River of Shadows (Underworld Gods #1)(96)

She throws the blade, quick as a wink, the power shooting out of her fingers, guiding the knife forward. Before it can hit Alice, she’s pushed aside at lightning speed as Hakan steps forward.

Taking the knife to the heart.

Saving his wife’s life, but ending his own.

Hakan immediately falls to the ground, his body seized by the blue currents as it spreads out from the knife, overtaking his limbs, making them shake.

Alice cries out in horror, dropping to her knees beside Hakan.

“Why?” she sobs to him, trying to take the blade out. “Why did you do that?”

Hakan stares at her, pain engulfing him as the last vestiges of life are leaving him. It must be quite the feeling of being almost immortal.

While Elaine stares at the scene, transfixed, Jim points to the house, closing his eyes, and draws the fire out of the fireplace inside. Flames spread immediately, as if the place was doused in gasoline.

Alice screams. “Lenore!”

Elaine and Jim exchange a sharp look. Lenore?

“Go to her,” Hakan says to Alice, spitting out blood. “Save her and maybe they will spare your life.”

Elaine’s heart clenches. Who is Lenore?

Suddenly a child’s cry fills the air, rising above the roar of the flames, and Elaine’s mouth drops in horror.

A child.

Alice and Hakan have a child.

This they didn’t know.

Alice gets to her feet and runs into the house.

But Jim is fast, throws the blade so it gets her in the back, knowing the knife’s power will penetrate to her heart that way, slipping past her ribs.

Alice stumbles but keeps running, right into the flames, fueled by a mother’s love and protection.

Elaine looks at Jim in horror. What do we do?

We wait for them all to die, Jim says. And we leave.

But from the fraught expression on her husband’s face, he feels as torn about the situation as she is.

And there’s something more than that.

There’s something that is calling Elaine to the house, the child’s cry that doesn’t stop is reverberating around her heart, tugging at her, making her feel. How can it not, they both know that a child is only a vampire in waiting. At the moment, the child doesn’t drink blood, lives with innocence in the soul.

The child is burning to death, burning alive.

Elaine stares down at Hakan, his lifeless body, and knows the flames will reach him too.

“We have to go,” Jim says. “People will see the fire, they’ll be here soon.”

Elaine just blinks, numb, and he puts his arm around her, leading them away from the house, the fire hot at their backs. The child has stopped crying, which means it’s dead. And it’s their fault.

“Please,” a tiny shaking voice says from behind them, stopping them in their tracks.

The Warwicks whirl around to see a child standing beside her father, staring down at his body. She can’t be more than two, her clothes burned off of her, but the rest of her untouched. Her hair is long and dark blonde, like amber honey. “Daddy.”

Elaine’s heart breaks and she feels a calling to the child, like a haunting siren song that rises from the moonlit well in her gut.

The child raises her chin and looks at Elaine, right in the eyes. They’re large and hazel, all the colors of nature in them.

“Please,” she says again. She can’t be more than two, but she’s so soft-spoken.

Elaine knows she’s asking for them to save her.

The fire leaps forward, licking the child’s back, causing the remains of her burned dress to catch on fire and fall away, but the child isn’t even hurt. She doesn’t seem to notice.

This is no ordinary vampire child. Fire kills them. It kills witches too.

But it’s not killing her.

Elaine looks at Jim and he nods. He knows what she’s decided to do. Perhaps he can feel the child calling inside him as well.

Letting them both know that she’s not just a vampire.

But one of their own.

Something that should never be.

Elaine runs forward, into the fire, scoops up the girl, the fire burning her bare arms. Elaine doesn’t scream, though the pain is unbearable. She just takes the girl in her arms — Lenore — and brings her toward Jim.

Being the bigger and stronger of the two, Jim holds on to the child, and they both start running off into the woods, letting the fire burn all evidence to the ground.



* * *





CHAPTER ONE


San Francisco, California

Present Day





* * *



I think I’m being followed.

My friends have called me paranoid once or twice before, so there’s a chance they might be right. But I still can’t shake the feeling that someone’s been following me, all the way from my apartment down in Hayes Valley, to here in Upper Haight. Doesn’t help that the further up the hill I go, the thicker the fog gets, making every shadow extra ominous. That’s what I get for taking the shortcut past Buena Vista Park.

I pause, coming to a standstill, and listen.

I’m a couple of blocks away from the speakeasy, in the residential area close to Haight Street, which is busy on a Friday night, and yet everything seems eerily calm. Hushed. Like the houses around me are holding their breath.