Through our bond, I know she’s in there, but she can’t focus on me. It’s like a wall of cotton stands between us, muting everything.
The whole world is falling apart the seconds it takes me to reach the door on the side of the building. It’s the least used out of all the doors. Whether that’s by plan, or just how they’ve holed themselves up inside, we don’t know.
But we’re taking advantage of it.
My body connects with the door before I even think to pull it open.
Metal squeals against metal, the door torn from everything holding it in place, and brick and mortar explode around me as I break through the opening.
A pile of dead bodies and some poor fucking ghoul become the blast victims.
Matthias comes through the door behind me, his unnaturally long, razor-sharp claws extended.
A vampire races through the door opposite of us. He’s clearly not expecting to have his head disconnected from his body as I extend my hand, grabbing him.
Gripping his head between my claws, I twist, freeing it from his neck.
One down.
“I’ll start searching for the soulmarked with Raph,” Andrei murmurs, fading into the shadows.
I feel the rest of my sons racing in around me, their presence settling my nerves.
Pushing out through the bond, I listen for Chloe.
She’s halfway across the alley.
I’m coming for you, my love. Just hold on.
Another vampire and a huge gray wolf come bounding into the backroom we’ve found ourselves in.
It takes everything inside me to wait long enough for Caden and Maddox to leap onto the two enemies. Whirling away in a frenzy of claws and teeth.
If I wasn’t so pressed for time, I’d watch as the twins fall into a deadly rhythmic dance of death. They’ve been fighting together for centuries, and their every move is in perfect sync.
Pushing past them and out into the bowling alley itself, I can already see a few wolves tearing into each other.
Raphael comes racing into the room after me, burning so hot and bright through our connection I can feel him slipping into his berserker madness.
“Raphael!” I roar. “Go find your soulmarked!”
The snarling vampiric beast doesn’t even acknowledge me as he grabs a passing werewolf by the scruff of its neck. Yanking the wolf up to his mouth, he sinks his teeth deep into the wolf’s throat, ripping out its jugular, then flings it away.
Looking around himself, Raphael’s eyes blaze with rage and desperation as he sniffs the air.
Finding whatever he’s searching for, he takes off, racing for the front of the building.
Fuck. I hope he has enough mind left to pay attention to the red bands.
“Nikolaos!” I bellow.
This close to Chloe, I can feel the bond pulling at me. Even though she’s been muted by Nikolaos, our souls are yearning to be reunited again.
My mind slips into a semi-state of consciousness as I move through the long building. My claws slashing into bodies of fur and flesh. I feel as if every single step I take, I’m forced to fend off an attack.
If only I had Chloe’s vanishing ability, I’d be by my beloved’s side at this very moment. Instead, I must use every ounce of my brute strength to throw those around me out of my way.
Blood splatters against me as a ghoul’s body is tossed from a circle of fighting.
Matthias screeching, “No one picks on my baby brother!”
I can only spare a moment to look. I see him throwing himself in front of a wounded Ambrose before I force myself through a gap in the fighting.
She’s close now.
So close I can taste her in the air.
Following the thrumming cord inside me, I let it lead me up to the door of an office.
Kicking in the door, my voice comes out in a growling rasp. “Chloe.”
She doesn’t answer though, and I can instantly see why.
Seated on a wooden chair, she holds a severed arm in her hands.
Dangling from the fingers of the severed arm is a silver necklace.
Nikolaos has forced her into her own little macabre prison.
Standing in front of Chloe, his fingers wrapped around her neck, Nikolaos digs his claws into her skin.
“You took her from me, Asher,” Nikolaos hisses, bloody spittle flying everywhere. “You took her!”
Carefully I push the bloodlust aside, my brute strength will do nothing good here. I can’t attack Nikolaos yet. Not with the way he’s threatening Chloe… poised and ready to tear her head from her neck.
Words. I need to find the words to get those fucking claws away from her throat.
I push hard into the bond Chloe and I share. She has to break out of the fascination.
Wake, Chloe! For fuck’s sake, wake!
“You took her from me!” Nikolaos snarls, his eyes flashing with murder.
“She was not your soulmarked,” I say quietly. “You know this. You would have turned her into a ghoul. No better than the dying girl beside you.”