Chapter 15 Make it Matter
Rhea POV
That night the tunnels screamed.
I’d been awake before the first alarm, I could feel the shift in the air, and the taste of iron crawling up from the depths. When the sirens finally wailed through Haven-9, the rest of the world caught up to what my blood already knew.
“Move!” Solen’s voice cut through the chaos, sharp and sure despite the smoke thickening around us. “Cinders first, secure the path to the hatch!”
The floor trembled. Somewhere behind us, a generator exploded, spraying molten light across the stone. The vampires were already in.
I pulled my long knife from its sheath. It was nearly the length of my arm, blackened steel edged in silver, and heavy enough to split bone. The weight felt good. Familiar.
Maris darted to my side, two pistols flashing in each hand. “Headshots only,” she barked. “Or you get to be dinner.”
“Got it,” I said, and drove the knife through the first bastard that lunged from the smoke.
It was like cutting paper. His head hit the wall with a wet crack, the body collapsing before it realized it was dead. The speed in my limbs felt impossible, each movement too fast, too precise. I didn’t think, I reacted. My blade was an extension of every heartbeat that wasn’t mine.
“Ghost!” Kessa shouted, tossing me a spare clip. She was bleeding from a gash on her temple, still grinning. “Remind me never to piss you off!”
“You already did!” I caught the clip midair, slammed it into the pistol hanging at my hip, and fired at the pale blur sprinting for her. The silver bullet caught the vamp clean between the eyes. He dropped, twitching.
We moved as one, a blur of rebellion fury and half-trained terror. The younger recruits clung to the walls, firing blindly down the hall while the Cinders, our infiltrators, cleared the flanks. Ryn covered the rear, shouting curses older than the war itself.
“Keep them moving!” Solen ordered. “The hatch is three corridors down!”
I caught up to him near the front line. He’d taken a sword off a fallen enforcer and was cutting through the enemy with surgical calm. “How many left?”
“Too many,” he said. “Buy us thirty seconds.”
“Done.”
I sprinted back into the choke point. Three vamps were crawling along the ceiling, their claws digging into steel like spiders. I leapt...actually leapt...higher than I ever should have been able to. The first lost his head to my blade. The second I shot midair. The third hissed, grabbing me by the throat.
“Pretty toy,” he sneered. “I’ll...”
I snapped his neck before he finished. The sound was obscene and satisfying.
When I landed, the world tilted for a heartbeat. The second and third pulses inside my chest thundered, answering each other like drums. Power crackled under my skin. For a moment, the tunnel glowed gold, then dimmed again.
“Rhea!” Maris shouted from ahead. “We’ve got the hatch!”
I ran, my feet pounding slick stone. The last corridor opened into a maintenance bay where an old freight lift had been gutted to hide a steel hatch in the floor. The Cinders were already prying it open while Solen herded the wounded inside.
“Go!” he ordered. “Down, all of you! Kessa, help Sera!”
Maris waited for me at the threshold, her hair matted with soot and her eyes wide. “You good?”
“Define good,” I said, panting.
She grabbed my wrist. “Then fake it.”
We dropped the last of the kids through the hole. The hatch clanged open beneath the hum of approaching wings, vampires, gliding through the tunnels like shadows with teeth.
“Everyone’s in!” Ryn barked.
Solen nodded. “Rhea, you’re last.”
I turned to cover them. The hallway behind us erupted in movement, dozens of pale shapes pouring from the dark. "Not yet,” I said, stepping forward. “Go, Solen. Get them out.”
“Rhea...”
“I said GO!”
He hesitated just long enough to make me want to punch him, then dropped through the hatch after the others. Maris lingered, firing into the dark until her gun clicked empty. “You better follow me, you crazy bitch.”
“Wouldn’t dream of not.” I winked and shoved her through, then reached for the lever.
That’s when cold fingers clamped around my ankle.
I hit the ground hard, dragged backward by a vampire with half its face blown off. “Got you,” it hissed.
The hatch began to close automatically, Solen’s failsafe system. I could hear Maris screaming on the other side, pounding the metal. “Rhea! Don’t you fucking dare!”
I twisted, slammed my knife through the vamp’s skull, and kicked free. The hatch was halfway shut. No time.
I reached up, slammed my palm against the manual override, and locked it from my side. The mechanism hissed, sealing tight. No one could open it now.
“Rhea!” Maris’s voice broke. “Rhea, open it! I swear!!”
“Go!” I screamed, my throat raw. “You hear me? Go! Make it fucking matter!”
The tunnel filled with the sound of my own breathing and the distant screams below. Then silence. I was alone.
Except I wasn’t.
The next wave of vampires spilled into the room, dozens of them, red-eyed and laughing. I raised my knife. “Come on then,” I muttered. “Let’s dance.”
The first rushed me, and I took his head. The second caught a bullet between the eyes. I spun, ducked, parried, and slashed, blood spraying the walls like paint. My muscles burned, but I was faster than I’d ever been, strength surging through every movement. I stopped counting kills after fifteen.
Then the air changed.
Cold rolled through the chamber, so sharp it burned. The vampires froze mid-step, their laughter dying in their throats. Shadows bled along the walls, crawling toward each other until they coalesced into a single, perfect shape.
A man stepped from the dark.
Tall. Elegant. Dressed in black so deep it swallowed the light. His eyes, crimson rimmed with silver, found mine and held them.
The vampires dropped to their knees. “My king,” they murmured.
Nox. The Vampire King of the Obsidian Court.
I’d seen his face once on a stolen holograph. The image hadn’t done him justice. He was beauty made lethal, the kind of creature that made sin look holy.
He smiled, slow and cold. “So this is the Ghost who cheats death.”
I lifted my blade. “Guess you’ll have to test the rumor.”
He stepped closer. “You’ve already been tested, little fire.”
Something in his voice crawled inside my head, smooth, dark velvet that wound around my thoughts like smoke. My knife trembled. My heartbeat stumbled.
He was in my mind before I could blink.
“Stop,” I managed, but the word was small and lost.
His hand brushed my cheek. It was cold enough to burn. “You’ve been marked by others,” he whispered. “Wolf. Dragon. Interesting.”
“Get out of my head,” I growled. I tried to swing the knife, but my body didn’t listen.
His eyes deepened, swallowing the world. “Why would I? You’re exquisite.”
And then his fangs sank into my throat.
The pain was instant and infinite. Fire and ice crashing through me at once. My body convulsed, and the knife clattered to the floor. I could feel him drinking, feel the pull of my life ebbing out through every pulse.
Somewhere behind him, chaos erupted, gunfire, howls, and snarls. Wolves. A pack of them tearing through the vampires like a silver storm. One broke free, massive and black-furred, launching for Nox.
Too late.
He released me only when the world went dim. My legs gave out. The wolf’s roar shook the chamber, his claws raking across marble. But the king was gone, vanished into shadow, leaving only cold air and the echo of his laughter.
I hit the ground, my vision tunneling. Blood soaked my collar, pooling beneath me.
Maris’s voice echoed in my head, faint and furious, Make it matter.
I smiled. “I'm trying,” I whispered.
Then the dark took me.