I let out a soft sob of relief. But the cold crested, poured over me in a wave of ice like I was back in

the snow in the Dakotas. And there was a hiss behind me.

“—Sssssssvetosssssha—”

I almost fell against the wall. Ash’s growl rose from the subsonic, rattling everything around us.

And if you’ve never heard a pissed-off werwulf howling as he takes on four vampires in an echoing

stone hall, wow, you’ve really missed out.

Not really.

Get moving! They catch you in here, you die! Dad’s bark, the way it always sounded in my head

when something bad was happening. I pushed away from the wall, my knees full of water, and almost fell. It was like being in a really bad dream, one where you can’t run because your entire body

is too heavy to move, and the things behind you are breathing on your neck. Hot meaty breath, or

cold, cold, knife-sharp breath.

I had to look back. I couldn’t not look back. The noise was incredible.

A thrashing mass of squealing, growling, bones snapping, and crunching writhed in the hall. Eyes

like lamps, and there were only three of them now because black vampire blood exploded, painting

the walls with its acid stink. I half-screamed again, a throaty whisper because I’d lost all my air.

Ash hunkered down, snarling. The vampire he’d killed flopped bonelessly on the floor, bleeding a

wide puddle of brackish black. The bright copper taste of adrenaline cut through wax oranges on

my tongue as I backpedaled, stone floor rasping skin off my palm and yanking the bandage around

my wrist loose, my sock feet scrabbling. Trying to get away because their hate poured through my

unprotected head and set all of me on fire. A cold gemlike fire, pure frozen evil burning as it

scraped every inch of my shivering skin.

I screamed, Ash making that low freight-train noise, the vampires hissing as they cringed back. And

to top it all off, a klaxon split the air with its own wild howl. The Schola Prima took a deep breath

and woke, but it was too late. Because the slim pale vampires, all in black gear with leather loops

and professional-looking buckles, surged forward, and I knew Ash couldn’t hold them off forever.

Jealousy

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

My back hit the door. I scrabbled for the knob with clumsy fingers, caught in a nightmare. Ash

backed up two swift steps, hunched further, and kept growling. Tension ran through him, but the

three remaining vampires—one a slight pale female with long dark hair, the other two a matched set

of blonds, all with black, black eyes—stared at me. Their narrow white hands hung at their sides

like strangled birds, and for a hellish moment I was back in that empty palatial fake adobe in the

Dakotas with a ton of snow outside and fiercer cold inside.