I felt Muller stiffen behind me and I felt something wet against my ass. Muller had pissed himself.
Jordan wrenched the detective away, and I heard Malcolm yell, “Shakespeare!” at the same moment, but I couldn’t respond—couldn’t do anything. Jordan’s movement had made Muller slice right through my neck and all I could see was a fountain of blood erupting from my own neck.
A huge hand latched onto me, and Andros’ voice growled in my ear. “Ignore everything I fucking told you. Don’t make him kill you. Don’t! I can’t watch it again,” his voice cracked.
Whoosh.
Fingers tightened around my neck and the business end of a knife pressed into my jugular.
A strange sense of déjà vu hit me as I realized Muller was attacking me. My first instinct was to burn him. But then I remembered what Andros had told me.
Get him to kill you.
The fastest way to ensure that Muller killed me … was summoning my stepfather. “Claude,” I gasped.
The ghost materialized a second later, his blue eyes gleaming with wrath as if he could hear my voice and realized I’d summoned him.
Immediately, I coated my body in shadow so that Claude wouldn’t have the chance to possess me himself.
“Fuck no—” Muller started to wrench himself away from me when he realized what was happening, but I watched Claude slide easily into his body. I knew the second that my stepfather had taken control because Muller’s voice changed. It got breathier.
“I always knew you had a taste for pain, little Hayley,” Claude whispered using Muller’s lips. The edge of the knife slid down from my neck and stabbed just below my collarbone where I could see it.
I gasped.
Muller chuckled, the sick, twisted chuckle that my stepfather had always had. “Such wasted potential.”
Malcolm’s voice floated down the stairs as he realized what was happening. “Shakespeare!”
I didn’t look up at him because I didn’t want to see the fear on his face. I couldn’t let fear taint my determination. If I could get rid of Muller and Claude somehow, then they still had half the serum. They could still get to Matthew and get him out.
“Go on!” I yelled up the stairs.
Yelling earned me a knife twist and Muller’s hand shoved the knife back up under my chin. “Stay back!” he called, stepping carefully backward, down the steps. He pulled me with him, ignoring how I stumbled a bit.
“Claude’s here!” I roared the warning, so my guys would know.
“Claude?” Callum’s tone was shocked.
A rush of wind hit my face and Muller was ripped away.
I turned, gasping, hand coming up to clutch my chest wound. I saw Callum holding Muller aloft, the detective’s feet dangling in midair. Callum glanced over at me. “This isn’t Claude King.”
“Claude’s a ghost. He’s possessing that man.”
Callum squeezed Muller and I watched in rapt fascination as Claude popped out of his body, backing away. As soon as Muller’s mind was his own again, he slashed at Callum with the knife. He was wild and uncoordinated and destined to lose.
Until he got a lucky shot—he swiped across Callum’s neck and the vampire gave a gasp, releasing Muller and stumbling slightly.
Shock made me freeze.
But it wasn’t just shock that Muller had attacked Callum—it was shock that when he did, Claude had flickered.
Holy fuck.
Holy fucking hell.
My eyes darted between the two men, if they could be called that any longer. One was a vampire and one a ghost.
My mind went into overdrive. Claude had known at least one other ghost. He might have known how the process worked, that he had to attach his soul to something in order to become a ghost himself. That, or he might simply have been so obsessed with the serum and its effects that he’d tied himself to the first vampire to receive it. Was it because vampires were immortal? Was it because he thought that would give him the best shot at living forever? Or … or there was history between the two of them that I didn’t know about?
I had no idea. None of that mattered though.
What mattered was that it looked like they were bonded.
It looked like Claude had hitched his soul to Callum’s.
My hands shook.
What should I do?
Could I possibly take out Callum and Claude in one go? The silver knife in my boot felt hot against my skin. Tempting. Callum was cold-blooded. He condoned random murder. We had an alliance of convenience only.
Would taking him out be such a bad thing?
I licked my lips, which had grown dry as parchment, as I tried to decide.
But of all the moments in the universe, the memory of Potts chose this moment to appear. “You’re willing to make other people a means to your ends.” I could see the disappointment in her eyes and feel it all over again like a phantom pain.
I shook my head.
No.
I wasn’t like Muller.
I refused to be.
I lifted my hand and blasted the hallway with shadows, all the way from where we stood at the bottom of the stairwell to the other side of the building. It was blacker than a blink of the eye, dark and thick as paint.
I heard the metallic clang of a knife hitting the ground, a gurgle and spurt that sounded like a water fountain—sounded like, but wasn’t.
When I lifted my shadows, Claude had disappeared.
Muller was dead on the floor, a puddle of his own blood forming underneath him as his eyes stared unseeing at Callum’s feet.
My ally’s eyes met mine.
And somehow I thought he knew.
It felt like he knew my mind, knew what I’d realized … and what I’d chosen.
“Let’s get your brother,” he said, turning toward the steps.
“But the others …” I trailed off as the whirr of a helicopter overhead drifted in through the broken front door.
“No time,” Callum responded.
He hurried up the steps, barking at his vamps to hold still as he used his claws to slice through the rope that bound them. It still remained melded to their hair and faces, it still matted Evan’s fur, but once everyone was at least separated, we turned and went up the steps to the second floor. I had to walk carefully on the icy floor, around the frozen bumps and masses that used to be Pinnacle guards. One man had gotten his head free, but his face was blue … he hadn’t been fast enough to free his heart. Most of the others had hardly made a dent in their icy prisons before they’d succumbed to the elements.
I tried not to look.
When we got to Matthew’s door, tears filled my eyes.
Because we’d finally made it.
42
Malcolm melted the glass between the visitor’s section and Matthew’s as my heart thumped rapid-fire.
The walls seemed to lean inward and close around me as I walked forward to where Matthew snarled, chained in a corner. My freckle-faced brother didn’t look any better than the last time I’d seen him. He looked purely vampire, fangs and claws extended. There was no hint of a bat, which pissed me the fuck off, because Potts had promised to keep him hidden.
But either her illusion spell had worn off or she’d been too afraid or angry at me to keep her word.
I shook off my fury at the self-righteous counselor because it didn’t matter. Her cowardice saved me a step and now Evan, who had shifted but was still stuck with a net on his face, didn’t have to try to unravel a spell I’d only ever guessed at.