Chapter 2 Another Blood Farm Down

VASILIY -

The bullet slammed into the column above my head, showering my shoulder with plaster and stone dust.

“Any closer and it would have taken your ear," Zeyne, my inner beast, said, his laughter rolling through the inside of my skull as though the possibility of losing part of my face were the most entertaining thing he’d encountered all night.

I pressed my back against the fractured concrete and brushed the dust from my coat.

“I’m so happy I can humor you, I should get shot at more often.”

“I’ve always thought your ears were slightly too large.” His laughter was deep and annoying.

Across the warehouse, Micah rushed the last of the freed captives toward the hole we blasted through the outer wall. His broad shoulders nearly filled the opening as he steadied a woman whose bare feet kept slipping beneath her. Her hospital gown hung loosely from her starved frame, and the silver emergency blanket someone had thrown around her shoulders dragged through the dust behind her.

Micah pushed her gently into the waiting hands outside before glancing back.

His gaze found me first. Then it shifted toward the mercenary hunting me through the warehouse.

I gave him a small nod before he disappeared through the opening without arguing.

The final mercenary moved somewhere beyond the broken support beams and stacked crates. His boots scraped over concrete while his heartbeat pounded hard enough for me to track him without seeing him. It was fast, but not panicked.

A spent magazine struck the floor, right before another snapped into place.

I closed my eyes and tilted my head toward the sound.

“Can I teleport again?” I asked.

“No,” Zeyne answered immediately, his tone turning serious. "Not without feeding.”

My mouth dried.

The faint metallic scent already hanging in the warehouse seemed to thicken until it coated the back of my throat. Hunger shifted beneath my ribs, and I swallowed hard against the sudden tightness in my throat.

It’d been too long since I’d fed properly. “Fine,” I said through clenched teeth before returning to our mental conversation. "But you’ll have to heal whatever damage he manages.”

“I told you before we came that we were nearly empty.”

“Then make do, Zeyne.”

Zeyne muttered something in an ancient dialect that translated poorly but involved my intelligence, my ancestry, and a diseased goat.

The mercenary shifted behind the crates, and I heard the slight change in his breathing as he lifted his weapon, but I moved before he fired.

The warehouse blurred around me as I launched from behind the column. The first burst of gunfire tore through the space where I had been, bullets spraying wildly trying to keep up, and chewing into concrete before sending fragments skittering across the floor.

A stray bullet suddenly punched through my shoulder, and pain tore deep through the joint. Lightning tore down to my fingertips, turning my hand numb for a fraction of a second.

I reached him before he could fire again. His eyes widened as my fingers closed in his hair. The sour scent of his fear sharpened beneath the gunpowder.

I wrenched his head sharply to the side.

Bone broke beneath my hand, and his body collapsed to the floor with a heavy thud before the rifle clattered across the concrete, spinning into the shadows.

The warehouse finally went still.

Broken glass continued to fall from the shattered windows overhead, striking the floor in delicate, glittering pieces.

“I can’t heal you fully without blood,” Zeyne said. The humor had disappeared completely from his voice. “We’re all but drained, Vasiliy."

Warmth spread beneath my coat as blood slipped from the wound in my shoulder. I kept my gaze fixed on the opening in the wall.

The ache in my shoulder tightened as Zeyne pulled at the damaged flesh, forcing muscle to knit around the lodged bullet as he slowly shoved it out the back of my arm. The pain was different from the shot itself, deeper and more deliberate, as though invisible claws were stitching me together from the inside.

I started toward the opening when the warm liquid reached my fingertips, and my hand stiffened.

I refused to lower my eyes. I already knew what coated my skin, already felt the slickness caught between my fingers and beneath my nails. The scent curled into my lungs before I could stop it.

I shook my hand once, flinging dark droplets toward the floor, before I ducked through the opening in the wall.

Micah met me several yards from the warehouse, his attention dropping immediately to the torn shoulder of my coat. Concern crossed his face before he buried it.

“Every captive made it out this time,” he said.

His tone was deliberately light considering the number of Alliance paramedics surrounding us and the dozens of survivors scattered across the parking lot.

“Yea,” I managed.

Zeyne pulled harder at the wound, and a sharp pinch of pain traveled down my arm. My fingers curled before I forced them loose again.

Human voices overlapped beneath the Alliance ambulance sirens. Some survivors huddled under emergency blankets while others clung to one another in trembling clusters. Several stared at the warehouse with hollow eyes, as though part of them remained locked inside somewhere.

Their heartbeats were deafening as rapid pulses collided with sobbing breaths. The entire parking lot became a storm of sound pressing against my senses from every direction.

I lifted my face toward the cloud-covered sky. The glow of Meridian Grove stained the clouds a dull silver, hiding every star above us. Rain hung in the air without falling, and the wind tried hard to blow the scents of the warehouse away.

“Another blood farm destroyed,” Zeyne murmured in my head. His voice remained weak, but pride had warmed it.

For two centuries, men like those inside the warehouse had convinced themselves that chaining humans was acceptable. They called the captives livestock or inventory. Like that made it okay.

“We’ll need to feed sooner than planned," Zeyne said, and my stomach clenched.

Healing required blood, and Zeyne needed more than the cold, preserved filth I forced down.

A shiver moved along my spine at the thought of another cold white bag for dinner.

“Vasiliy.”

“I heard you.” My jaw tightened. “I’ll arrange it.”

Relief moved faintly through the bond between us before Zeyne fell silent.

I was turning to leave when a woman ran past me. Her bare feet slapped against the pavement, and an emergency blanket billowed behind her. She caught a paramedic by the arm so violently that the bottle in his hand dropped to the ground.

“Wait,” she gasped. “I can’t find her!”

The paramedic steadied her before saying, “It’s okay, just breathe, and tell me what she looks like.”

The woman clutched the blanket tighter around her body. Her knuckles whitening. “She’s only a little girl. I thought someone else had her, but nobody’s seen her since we came outside.”

More sour fear clung to her skin beneath the warehouse’s chemical stink.

Then a scream tore through the night from the far side of the warehouse, and every voice in the parking lot stopped.

Another scream followed, higher and more desperate than the first.

I moved before Micah could even call my name.