Page 35 of Veil of Blood and Bone

And I will take it from her again.

The way I always do.

The way I never choose.

Loathing bubbles up hot and aimed somewhere inside myself I refuse to name. I turn my back on her, shrugging the collar of my jacket higher.

“Tell me what to do. Give me a sign, Mom, please. Things have to change. Something has to change? It's time for life to relent! Tell me the troll coming here wasn’t some break from reality,” Helene pleads, and the distinctive scrape of fingers drawn through dirt is an assault on my heart. “Tell me it’s real, and there’s something happening. I need a way out.”

If I were Wren, I would know how to soothe her. I’d say the right thing at the right moment, and all those raw nerves of hers will be forgotten.

I’m not Wren.

Helene groans. “In other news, I found your runes at the festival. Esmerelda is trying to sell them. I, ah, I stole them. Not on purpose. I thought I set them down when the troll attacked but I must have stashed them somewhere, because they fell out when I ripped off that stupid costume. I don’t remember. I’m sorry. Karma is gonna get me, isn’t it?”

The cycles have already started and not going to her, not speaking to her, won’t help anything. More often than not, fate ensures her blood is on my hand and it kills me.

She’s right. There’s no escape.

My awareness splits further, old spots blooming behind my eyes like something listening back. Straightening, I cut toward the fence around the cemetery and vault over it, much faster than Helene.

Of all the fucking times...They shouldn't be here.

The black wall of the forest looms dead ahead, all paths sloping near it and the river. I speed into the trees and grab the closest vampire by the throat. Before he recognizes the attack I slam him against the trunk of an oak and squeeze.

“Talk, or die.”

The man claws at my wrist with pale, spidery fingers, eyes bulging. Red rims the center of his iris, and he gasps in a gut reaction. We don’t need to breathe.

Only the living do.

“Let him go, Silver,” a smooth voice cuts in from the left. “There’s no sense in choking the afterlife out of Gustaf. He hasn’t done anything yet.”

Helene’s words are still in my ears. It makes my grip tighten instead of loosen.

“You have a lot of nerve to come into my territory, Jules.” I refuse to look away from the sputtering mess of Gustaf.

He’s young, turned in his late teens and given new life as a vampire for the last five years. And he smells like it. Still got a damn cowlick and cheeks his mother probably pinched three times a day.

Jules sniffs and stares at the long curve of his claws, the tips stained, the gap between his teeth locked in place for eternity. “Is it yours? I hadn’t realized you’d marked it already. I thought you, like us, were simply passing through. Did we have to ask permission?”

Fucking vampires.

They…we…are a general archetype I can’t stand. Superiority and self-loathing bugs the undying hell out of me, the mirror too harsh.

Something about her calls things here.

I glance at Jules. “How many did you bring with you?”

My fingers squeeze tighter on Gustaf’s neck, but no matter how he kicks at me, there’s no breaking the hold.

I keep him pinned.

“Come on, Nic, go easy on the poor thing. He’s still learning our ways. He wasn’t going to drain the woman.” A note of desperation colors Jule’s coo.

Another type of plea, this one to protect his fledgling. Drain the woman.

I straighten my arm and lock it at the elbow, claws digging into Gustaf’s neck. My woman. “Why did you come?”