16
DAMIEN
The wind hadn’t been right all night. It was better when we rolled out, though. Maybe the best we’d get.
“Keep moving,” Broderick said needlessly. “And stay close.”
The words were more for her than for us. Serena was keeping up just fine, but we’d walked these paths a hundred times. We knew every walkway, every loose stone. Every ancient footpath of this once magnificent place, even the ones lost to time.
She was catching on fast for an outsider, even if she didn’t believe us. Already I could sense the nearness of my totem. The proximity of it was a steady thrumming in my chest. I needed it. Almost like I needed her, but in a much different way.
I was slowly coming to realize Broderick was right. Mating Serena had been a mistake. A beautiful, amazing mistake… but a mistake nonetheless.
What’s going to happen when we’re finished here?
Already I could feel the sense of loss. The ache of separation that was destined to occur once she flew back across the ocean and left us to ourselves again. I’d screwed Broderick over, totally. He hadn’t even consummated the bond yet. He’d feel it even worse than me.
And you made it bad for her, too…
Impulsiveness had always been my thing. Young, dumb, and full of come; that personality trait hadn’t really mattered all that much to me.
Until the one time it did.
I’ll never forget the day it happened. I’d been surfing the point breaks of Zuma, the southern swell for Hurricane Maria putting up fifteen to twenty-fives by the end of the day. I was both scared and exhilarated. I’d never seen twenty-five foot waves in my life.
And at sunset? It was absolutely spectacular.
Coming out of the water I felt like a god. A surf-washed, sun-bronzed conqueror. I collapsed into my little place in the sand, exhausted and sated, and fell happily asleep before last of the orange glow went out of the sky.
I slept on the beach all the time back then. Other than the occasional police officer waking me up to move me along, I’d never really been bothered. I was a long-haired surfer who slept on his board. I nothing to steal, nothing to take.
I hadn’t been sleeping long when I was shaken awake by him. The one who took me. The one who made me into what I am now. He was long and lanky; a bleach-blonde mop top hanging down over a set of dark, soulless eyes.
I’ll always remember those eyes. Sunken beneath two heavy brows. Even now, even in my dreams, I can still see them.
I recognized him immediately as the guy I’d snaked a wave from. The hook-nosed goofy-foot I’d dropped in on twice actually, and left in the soup on one of the best waves of the day.
In all honesty, I hadn’t even thought about it. I’d never seen him before, so he wasn’t a local. He had no style either, and I sure as hell wasn’t out there to make friends.
He seized me, and I remember knowing in that very instant I couldn’t possibly fight him. His strength was terrifying. His expression… even more so.
He’d left me there when he was finished, bleeding into the sand. Crumpled and helpless. Barely clinging to what was left of my life. I would’ve died if it hadn’t been for a group of random kids who stumbled over me, on their way through the dunes.
Being made like that was cold. Cruel. I had no idea who I was, or who I would become. Or why I’d be going through such a thing at all.
The first time the change happened I didn’t even remember it. The shift occurred at such a primal level, it wiped out any human memory. I woke up naked in Malibu’s Equestrian Park, with some woman’s horse sniffing over me. I was huddled and cold. Disheveled and covered in filth. My limbs ached like I’d just run three marathons, and my head still spun from the reverse metamorphosis.
In time, I’d learn what happened to me. I’d learn how to prepare for it, how to recover — even how to control it, thanks to Xiomara Magoro.
But for several long months? My life was a whirlwind of confusion and constant dread. A twisted, living nightmare, from which I could never fully wake up.
I shook myself back to reality as we crossed through the broken expanse of the stronghold’s inner courtyard. Nature had claimed back most of the interior, but not so much with the cobbled floor.
“How old is this place?” Serena was asking.
“Twelfth century,” Broderick replied casually. “Although the cathedral went up about two hundred years later.”
The cathedral…
It had been the center of our lives for a while. The one place we all belonged. Meeting up with Broderick, Karessa, and the rest of my breed wasn’t like just hooking up with a group of like-minded people. It was more like finally coming home.
We got closer and also quieter. The shattered arches of the once-beautiful Gothic cathedral loomed above us, obliterating the moonlight as we stepped into its shadow. It was here that we’d gathered. In and beneath this hallowed place, we’d all been together as one.
Broderick held up one fist, silently stopping us in a military gesture. The three of froze utterly still.
“I don’t sense her,” he whispered.
“That a good thing?” asked Serena.
“Yes and no.”
“Why yes and—”
“Because eventually we need to face her,” he said. “She’s the one with my totem.”
“Oh.”
“But it would be best to face her alone.”
He motioned us forward. Together we passed beneath stacked arches, and into a wider area that had all the signs of human life again. Broderick was doing his best to remain expressionless, but I knew this part was hard for him. There were memories here that definitely—
“STOP.” I said the word a little louder than I meant to.
“What is it?”
My heart was suddenly pounding out of my chest. It happened too suddenly, though. Too quickly to be—
“You feel it, don’t you?” asked Broderick.
I nodded. “Yes.”
“How close is it?”
I couldn’t respond. I was too lost in my own head, trying to pinpoint the source.
“Damien, answer me,” he growled again. “Is it close?”
Serena looked utterly confused. I couldn’t even tell you what I looked like.
“It’s… It’s…”
It was like my totem was moving. Sprinting. Wherever it was I could sense it spinning faster and faster, causing my whole body to shake.
“I think—”
My sentence died abruptly as the hulking forms of Lionel and Christophe sprang from the outer brush. They landed heavily, skidding across the smooth stones of the ancient courtyard before spinning to face us. I should’ve smelled them. Should’ve heard them coming. But somehow they’d gotten upwind, and gained the advantage.
“DAMIEN!”
The growls, the snarls, the screaming — all of it faded instantaneously away. There was a rush of white noise, as there always was, and then the distinct sensation of leaving my body. Of rapidly falling away, faster and faster.
Of plunging into darkness…