Chapter 2 THE GIRL WHO DIDN'T BELIEVE IN MONSTERS

Lena Ashcroft hated museums.

It wasn't just the quiet, which felt heavy and artificial, or the way the air always seemed to be exactly sixty-eight degrees to protect pieces of parchment that were older than the concept of paper. It was the smell. They smelled like dust and dead men with too much money-stone, silence, and the kind of forced reverence that made her skin itch.

To most people, the British Museum was a temple of human achievement. To Lena, it was a graveyard where history sat behind glass, stripped of its soul and given a catalog number.

She adjusted her security badge for the tenth time that hour, the plastic clip biting into her thumb. She stood watch in the restricted wing-the "Old World" wing-stifling a yawn as the last of the evening's VIP tour groups shuffled past the velvet ropes. Their voices were a low, blurred hum, punctuated by the occasional gasp of rehearsed awe or the clinical click of a high-end camera.

Lena barely noticed them. Her mind was already at home, in her cramped studio apartment with its peeling wallpaper and the radiator that clanked like a dying ghost.

Her life was painfully, beautifully ordinary, and tonight was supposed to be no exception.

She was twenty-six, her bank account was a tragedy in three acts, and she currently had an overdue rent notice folded into the back pocket of her black uniform trousers. She'd spent the last year trying to rebuild a life that had shattered when her engagement ended-a breakup she told her sister was "mutual" and "mature," even though it had felt more like a limb being torn off without anesthetic.

But lately, the ordinary world felt like a thin mask.

The nightmares had started six months ago. At first, she'd blamed the double shifts and the cheap caffeine. Then she blamed the city. But doctors couldn't explain why she woke up every morning with the phantom scent of smoke in her hair and the taste of salt on her tongue.

They came in fragments. Vivid, jagged shards of a life she had never lived.

A man with eyes like molten gold standing in a field of waist-high snow, blood staining his hands. A forest fire so hot the sky turned purple, and the sound of someone screaming her name-a name that wasn't Lena, but felt more "right" than the one on her birth certificate. The sensation of cold steel sliding between her ribs.

She always woke up gasping, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird, clutching her throat as if to check if it was still intact.

The doctors called it "Grief-Induced Somatic Flashbacks." Her therapist called it "Unresolved Trauma."

Lena just called it exhausting.

Tonight, the air in the museum felt wrong from the moment she had clocked in. The "Relics of the Old World" exhibit was quieter than usual, the shadows pooling in the corners where the ancient artifacts rested. The temperature had dropped ten degrees since midnight, and the air felt stale and heavy, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath, waiting for a signal.

"Get a grip, Ashcroft," she muttered, her voice echoing too loudly against the vaulted ceiling.

She paced the marble floor, her boots making a rhythmic clack-clack-clack that usually soothed her. She passed a collection of Celtic swords, then a display of 14th-century tapestries that looked like they had been woven with dried blood.

Then she saw it. The case at the very end of the hall.

The pendant.

It was small, nestled on a bed of black velvet. A silver medallion shaped like a wolf biting its own tail-an Ouroboros of fur and fang. The placard claimed it was a ceremonial piece from the 13th century, recovered from a burial mound in Northern Europe.

Lena hated it. She'd hated it since it arrived two weeks ago.

Every time she walked past it, a sharp, cold discomfort settled in her solar plexus. It was a feeling of profound recognition, the way you might recognize a killer in a crowded room before they even draw a weapon.

She stopped in front of the glass. Her reflection stared back at her-pale skin, dark circles under her eyes, and a mass of dark hair she'd pulled into a messy bun. She looked tired. She looked human.

Then the pain hit.

It wasn't a dull ache. It was a violent, white-hot brand.

Lena gasped, her knees buckling as a searing heat flared just below her collarbone. It felt like someone had pressed a glowing coal against her skin and held it there.

"Ah-God!"

She stumbled back, her hand flying to her chest, her fingers clawing at her shirt. Her vision swam, the white marble of the floor turning into a kaleidoscope of dizzying shapes.

Then the pendant began to move.

At first, she thought it was the blood rushing in her ears, making her eyes play tricks. But the silver chain was rattling against the velvet. The medallion was trembling, vibrating with a frequency so high it made her teeth ache.

Cling. Cling. Cling.

The sound of the silver hitting the glass was like a countdown.

"No," she whispered, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm. "No, no, no."

The lights overhead flickered. The hum of the building's HVAC system faltered, dying out into a tomb-like silence. The dim, orange emergency lights kicked in, bathing the hall in a sickly, apocalyptic glow. The air grew impossibly thick, pressing against her lungs until every breath felt like she was inhaling water.

And then, she felt him.

She didn't see him, but the presence was immense. It was the feeling of a mountain leaning over her, the weight of an ocean about to crash down. It was ancient, predatory, and achingly familiar. It wrapped around her mind, a golden tether that pulled at a part of her soul she didn't know existed.

Lena's legs gave out. She hit the floor hard, her palms scraping against the cold marble.

"Please," she sobbed, the word caught in her throat. "Help me."

But the museum was empty. Only the statues were watching.

Then the world fractured.

The marble beneath her hands didn't feel like stone anymore. It felt like wet earth.

THE FIRST VISION: THE HEALER (1542)

The smell of burning pine hit her first.

Lena-or the woman who was Lena-was tied to a thick oaken post. The village square was a blur of angry faces and mud-splattered tunics. The sky was a bruised grey, heavy with the promise of rain that wouldn't come in time to save her.

"Witch!" they screamed. "Demon-seed!"

She looked down. Her hands were small, calloused from grinding herbs and tending to the sick. She wasn't a witch; she was a girl who knew how to stop a fever. But the villagers didn't care about the lives she'd saved. They only cared that the Alpha of the Great Forest had been seen at her window.

The fire licked at her feet. It was a terrifying, orange beast that roared in the wind.

Then she saw him.

A man tore through the crowd like a wolf through sheep. He wasn't human. He moved too fast, his eyes glowing like embers in the twilight. He roared-a sound that wasn't a man's voice, but the howl of a god in mourning.

He reached for her as the flames climbed her skirts, his fingers brushing hers for one agonizing second.

"Adrian!" she screamed.

Then the fire consumed everything.

THE SECOND VISION: THE SOLDIER'S WIFE (1815)

The heat of the fire vanished, replaced by a cold so sharp it felt like glass in her lungs.

Lena was lying in the mud. The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder and the metallic tang of fresh blood. All around her, the sounds of Waterloo were dying down-the moans of the wounded, the distant crack of a final musket shot.

She felt the wetness at her side. She looked down and saw a crimson stain spreading across her white bodice. A stray ball. A piece of lead that didn't care about her name.

"Stay with me! Look at me!"

A man was kneeling over her. He was wearing a tattered officer's coat, but his face was the same. The same sharp jaw, the same dark, tortured brow. And those eyes. Those golden, impossible eyes.

"Adrian," she coughed, the blood bubbling in the back of her throat. "The children..."

"I have them," he lied, his voice breaking. His hands were pressed hard against her wound, but the blood just kept coming. "I have you. I'm not letting you go. Not again. Never again."

He bent down, his forehead resting against hers. He was sobbing, a sound of such profound, immortal agony that it hurt worse than the bullet.

"Find me," she whispered as the world turned grey.

"I will always find you," he vowed.

THE THIRD VISION: THE SCHOLAR (1924)

The mud turned to a velvet rug. The smell of blood turned to the scent of old books and expensive brandy.

Lena was sitting in a high-backed chair in a dimly lit library. A glass of wine sat on the table beside her. Her head felt heavy. Her limbs felt like lead.

Opposite her sat a woman with dark hair and a cruel, beautiful smile. Selene.

"You always think love is enough, don't you?" Selene murmured, watching as Lena's hand trembled. "But he is a monster, my dear. And you are just a candle. Eventually, the wind has to blow you out."

The poison was efficient. Lena's heart slowed, each beat a struggle.

The door burst open. Adrian.

He looked younger here, dressed in a sleek tuxedo, but the exhaustion in his soul was visible in the way he moved. He saw the glass. He saw her pale face.

He didn't look at Selene. He ran to Lena, catching her before she slid from the chair.

"No," he begged, his voice a ragged whisper. "Not this time. We had only a year. Please, Lena. Just one more year."

She tried to speak, but her tongue was numb. She could only watch as the gold in his eyes turned to a sea of tears.

THE AWAKENING

"I don't know you!" Lena screamed, her voice echoing through the restricted wing of the British Museum.

She was back on the marble floor. She was clutching her head, her body racking with sobs. The visions had been so real she could still feel the heat of the fire and the cold of the mud.

"I don't know you!"

But her soul knew better. Her soul was screaming back at her, demanding she recognize the truth.

The pendant in the case suddenly shattered.

The glass didn't just crack; it exploded outward in a spray of diamond-like shards. The silver wolf-medallion snapped in half, the two pieces clattering against the marble floor like discarded bone.

Throughout the building, the alarms went mental. High-pitched shrieks bounced off the walls. Red lights spun, painting the hall in the color of the bleeding moon outside.

Lena collapsed fully. Her strength was gone. Her mind felt like a house that had been ransacked by a storm.

She lay there, gasping, staring at the broken pendant.

"What did you do to me?" she whispered hoarsely to the empty air.

She pressed her trembling fingers to her collarbone, right where the burning had been. Her skin was raised. She could feel the shape of it. A crescent. A mark. It felt like it was humming, a low-frequency vibration that resonated in her very bones.

"Ma'am? Ma'am! Can you hear me?"

Footsteps pounded toward her. Beams of flashlights cut through the darkness. Security guards-her coworkers-surrounded her.

"It's Lena! Lena, stay with us!"

"Call an ambulance! She's hemorrhaging or something-look at her neck!"

Lena flinched as hands touched her. She tried to tell them she was fine, but her voice was gone. Her vision was dimming at the edges, the world shrinking down to the flickering red lights and the sound of her own frantic heart.

The last thing she felt before the darkness claimed her wasn't the hands of the guards.

It was a shift in the air. A sudden, violent surge of power that made the guards freeze and the alarms falter for a split second.

Someone was coming.

And they weren't coming to help.

THE HOSPITAL

University College Hospital was a temple of sterile white and the smell of antiseptic.

The ambulance ride had been a blur of sirens and the metallic taste of an oxygen mask. Lena was vaguely aware of being rolled through corridors, of the bright fluorescent lights that felt like knives against her retinas.

She was in a private room now. They had sedated her, or tried to, but the visions kept dancing behind her eyelids.

Suddenly, the door to the ward didn't just open-it was nearly taken off its hinges.

The nurses at the station screamed as a man stormed past them. He didn't look like a visitor. He looked like a force of nature dressed in a thousand-pound suit. He was soaked to the bone, his dark hair plastered to his face, his eyes fixed on Room 402 with a terrifying intensity.

"Sir! You can't be back here!" a young doctor shouted, stepping into his path.

Adrian Blackthorne didn't even look at him. He simply kept walking. The doctor was physically shoved aside by a wall of unseen pressure, stumbling into a gurney as Adrian passed.

He reached Lena's door. He paused, his hand trembling as it hovered over the handle.

For seven hundred years, he had waited for this moment. For seven hundred years, he had rehearsed what he would say.

But as he pushed the door open and saw her-pale, fragile, and marked by the moon-the only thing he could do was breathe.

He crossed the room in two strides and fell to his knees beside her bed. He didn't touch her-he didn't dare. He just watched the rise and fall of her chest.

"I found you," he whispered, his voice thick with a grief that spanned centuries.

On the bed, Lena's eyes flew open. They weren't their usual brown. For a fleeting second, they reflected the silver of the moon.

"Adrian?" she whispered.

It wasn't a question. It was a memory.

Outside the window, the moon began to weep red. The hunt had officially begun.