The Midnight Veil

Chapter 3

Elara hated that he made it sound so simple.

Choose.

As if she were deciding between tea and coffee instead of whether to trust the silver-eyed stranger who had appeared in the middle of a cursed forest surrounded by red-eyed monsters.

The thorns she had raised trembled in front of her, the black vines twisting over one another like living wire. Beyond them, the shapes in the dark prowled closer, low and silent now, circling the standing stones with patient hunger.

One of them stepped forward into the moonlight.

Elara’s breath caught.

He looked almost human from a distance. Tall, lean, pale. But up close there was something wrong in every line of him. His limbs were too long, his smile too sharp, his eyes glowing red in a face that seemed stretched too tightly over bone. Blood stained the front of his coat. Fresh blood.

Maeve’s voice crashed through her mind.

Do not let them touch you.

Her stomach twisted so hard she almost doubled over.

The creature grinned. “There you are.”

Elara took a step back.

The silver-eyed stranger, Kael, though she still had no idea how she knew that name fit him, did not move. Not yet. He stood on the other side of the wall of thorns as though utterly unbothered by the monsters gathering in the trees.

Which was, frankly, offensive.

“You know,” Elara said shakily, because panic always made her mouth worse, “for someone insisting I choose quickly, you are doing a stunning amount of standing there.”

His gaze flicked to her. “Drop the barrier.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

The red-eyed creature laughed softly. “He wants you alive, girl. We don’t care either way.”

Several more stepped into view between the trees.

Elara’s pulse pounded so violently it blurred her hearing. There were five now. No.. six. Their eyes burned in the dark like embers. They moved with terrifying ease, each step soundless on the moss.

The one in front tilted his head. “Do you know what you are yet?”

“No,” Elara snapped. “And I’m having a terrible night, so this feels like a poor time for riddles.”

His grin widened as he lunged, and everything happened at once.

Elara flinched backward as the creature hit the thorns. The barrier exploded into motion, vines snapping upward and around him like whips. He snarled, clawing at the branches as the thorns tore through his sleeves and sank into his pale skin. Blood spattered across the stones.

The red-eyed creature roared and ripped free with brute force, shredding half the barrier apart.

Then the silver-eyed vampire moved, one heartbeat he was still and the next he was in front of the stones, a blur of black and moonlight.

He struck the creature so hard it flew sideways and smashed into one of the standing stones with a c***k that echoed through the clearing.

Elara stumbled back again, her breath leaving her in a sharp gasp.

That was not human speed.

Not even close.

The other creatures hissed and rushed forward.

Kael met them head-on.

He moved like violence given shape, controlled, precise, terrifying. One red-eyed attacker leapt for his throat, and Kael caught him mid-air with one hand, twisted, and drove him into the earth hard enough to split the ground beneath them. Another came from the side. Kael turned with impossible calm and buried a blade Elara hadn’t even seen him draw into the creature’s chest.

The monster screamed.

Silver flashed.

The scream cut off.

Elara could not breathe.

She had never seen anyone fight like that, with no wasted movement, no panic, no hesitation, moving with an elegance that should not have belonged to something so deadly, and then a hand closed around her ankle and Elara shrieked.

One of the creatures had crawled through the broken thorns and seized her from behind. Its fingers were ice-cold, impossibly strong, claws biting into her skin.

“Found you,” it hissed.

Terror detonated in her chest and something answered.

Power surged out of her so fast it nearly knocked her off her feet. The standing stones flared silver. Roots burst from the earth beneath the creature, spearing up through moss and rock, wrapping around its arm, its throat, its torso in a violent tangle.

The red-eyed thing screamed as the roots tightened.

Elara stared at it, horrified. “I did not mean..”

The roots snapped its neck.

Silence fell.

The creature dropped in a twisted heap at her feet, black blood leaking into the moss, and Elara couldn’t move or think as the world narrowed to the body on the ground and the ragged sound of her own breathing, because she had killed it.... she had killed it without even touching it.

A shadow fell across her.

Kael.

The rest of the creatures were gone. She did not know if they had fled or died. She did not want to ask.

He looked down at the body, then at the glowing roots still curled around it. His expression gave away nothing, but his silver eyes were sharper than before.

“Elara.”

She jerked her gaze to his. “Don’t.”

His brow shifted almost imperceptibly. “Don’t what?”

“Look at me like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m something you’re trying to figure out whether to kill.”

The words came out harsher than she intended, but she was shaking too badly to soften them.

Kael glanced once more at the dead creature, then back at her. “If I intended to kill you, you would already be dead.”

Elara blinked. “That is the least comforting thing anyone has ever said to me.”

A strange pause followed.

Then, to her absolute outrage, one corner of his mouth moved, not a smile but enough to make her chest do something abrupt and irritating, and she hated that even more than everything else.

The silver glow began to fade from the standing stones. The roots loosened and settled back into the earth as though nothing had happened.

Elara wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly cold. Her whole body felt raw, as if the power had stripped something out of her on its way through. “What were those things?”

Kael’s gaze shifted to the tree line. “Not things. Vampires.”

She let out a brittle laugh. “No.”

He looked back at her.

“No,” she repeated, more forcefully this time, because if she said it firmly enough perhaps reality would take the hint and rearrange itself into something tolerable. “Absolutely not. Vampires are stories people tell children to keep them from wandering into the woods.”

“Then whoever told you the stories left out the useful parts.”

Elara stared at him, and he stared right back as she said, “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

She shook her head once, then again, harder. “No. No, actually, I reject that entirely. That man in my cottage had red eyes and blood on his hands, and yes, deeply upsetting, but that does not make him a vampire.”

Kael stepped closer, moving slowly enough that she could have backed away if she wanted, but she didn't.

Moonlight caught the planes of his face. The cut of his cheekbones. The stillness of him. He was pale, yes, but not corpse-pale. Beautiful, yes, but not in any human way that felt safe. There was an oldness in his eyes that did not belong to youth, no matter how young his face looked.

Then he let his upper lip pull back slightly and Elara stopped breathing as she saw the fangs..real, sharp, inhuman...not theatrical little points, not imagination, not a trick of the dark.

He let them disappear again. “Does that help?”

For several seconds she could only stand there.

Then: “I am having the worst night of my life.”

“That,” he said, “is obvious.”

She made a strangled sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob.

The forest around them had gone unnaturally still again, but not with immediate threat this time. More as though it were listening.

Elara swallowed hard. “Maeve.”

The name cracked on the way out.

Something changed in Kael’s expression then. Very slight. A shadow passing over stone.

“She fought to get you out,” he said.

Elara’s throat closed. “That is not an answer.”

“No.”

It was enough, and the tiny shred of hope she had been clawing at all this time finally gave way, her knees nearly buckling as the truth settled in..... Maeve was dead.