“She’s kidding, right?” Alec asked the others.

Ivy just smiled at him.

“The Legion’s Interrogators would use everything they heard against him. They’d use it to threaten, blackmail, and coerce him,” I said. “But we’re not going to play that game. I won’t steal his secrets or expose them. I just want to figure out what happened with Serenity.”

“You might not like what you hear from the bug,” Drake warned me. “Supernatural houses engage in a lot of cruel activity—cruel, but sanctioned.”

“I’ll deal with it. I have to. Whatever is going on, it’s bigger than just that one incident, and that means it could happen again. We have to stop it before something happens and a lot of people die.”

It was getting dark outside now. My first training session with Harker was scheduled for tonight. Was it weird that I was looking forward to it? I guess I was just morbidly curious of how he was going to torture me up to the next level of the Legion ladder.

My phone buzzed. I pulled it out. “I’ve gotten an alert. There’s been another incident.”

It seemed Harker would have to wait.

“A vampire has gone wild, exhibiting unusual powers,” I read on.

Who said lightning never struck twice?

15 Monsters

“Drive north two blocks, then turn right at the edge of the Witches’ District,” I instructed Alec.

We were driving to the source of the vampire attack, our sirens flashing. Traffic parted in front of us, but they weren’t moving fast enough for Alec. He swerved the truck onto the sidewalk, speeding past the lines of cars. He was driving like a maniac. Usually, I would have complained, but we were in a hurry right now. If the last attack were any indication, we could be in a lot of trouble. A typical vampire had the potential to cause a massive amount of carnage. If his powers were boosted like Serenity’s had been—if he’d acquired magic outside the vampire spectrum—then this could turn into nothing short of a disaster.

We were getting close. I could see the trail of destruction. Buildings had holes in the sides; something hard and heavy had been thrown at them. Cars were overturned everywhere. The warped remains of streets signs lay on the pavement, like they’d been used as baseball bats. A car was impaled on a traffic light. I prayed that we didn’t find anything else impaled.

“Park here,” I told Alec. “This is the place.”

The car had barely stopped moving when we all ran out. It looked like a battle site. Blood was splashed across the buildings. There was a low rumble, the love child of a hiss and a growl. It echoed in the darkness, seeming to come from everywhere. And it was growing louder.

A potent electric charge danced across my skin, causing the hairs on my arms to stick up. A strange, unsettling feeling washed over me. It wasn’t exactly dread, though I was feeling a lot of that at the moment. My magic clenched up inside of me, like an iron ball in my stomach, like it had eaten something it didn’t agree with.

We moved carefully, weapons out, searching the shadows. A bent streetlamp was buzzing, flickering at erratic intervals. A scream shot down the street. We kicked off into a run, following the sound to its source.

When we reached the end of the street, we found bodies on the ground. Two of them were Legion soldiers. They’d been ripped apart, mutilated. My stomach lurched as I glanced across what remained of their uniforms. Corporal Jenkins and Sergeant Lee. They were the ones who’d called in the report. Just minutes ago, they’d still been alive. If only we’d gotten here faster.

A shaking lump lay beside their bodies. I squinted and saw that lump was actually a woman on the ground. Her skirt was torn, and the strings of her corset had split open. It looked like an enormous beast had scratched her across the stomach. The short sleeves of her blouse hung limply against her arms, soaked in blood. The top might have been white once, but now it was stained crimson.

“A witch,” I said.

She was bleeding but still alive. Ivy ran to her and began to mix up potions using the ingredients she drew from the pouches on her belt.

“What happened here?” I asked the witch as Ivy healed her.

The witch’s body shook with fear. “A beast. A horrible beast.”

“A vampire?”

“Yes.” Her lower lip quivered. “And no.”

“What do you mean yes and no?” Alec asked.

“It was big. So big. Especially his fangs,” she said. “But he was not beautiful like a vampire. He was…wild. A monster.”

“Where did he go?” I asked her.

The witch pointed up, her eyes trembling.

I looked up, squinting to see through the darkness. I caught a hint of movement. I ignited a ball of fire, sending it up there to light up the darkness. A vampire fell down from the shadows. He’d jumped off the roof of a hundred-foot building. His bare feet landed on the cobbled ground with a thump, but the drop hadn’t hurt him. He was very resilient, even for a vampire.

His eyes were lit up like rubies. Blood dripped from his fangs and fingernails. His pale hair was stained with it. His clothes, the fashionable clubbing outfit of a vampire going out on the town—a silk shirt, a pair of designer jeans, dress shoes—it was all torn to pieces and stained with blood and rust, the latter presumably from the old street signs and posts he’d thrown around.

When the vampire saw us, his mouth opened wide and he let out a horrible noise. The growl-hiss I’d heard earlier belonged to him. There was something deeply primitive about it, as though there was no rational thought left in him, only instinct. The witch was right. He was truly a beast. His eyes shone with uncontrolled rage.

I waved at Drake and Alec. They tried to move toward him from two sides, to surround him. The vampire pivoted sharply, lightning sizzling down his right arm. An electric whip formed in his hand, snapping and hissing as he lashed out at Drake.

No vampire had elemental magic. This was definitely linked to the earlier incident with Serenity. But what had caused this strange sickness that gave them both powers and drove them mad? What was turning them into monsters?

Monsters. That’s what Serenity had meant when she’d said the monsters were taking over. The monsters inside of her, taking over her mind. I glanced at the wild vampire. Those same monsters lived inside of him.

The vampire’s whip knocked Drake against the wall. Lightning kissed the brick facade, creating a wide laceration with a black burnt line on either side. He swung again, but Drake was already on his feet.

The vampire turned around and, in a flash of speed, slashed his whip at Alec, who’d tried to sneak up on him. Alec caught the lightning whip around his forearm and tugged. It disintegrated into smoke. The vampire roared in fury.

Alec shot at it with his Hellfire, but the vampire was too fast. It ducked out of the way, and the flaming bullet tore through the building behind him.

Drake and Ivy charged at the vampire, but he shifted shape, turning into Ivy. There were two of her now. One of the Ivys grabbed the other and they tumbled onto the ground, kicking and punching.

Alec aimed his gun again, but then he paused. “Which one is the vampire? I can’t tell them apart.”

Drake shook his head in frustration. “I don’t know.”

I looked at the two Ivys. It was a powerful spell, a good copy. Thanks to my recent training in shifting magic, though, I could pick out the subtle differences between them. I spotted the vampire in the shadows, behind the Ivy mask. I ran forward and punched him hard in the jaw. I put a lot of magic behind that punch, enough to break through the illusion. The false Ivy shattered, revealing a feral vampire.

“It’s sure great to have my magic back,” I commented.

I moved in to knock out the vampire, but he darted out of my path, his nimble grace in complete contradiction to the primitive gleam in his red eyes. He was so fast, faster than any vampire I’d ever fought. Faster than I was. I couldn’t get in close enough to land another punch.