Chapter 4

Glyss's POV

I had never faced a vampire in daylight. Neither had any of the other blood hunters — they had no experience of it at all, let alone of the powerful vampire standing in the execution ground, in the full face of the sun.

For a moment, the world went quiet. None of the blood hunters dared step forward; every one of them turned to look at me.

The vampire before me stood close to two meters tall, his dark red slit pupils fixed on me. "You are not allowed to die yet."

I never got the chance to thank him. I saw a blood hunter charge at his back with a silver sword.

"Watch out!"

My warning came slower than his spines. A sharp flash of bloody light — and the man fell to the ground, cut in two.

No one dared approach.

"Glyss has betrayed the Blood Hunt! Kill her along with that vampire!"

I couldn't tell who screamed it from the black mass of the crowd. The blood hunters frozen in place came to life like machines that had just started running, and threw themselves at us.

The vampire roared. The crimson spines on his back shot out again, like a swamp viper baring its fangs, sweeping the oncoming blood hunters off their feet and coiling around them. His hands closed on the iron cage holding Barney; a swift twist of his wrists and the warped bars burst apart.

The sunlight was burning Barney alive. A rattling wheeze came from his throat — he was a second from death.

I tried to lunge forward, but the vampire's spines coiled around my waist and held me fast.

"Barney's dying! Let me go!"

Stripped of his human nature, he was pathetically weak now, desperate for energy to recover. I was willing to let him drink my blood — anything, as long as being a vampire did not add another charge to his name.

The vampire gave me a flat look. My heart lurched.

I understood what he was about to do, and screamed.

"No!"

The blood hunters caught in his spines burst apart, and red blood rained down on Barney.

"I am Adrian, holder of the Progenitor's bloodline, the only master you need serve. Here, with my own hands, I grant you the honor of the second generation! Share the Progenitor's blood!"

The spines squeezed the air out of me. I pounded on the barbs until my hands ran with blood. "We had a deal! Your blood was only to slow the blood-tainted affliction! You can't assimilate him!"

"If I don't assimilate him, he dies." Adrian's deep-set slit pupils slid toward me. "Unless you'd rather lose your family."

"You know you have no choice."

Before I could answer, Adrian slashed his own wrist and let the blood fall on Barney.

Under the blazing sun, Barney's body began to change before my eyes.

With the Progenitor's blood in him, his frame rapidly caught up to Adrian's, and something shifted beneath the skin of his back until crimson spines broke through.

The handsome face I knew went utterly bloodless, and his round eyes turned to slits, glaring at every blood hunter present like a wild beast.

Like Adrian, he no longer feared the sun.

He looked at the blood hunters now with the ravenous gleam of a creature that wanted to feast.

I fought wildly to break free of Adrian, screaming at him. "Barney! Snap out of it! Don't kill anyone!"

But Barney had already been assimilated. Almost nothing of his human mind remained; every movement he made was driven by Adrian.

Adrian's thin lips barely parted. "For the glory of the vampire race, and for your sister's life — kill them."

At those words Barney snarled his assent, and his spines swept out like scythes, cutting the blood hunters around him in half at the waist.

The execution ground became a slaughterhouse. Screams rose and fell; blood mist filled the air, dyeing even the morning sun red.

"Stop! Barney — Adrian! Make him stop!"

I screamed and hammered my fists against the spines binding me, and Adrian caught my wrists in warning.

"He can't hear you now."

"But you promised! I want my brother to stay human! I don't want him turned into a vampire!"

My parents died at vampire hands. Now Barney had been assimilated by one — what was I supposed to do with myself?

I looked out at the middle of the execution ground. Barney had lost all control.

His spines picked up one blood hunter after another, slammed them to the ground like toys, and he threw himself on them, biting and tearing.

That delicate face was layered in blood until no trace of its original shape remained.

"There are good people among the blood hunters. I know you hate them, but not all of them deserve to die!"

"Good people?" Adrian laughed, a sneer in it. "Where were the 'good people' when your brother turned into this?"

"They cut off his medicine. They locked him in a cage and displayed him like a trophy. And now you want me to hold him back, so he can go be a good man's dog again?"

Adrian's words went in like a knife, deep into a corner of me I could not bear to speak of.

"At least — at least don't let him become—"

"Become what? Like me?"

Adrian looked down at me. In his blood-red slit pupils a deep mist gathered, and I could not make out his true face.

That was when Barney swept past the west side of the execution ground, where several young blood hunters stood.

I recognized one of them.

The girl with curly blonde hair and gray eyes was Vanessa, a blood hunter of Barney's cohort.

After Barney was infected, she wasn't family, so she wasn't allowed to visit him. She always made things and asked me to bring them to him.

My legs kicked and flailed in the air; I braced my hands against Adrian's spines and vaulted down.

My ankle twisted when I landed, but the pain was nothing next to the urgency of the moment.

"Barney! Stop! That's Vanessa!"

Silver sword in hand, I blocked the blood hunters who came at me one by one as I screamed at him.

If Barney came to his senses and remembered killing a girl as good as Vanessa, it would destroy him.

I don't know whether my shouting reached him, but Barney's spines stopped.

An inch from Vanessa's throat.

A clear light flashed through his slit pupils. The spines drew slowly back from her, and a thick, garbled rumble rose in his throat.

"Barney…" Vanessa sobbed his name. "It's me… I'm Vanessa… do you remember me?"

"Barney! Come back! We're leaving!"

I kicked my way through the blood hunters blocking my path and ran straight to him.

His eyes turned to me. He had just started to speak when a heavy bell began to toll from the clock tower in the distance.

The Sanctum's alarm bell.

Neat hoofbeats sounded beyond the edge of the execution ground, and banners — white ground, gold border — unfurled at the gate.

The Sanctum's reinforcements had arrived.

The knights of the Sanctum wore silver armor, each carrying a silver sword blessed with holy light. There were at least a hundred of them.

"Go!"

Adrian was on me like a swift hawk. His long arm seized my waist, dragged me against his chest, and he launched into the air.

"But Barney—!"

"He'll follow!"

The moment Adrian spoke, spines had already coiled around Barney's waist and hauled him back from the middle of the execution ground.

Barney struggled once, but the Progenitor's blood in Adrian suppressed his instincts.

Bullets came from behind, thick as a rainstorm.

Adrian spread his defenses at once; his spines opened wide in the air and took the brunt of the attack for Barney and me.

Wind roared past my ears. I heard Hestia bellowing from the ground: "Chase them! If you don't capture them, I'll strip you of your knightly honors!"