Page 21 of The Shadows of the Dawn

“Oh, boy!” Asher interrupted with mock enthusiasm. Then, his voice colder and lower, “Do you really think I care?”

Vanessa pretended that she didn’t hear him. “You turned your back on Lord Malkolm, and here we are, trapped in a burning city with Morrigan claiming the throne. And for what? Why did you think, out of everyone, that you could get a free pass? You were a monster just like Lord Malkolm, I hope you know that. We all despised you just as much as we feared you. You were cruel, unpredictable, demonic. Yet here you are, parading the mark of the Moon, as if the last decade doesn’t matter.”

Nikola glanced over at Trish, sensing her steely gaze fixed on Asher, as if the woman pointing a weapon at them had a point. Asher grew still as the faintest trickle of disgrace rippled through him. But then he laughed it off, a quiet chuckle at first, before building toward his mad cackle.

“Drastic measures for drastic monsters,” he said lowly, sobering so abruptly it was jarring. “Y’all were let loose for a few days, and you went and destroyed the damn city. If you think I was cruel, imagine if it had been Malkolm’s personal hand. I did what I had to do to keep a brood of stir-crazy Blood Followers from eating a city alive from the inside out.”

Nikola picked up a pulse of shame coming from Liam’s direction. He couldn’t help but sympathize with the kid, knowing that Liam understood what kind of monster he would be without his sister’s leash.

“Oh, so we should be grateful, is that what I’m hearing?” Vanessa spat.

Asher gave a high-pitched laugh. “Oh, yes.” Nikola watched warily as Asher’s claws came out. “You should be.”

Vanessa was no stranger to Asher’s skills, if she’d been around for as long as she was implying. She wasn’t going to take that chance. Liam saw it, too. Nikola could boast of his half-Blood traits all he wanted, but the fact remained that Liam was full Blood, and nothing was keener than instincts blessed by the Horned God.

When Vanessa pulled the trigger, Liam and Nikola both moved, Nikola shoving Asher aside to stand in his place and Liam jumping in front of where Asher had been standing.

The bullet punched into Liam’s heart, lodging itself in his chest cavity, failing to emerge through his back.

The world froze, time standing still. The pause stretched out as slowly as a lonely century. But when it did pass, everything happened all at once.

Liam’s breath hitched, his lungs rattling. He coughed once, body seizing up before his legs gave out, a limp corpse folding beneath the weight of gravity.

Before Nikola could move, Asher was already dancing around him, catching Liam. His head lolled, opened eyes seeing nothing, blood dribbling down his lip. “Nah,” Asher growled. “You do not get to sacrifice yourself for me like some sort of rushed redemption arc.”

Asher laid Liam out on his back. He ripped open the front of his black shirt, growing sodden with fresh blood and appearing wet with mere water. Because it was near impossible to fully recover with a foreign object still in the wound, Asher started clawing into Liam’s chest, muttering something about “not being a damn heart surgeon.”

It was visceral, Asher tearing through flesh and muscle, blood soaking his clothes, flooding Liam’s form and the pale carpet in a river of crimson. But it was not senseless violence. Asher’s face was sharply focused as he carefully poked and felt around Liam’s chest cavity, trying his best to not damage it beyond repair.

So gratuitous was the carnage that Nikola looked around for Trish, ready to stop the overprotective sister if need be.

The Moon Child’s attention was fully fixed on Vanessa. It only just struck Nikola that the Blood Follower had yet to take a second shot. Trish had her hand outstretched toward Vanessa, the Blood Follower visibly shaking with effort, the barrel pointed at the floor.

“Ha!” Asher gasped in triumph. Nikola heard the clink of the bullet dropping.

He heard Katsuki say, “Trish, consider what you’re about to do.”

He heard Asher growling beneath his breath, “You two saw what we saw, eh? When Moss died? You know Liam has it in him to carry both Moon and Blood.”

Nikola glanced down right as Asher started splitting open his own veins. His attention snapped back up to Trish as she let out an ear-splitting scream, reminiscent of a Blood Follower’s feral howl.

Vanessa cried out in an agonized effort, the gun clicking as it shook in her quaking hands. She gripped it as if she was fighting to hold it in place. Next to Trish, Moss lifted a hand, assisting the Moon Child as she...? What were the pair trying to do?

It fell into place as Vanessa’s shoulders slumped, losing the psychic battle. As if of her own choice, she turned the barrel on herself, angled at the same point in her chest she’d just shot Liam.

“Wait—!” Nikola cried too late, lost to the crack of the gunshot.

Vanessa’s body jerked. She crumpled to the floor, the gun falling with a clatter. Moss rushed in to snatch it with a trembling hand, but unlike Liam, no one caught Vanessa. She was left to bleed out on the floor of the building she’d failed to take over.

Katsuki drew in a deep breath before turning away from the scene. If to watch a death was enough to lose the Moon Goddess’s grace, no one here would still have it. That couldn’t be said of Trish.

When she whirled around, crying her brother’s name, Nikola saw a flash of red and assumed she’d fully Converted. A brief vision of the Blood siblings surviving the next Purging flashed through his mind. But only her left eye was red.

“Trish?” Liam croaked out. So captured by the scene of Vanessa’s defeat that Nikola hadn’t noticed the young Blood Follower’s recovery.

Wait.

No, not a Blood Follower.

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