The rain didn't just fall; it reclaimed the earth. By the time I reached the outskirts of the town, the sky had collapsed into a torrential downpour that turned the windshield into a sheet of liquid glass. My hands were locked onto the steering wheel, my knuckles white, my breath coming in jagged, shallow hitches. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the shattered glass of the photograph in the Thorne manor. I saw that face—my face—trapped in a silver frame from a century ago, a relic of a past I didn't own.
I am a ghost to them, I thought, the internal monologue a frantic, looping scream that drowned out the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers. I'm not Lyra Vance anymore. I'm a memory walking in a dead girl's shoes. I'm a second chance for a man who isn't even breathing, a mirror for a monster who wants to see me shatter.
I couldn't go home. I couldn't sit across from Jeremy at the dinner table and pretend that my world hadn't just been turned inside out by a portrait and a brother with eyes like ice. I couldn't look at Aunt Jenna and see the worry in her eyes without feeling like the lie I was living was about to crush us all. Instead, I found myself driving toward the Falls. It was the social heart of Mystic Ridge, a place where the water cascaded over the jagged rocks of the upper ridge into a deep, dark basin below. Tonight, despite the storm, it was meant to be the site of the back-to-school party—a bonfire fueled by cheap beer, loud music, and the desperate need of every teenager in town to feel something other than the encroaching autumn.
I parked my car at the edge of the woods, the tires churning through the thick, black mud. I stepped out, and the rain instantly soaked through my thin sweater, clinging to my skin like a cold shroud. The mud sucked at my boots with every step, and the distant roar of the falls began to compete with the muffled, rhythmic thump of the music coming from the clearing.
I walked toward the flickering orange light of the bonfire, my movements mechanical. The party was a chaotic blur of overlapping bodies, steam rising from wet clothes, and the smell of woodsmoke mixed with damp earth. I saw Caroline laughing near the keg, a red plastic cup in her hand, her blonde hair plastered to her cheeks in wet coils. I saw Matt watching me from across the fire, his eyes full of the same lingering questions he'd been asking since the funeral—questions I still didn't have the heart to answer. But I didn't stop for them. I kept walking toward the edge of the clearing, toward the darkness where the light of the fire died and the roar of the water became absolute.
"Lyra! You're soaking! You look like you just crawled out of the river again!"
Vicki Donovan stumbled toward me, her eyes glazed and dilated, her movements erratic. She looked worse than she had at school; her skin had a sallow, sickly cast, and she was constantly rubbing at the thick bandage on her neck, her fingers twitching with a nervous, frantic energy.
"I'm fine, Vicki," I said, trying to move past her, but she caught my arm. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her fingers digging into my skin with a strength that made me wince.
"No, you're not fine. You're like me," she giggled, a sound that lacked any real mirth, sounding more like a rattle in her chest. "You're seeing things in the dark, aren't you? The shadows. The brothers. They're everywhere, Lyra. They're under our skin, waiting for the lights to go out."
She leaned in closer, her breath smelling of stale beer and something metallic, something sharp. Her eyes widened, focusing on a point over my shoulder. "He's here. The mean one. He doesn't smell like the others. He smells like... he smells like the end of the world."
I spun around, my heart leaping into my throat. Jax was standing at the edge of the tree line, framed by two ancient oaks. He was dressed in a dark leather jacket that seemed to drink the flickering light of the bonfire. He wasn't looking at me; he was looking at Vicki. There was a hunger in his expression that made my blood turn to slush—a predatory, absolute focus that made him look less like a man and more like a creature of the wild, circling a wounded lamb in the tall grass.
"Vicki, go back to the fire. Go find Matt," I commanded, my voice sharp with a protective instinct that flared up through my fear.
"Why? The fire is too hot. I'm so cold, Lyra. I've been cold ever since that night in the woods," Vicki murmured, her eyes lost in a trance. She let go of my arm and began to wander off into the shadows, her footsteps heavy and uneven as she disappeared toward the upper path.
I turned back to where Jax had been standing, but the space was empty. The forest had swallowed him whole, leaving nothing behind but the scent of ozone and the feeling of being watched by something that didn't know mercy.
He's hunting, my mind whispered, a cold realization dawning on me. He didn't come here for the party. He came because there are hundreds of beating hearts in this clearing, and he's the only thing in the woods that doesn't have one.
I started to run after Vicki, calling her name, but the music was reaching a crescendo, the bass thumping like a dying heart against the damp air, drowning out my voice. I pushed through the groups of dancing teenagers, ignored Caroline's hand reaching out to grab mine, and plunged into the dark, narrow path that led toward the upper falls.
The sound of the water grew deafening as I climbed higher. The mist from the falls mixed with the torrential rain, creating a blinding, white shroud that made every tree look like a grasping hand. I slipped on a wet stone, my knee hitting the ground with a sickening crack that sent a flare of white-hot pain through my leg. I gasped, clutching the rock, but I forced myself back up. The scent of copper—sharp and unmistakable—hit my nose, cutting through the smell of the rain.
"Vicki!" I screamed.
A scream ripped through the night—a high, thin sound that was abruptly cut short by a wet, choking noise.
I scrambled up the last few mossy rocks, my fingers clawing at the earth. There, in a small stone alcove hidden by a curtain of dripping ferns, I saw them.
Vicki was slumped against a jagged rock, her head tilted back at an unnatural angle, her eyes rolled back in her head. Jax was leaning over her, his hands pinning her shoulders to the stone. His face was buried in the side of her neck. I could hear it—the rhythmic, desperate sound of drinking. It was the sound of a man dying of thirst finally finding a well. It was a sound that belonged in a nightmare, not in the woods of Mystic Ridge.
"Jax! Stop it! You're killing her!" I screamed, my voice breaking against the roar of the falls.
He froze. Slowly, with a deliberate, agonizing grace, he lifted his head. He didn't look like the man I had seen in the manor. His face was a mask of primal horror. His eyes were no longer blue; they were a pulsing, midnight black that seemed to fill the entire socket, and the skin around them was mapped with dark, bulging veins that throbbed with every beat of his stolen heart. Blood—Vicki's blood—smeared his lips and chin, dripping onto the collar of his jacket.
He looked at me, and for a second, I saw a flicker of something in those black eyes—a flash of shame, or perhaps just the annoyance of a predator interrupted. He let Vicki's limp body slide to the ground. She hit the mud with a soft thud, her eyes fluttering, a dark, jagged wound weeping on her throat.
"I told you, Lyra," Jax hissed, his voice a distorted, guttural version of the melodic tone he'd used before. He wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, leaving a crimson streak across his cheek. "I'm not the hero in this story. I'm the part of the night that bites back."
He took a step toward me, his movements blurred and impossible. Before I could even draw a breath to scream again, Silas was there. He appeared between us like a bolt of green lightning, his hand slamming into Jax's chest and throwing him back against the rock wall.
"Enough!" Silas roared, his own face beginning to shift, the same dark veins appearing beneath his emerald eyes. "You've done enough!"
"I'm just showing her what we are, Silas!" Jax spat, scrambling to his feet, his teeth bared in a snarl. "Stop pretending you're any different! You want it just as much as I do! I can smell her heart from here, and so can you!"
Silas didn't answer. He kept his back to me, his body shaking with the effort of restraint. "Run, Lyra. Get her out of here. Run!"
I didn't wait. I scrambled toward Vicki, grabbing her under the arms and dragging her back down the path. My adrenaline was a cold fire in my veins, numbing the pain in my knee. Behind me, I heard the sound of wood splintering and stone cracking as the two brothers collided, a violent, supernatural struggle that shook the very ground beneath my feet.
I dragged Vicki back into the light of the bonfire, screaming for help. The music died instantly as the crowd saw the blood. Matt ran toward us, his face pale with terror as he took Vicki from my arms.
"Something attacked her! An animal!" I lied, the words tasting like ash in my mouth.
I looked back toward the dark tree line, expecting to see them emerge, to see the black eyes and the blood. But there was only the rain and the shadows. Silas and Jax were gone, vanished back into the dark as if they were nothing more than figments of the storm.
As the sirens began to wail in the distance, I stood alone in the mud, my hands stained with Vicki's blood. I looked down at my palms, the red liquid mixing with the rainwater, and I realized that the bridge hadn't been the end. It was just the beginning of a long, dark fall.