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How was I so stupid as to trust these people? What the hell was I thinking?

But she knew her reasons, and they started with the boy sitting beside her. She’d wanted so desperately to have someone she could confide in, someone who understood her. She’d wanted a friend she didn’t have to constantly feel like she kept such huge secrets from. No matter how close she was—or had been—to Emily and Jasmine, her knowledge of the paranormal world, a world they were so unaware of, would forever act like a wall between them.

Elizabeth caught sight of a sign for the Santa Monica Highway and sighed in relief. At least she was still in the city. Movement, seemingly unrelated to the storm, caught her eye. Something black was moving at a run along the side of the car.
An animal
? It seemed to be keeping pace with the vehicle, though she guessed they weren’t going particularly fast, due to the constant wind and rain. Even so, the presence of the creature was strange. She’d expect an animal—it looked to be the size of a dog or fox—to want to seek shelter during these conditions. She leaned in closer to the passenger window, cupping her hands around her face and pressing them to the glass to try to get a better look.

What i
s that thing?

“Are you okay?” Ryan asked again, keeping his voice low.

She tore her eyes from the window and glared at him.

“What’s going on back there?” Conner demanded.

“Nothing to worry about, Dad,” Ryan called back. He lowered his voice again and leaned in closer to her. “I’m serious. You looked kind of weird just then.”

“I’m fine,” she hissed at him. She realized his hand still rested on her knee and jerked her leg away. “What do you care anyway?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for it to all end up like this. I didn’t know …” His eyes flicked back to the front of the car, where his father was driving and Orla sat in the passenger seat. They were both concentrating on the road, the treacherous conditions commanding their attention. The constant drum of the rain on the metal roof helped to drown out their voices.

“I trusted you! I thought you were like me?”

The corners of his mouth turned down. “I’m nothing like you.”

She frowned. “What do you mean? Look at you? The strange eyes, the pale skin, the scars you showed me?”

“It’s a simple masking spell,” he told her. “The same spell kept you from learning about me.”

What he said was true. She’d touched Ryan a number of times now, yet she’d picked up nothing about him. Normally, she’d get at least a couple of flashes, even if it wasn’t anything interesting, yet, with him, there’d been nothing. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in her hopes about him being like her, she probably would have noticed sooner.

“A spell?” she echoed.

He nodded.
“Watch.”

He lifted his hand and flattened it, palm toward him, and drew his hand slowly down over his face.

She gasped in surprise. Gone were the pale blue eyes and white skin. Replacing them were eyes the same color as his father’s—a blue-gray—and a more normal, freckled complexion. With his red hair, his new coloring suited him. If she hadn’t been so stunned, she would even have thought he was cute.

“Just a trick,” he said with an apologetic shrug.
“A way to get you to trust me.”

She grabbed his wrists and pulled up his sleeves. Where previously there had been faint but visible twisted white lines, now she only saw smooth skin.

The trick had worked.

“Ugh!” She pushed his arms away in disgust.

His betrayal settled in her gut like something rotten. She’d thought she’d finally found someone she could relate to, someone who understood her life, even if his family and friends were up to no good.

She thought of something else, her whole sense of self spinning in her confusion. “But you described my change and exactly how I felt.”

“It wasn’t hard to figure out.” He shifted in the seat and she sensed at least the deception was making him uncomfortable. “We just wondered what it must be like to start turning into a bloodsucker and made the rest up from there.”

She scowled at him and lowered her voice to a hiss. “You’re not going to get away with whatever messed up thing your dad and his friends are planning.”

He shrugged. “Look around you. It’s already happening.”

“What do you …?” Elizabeth frowned and looked out of the passenger window. Where the creature had been running, now a wave of darkness rushed alongside them, like liquid shadows. She might have put the shadows down to a trick of the light caused by the street lamps and the rain, but there was something strange about them, as if they were too solid. She squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again, thinking she’d dispel the weird effect, but the shapes had only taken on more definition.

More dogs? A whole pack of them?

She could make out what seemed to be arms and legs, like small creatures running alongside them, too many to count. And then one of them turned its face toward her, locked its blood red, hate-filled eyes on hers and opened a mouth full of needle-like teeth in a snarl.

Elizabeth let out a shriek and backed away from the window, inadvertently colliding with Ryan’s legs. His hand closed over hers, but she snatched it away.

However strange the night was becoming, she refused to take any comfort from the boy who had betrayed her.

Chapter Sixteen

With her heart in her
throat, Serenity watched Iona’s eyes flicker open.

For the past fifteen minutes, it had felt like the young woman didn’t even exist in the room. Though they could see her clearly, kneeling in the middle of the living room floor, it had been like watching an inanimate object, or even, God-forbid, a corpse. As soon as Iona had stopped muttering words that Serenity had been unable to understand, she’d fallen completely still and silent. The atmosphere in the room had
changed, a tensing of the air molecules around them. Even the two vampires had sensed the change, both falling as motionless as Iona, and Serenity had to shake off the feeling she was surrounded by stone statues.

The minutes had stretched on, time impossibly extended, until Serenity wondered if she’d fallen into whatever state Iona had entered and now waited in a  place where time didn’t change.

Iona gasped and fell forward, her hands on the floor to halt her fall, her hair hanging around her face like a silken sheet of silver.

Serenity hesitated. Her first instinct was to go forward and check she was all right, while the other part of her didn’t want to interrupt whatever process the young sorceress was going through.

But now the sorceress had come back to them, Serenity suddenly became aware of time ticking away, dawn fast approaching. With it would bring Elizabeth’s murder, a possibility Serenity couldn’t let herself think about too hard for fear of fracturing into a thousand shards of pain.

Sebastian made the first move. In a blur of movement, he crouched in front of Iona. He reached out and touched her shoulder.
“Iona? Did you see her?”

She lifted her head and nodded. “She was at the
Happy Stay Motel on the outskirts of downtown.”

“Was?” he said.
“What do you mean, was?”

“They’ve taken her in a car. She doesn’t know where they’re headed.”

Sebastian sprang to his feet and turned to Vincent. “Are you coming?”

The younger vampire squared his shoulders.
“Of course.”

A wave of indignant anger rolled over Serenity. “Don’t think for a minute that I’m not coming with you.”

Sebastian turned to her, his green eyes fierce. “You need to stay inside. This storm is only going to get worse, never mind what Conner and his lot might do to you. Besides, you’ll only slow us down.”

“You can carry me,” she said, resolutely. “I’m not going to hang around here while my daughter is in danger.”

Iona got to her feet. “You might need me too. If they use magic on you, you will need my defenses.”

Serenity put her hands on her hips. “And if one of you needs to carry Iona, then the other one might as well carry me.”

The two determined women stood facing off the two vampires.

Sebastian’s shoulders slumped. “Okay, but we need to move now. Every second we’re standing here is another second they’re taking Elizabeth farther from us.”

Iona stepped toward Vincent. “I never thought I’d be doing this again,” she said to the big vampire.

“You and me both,” said Vincent, cocking an eyebrow. He reached out and scooped the young sorceress up against him. With Iona’s wide blue eyes and silver-blonde hair, and his huge bulk and fierce appearance, they made a striking pair. Nevertheless, Serenity didn’t miss the tight-lipped look he gave her and Sebastian as she stepped into his arms.

Sebastian lowered his forehead to hers, looking deep into her eyes. “Are you ready?”

She forced a smile, though her heart hurt in bittersweet agony. How good it was to be held against him again, to be gifted with his strength and endless love for her. Her heart ached and she could barely imagine how she had gone for so long without having his arms around her once again. It dawned on her that she never felt safer than when she was in his arms. Even if the situation should leave her terrified, something about his presence made her draw strength from him.

The part of her that always seemed to be searching for something to complete her had finally grown full. She’d always been so terrified of being forced to need a man again, of becoming trapped in a relationship like she’d been in her past. But she’d proven she could be on her own, that she didn’t need to rely on someone else to survive. Now she understood that she no longer had to
need
someone, instead he was simply what she wanted.

She nodded against him. “Let’s go get our baby back.”

They stepped out into the night, Vincent and Iona close behind. The moment they moved from the protective shelter of the big house, the wind snatched the air from her lungs. It tore her hair from her face, the rain seeming to drive horizontally, lashing her skin.

Sebastian must have sensed her discomfort, for he reached up with the hand that wasn’t holding her and pressed her face down against his shoulder, sheltering her as though she were a child. For once, she didn’t object, relieved to have some respite from the horrendous conditions.

He set off at a run, heading through the suburbs to get onto the freeway and downtown toward where Elizabeth had last been able to give a description of her location. Serenity kept her face buried, hoping they would reach Elizabeth before the people who’d taken her would be able to move her too far.

But within only a minute, Sebastian slowed to a human walk and she lifted her head to gaze up at him. “What?” she asked. “What’s wrong?”

“Look.”

At his bequest, she turned her face toward the street and gasped. She didn’t want to believe the scene before her. Had they stumbled onto the set of a horror movie? But no, she knew this was real. She’d seen the cause of this chaos before.

They stood in a modest street, white painted, two-story houses with simple yards. The storm had created the expected damage, tiles torn from roofs and shattered on the sidewalk, large branches torn from trees. At the end of the street, a traffic light hung at an angle, the lights—red, amber and green—flickering in no distinct order. Rainwater poured from the roofs of houses, the guttering unable to cope with the deluge. Drains bubbled over with mud and silt. The water flowed down the street, flooding over their feet, soaking through their shoes and reaching ankle height.

But it wasn’t any of these things that had caught Sebastian’s attention, Serenity realized. Where the streets had been deserted an hour or so earlier, now people ran around the ravaged neighborhood. A woman, her soaked nightgown plastered to her body so it looked like a second layer of skin, ran from her yard. Close behind her, moving silently and smoothly across the ground like a ghost, was one of the tall humanoid demons Serenity had seen in Dominion. The woman, frantic with fear, glanced back over her shoulder and saw the thing still coming. She let out a shriek and continued to run, though she had to fight against the wind and rain to get away. Across the street, an elderly man burst from his home, three of the smaller primate-like demons attached to his arms and shoulders. The man ran out screaming in a pitch a man his age should never have been able to produce, staring at the horrors attached to his limbs as though he was on fire. A teenage boy sat huddled against the side of a car, trying to find shelter while more of the smaller demons surrounded him, staring him down with their blood red eyes, hissing and flashing their maws of needle-sharp teeth.

Serenity stared around, her eyes wide in dismay. “Oh, my God.”

Vincent and Iona appeared beside them, the same expressions of fear and disbelief on their faces as they surveyed the scene before them. Rain drummed against their skin, the wind snatching their voices as they spoke.

“What the hell are those things?” demanded Vincent, leaning in toward Serenity and Sebastian to be heard.

“They are what we’re trying to stop happening,” said Iona.

Serenity spun to her, having to shout above the storm. “I thought we were trying to stop Elizabeth’s murder?”

“We are,” she shouted back, holding her hair back with one hand so she could see. “But if we fail, this is the world we will all find ourselves living in. The veil between our world and Dominion is almost completely gone now and some of the demons have been able to get through. We must only have a few hours left.”

“We need to find Elizabeth,” said Sebastian. “And we need to do it fast.”

The demons didn’t appear to be paying the small group any particular attention. They needed to remain unnoticed. If the demons decided to focus their attention on the two vampires and women, they would surely slow them down. At least Sebastian still had his strengths here, Serenity reminded herself. When they’d been trapped in Dominion, his strengths had been failing him and he’d struggled to fight back. She hoped if the demons did attack, at least the two vampires at her side would crush them.

Sebastian’s strong arms lifted her again, and she tucked her face against the side of his neck, thankful for the protection and to be able to hide her eyes from the terrifying world around her. The initial jolt of his movement felt like her whole body had snapped back in time, and then the world rushed around her as he ran. She closed her eyes against the wickedly heightened force of the wind and rain and prayed they’d left the demons they’d seen far behind.

His movements drew to a stop once again and she found herself being set back on her feet. She blinked and lifted her arms to shelter her face from the driving rain. They
stood in the parking lot of a motel. In front of them, the rundown motel had suffered badly from the storm damage; the sign had toppled from the top of the building and now hung in darkness across the front of the single story building. The rest of the lights were out as well—a power outage she assumed—but she was still able to make out the broken window of one of the rooms.

Elizabeth
...

Sebastian’s nostrils flared. “I can smell her. She was definitely here, but her scent is mixed with the smell of fuel, so she was taken in a car like she told Iona.” He nodded to the west. “They went in that direction.”

“So what are we waiting for?”

“It’s going to be almost impossible to track her with this storm. Individual scents of cars are always hard to distinguish from one another, never mind with this storm going on. The rain will wash away most trace, and whatever is left will be intermingled with whatever water might be running down the street at the same time.”

For once, he turned to Vincent for back up. The other vampire nodded his agreement. “We’d lose them within seconds.”

Serenity turned to Iona. “So what are we going to do?”

The sorceress pulled Elizabeth’s comfort blanket from beneath her shirt. Serenity blinked in surprise, she’d not realized Iona still had hold of it. The wind almost whipped the item from Iona’s grip and she pulled it closer to her body.

“I can try to make contact with her again. Find out if she’s seen anything else that might alert us to where she is.”

“Come this way,” Serenity said, catching hold of Iona’s hand and tugging her into the shelter of a porch which opened out into the small reception for the motel. The storm probably wouldn’t bother the vampires too much, but Iona was human, however powerful her sorcery might be, and Serenity’s first instinct was to take care of her.

They stepped in out of the worst of the weather, though the wind still gusted beneath the door and rain hammered against the roof and windows. The place seemed
deserted, no sign of the demons or anyone else for that matter, and the reception area was in darkness. But then it was the middle of the night in a storm, most people would either be in bed—though probably too nervous to sleep—or had boarded themselves in. This area wasn’t used to storms of this magnitude and so didn’t have the storm cellars so common in many other parts of the country.

“It should be quicker this time … reaching her, I mean,” said Iona. “I’ve already created that connection with her.”

“Okay, good,” said Serenity, relieved they wouldn’t be standing around in the storm for too long, but also because of the knowledge that with every passing minute, Elizabeth was probably being taken farther and farther away from them.

She tried not to hold her breath in anticipation as Iona knelt on the floor, closed her eyes, and fell into a trance-like state. Serenity’s eyes darted around the forlorn parking lot, every pool of shadows now potentially hiding something she’d thought would never exist in this world. Every movement—pieces of debris lifted by the wind and spun, twirled and skittered across the asphalt—had her catching her breath, her heart leaping in her chest. At least she had Sebastian and Vincent by her side to protect her. But what if the demons were after Elizabeth? Who would protect her baby?

Iona gasped and lifted her head.

“Well?” Serenity
asked, her anxiety too great for her to hold her tongue. “Did you see her? Speak to her?”

Iona nodded, the
movement making her sway as if she was disoriented, and Serenity put a hand out to steady her. “She’s fine. Scared, but unhurt.”

“Did she tell you where she was?”
             

“She thinks they’re on the Santa Monica Freeway, heading west.”

Thank God,
she thought, though the idea of her daughter being frightened made her more furious than anything else she’d ever experienced in her life. When she caught up with the man who had taken her child, she would kill him herself.