Page 98 of Soulbound Shadows: Part 1

Gabriel, though. Gabriel was distraught. His eyes were wide, his chest heaving. He looked more scared than I had ever seen him.

He looked scared of me.

So, I ran.

I ran back through the bedroom door, away from him, and a wild bolt of magic crashed out of me, taking out half of the bedroom wall with a deafening noise. I was still floating, and as I ran through the hole in the wall, the whole city spread out beneath me. It was getting dark. The city of Eldoria blurred beneath my bare feet as I ran through the air. Streetlights flickered to life as I moved. The part of me that was truly me was drowning, and I knew I had to think about something, anything, except what I had just done if I didn’t want to lose myself completely.

I watched the city beneath me; watched the streets pass below my feet far too quickly. There was Highland, with the good bookstore. There was Main, with the second-best coffee shop, and the fourth-best bakery. Danvers, with the garden store I went to but never bought anything from because it was too expensive, and I would kill all their fancy plants immediately. Pearl Street and Baker Lane and Spruce Ave all blurred together below me, interconnected chains of streetlights blinking on as I passed. All those lives below me.

Ahead of me was a gap in the metal and brick of the city. The Garden District, green and shadowy. One building, right on the edge, was already brightly lit. Everyone in Eldoria knew the place. It was printed on postcards, drawn on quirky landmark posters, featured in every single Things To Do listicle about the city. The Tranquility Pavilion was a gleaming latticework of metal and glass; a greenhouse the size of a football field. Parts of it were sectioned off with stained or frosted glass in intricate motifs. Local legend said it had been the final masterpiece of an architect who was being driven mad by the ghost of his murdered wife. It sure looked the part.

My body plummeted toward it like a professional diver. I watched with a strange detachment as the beautiful glasswork got closer and closer, and then I crashed right through the center of a large rose window, showering the greenery below with glittering shards. I landed hard in the middle of the greenhouse, cracking the mosaic floor below me.

“You and I have unfinished business, Roland,” the thing in my body called out. My voice echoed off the glass, the lush fronds of the plants all around me doing nothing to muffle it.

There was a click, then a hum. I glanced around, and my face scowled without my input. On the underside of the metal lattices that supported the glass, runes began to glow a cold, sterile white. My own burning gold glow was fading, disappearing faster and faster as each of the runes clicked on.

Stupid.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Gabriel had been right; it was a trap, and a trap set specifically for a powerful witch.

My light sputtered and went out. My hair flopped down limply against my back. Suddenly, the pain in my chest was excruciating.

“This isn’t—” the thing in my body mumbled. “No. This can’t be. This isn’t right!”

The pain was enough to make me woozy. I swayed and began to drop, but before I could hit the ground, a pair of arms wrapped around me.

“Gabriel?” I slurred. But no. When I squinted up at the shape above me, it wasn’t Gabriel.

The man who had caught me was broad and bulky, with a square jaw and watery blue eyes. The last time I’d seen him, I’d drugged him into spilling his secrets and accidentally knocked him out.

“You’re Damien,” I rasped.

He looked down at me. Something seemed off, even to my pain-and-magic-addled brain. He didn’t look like he was smug about a job well done, or like he was ready to help me make some brave escape. Instead, he looked miserable.

“Evangeline Summers,” he said. “I really hoped it wouldn’t come to this.” He rubbed a hand over his face, staring at me like he’d seen a ghost. The cold white lights of the runes glinted off a ring on his finger, highlighting the engraved shape of a narrow crescent moon.

I knew that shape. I’d seen that shape before, and the border around it. It had been stamped into the wax seal of the letter that had turned up in my office at the start of all this. The letter that had warned me about the array and had led to me meeting Gabriel.

“You sent me the letter,” I said dumbly. “You sent me that letter.”

“I had to,” he said, oddly softly. “I’m sorry, Evie. I’m sorry about all of this.”

Cradling me in his lap, he supported my back with one arm and reached his free hand down. For one surreal moment, I thought he was going to hug me close to him. Instead, his huge hand clamped down around my throat. I struggled against his wrist, kicking limply, but it was useless. Blurry shapes closed in around us—other vampires? I couldn’t tell. The last thing I saw as the world went dark was a pair of watery blue eyes staring down at me, unblinking.

34

EVANGELINE

Consciousness came slowly and unpleasantly. My head throbbed, a relentless ball of pain growing and shrinking in my skull. My mouth tasted strongly like bile. Where my magic should have been, there was nothing. Just a void in my chest. I tried to reach out to the magic around me, but I couldn’t feel it at all. I swallowed hard, then immediately regretted it as the bile burned my throat. Okay. I had to stay calm and take stock of the situation. Panicking wouldn’t get me anywhere.

I felt hollowed-out and weak. The giddy rush of power that had overwhelmed me was well and truly gone, but it seemed like that horrible spiky thing that had taken me over was gone too, or at least dormant. My chest ached like a bruise that had been pressed, not a fresh raw wound.

The room was pitch black, cool, and humid as hell. It smelled faintly musty, with a tang of old blood. I was in a chair, my arms cuffed behind my back. When I tried to move, I discovered my ankles were restrained too. Frustrating, but not surprising. The restraints keeping my feet in place were cold and solid. Metal, not zip ties or rope. Built into the chair, maybe? Running my fingers over the little bit of the chair I could reach didn’t tell me as much as I would have liked. It felt like the chair was made of wood, but when I tried to dig my nails in, they couldn’t find any purchase on the surface. Something strong, then? Figured that I wouldn’t have enough luck to get chained to something made out of shitty, flat-pack pine. Vampires probably didn’t decorate their secret dungeons with stuff from Ikea.

Behind me there was a creak of metal—hinges? A lock?—and light flooded the room. The sudden brightness made me feel as though a spike was being shoved through my head, but I forced my eyes to remain open, anyway. I didn’t know how long I’d have visibility, and I needed to use it. The room around me was made of grimy stone, and there were traces of blood still on the flagstones at my feet. I was restrained in a chair of age-blackened wood that looked sturdy as iron. Thick brackets made out of darkened metal were bolted into the legs and floor, keeping the chair from moving if I tried to squirm and scoot it around. The cuffs around my ankles were built into the chair, and the metal was easily half an inch thick. I bit the inside of my cheek. Having information was good, I reminded myself, even if it was shitty, shitty information.

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