Page 50 of Fated to the Fang

We don't pretend it makes us safe. Helena may already know we opened the record. Lucien is somewhere below the festival lights, counting hours. By tomorrow one of us could be gone, and we both feel that standing here, skin to skin in the rain.

But when he finally takes my hand and turns us back toward the house, I match his stride. Not behind him. Beside him. Whatever happens tomorrow, it gets the two of us, together, on our feet.

32

DORIAN

We have not had days. We had one night carved into scraps. Celeste scattered the proof before Helena's faction could close around it. Greer widened exits under the excuse of crowd safety. Avery moved the human pieces Lucien forgot to respect. And Lucien waited because he needed the square full, every phone raised, every road closed, every frightened body packed exactly where his map wanted them. That is the only reason the harbor still stands this morning. Both enemies are trapped, for a few hours, inside their own plans.

Strings of blue and gold lights burn over everyone, food trucks hiss, children run around, and the band on the platform murders a cheerful song badly. Greer's people hold the widened exits Avery forced open. Caleb stands at the south stairs, moving bodies with calm authority. Mabel plays with children inside the chapel. Nora hands out water from the café table. Owen watches through his camera, pretending not to worry.

Avery stands beside me with a radio in one hand and Lucien's altered plans folded under the other.

"It's too clean," she says.

I hear it then. Not the music. Beneath it. The tunnels. A scrape shivers under the square, too deeply. A tourist turns toward me, cup trembling.

"Do the boats leave here?"

Avery steps in. "Closed tonight. South lane."

He blinks. "I thought I was there."

Two women stare at the grate.

"Electrical work," Avery says. "Move back."

The crowd buckles in small places. Memory ruptures, wearing ordinary faces.

Avery's eyes find mine. "It isn't starting here."

"No. It is rising here."

I turn toward the harbor works below the square, and the bond snaps tight between us. Beneath the festival, something old opens its mouth.

"Greer," Avery says into the radio, already moving. "Keep them above. No one goes toward the pier stairs. Caleb, open the south lane now. Mabel, lock the chapel doors if anyone starts repeating phrases. Nora, get the weak ones sitting down. Owen, keep filming the exits, not the people."

Caleb's voice cuts through. "Ave, what the hell is happening?"

"Crowd safety," she says. "Trust me."

He does. That nearly breaks me.

Then she looks at me. "Down."

The promise I made last night burns louder. We take the service stairs under the bandstand. Celeste joins us at the first landing, Aldric behind her, blood already on his coat. Loyal vampires move through the lower dark, and below them the sanctuary roars.

Lucien has opened every sealed throat under Crimson Harbor. Rogues pour through the old archways. Memory charms burst against the stone and throw stolen terror into the air. A fisherman drowning. A child screaming. Tracy's broken whisper. The chamber water rises around our boots, black with blood and seawater.

Maddox comes out of it like a wall given teeth. He hits Aldric first and drives him downward, cracking the stone on impact. I get to him before he gets to Ave. His fist catches my ribs and I feel the break that heals almost instantly. I answer by taking his arm at the elbow and ripping it off his joint. He just laughs, knowing his end is near. Celeste takes his knee from behind. I take his throat.

Together we put him down into the flooded step and hold him there while he thrashes, huge hands tearing grooves in the stone. When he still tries to rise, I drive his skull into the memory-carved floor until the water around him goes dark and I put my blood into the strike, severing the old thread at his center. Maddox stops being a vampire in this battle. Then he stops being a body at all, unraveling into ash beneath my hands.

Across the chamber, Sabine stands with a blade at Jasper's throat. The old fisherman is bleeding but upright, one hand closed around the bell rope that hangs through a cracked shaft from the tower above.

She licks the blood from his neck, smiles with her fangs and says, "Let the old world end. Let them see us. Let them fear again."

Jasper spits blood at her shoe. "Girl, I've feared better things than you."