Prologue
The sky… Is so pretty. And the clouds…
I never quite appreciated the beauty, the simplicity. The serenity of an overcast sky, the clouds floating across on a wind heavy with power.
Such peace. Even when my belly is filled with butterflies, my heart thrashing, desperate to abandon this body so it can keep living.
Everything feelsright. Like all is meant to be.
A sound breaks through the air. It is everywhere yet nowhere, and I can’t discern what it is. A bright slice of gold through the steely grey echoes it, making it… tangible.
Makingeverythingtangible.
I sense the earth rushing up toward my back, my body plummeting to meet it, and that serenity is yanked out from under me. Another shout—one that takes me a second to realize is mine—jerks me out of that blissful paralysis. I’m hit with the horrific awareness that I have not escaped,have not avoided, feeling my death. That I have not been spared the impending splattering of my brains onto the London street below.
All that acceptance cleaves away as pure terror twines itself through every fiber of my being.
“No!”The word is entirely breath. My last breath—as the air rips from my lungs.
I claw at the space in front of me—all sky and wind and dim light. No buildings, no telephone wires, no posts, no awnings—nothing.
Nothing to grab onto, nothing to break my fall.
There is only the roaring of my blood in my ears, the wind whipping violently around me, and my throat—raw and dry and burning and…
Screaming.
I am screaming, but my voice is lost to the elements—so far, far away from me.
“Illyria.” That sound, now a voice, like a bullet whispering past my ear, cutting through my panic, the din. But it isn’t the sultry Boston drawl of Faith or the Midwestern twang of Moira, which is what I’d normally hear upon waking—it is a man’s.
Deep. British.Familiar.Like a melody I can’t quite place. It hums along my skin, eddying around my senses, like…
Spike?
“Try again.” The voice is a bit rough. I didn’t think I said his name out loud.
But indeed, the presence isn’t the typical buzz I’d feel from Spike, from an average vampire.
It is a sister-Slayer—
No, no longer just asister’s—because it is the voice of Jay Whitlock, the boy with Slayer powers.
Here.
Somewhere to my left.
A quick, sleep-glazed sweep of the room reveals posters of death metal bands hiding the curved wooden panels, bowing and peeling with age, instead of the hand-drawn targets on the cracked walls of the abandoned hotel. Outside the sole window, a bright white blizzard quietly rages. And the mattress I’m lying on—his mattress—is just as hard as mine, only lacking the cozy, fluffy pillows I’d specifically chosen to add a touch ofhometo it all.
Looking over my shoulder, I find Jay sitting in a chair, elbows propped on the wooden armrests. A few slices of his platinum hair have slipped into his face, but the rest is raked back as if he has been constantly running a hand through it.
“Am I dead?” My own voice is but a mere rasp.
“No,” Jay breathes, and the relief packed in that one word tightens something in my chest, making it that much harder to meet his eyes behind his thick, square-framed glasses.
Instead, I take in his wrinkled black shirt, his matching sweatpants, and the bedside table with a stack of books—Moira’sWatcher Diaries.
“So this is another Dreamscape visit,” I observe softly, unable to summon my usual irreverence, then face forward, watching the snow rain down like static on a television screen…
And silently hope that ignoring him will somehow shut him out.
To my disappointment, Jay confirms he’s still here by saying, “Thought I’d see if I could reach you.”
“Why.”Why are you here, why are you checking on me, why can’t you stay the fuck out of my head?
He grunts, almost sounding amused. “Your friends were worried.” That tightness turns into an ache at the rawness of his words. Like he’s been screaming, too, and I swear I hear a disembodied voice that sounds so much like his, whispering: Wewere worried.
I don’t need to see him to feel his gaze tracing down my spine as if it were his hands raking over me instead. Anyone else would’ve gotten their eyes scratched out for it—Jay still up for debate—but I don’tespeciallyhate his presence.
His Slayer-sense hums in me, like a calming white noise, as if my instincts are saying he is safe;he is like you.
But I can’t bring myself to relax. The Dreamscape is too intimate, and my inexperience in it makes me too vulnerable, like the last time we were this close. If he can find my name, he can discover other things, too.
Remembering that snaps my walls back up, and I shift onto my back, finally looking dead into his eyes, as if my lethal glare alone will keep him out.
A ghost of a smirk tugs at his lip as if to say,Now you get it.
Because he can read me here as plainly as I just read him; thought or feeling, it is translated as if it is my own, and the other way around—and vice versa.
Jay raises a brow—a confirmation. The arrogance in it sets my teeth grinding. If I’d spent the time learning how the Dreamscape works, I could have protected myself better. But I see now that I’ve done so well burying the things I never want a Slayer to stumble into that I’ve somehow left the surface things available foranyof them to see.
And I let a stranger be the first one to do it.
My jaw begins to ache from how hard I’m clenching it.
Now he knows: the name that catches in people’s throats and stutters its way out as if it’ll summon the Devil himself—or perhaps even worse, thedemon goddess: Illyria the Merciless.
But one might argue she has outgrown that title.
In reality, a mere whisper of the Old One’s name won’t bring her forth, especially since magick has gone kaput. Summoning the demon goddess required elaborate sigils, well-positioned candles, a few minutes-long incantation, the right offerings—the wholeenchilada.
And despite sharing her name, I’ve never even met the unholy being. But I know of her; know how she has come to the aid of both Angel and the Organization on multiple occasions. So summoning her doesn’t come with an immediate fear that she’ll slaughter us all, even if whisperingdidwork.
As if he knows what it means to me, my name again flows effortlessly from Jay’s lips: “Illyria.”
No hesitation, no fear. Like he knows of no one else.
It’s the most beautiful way someone has ever said my name, and I can’t stop my gaze from dipping to his lips, wanting to hear it again.
He leans in, his mouth curving into a smile. A cat looming upon its new toy.
But I will not be his plaything.
It takes effort to pull myself upright, to swing my legs off the bed, ignoring how short my shorts are, my abdomen exposed to the cool air in my loose grey crop top, and the pair of eyes tracking me from the bed. No—I only focus on the floor beneath me, the wood rough against the soles of my feet as I pad across the room to the door, past the window where the blizzard rages on.
Last I checked, it was October.
Illyria…
His voice is a purr in my head, but I push it out, curling my fingers around the cold brass doorknob and twisting it open, grateful for the icy bite of metal into flesh.
The hallway of the Whitlock home is gone, and the wooden floors and walls have been replaced by grey concrete. There is no ceiling, just miles and miles of cement stretching upward into blackness. In the center of the room, a large gunmetal ring stands at the end of a wide ramp lined with fluorescent lights.
“The hell is that?” Jay breathes. I hear his footsteps padding on the floor behind me, so I expect his presence at my back—but I don’t realize how cold I am until his heat presses in.
“Not sure.” I step out of that warmth, striding up the ramp to get a closer look. The cold cement gnaws at my toes with each step. Why I think I’d prefer this to the comfort of the bed, I don’t know, but I try not to let the thought escape me, fearing it’ll travel down that psychic bridge to Jay. I keep my face neutral and my lips tight as I appraise the circle, the chevrons pointing to odd connect-the-dots—and ignore him trailing me.
We exchange a curious glance—
Lights I don’t realize are on the structure flicker to life, flooding us in blinding whiteness. Guards begin shouting in areas beyond the concrete walls; an alarm shrieks at an ear-shattering volume, and red lights strobe above us—both methods to disorient their enemy. To disorientus.
Before I have a chance to think, Jay grabs my hand and yanks me toward his room. His voice barely makes it past the wailing as he grunts, “Let’s go.”
I don’t argue, don’t fight. We’ve left his door open, and his small twin bed, the strewn sheets, nearly beckon us to them, offering nothing but comfort and safety.
We burst through the threshold, his hand still squeezing mine, but the alarms behind us sound distant now. A mile away, despite taking only a few long strides.
I glance over my shoulder to see how far we’ve traveled and if we are being followed, but the concrete room is replaced by a new sort of chaos:
We’re on the dance floor of a nightclub, one almost identical to Faith’s rave but without the brunette Slayer here to greet us. The strobing lights flash to a normal white to illuminate the floor. The DJ is speaking indiscernible cautions to the crowd that is frantically clamoring in one direction. To the exit, I realize once I take a step closer to investigate.
They’re evacuating.
In the opposite direction, golden light dances with shadows on the walls, flickering like flames.
I begin to smell the smoke and gas; the burning metals, fabrics, and flesh.
No matter that the hard mattress is calling my name, the Slayer in me wants to jump into the fray to assist.
I take my first step—but Jay tightens his grip on my hand, pulling me back into the room and shutting the door.
I whirl on him, face pinched, lips curling back from my teeth. “What the fu—”
“This is a dream, Illyria,” he says firmly. “There’s nothing you can do for whatever is happening there; you can merely… acknowledge it.”
“Do not talk to me like I don’t know what this is,” I hiss.
“You said so yourself, you’re a novice to the Dreamscape—”
I shove him, ripping my hand back. “Stay out of my head, dude! I don’t go snooping around yours!”
Jay gives me a half-smile, exposing his palms in invitation. “Go ahead; you may be surprised by what you find.”
I blink at him, unable to keep the surprise off my face.“No.”
“C’mon, luv. I know you can hear me in there.”In your head,his voice echoes exactly where he wants it to.
He closes the distance between us, and I yield a step—myonlystep—as I feel the door’s presence an inch or two from my back. “This is me giving consent for you to learn everything you want about me so you can finish deciding if we’regood enoughfor your Organization.”
I cut him a glare, willing it to be as cold as the blizzard outside.
So, on top of my name, he discovered that Faith and I had been evaluating them for recruitment while we were offering our help.
“No,” I repeat. Because I have no idea how to control what he reads off me, and it may be even more dangerous to go into someone else’s.
His lips curve into a wolfish smile. “You’re afraid.”
I scowl. “Will you give me some fucking privacy?”
“Stop thinking so loudly.”
Boy, I’d like to claw that cocky expression off his stupidly beautiful face.
But I shift my weight, instead looking deep inside myself to see if that’s possible—if there’s some kind of mental wall I can put up. Perhaps it’s as easy as imagining it: some impenetrable black steel rising between our linked minds.
It’s time I start fortifying it.
When I feel like I may have found it, I finally ask, “Why can’t I wake up?”Or control this damn dreamscape?
Jay tilts his head, his platinum hair sweeping his jaw. The silver hoop pierced through his right nostril catches the light with the movement. “You took quite a beating, plummeting and all.”
A flash of light that only I seem to see has my guts churning, lurching upward, while my body is pulled down, down—
My knees buckle at the memory.
Jay’s hands find my waist, and in a heartbeat, the walls fall away, the floor out from under me—
The tough mattress once again plows into my back, my head bouncing on the deflated pillows. The ceiling is unmoving above me, the world no longer spinning.
I start—but a hand rests softly on my shoulder, pressing down.
“You’re alright,” Jay quietly murmurs, now sitting beside me on the bed. He hooks the red strands framing my face behind my ear nearest to him, his touch sending warm tingles skittering down my neck.
And despite the knot in my gut, the trepidation I feel thrumming in my bones, I relax into the bed, the sheets whispering against my clothes.
An invisible, almost foreign feeling sinks its claws into me, wending itself through my Slayer instincts and melting all that tension away. It isn’t the calm, black sea of sleep, but…
“If I’m not dead… am I dying?” The question comes out barely above a whisper.
Jay’s chuckle rumbles through the bed. “No. You’ll wake soon. With enough rest.” He reaches across to do the same to the other ear; I feel too heavy to recoil, not even as he murmurs comforting words that I almost feel against my skin.
“What are you doing?” I ask. At the same time, my inner voice urges me to shove him away.
Between strands of his hair, I spot a crooked grin—like he heard that thought, too, finding it amusing that I haven’t yet retaliated.
“Taking care of you,” he answers softly, tracing my jaw as he pulls his hand toward himself.
“The beers you owe me would’ve sufficed,” I respond through clenched teeth, staring ahead at the closed door. I tell myself that the next time I open it, it will be my childhood bedroom—the easiest place to imagine, to build my own dreamscape around.
“Would you rather I move us to the alley, where you can bare your teeth and pretend you don’t find me charming?”
His arrogance drags up enough temper for me to snap my hand up, grabbing his wrist out of the air. He doesn’t flinch at the sudden action, or at the bone-groaning strength with which I’m holding him, and doesn’t have the faintest hint of concern when I slide my eyes to his with an exaggerated slowness that can only mean:Do not touch me.
But Jay merely scoffs, “C’mon, luv. This is just a dream. And youdidalmost die, for the record. Unwind a little, yeah?” I feel the warmth of his breath caress my face, blowing his clean, soapy scent toward me.
After a moment of consideration, I let his hand go and again face forward. “Where are the others?”
“They’re fine. Taking care of you, too. In their own ways.”
I open my mouth to ask more, but he cuts in before I can. “They don’t want you worrying about them.”
“But—”
“Your friends have ordered you to rest,” Jay says, then adds in response to my glowering, “I have other ways of shutting you up—if you insist.” His voice drops an octave, and my mouth snaps shut at his tone, the carnal threat in it.
Every ounce of focus goes into him, my ears hollowing out and the room dimming as the Slayer within me stirs to challenge.
“I dare you totry,” I nearly growl, slow and lethal, feeling the itch for a fight swelling in my palms, my hands tensing, waiting.
He raises a brow, almost like he can’t believe I’ddarehim.
But if I keep up this wall of black ice, then he won’t be able to dive into me, my psyche.
A bit to my dismay, he doesn’t bite, leaning his head against the headboard and facing forward, the corner of his lip quirking upward. “I’ll be sure to take you up on that challenge when you’re awake.”
My skin heats in answer. Jay glances down at my hands, and I follow his gaze to see I’ve dug my fingers into the sheets, fisting them.
He clicks his tongue, the sound loud in the ethereal silence of our dreamscape. “You Slayers and your pent-up aggression,” he drawls. “You’d think beating blokes into bloody pulps would be enough of an outlet, but it never seems to satisfy fully, does it?”
“I’m assuming Kai is cursed with that hunger,” I say, for the sake of not having any other response to it.
“We’re both cursed, just with different intensities.”
“Oh?” My curiosity isn’t entirely feigned—does he suffer from the same hunger that keeps me perpetually tense?
Care to find out?he croons, and his voice is so clear it could’ve been whispered in my ear if he weren’t a few inches too far.
“Careful,” I warn aloud, ignoring the flutter in my belly and instead making my voice low and even, “I’m still debating whether I should help you after the shit you and your sister pulled.”
Jay shifts a little on the bed, enough that I look up at him and see that he’s chewing his lip, considering.
And at that expression… all the bravado between us seems to melt away.
I turn my eyes to the ceiling, the wood panels slightly hazy. “You’re not so great at hiding what’s on your mind, either.”
“Or I’m just letting you see it,” he says, almost dismissively. But then he rakes a hand through his hair, expelling a long breath. “We’ve never done tests to compare abilities.” He removes his glasses and rubs his eyes with a thumb and forefinger—taking this moment to choose his words. “Our mother refuses to let us learn anything more than fighting techniques from Quinn, so what we know of our other abilities is limited.”
“You seem well versed in the Dreamscape,” I mention.Almost dangerously so.
“You would’ve been too… if you weren’t so damn scared of it. For whatever reason you deem sodangerous.”
I bite back my surprise, reminding myself of that mental wall. “So—you heal faster than Kai, but she still hits harder than you,” I press. Then, after a beat, “Unless you were pulling punches.”
Jay meets my stare, the flicker of amusement noticeable without his glasses to obscure it. “Would it irk you to know if I was?”
He may as well have been dangling bait in front of me, but I don’t fall for it, shrugging it off. “No. I was pulling mine, too.”
He chuckles, a light, dry sound, and sets his glasses on the bedside table. “What a relief. Being Faith Lehane’s favorite, I’d hope you’d hit harder than my sister.”
It is a failed effort to stop my scowl, and the delight twinkling in Jay’s aqua eyes only makes my temper flare.
I finally bite, “Are youaskingfor a rematch? No holds barred?”Because you’d end up deadare words that intrude afterward, a fleeting thought that I swallow down like a pill and hope it doesn’t make it past my wall.
“Perhaps when we’re both up to strength,” Jay muses, taking a casual sweep of the room—and he doesn’t care to hide the conspirator’s smirk ghosting his face.
I follow his gaze, willing my body to cool itself and my temper to wither. Although the band names on the posters were illegible to me in reality, they seem even more so—like the glyphs on the metal ring or the language of Pokémon.
It could’ve been a few seconds or a few minutes that pass—it doesn’t matter in the Dreamscape—before I ask, my throat feeling a bit raw, “What else is different between you two?”
“Just that—she hits harder, can take more punches.”
With a long sigh, Jay slides down the bed until he’s on his back, his slim frame still taking up most of the twin bed, and I shift toward my edge to give him as much space as possible—which isn’t more than a few inches, even with him partially hanging off the side.
But he continues as if he’s perfectly comfortable, “She still heals at above-human speeds, I just heal faster. I inherited a good amount Slayer-strength, too.”
It feels like he’s been staring at the ceiling for ages before he speaks again, and I can’t help but wonder if he was debating all that time about what to reveal next. I can find out by cracking my gate to the psychic bridge, but I already said I’m not going to pry—though he made his invitation clear. Like he wants me to. Practically isbeggingme to.
But I don’t, keeping that wall of black adamant up.
He finally says, “She doesn’t have access to the Dreamscape; her only Slayer-related dream was the night we were activated.”
That explains so much: the pull toward him that I feel with the rest of my sistren, like opposite poles on a magnet yearning to touch, and the strangeness I feel with his sister—two north poles repelling. It perhaps explains why Kai’s more hostile toward Slayers than he is.
She’s not connected to us, not on the subconscious level.
“There was a short period when Kai and I sought out information for ourselves but found nothing we didn’t already know,” Jay goes on. “Not without putting us at risk. We’ve been with my mother since magick was destroyed, and… well, you know her feelings about Slayers.”
“Yes, I do,” I mumble, tucking away theat-riskmention for later. Do I evenwantto ask how he feels about his mother, being part Slayer himself?
No, you don’t,I hear his voice whisper in my head.
My eyes widen on him. Partly out of shock, yes—but also because in that split moment that adamant wavered, he sent the feeling, the answer, down the bridge.
And then I snap that shield back up before he can recognize that same feeling already living within me:
Inadequate. An abomination. A mistake.
All the same scars that my own mother left on my psyche.
Realizing I’ve been staring at him too long, I cast my gaze down, gluing them to his door and what I wish lay beyond it. “Would you want to learn more? About the difference between you and your sister?”
“No.” His response has me shooting my eyes back up to look at him, but he has found his hands particularly interesting, now clasped on his stomach. “I just want to learn about being a Slayer—for Kai to learn.”Because she already feels a degree separated from usis left unspoken, but it is felt, seeping through the gates of my psyche that I’m daringly leaving open a crack.
“Maybe I can help with that,” I offer, my voice soft.
He finally looks at me. “Totrain and testus for the Organization?” The emphasis on his words is an exact echo of the conversation I had with Faith before we got knee-deep in their business.
I dip my chin in a nod. It no longer matters how he knew. “Every Slayer goes through it when they join; there are archives—”
A sound grabs my attention, coming from beyond the door. I hold my breath and raise a finger to silence Jay, waiting to hear it again.
Crying.
Someone is crying beyond that door—a girl.
I push up into a sitting position, but in the next blink, Jay’s room disappears, replaced by grey stone walls. No longer am I in his bed, but on a cot—and he isn’t here.
It appears to be a castle infirmary. Shelves to my left contain jars of herbs, vials of various liquids, and medicinal books. To my right, arched windows expose the dreary midday sky—no sign of a raging blizzard. I can see a garden in the near distance with stone monuments jutting up from it. In front of me: a thick velvet curtain in grey-black fabric sections off the room.
The cold stone is just as biting as the cement in the ring room, but it is rougher and uneven under my feet as I approach the curtain and pull it back to see who is crying on the other side.
Kai sits beside a cot, blocking my view of the person she’s mourning. There is another body on the next cot over, also blocked by her uncanny alignment. Her back is to me, her blond ponytail loose and bobbing with each heaving sob.
“Kai?” I think it is a coat of sleep making my throat raw, but as soon as I go to clear it, I feel the soreness around my esophagus. She doesn’t hear me, so I call her name again, louder this time. My throat burns to do it.
Perhaps she just isn’t deigning to acknowledge me.
No—she’s just not aware, I remember,because she doesn’t have the Slayer dreams.
My jaw ticks as I consider the implication of her being here, now knowing too well that she must be here for a reason. I approach, hooking a strand of hair behind my ear.
All that irritation flushes from me when I see that it is Jay who lies on the cot before her, his skin pale and chalky. A set of holes mark his neck, but the blood has been cleaned away, just like the last dream I had of his death.
Something in my head goes quiet, and it is all I can do to force my gaze to the cot on the other side of him—where Lenora lies. Her throat is cut from ear to ear, but she isn’t cleaned; her sheets and clothing are soaked red with her blood, still fresh and dripping onto the stone floor.
My movements are so loud in my ears as I kneel beside Kai, near Jay’s head. Even Kai becomes a distant presence as I reach my fingers to brush his hair away. Despite my finger pads being burned smooth, they feel too abrasive against his cold skin.
But at my touch, his eyes snap open—crimson rings of fire burn back at me. A snarl rips from his throat, and a hand snatches the back of my head, fisting my hair, baring my neck to him.
Before I can do anything, he closes his mouth on my skin, sharp fangs piercing, the pain paralyzing—
