Rotten blood and still
We call this power
Tancredi Falco shivered uncontrollably as a feverish sweat drenched him and froze to his skin. He pulled his cape closer, fighting off the bitter wind. One minute he was so cold he thought his skin was turning to ice; the next he burnt with fever, and the leather mantle he wore to aid his flight and the headdress of feathers that helped camouflage him when he was high in the sky suffocated him. Nothing could save him now.
Not that he wanted to be saved. Everything he knew was gone. Nothing mattered any more but killing Sarah Midnight. And maybe then his sister, the last heir of the Falco Family, now sheltered by the Vendramins in Venice, would be given a chance to live. Micol’s beloved face danced before his eyes. His sorellina, alone. Ranieri had been there with her, but he was dead now. He’d died soon after Tancredi had left for Scotland to look for Sarah Midnight. Tancredi had felt his brother’s death one night, like a stab in his heart – and then emptiness. Another heir taken by the Azasti, instead of finding an honourable death in battle like they were meant to. Another piece of his family gone.
Tancredi staggered on, following the trail left by Sarah and her friends. He’d flown all the way to that point, using the last of his vital force, keeping track of his prey as they drove on the frozen roads. He’d witnessed the demon attacks, one after the other, and marvelled and seethed as Sarah survived every one of them. What were the chances of him killing her, when not even all those demons could? No point in even asking himself.
Long ago, he’d been more powerful than any of those demons; he could have cut them all in two with the Falco claws, forged of a metal unknown to anyone but his family, ambushing them from above. But that was before. Before the Azasti had taken every last ounce of strength from him. Now only despair kept him going. At Palazzo Vendramin, they’d believed he was delirious, that his search for Sarah was a consequence of the madness brought on by the Azasti. But he knew it wasn’t. His dreams had told him to hunt her. They told him what was in store for her, and his dreams never lied.
He could not allow Sarah to survive. He had to destroy her, or make Sean Hannay and Niall Flynn see what he could see, tell them that Sarah would betray them all, that her destiny was written and there was no way to change it. Maybe then they would kill Sarah themselves. She could not be allowed to live after such betrayal. They couldn’t allow a power like hers to join forces with the King of Shadows.
He made himself put one foot in front of the other, and one more and one more, until he saw something black and shiny beyond the trees. One of the cars Sarah and her friends had been driving, abandoned. In front of him lay a condemned building, its windows broken and its paint peeling off the walls – a strange sight, right in the middle of this wild place. Tancredi examined the snowy ground and then followed the footprints in the snow.
Suddenly, alerted by something only he could feel, he crouched behind a fallen tree. A hundred yards away from him stood Sarah Midnight, slender and strong, her long black hair loose around her shoulders.
Tancredi’s heart bled with regret as a painful thought travelled through his mind. Had she not been chosen as the bride of the Underworld, Sarah would have been a powerful asset for the Secret Families, maybe the most powerful. In other times she could have been their hope and their pride, a legend among the heirs. And now he was about to cut her throat.
A wave of fury hit Tancredi as he spotted Nicholas, tall and raven-haired, his skin otherworldly pale. He was the monster who, together with his father, had been the cause of the Secret Families’ demise.
Tancredi tensed and held his breath as the French heir, Elodie, turned towards his hiding place for a moment. She could sense him, he knew that. The Bruns were known for their psychic abilities, among other things. He was about to take flight and pounce on Sarah from above when he spotted something flickering in front of them, something shimmering and twirling. They’d opened an iris! In his generation only Lucrezia Vendramin, as far as he knew, could do something like that. Tancredi watched Sean touch Nicholas’ hand and then step into the rippling air, disappearing from view, out of his grasp. And then Sarah, the Flynn boy and the silver-haired Elemental followed through, and finally Elodie and the monster, the son of the King of Shadows. Without thinking, Tancredi ran blindly. He knew that he hadn’t been marked, he hadn’t touched the monster’s hand. There was no way he could have followed them, but he was beyond rational thought. With a scream of despair he threw himself into the rippling air, expecting to bounce back, or burn up, or whatever happened to those who tried to step through unmarked. But none of that happened. He swayed and struggled for balance as he found himself in the Shadow World, barely registering a full moon shining cold in the black sky. And then he saw the spectre. He saw them all.