Her expression hardens. “Because when I first got turned, I found other vampires. We pooled our money and lived in an impossibly small apartment so we’d have money for cheap blood. We didn’t kill, but that didn’t stop one of these troupes from wiping all of them out one night after we came out of a club. I was the only one left alive. I couldn’t afford blood without their help. It became kill or die, and instinct swallowed me. That’s when Numerius’s people found me.” She shrugs. “I agreed with his cause even though I didn’t always like the method.” She turns away as Ethan gets tossed ten feet across the tank. He pulls out his gun and fires off a couple shots that hit the vamp in the chest and seem to have the same impact as a fly on a semi.

Stacie chuckles a little as she watches, like she’s flipped a switch back to careless vampire, and I know this is my moment. One stake sliding into one heart, but I hesitate, and an inhuman hunger lights her eyes when she turns back to me. I know this is kill or die, and I know which one she’s choosing—the one she already chose. I swing one of my stakes at her face and the other at her heart. She whacks the one headed for her face away like it’s nothing. The other hits something hard, and my stomach lurches with the feeling, but she’s smiling at me. I look down and see my stake piercing through her hand. She yanks it out of my grip and out of her flesh like it’s a splinter.

“I guess you do have it in you,” she says.

I scramble for one of my knives, but she slams a hand so hard into my chest that I feel my ribs bending. I’m on my back, and she’s on top of me before I can even think of the right move or how to use the magic inside me.

Pinning me by the shoulder, she grabs my chin and yanks my head to the side. My cheekbone hits the glass floor. A long stretch of my neck is exposed, and I don’t know if I’ve ever felt so vulnerable. I kick and squirm, but it’s like being trapped beneath a fallen tree.

I almost yell out to Ethan, but somehow asking him to save me seems even worse.

I stop squirming. Her hot breath brushes my neck.

I whisper Parker’s name like he’ll hear it wherever he is and know I love him.