“Listen to me, you worthless piece of chum, I am Mira. I am the Fire Starter, a coven Elder, and the keeper of Budapest. Do you know what that makes you?” I growled, leaning close so that all she could see were my glowing lavender eyes and long white fangs. The female shook her head as she held the hand wrapped around her neck with two trembling hands. “My personal plaything for the rest of the evening. If you’re lucky, you’ll prove to me exactly why your maker didn’t kill you the second you were reborn, because right now you’re seeming extremely useless to me.”

Two humans stupidly attempted to rush me at the same time in hopes of freeing their precious companion. Throwing the female nightwalker back to where she had been seated earlier, I didn’t hesitate as I snapped both their necks in the blink of an eye and set another nightwalker on fire for edging too close to me.

Chaos erupted in the small booth at the sight of the fire. I stopped thinking and only reacted to the hands reaching for me and the knives that suddenly appeared, glinting in the firelight. After nights of running and fighting naturi, bori, and nightwalkers, I just stopped thinking and let my emotions run free. Limbs were ripped and broken. Screams were quickly muffled, lost in the roar of music that rumbled through the club. Valerio and Stefan appeared beside me, splashed with blood and smiling like devils at the carnage spread before them. In a matter of only seconds twenty people lay dead, both nightwalkers and humans. Hadn’t even thought about it.

Stepping onto the table, I walked over the mess and claimed the seat at the back of the niche, pushing bodies out of my way. With a wave of my hand, a couple orbs of fire appeared in the air and hovered above the table, casting the blood-soaked booth in a frightening light. I looked around at the mess I had made and I wanted to be sick. I hadn’t lost control in years. I hadn’t killed a human in centuries. Not since my days with Valerio and Jabari, when I was young and reckless, had I caused such death and destruction. And yet despite my superior strength and vicious skill, they kept coming at me. They hadn’t tried to run in fear or plead for their lives. They just attacked me, and I killed them because . . . because killing was the only thing I was good at. Killing them meant taking my own life back one person at a time. I was tired of being hounded by Rowe, Nick, Macaire, and too many others to count. If I killed them, then there were a few less people in the world that wanted to kill me.

After staring blindly at the severed head of one of the nightwalkers that had been in the booth, I blinked a couple times and looked up to find Stefan and Valerio sitting on either side of me, while other nightwalkers crowded the opening to the private little niche. Horror stretched their handsome features and widened their luminous eyes. I could hear “Fire Starter” whispered among them in both Hungarian and rough English.

None of them cared that I was a member of the coven. They didn’t care that being an Elder made me a creature that demanded instant respect within the world of the nightwalker. They only cared that I was the Fire Starter, and with me came the instant threat of a painful and brutal death. Of the twenty, only one person within the booth had died by fire. They rest had been ripped apart by my bare hands. I was washed in their blood so that it was soaked into my clothes and dripped from my chin.

No matter what I did or where I went, I would always be the Fire Starter first and above all else.

Lifting my chin a little, I smiled at the nightwalkers that were cautiously watching me. “I am Mira and I am the new keeper of Budapest. I’ll be in town for a few nights along with my companions. I hope you will make us feel welcome.”

The response from the group was overwhelming silence, but I could feel a buzz in the air as many of them spoke with each other telepathically. I continued to smile at them, soaking in their fear and terror like a drug.

“And if you’re wondering, I have already visited with Odelia and Veyron. They are both aware of my new position within the city,” I added, just twisting the knife a little more.

A few of the older nightwalkers that had been around long enough to potentially see a regime change within a region lingered long enough to welcome me to the lovely city of Budapest and offer their services. However, most silently filtered back into the crowd of humans. In fact, most of the nightwalkers had left Bahnhof within twenty minutes of discovering the slaughter. I was simply too dangerous to remain close to. There was no telling whether I would decide to strike out at more nightwalkers. By now the killing at Széchenyi Baths was well-known among the Budapest nightwalkers, and now there was the bloodbath at Bahnhof. Death followed me wherever I tread, and no one was willing to stand in my path.

I looked across the table so find both Valerio and Stefan relaxing against the bloodstained cushions, appearing at ease with the world. They had nothing to worry about. They were both my protectors and instruments of my destruction. They were immune to my fits of rage, need for chaos, and desire for fear among those that surrounded me. I knew that this type of behavior was expected as I took my place within the city and as a member of the coven. The only problem was that it was starting to make me ill, even as I got better at the destruction as time slipped past. I was beginning to believe that I was the daughter of chaos.

The next night, the hotel room looked like a bomb had gone off. The walls were pockmarked with bullet holes and the furniture had been trashed. Glass from broken picture frames littered the floor so that the carpet now sparkled in the light coming through the window. Releasing Valerio, I took a couple of cautious steps into the room, my mouth hanging open as I dragged my eyes over the chaos. Danaus sat on the floor with his back pressed against the door that led into my bedroom. His clothes were torn and bloody. A knife was held loosely in one hand while a gun rested on the floor next to his other hand. He looked up at me, confusion filling his face.

“How the hell did you get here?” he demanded, pushing slowly to his feet.

“I stayed with Valerio during the day. He just brought me back.”

He pointed at the bedroom door with the knife. “You mean you were never in there?”

“No.” I shook my head, my eyebrows snapping together over my nose at his tone. “Didn’t you ever look in on me? You never checked?”

“No!”

“You left me!” I shouted back, refusing to feel guilty that he had defended what amounted to an empty room. “I told you that Veyron’s men would attack me during the day. Did you think I was going to stay here unguarded and vulnerable during the daylight hours while you went after Sofia?”

“I didn’t go after her,” he admitted, lowering his voice to a normal level again.

“But you left.”

Danaus narrowed his eyes on my face as his frown grew darker. “And you thought I would choose her life over yours.”

“Yes.” There was nothing else I could say. He left. He left the hotel room and I assumed that he was going after Sofia. Where else would he have gone after our argument? “Your leaving the room signaled to me that you were going after her. I would have been alone during the day, left vulnerable to . . . to this,” I said, extending my hands to encompass the destroyed room.

“I went down to the hotel bar for a drink,” Danaus snapped. “How could you think that I would honestly leave you alone? I stayed at your side in England when the naturi attacked. I was with you in Venice and Peru. Why would I leave you now?”

Because I thought you cared about Sofia more than you cared about me.