In Cold Blood Chapter 1 Summary Novels & Stories

His grip collapses; hot blood sprays over my hands, my black dress. Vex lunges, dragging me into the car. Kade and Ben pile in, weapons still drawn as the SUV peels away from the curb. I stare at my hands. Blood slick, sticky. My first kill. My first blood. The shock makes everything around me blur. Vex pulls me into his chest, checking my face, my neck, searching for wounds. His thumb wipes blood from my cheek — just as I had wiped it from him. “Breathe, Brynn. Just breathe.”

The first man dies before he even realizes I’m behind him. One arm around his neck. The other hand twists. A clean break—quick, sharp, final. His body drops at my feet without a sound. Good. I don’t want noise. Not until I’m ready for it. I wipe the blood on my pants, not because it bothers me, but because I want my hands free. I step deeper into the building. Eloise has to be around here somewhere. I highly doubt she’s been killed but I can’t be too sure for much longer.

POV DARLENE The lavender mist was gone. In its place, the North had returned to its true, brutal form: White-Out Blizzard and Bone-Chilling Silence. I stood on the ridge overlooking the ruins of the First Square—the exact spot where, one hundred and ninety-two chapters ago, Jackson had looked me in the eye and told me I was "nothing but a burden." Back then, I was a girl with no wolf, shivering in a thin coat, watching my world shatter. Now, the snow didn't make me shiver; it melted before it could even touch my skin, vaporized by the Golden-Emerald Fire that roared in my veins.

It was a presence. It filled the room. It filled my mind. It filled my bones. And then it spoke. Not in words. In truth. In judgment. In a cold certainty that made my skin crawl. The spine chose for me. And the choice it made was written in a single sentence that echoed in my mind like a death sentence: “The bloodline survives.” The chamber door opened… and the first figure that stepped in wasn’t a Council agent, nor a soldier, nor a shadowy enemy.

My body fell limp and I was met by darkness. *** My consciousness started to return, but the first thing I felt was cold. It was a gentle chill you feel in the morning when one wakes up realizing winter had arrived. It was a different type of cold, and cold that made me panic and scared. The steady, drip… drip… drip of liquid somewhere close reached my ears. With a struggle, my eyes finally fluttered open. Pain lanced through my arm.

Danny's POV The first thing I felt wasn’t the pain. It was the cold. It was the kind of damp, biting chill that seeps through your clothes and settles right into your marrow until your bones feel like they are made of ice. My head was throbbing with every heartbeat, a heavy, wet rhythm that made the back of my eyes ache. When I finally forced my eyelids open, the world was just a blur of gray concrete and flickering yellow light.

I stared wide-eyed as it took hold of my arm, squeezing tightly until I could feel the coldness of its fingers piercing my bones. "YOUR BLOOD IS MINE!" it roared. "I WILL TAKE EVERY OUNCE OF YOUR LIFE! YOU ARE WEAK AND PATHETIC! YOU ARE MY KEY TO THEM! ONCE I HAVE YOU, THEY WILL ALL FALL. I WILL END THEM ALL!" It's deep voice raved, pricking at every cell of my body, turning it into stone so I could not escape. I could not fight back.... it had me.... it had me choking on all of my fear.

CHAPTER ONE: MEETING MR DASHIELL My eyes flickered open like the blurry Christmas lights at the far end of a NewYork street. I tried to move but my head felt like it had been nailed to the hard, black tiles, and I could only manage to lift a finger or two. My mouth quivered as I felt liquid surrounding my cold body, I began to wonder whether I had taken a piss on the floor while unconcious. Using the strength I had left, I raised my fingers up to meet my eyes. My vision was blurry but I could still decipher that the liquid on the floor wasn't piss but in fact blood.

And curiosity, in my world, always ended in blood. END OF CHAPTER 1

I will not let this panic attack get the best of me, I think with a more determined resolve. As I open my eyes, my blood runs cold as my heart skips a beat. Detective Clements and Chief Harding are blocking the front entrance, one draped over the other on the hard, cold floor, unmoving as a pool of blood spreads rapidly around them, inching closer by the second. I step back and freeze, paralyzed as my back brushes against something that I know shouldn’t be there.