paint smudges and coffee dates.

But as she looked toward the hazy, lit windows of the student union, the ancient, romantic gravity pulled at her soul with terrifying strength. She didn't want to run. For the first time in seven decades, she wanted to stay.

"She told you to run, Maya," Elena whispered into the empty, foggy air, her velvety voice swallowed by the wind. "You should listen to her."

Elena pulled her hands from her pockets, turned her back on the coffee shop, and melted into the thick campus fog. She had exactly twenty-four hours before their first scheduled study session in the university library. Twenty-four hours to build a wall around her instincts, or risk destroying the only light she had found in seventy years.