Adrenaline flooded my veins and red-lined my pulse as I sprinted through the snow. How many hybrids were trying to breach the fence? Had they already broken through? Fuck! It would take me a couple minutes to reach it—minutes we didn’t have.
A blur of black streaked by and vanished between the buildings up ahead. My fangs retracted, and my heart thundered in my ears.
The clanging sound of a bell sent people scattering around me. The women darted inside the hospital, and the men gathered weapons, looking at me for direction.
“Hybrids on the north wall.” I picked up my gait, lungs heaving. “Flank both sides of the weak point. Close quarters formation. Fast and discriminating fires. Don’t you dare hit Salem. I need three on the south gate. Find my fathers!”
I continued to bark orders at the soldiers I passed, my legs burning with exertion and fingers locked painfully around the bow.
Eddie caught up, outrunning my shorter legs. “Did you see his veins? That’s how you know?”
“Yeah. Did you?” I cut a corner, narrowly dodged a rusted barrel, and my fangs reemerged.
“Saw his neck.” He positioned his bow and nocked an arrow as we closed in on the wall. “No veins.”
Maybe Salem was right. The anomaly was me. My freaky vision. But he was a freak, too, because amid the mayhem of clashing bodies up ahead, Salem was the only one who stood out, his vascular throat glowing like a beacon.
Hybrids poured in through the newly smashed hole in the wall, slamming into my soldiers and tackling them to the ground. I counted nine intruders before I lost track. Thirty yards from the battle, I positioned myself with an unobstructed field of fire and targeted the closest hybrid.
With a steady breath, I drew back an arrow and let it fly on my exhale.
The shot went wide, as did my next three attempts. More soldiers swept in around me. It was too dark to make out faces, but the clank of Roark’s sword and my fathers’ shouts drifted from the center of the melee.
I volleyed arrows with deliberate slowness, my nerves eroding with the fear I’d hit one of my own. Salem moved in my periphery, swinging the club and sending the deadly spike through more heads than any of our arrows. There was no question whose side he was on, yet none of the hybrids attacked him. They weren’t just avoiding him. They were giving him a wide berth.
My mind raced as I tried to focus on my targets. I finally hit one in the eye before two others broke the front line and darted in my direction.
“Dawn!” Eddie spun toward them, his arrows missing their inhumanly fast movements.
My hands trembled as I lined up the next shot. I would never hit both of them in time, but dammit, I tried. Feet braced apart and breaths even, I nailed one in the eye, aimed for the second one, missed. It’s okay, it’s okay. I aimed another shot. Oh fuck, I was too late.
Fangs bared, he leapt toward me from a few feet away. My heart stopped, and my arrow slipped.
Someone slammed into my attacker from the side. They rolled through the dark and landed against the side of the shack. The spiked club hung from a bloody hole in the hybrid’s skull.
Salem freed his weapon and turned toward me. The veins in his neck dimmed, faded into nothingness. No more hybrids. A visual sweep confirmed the fight was over. I let out a huge breath and lowered the bow to brace my hands on my knees.
“That’s all of them,” I shouted to the soldiers and met Salem’s eyes. “Thank you.”
“You okay?” He prowled closer, scanning me from head to toe.
“Yeah. You?”
He nodded and turned toward the approaching footsteps.
Silhouettes emerged from the dark—Eddie, my surviving soldiers, my fathers. I wanted to run to them and hug them with relief. But bodies littered the ground, three of them writhing and convulsing. I recognized the faces. Three of my soldiers. Bitten. We only had about a minute before they would turn.
I ordered several men to repair the breach in the wall and joined Michio beside Kip, one of the bitten soldiers. Roark quickly moved between the other two, murmuring Last Rites. Jesse stepped behind Roark, tomahawk raised to end the men’s lives before the infection took over. My chest squeezed.
Salem touched Jesse’s arm. “I’ll do it.”
I looked away, but couldn’t tune out the wet thunks when that spike pierced through bone and brains.
Kip lay on the snowy ground before me, delirious and jerking with seizures. When venom attacked the body, it was violent and painful. And agonizing to watch. Especially as I thought about the wife and husband he had at home, anxiously awaiting his return.
Roark crouched beside me, his hands on Kip’s chest, and whispered prayers of absolution. I removed my mother’s dagger from my belt and fisted the handle, prepared to spare Salem another kill.
Michio gripped Kip’s hand, wearing the expression of a doctor who desperately, passionately wanted to save lives, no matter how infected or irreparable. I stared at the dagger in my hand, listening to Kip’s final breaths, loathing myself for not keeping him safe.
My worldview was shaped by my fathers, but my motto was adopted from my mother. Stay alive. Seek truth. Don’t look back.
Killing Kip kept us alive. Once I plunged the blade, I wouldn’t look back. But was I searching hard enough for the truth? What if I could cure him and return him to his loved ones? I didn’t feel an urge or craving to bite him. Contrarily, the thought made me sick. But it was just one bite.
“One bite.” I met Michio’s eyes and pressed my fangs against my bottom lip. “And we’ll know.”
“Is that what your gut is telling you?” His brown eyes filled with hope as he searched my face.
I shook my head. “Seek truth, right?”
He closed his eyes, opened them, and stared at Kip, who foamed and frothed at the mouth.
I turned to Salem. “Can you hold him after he turns?”
“You’re not biting him.” His nostrils flared. “It’s too fucking intimate.”
“I’ll bite his wrist and think of you.”
I stood, shifting to the side as my fathers pinned Kip to the snow-covered ground.
“Move out of the way if you’re not going to help,” I said to Salem.
He flexed his hands, gave a reluctant nod, and knelt above Kip’s head, gripping the man’s shoulders.
“Eddie?” I found him standing off to the right, an arrow nocked and aimed at the writhing man, having already anticipated my order. “Thank you.”
I lowered beside Salem and pulled back the collar of his coat. His strong neck worked through a swallow. I stroked his throat, relishing the warmth of his skin as I waited for the veins to light up.
The wait felt like hours, and a bitter taste washed over my tongue. My stomach twisted and clenched at the notion of drinking Kip’s blood. Was this my body’s way of throwing a cold light of reason on this plan? Before I could consider that, another light flooded my senses.
Salem’s veins burned hot against my hand, each capillary so evenly lit and prominent it was a scientific wonder. There was no explainable light source, and I realized his epidermis wasn’t transparent. The glow radiated so brightly it simply shone through his skin.
“Dad,” I said to Michio, gliding my hand down Salem’s throat, captivated by the way the veins reached toward my touch. “Do you see this?”
He followed the movement of my fingers, eyebrows furrowing and releasing. “No.”
I looked at Roark and Jesse, and they shook their heads.
Lowering my chin, I released a heavy sigh and moved to Kip’s wrist. “Do I aim for a vein?”
“Your fangs will find it.” Salem watched me intently, displeasure sharpening his cheekbones, evidently still sour about me biting another man.
Kip growled, bucking against the hands holding him down and snapping his altered canines, his hungry eyes fixed on me.
I raised his wrist to my mouth and bit hard and fast. The pungent taste of blood rushed over my tongue and down my throat. I swallowed quickly, pulling on the vein and fighting nausea.
I couldn’t see Kip’s arteries, but holy hell, Salem’s glowed brighter than ever, bulging and pumping beneath his skin. I sucked harder, and the silver things in Salem’s veins froze in place. I was doing that? Affecting their movement? I tried to redirect my focus to Kip, but I was utterly absorbed by Salem’s blood. The need to bite him was powerfully vicious, tightening my fingers and commanding the movement of my jaw.
“Dawn.” Michio’s voice sounded muffled, distant, beneath the pounding in my ears. “Dawn!”
The skin against my lips burned feverishly hot, so hot I yanked my fangs from Kip’s wrist. His exposed flesh grayed, crackled, and sank against his bones, his eyes staring heavenward, lifeless.
A chill gripped my spine. “What—?”
Kip’s entire body collapsed, disintegrating into a heap of clothes and…
I covered my mouth, whimpered. There was nothing left of him.
Nothing but ash.
“I killed him. I did that.” My breaths came fast and deep, but I couldn’t draw enough air. “I killed him.”
“Dawn.” Michio reached for me.
I spun away and wretched, emptying my stomach and splattering the snow in red.