Page 33 of Fated to the Fang

"That was fast."

"I spent days learning what the alternative would be. I won't let a cage ruin what this between us could be. I already regret building that."

I wait for the catch, but there isn't one. I don't entirely forgive him yet. "What help do you need with Lucien? What can I do?"

"You should meet someone first who will know how dangerous this is." He points in the direction of the ocean. "You need to be aware of what you are getting yourself into."

A woman I've never seen before waits by the rocks. She chooses to look me up and down, and doesn't offer to shake my hand.

"So. The marine biologist. The woman who has been causing problems in the harbor. Do you understand the danger you are in? Everything you have right now could either get you killed, transitioned into a vampire, or your memory distorted?"

"Yes. He told me where I fit in this story."

"Did he?" She turns to Dorian. "You told her the law."

"The complete picture."

"Then you've made her twice as dangerous. When you saw what fed on those seals, what did you feel?"

"Nauseous. Then curious."

"In that order?"

"Overlapping."

Her attention sharpens—not warmth, just interest. "Curiosity gets people opened up. Fear keeps them breathing. Learn which one you are before you go deeper."

We walk toward a cliff, inside it opens into a chamber. Celeste, whose name I just heard from Dorian's mouth, spreads a stolen-looking version of council knowledge across the long table.

"We assumed the rogues hunt where it's easy," she says. "Tourists, dock workers, anyone the town can forget. The seals we wrote off as opportunistic."

I pull my folder from under my arm, and lay my pages next to hers.

"They're not opportunistic. Look at the recovery points."

She looks.

"Direct feeding leaves a clean carcass—drained, intact, the gray residue I flagged. But half my dead seals aren't drained. Full blood volume, same residue. Those didn't get fed on. They ate something that did, or swam where it happened." I trace the cluster. "It moves up the food chain. Small fish, then seals, then whatever's next. And it concentrates downstream of three tunnel outlets—here, here, and here. Your rogues aren't hunting at random. They're working through planned attacks, and the water records which ones."

"Three active outlets," Dorian says. "We had it at one."

"You had the one you watch. The seals found you the other two."

Celeste studies the three points for a long moment, then taps the nearest outlet. "If she's right, this one tells us fastest."

We gather everything and head for the cliff base.

"She slows us," the guard says. "And she remembers. You walked a human into our nest."

"I walked in the only person who found the other two outlets," Dorian says. "Move."

The dark inside is total, the cold heavy with salt and rot. I keep my headlamp low and my eyes on the floor, reading the rock like a tide line. Then a scream hits my ears. A woman, then a child, then a man begging in a language I can't make out. The guard stops. Even Dorian's shoulders lock.

"It's a trap," Celeste murmurs. "They seed fear into a place—stolen from the ones they fed on, pressed into the stone. It plays for whoever comes."

The voices climb. Then they change. The woman's scream thins into words. Not English. Not any language I know, but the guard reacts as if something has opened inside his chest. His head snaps toward the flooded channel, eyes gone wide and glass-bright.

"Sienna," the voice whispers. The guard stops breathing.