The infernus—I needed the infernus! It was too far from me for the command to work! I spun in an unsteady circle, but I couldn’t see it among the litter of construction supplies. Finding a small pendant in this mess would be impossible.

I snatched a piece of rebar from an untidy pile of scrap metal. Turning on the vampires, I swung it into the female clamped onto Zylas’s wrist. It smacked her skull with a dull thud and bounced off. Her gaze, clouded with greed and ecstasy, focused on me.

As I lifted the bar again, she flung her arm out. The blow hit my chest and hurled me off my feet. A whoosh of air, then I slammed into a wall. Pain burst through my ribs and spine. I slid limply to the floor, unable to breathe.

Vaguely, I remembered these vampires were monstrously strong … and I was a feeble, breakable human.

Slumped against the wall, my vision blurring in and out, I tried to bring the room into focus. Zylas hung limply, spasms no longer moving his limbs. His unseeing stare had gone dark, the glowing crimson dimmed to flat, lifeless black. The vampires continued to feed with frenzied gluttony. They were killing him.

“Control yourselves, children.” The dry voice was quiet but its commanding power seared the air. “Even a demon will succumb to death if you drain it.”

The vampire drinking from Zylas’s throat lifted his head, a trickle of dark blood running down his chin. The other two reluctantly pulled their mouths away.

“My lord,” the female breathed, licking her lips clean. “Does the demon need to live?”

The newly arrived vampire glided across the room and stopped, unhurriedly assessing Zylas. Tall, pale, dark hair. Wearing a charcoal sweater and black jeans, he could’ve walked in off the street, but despite the dim light, a pair of curved sunglasses hid his eyes, the lenses reflecting the room. Four more vampires were arranged behind him, all staring hungrily at Zylas.

“Our own source of demon blood,” the man, who could only be Lord Vasilii, said in that emotionless voice, “will benefit us far more than a single indulgent meal.”

The female vampire pouted as she dropped Zylas’s wrist. The other male let go of his arm, and the final vampire pulled the limp demon against his chest, holding him possessively close.

Vasilii stepped closer. With a pale hand, he lifted Zylas’s arm. Inhaling over the bite wound on the demon’s wrist, the man ran his tongue across a trickle of blood.

“Exquisite,” he whispered.

The other vampires stirred restlessly, fixated on Zylas like starving hounds on a slab of meat.

“My lord.” The woman rotated on the spot until she faced me. “If we can’t have the demon, can we drink from the girl?”

“No, Bethany. If the girl perishes, her demon will be released from this world.” Vasilii frowned slightly. “She seems familiar.”

“She’s Jack Harper’s niece,” another vampire supplied. “I recognize her from the photos.”

Photos? What photos?

“Ah.” Vasilii looked across the room, then back to me. “Why are you here, niece of Jack Harper?”

I stared up at him, too terrified to make a sound.

“Is she injured?” His mouth shifted with irritation. “Did you wound her, Bethany?”

“I only struck her once.”

“Hmm. Bring them.”

As he walked away, the vampire holding Zylas followed. The woman leered at me, then grabbed a handful of my hair. Pain tore through my scalp, and I whimpered, clutching her wrist as she dragged me across the floor.

The vampire lord stopped at the makeshift table. Bethany flung me down, and a moment later, Zylas landed beside me, his head striking the concrete with a horrific thud.

After studying the empty table, Vasilii ordered one of his minions, “Watch over them. I will return shortly to question the female. If the demon stirs, bite him again—but do not feed on him.”

My panicked breath whistled through my clenched teeth. I dragged my aching body to Zylas’s side. He was sprawled on his back, blood streaking his neck, and his half-open eyes were black as pitch and empty. How much of his blood had the vampires drained—and how much tranquilizing saliva had they pumped into his body?

I wrapped my fingers around his upper arm. His skin was cool. Zylas? Can you hear me?

He didn’t react. Not even a flicker of awareness in his dark eyes.

“Can you smell it?” Bethany breathed. “His blood … the power in it.”

Another vampire licked his lips. “We will all get to drink.”

“Why can’t we have him now?” another whispered.

“The demon could die. We have to be careful. Lord Vasilii will make sure the demon keeps feeding us.”

My stomach turned over. They intended to keep Zylas as their personal blood bank? My hands tightened around his arm. Zylas, return to the infernus.

I waited for crimson light to overtake his body. Was the infernus too far away for him as well, or had the tranquilizing vampire saliva and blood loss anesthetized him? His comatose state, so much worse than when I’d been bitten, terrified me.

“Zylas,” I whispered, pressing against his side, my lips against his ear. “Go back to the infernus. Quickly.”

A shadow moved across me. Bethany grabbed my hair and hauled me away from Zylas. She threw me down and I hit a bucket, knocking it over. Discarded papers spilled across the floor and fluttered toward the abandoned air compressor and red jerry cans.

“Stay there and be quiet, girl,” she ordered.

I lay on my stomach, pain burrowing deep in my muscles from my earlier impact with the wall. A foot from my nose, a glossy photo lay amidst the scattered papers: my face, smiling back at me. A square graduate cap sat on my head and matching robes draped my small frame, while my parents beamed with pride on either side of me.

My throat closed. My high school graduation two years ago. How had the vampires gotten that photo?

“The demon smells so good,” a man groaned longingly.

Half under the photo was a lined sheet torn from a notebook, the cream paper filled with handwritten blue ink.

“Control yourself. Lord Vasilii doesn’t allow disobedience.”

My fingers closed around the paper, and as I squinted at that familiar loopy handwriting, I slid the page closer. Something small clattered softly against the concrete—a ballpoint pen. A pen. Sucking in a wild breath, I stuffed the paper down the front of my sweater and took hold of the pen.

“Lord Vasilii has promised we’ll get all the demon blood we want,” Bethany crooned delightedly. “Can you imagine?”

I flipped the photo over and drew across the back in a single, swift stroke.

“Mythics won’t dare hunt us then. We’ll be as powerful as they are.”

“Even more powerful! Only we can bring demons down with a single bite.”

Pressing the pen into another scrap, I drew a different rune across the paper’s full span.

“Demons are even more susceptible to our bites than humans. We’re the ultimate demon hunters, and mythics have no idea.”

The vampires laughed, voices coated in eager hunger. I crawled forward, belly sliding across the rejected papers they’d stolen from Claude, from Uncle Jack … from my parents.

“Do you think Lord Vasilii would notice if we took one more sip from the demon?”