Names: Neill, Chloe, author.

Title: Devouring darkness : an Heirs of Chicagoland novel / Chloe Neill.

Description: First Edition. | New York: Berkley, 2022. | Series: An Heirs

of Chicagoland novel ; 4

Identifiers: LCCN 2022011004 (print) | LCCN 2022011005 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593102640 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780593102657 (ebook)

Subjects: LCGFT: Novels.

Classification: LCC PS3614.E4432 D48 2022 (print) | LCC PS3614.E4432 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022011004

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022011005

First Edition: September 2022

Cover art by Tony Mauro

Adapted for ebook by Kelly Brennan

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

Cover

Praise for Chloe Neill

Other Novels by Chloe Neill

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Epilogue

Excerpt from The Bright and Breaking Sea

About the Author

Since all is well, keep it so:

wake not a sleeping wolf.

—William Shakespeare, Henry IV

ONE

Immortality required expecting the unexpected. And occasionally, heels.

Sometimes the unexpected was a mercenary fairy with a very sharp sword, or a shapeshifting monster, or a detachment of angry vampires at the door. And sometimes it was a pizza box taped to an art gallery wall . . . with a five-thousand-dollar price tag.

“Reflections on Post-Consumerism,” the woman beside me said, reading aloud the tag beside the box. “A very interesting choice of media, don’t you think?”

Lulu Bell, nonpracticing sorcerer and my best friend since childhood, her chin-length dark hair falling across her face, was doing her best to look serious and Very Intellectual. She was an artist, and I was here to support her and offer up some much-needed bestie time, which had been hard to come by lately.

I was Elisa Sullivan—vampire and newest staff member of Chicago’s supernatural Ombudsman’s office. Chicago had always been a hot spot for supernatural surprises, and that was especially true lately, with the detachment of vampires and mercenary fairies. The increase in activity hadn’t been conducive to quality time with friends. So we were in this small white-walled gallery on a Saturday night, mingling with a crowd that was mostly human, who’d come to appreciate the art and sample tiny cheese cubes and listen to music that was part ocean wave, part jazz.

“I think pizza is best mid-consumption,” I said, with as much gravity as I could muster.

The woman gave me a withering look before stalking off, apparently unimpressed by my critique.

Lulu snorted. “The pizza box is nonsense, but some of the other pieces are pretty good.”

She wasn’t wrong. There was a portrait of a former president rendered in neon lights. Rainbow streamers of plastic letters hung from the ceiling and made different words depending on your position. A hyperrealistic panorama of a Chicago traffic jam—uncomfortable content but remarkably detailed execution.