Chapter 7
1094 Words
The air in the apartment didn't just turn cold; it turned electric. Chloe felt the hair on her arms stand up as Cassius stood between her and the window. He was a statue of coiled iron, his breath—the little he used—coming in a low, rhythmic hiss.
Outside, the silhouette against the frosted glass moved. It wasn't the clumsy stumble of a burglar or the frantic skittering of a stray cat. It was heavy, deliberate. A pale hand pressed against the pane, the fingers long and tipped with nails that looked like yellowed bone.
"Stay behind me," Cassius commanded. He didn't look back at her, but his hand reached out blindly, gripping Chloe’s arm to keep her pinned in the shadow of his body.
His grip was terrifyingly strong, and Chloe let out a small, muffled whimper. She was caught between two nightmares: the monster in her living room and the one trying to get in.
"Cassius, your hand," she gasped, her voice cracking. "You’re hurting me."
He pulled back instantly as if he’d been burned, but he didn't lower his guard. "Forgive me. My senses... they are sharp as glass."
With a sudden, violent motion, the window didn't just open—it shattered. Shards of glass sprayed into the kitchen, glittering like diamonds in the moonlight. A figure vaulted into the room, landing in a crouch.
It was a man, or it had been once. He was dressed in rags that made Cassius’s tunic look like finery. His skin was mottled, grey and peeling, and his eyes were not the intelligent crimson of Cassius’s, but a dull, milky white. He smelled of stagnant water and old meat.
"A scavenger," Cassius spat, his voice dripping with ancient disdain. "A wretch who has forgotten his name and his honor."
The scavenger didn't speak. It let out a guttural howl and lunged.
Chloe screamed, stumbling backward into her dining table, sending a chair clattering to the floor. She watched, paralyzed, as the two entities collided. It wasn't like a movie fight; it was a blur of violence that her human eyes could barely process. There was the sound of tearing fabric, the wet thud of bodies hitting the floor, and a snarl that sounded like a saw cutting through bone.
Cassius was a streak of black shadow. He caught the scavenger mid-air, his hands locking around the creature’s throat. They slammed into the kitchen island, the marble countertop cracking under the force.
"Thou art a stain upon the Night!" Cassius roared.
With a sickening c***k, Cassius twisted. The scavenger’s body went limp, its head lolling at an impossible angle. Cassius didn't stop there; he flung the body toward the broken window, sending it tumbling back out onto the fire escape and into the alleyway below.
Silence returned, broken only by the sound of Chloe’s frantic, sobbing breaths.
Cassius stood in the center of the kitchen, his chest heaving. He looked down at his hands, which were stained with a dark, oily substance that wasn't quite blood. His face was still transformed—the jagged black veins pulsing, his fangs fully extended.
He turned toward Chloe.
She retreated until her back hit the wall, her hands held up in front of her. She was shaking so hard the floorboards seemed to vibrate. "Don't... please. Stay back."
The sight of her terror seemed to hit him harder than the scavenger’s claws. The red bled out of his eyes, and the veins receded. He looked at the wreckage of her kitchen—the glass, the broken chair, the ruined marble—and then at the bruise already forming on her arm where he had grabbed her.
"I am... a plague," he whispered, his voice trembling with a vulnerability that didn't match his lethal frame. "I brought death into thy sanctuary. I told thee, Chloe. I am a widower of the fire, and the fire follows me still."
"What was that thing?" Chloe asked, her voice small and raw.
"A Fledgling," Cassius said, leaning heavily against the wall. "One turned without care, left to rot in the hunger until nothing remains but the beast. They sense the ancient blood in my veins. They seek to feast upon the master to cure their own madness."
He looked at the window, then back at her. The paranoia in his gaze was suffocating. He looked like he wanted to run, to vanish back into the 14th century, but he was pinned by the sight of her.
"Thou shouldst hate me," he said. "Thou shouldst call the guards and let them burn me as they burnt my Eloise."
Chloe looked at him. She saw the monster, yes. But she also saw the man who had just saved her life, the man who was so terrified of his own shadow that he looked smaller than she was. Her nursing instincts, that deep-seated need to fix the broken, flickered to life through her fear.
"I don't hate you," she whispered, stepping over a piece of broken glass. Her legs felt like lead, but she moved toward him. "But you're bleeding. Really bleeding this time."
She pointed to his shoulder, where the scavenger’s claws had ripped through the black hoodie, leaving three deep, jagged gashes.
Cassius looked at the wound with indifference. "It will mend. The blood I took from the man in the cellar still works its magic."
"Not fast enough," Chloe said, reaching out. She hesitated, her hand inches from his chest. "Let me help. Please. It’s the only thing I know how to do."
As she touched his cold skin, a strange warmth bloomed between them—a spark that shouldn't exist between the living and the dead. But as she began to lead him toward the bathroom to find her medical kit, a low, melodic chime echoed through the apartment.
It was Chloe’s phone. A text message.
She picked it up with a trembling hand. It was from an unknown number.
I saw what went out the window, Chloe. You’re keeping secrets again. Just like your sister.
Chloe dropped the phone as if it were white-hot. Her sister lived three states away and hadn't spoken to her in months.
"Who is it?" Cassius asked, his eyes narrowing as he sensed her shift in mood.
"I... I don't know," Chloe whispered, her face going pale.
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