“No!” I bellowed, but I knew that Mira would not have enough time to react. She was surrounded. There was no second thought, no doubt in my mind. I summoned my powers and reached out for the wind naturi. He screamed in pain as he raised his blade, preparing to plunge it into Mira’s back. He dropped the sword as he started to claw at his arms and chest. But it was too late. His blood blackened his flesh before finally bubbling through with an ominous pop and hiss.

A second later, Mira finished off the second of the two naturi. She blasted the creature with a massive wave of fire, lighting the night to the point where it seemed as if the sun had settled on the Earth between us. When she doused the flames, the naturi was reduced to a pile of ash.

With the threat destroyed, Mira collapsed to her knees, her body seeming to convulse. I ran over to her. My feet slid out from underneath me on the wet grass as I stopped beside her. I grabbed her shoulders, holding her upright so that I could look her in the face. The glow was completely gone from her eyes, but her irises had now expanded to the point of blotting out what purple there had been in her eyes. Terror had taken over.

“It—it was inside of me,” she stammered, horror filling her tone. “I couldn’t fight it. I could feel it in my head, in my body. Controlling everything. I tried to scream. I tried t-to reach for you. Couldn’t do anything.”

“It’s gone now,” I said, only to be instantly contradicted.

“Not quite, my boy,” announced a scratchy, hollow voice that had become too familiar for my liking. I twisted around to find a ghostly figure standing just a few feet away. A teenager with spiked hair and baggy clothes that were crisscrossed with chains, it looked completely human other than the fact that we could see through it.

“Your hesitance to use your gifts is going to get you killed,” Gaizka sneered. “If the nightwalker had not been here, I would not have been able to save you. I am disappointed that you didn’t dispatch this riffraff properly. But then you’ll get another chance to find some tomorrow night.”

“We won’t help you break free,” I barked, my grip tightening on Mira’s shaking shoulders. The rain was slowing, but the trembling wasn’t from the bitter cold that bit into both of us. I could feel the fear that flooded her senses. She was looking at her creator, one of the creators of all nightwalkers. She was staring in the face of yet another creature that could control her. She couldn’t even fight this one, like she could Jabari or me.

The bori laughed, sending a cold, bitter noise winging through the air. “I don’t recall giving you a choice. Tomorrow night, I will finally be free of my cage, and you, my boy, are going to be my key.”

“We w-won’t help you,” Mira bit out, struggling to stop her chattering teeth.

Gaizka laughed at us as we were suddenly torn apart, our bodies flying through the air in separate directions. My back slammed into the side panel of Mira’s car, while the vampire hit the trunk of an oak tree standing near the middle of the yard. I inwardly cringed, my heart nearly coming to a stop when I saw her slump there for a moment. One misplaced tree branch could have staked her in a second, sucking her life away before she could draw a breath to scream. Kneeling on my hands and knees in the mud, I watched Mira, waiting to see her move, anything to prove that she was still alive. The bori might need her alive, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t make an impulsive error.

After a couple seconds, Mira pushed to her hands and knees as well, allowing me to expel my pent-up breath. The vampire summoned up a ball of fire and attempted to throw it at the bori, but her arm stopped in mid-swing as if it had struck an invisible wall. Gaizka raised one hand and closed its fingers, causing Mira to extinguish the flame. For a moment, her eyes glowed red, but a terrified scream was still ripped from her chest as she fought it.

“Leave her alone!” I shouted, pushing to my feet. I summoned up my own powers and attempted to focus on the center of the energy that danced in the air. But all attempts to beat the creature back were useless. It had no body for me to attack. I had no way of fighting pure energy. I had no effective attack against a creature that was little more than a ghost.

“Listen to her screaming, Danaus,” Gaizka said over the endless cries that escaped Mira, shattering the silence of the countryside. “The naturi are nothing in comparison to what I can do to her. Save her by doing as I wish. Set me free and you both will be protected.”

The bori finally released Mira, and she flopped limply to the ground. Gaizka slowly faded from sight, leaving Mira sitting in the mud in LaVina’s front yard. I ran over to her side and gathered her trembling body up in my arms. A large, broken tree smoldered beside us, while bodies of dead naturi lay scattered around the yard like broken ornaments. We had to find a way to stop the bori, but I had a growing fear that I wasn’t going to survive this encounter if we were to succeed. What if, during the past thousand years, Gaizka had been simply preparing me to become his next permanent host?

I leaned my shoulder against the stone wall outside of Abigail Bradford’s apartment building, hidden in the shadows that blanketed Factors Walk. I was standing in almost the exact spot where Lily had first spotted Gaizka so many nights ago. The place where it had all started, and where the bori would finally appear. The sun had set nearly an hour ago, and above me, streetlamps popped on around Bay Street, creating a fresh cast of shadows in the narrow alley.

LaVina had reluctantly agreed to come when I stopped by her house that afternoon. Workers were still tooling around her front yard, cleaning up the debris from the felled tree. The old witch hadn’t been particularly happy about the mess we made of her property, but relented as we focused on getting Mira out of her nearly catatonic state. The nightwalker had been faced with the naturi and the bori in less than six months—nightmares that had been banished from the Earth for centuries. And I had brought both into her life.

Mira had promised to meet me outside of Abigail Bradford’s apartment, but a part of me wouldn’t be surprised if she didn’t show. She had been through enough. And in truth, this was my fight. I was beginning to fear that she would only be a target for Gaizka.

LaVina’s steady, critical voice drifted down to me from where she sat on a bench near the railing above Factors Walk. I had left her there weaving Savannah roses with dried palm leaves. “You’re late,” she grumbled.

“Sorry,” Mira snidely replied. “I stopped for a shower.”

I looked up the stairs behind my left shoulder to see the nightwalker coming down wearing her typical garb of black leather. Strapped to her waist and legs were an assortment of blades. Her black leather duster danced slightly as she moved, while her leather boots were nearly silent on the concrete-and-stone sidewalk. She was ready for battle.

“Did you hear from Lily?” she asked in softer tones when she reached the bottom step.

“Tristan called me just about an hour ago to say that she was safe and that they were at the Compound,” I replied, a half smile tugging at one corner of my mouth.

Mira nodded. “Tristan called before I left the house. Said he was going to stay on for a few days to make sure that she’s settled properly.”

“It’ll give us time to get things settled here,” I said.

Mira nodded, her lips pressed into a hard, thin line as she clenched her jaw. On the exterior, she was all cold rage and immoveable hatred, but I could sense the undercurrent of fear rippling through her. I reached up and moved a strand of hair that had blown in front of her eyes. I let my fingers stray across her cool cheek, cupping her face. For a moment, I regretted every chance I’d had to kiss her but didn’t. I wanted to tell her to walk away. I wanted to tell her to get on a plane and fly as far from me as possible, but my throat closed up and I couldn’t utter a sound.