"That's the first place they're going to look for us when they find out we've escaped." Ethan hobbled alongside me, cursing his way to my house.

I let out an exasperated sigh. "I have to call the wolves and let them know the hunters are on their way. I can't run there fast enough, especially not while keeping you safe."

"Keeping me safe?" Ethan argued. "Leading me into a den of wolves won't keep me safe, they'll eat me! Besides, what's it to you if I'm safe?"

I wanted to stop in my tracks and slap him in hopes it would shake a memory or two loose, but I didn't have the time. Ignoring his complaints, I ran into my house and up to the house phone, quickly dialing the number engrained in memory.

Five rings later it went to voicemail. Was he upset with me for being half hunter? Was it too late? Had the hunters already found them? Callum's voice prompted me to leave a message after the tone.

"The hunters are coming for your pack! Get out of there now!" I shouted into the phone. If he was mad at me there wasn't much else I could say, so I hung up and considered my options.

I could run there and try to help but I was already behind the hunters. I wouldn't make it. And if I left, I wouldn't know what to do with Ethan.

"Shouldn't you be able to heal as fast as I can?" I asked, curious of what powers a vampire had.

Ethan stiffly laughed and leaned into the wall for support. "The hunters dosed me with aconite, it keeps me from healing or using any of my other powers," he explained. "It's a very poisonous plant to humans, and it's one of the few things that can be deadly for vampires as well."

"I thought they used silver, or stakes like on TV." In my limited time of being a werewolf, I hadn't learned much about the supernatural.

He shook his head. "Silver only incapacitates when it's combined with aconite. Anything struck through the heart could kill me, or if I was beheaded," he drew his finger across his neck. "Immortality doesn't exactly mean I'm unkillable."

"Well, how do you reverse the aconite? We can't stay here for much longer. Like you said, the hunters are gonna look here first and we need you healed if they find us." I'd gone from coming to terms with being a werewolf to hunted miracle child so fast it was giving me whiplash.

"Time," he answered. "The only cure for aconite poisoning. Well, that and blood."

"Then drink my blood," I offered.

Ethan's lips curled in disgust. "No thanks."

I rolled my eyes. "Let me guess, werewolf blood isn't good enough for your delicate tastes."

"I'm sure eating garbage would technically satiate your hunger but you're not about to go and eat it are you?" He asked sarcastically.

I screamed out an expletive so loud a neighbor's dog from down the street barked back in protest.

"Why do you care so much, anyway?" Ethan eyed me.

It was the last straw. Through the instinct I'd learned from fairytales, I grabbed Ethan by the collar of his shirt and forced a kiss on his lips so hard it tripped us both and we fell to the floor.

My lips lingered on his as I hesitated to pull away.

Ethan reached out and took my head in his hands, his cold fingers winding through my hair, and continued the kiss more forcefully. I could taste the blood from the cut on his lip and my stomach rumbled with insatiable hunger. My head swam in a euphoric haze, but a resurfacing emotion beckoned me back to reality.

Callum.

I pulled away from Ethan, throwing myself as far from him as possible. That was the last kiss I could ever give him.

Goodbye.

He touched his lips as if they were made of delicate glass.

"I'm sorry," but I wasn't saying it for Ethan's sake. I had to get to Callum. "I have to go," I stood.

Ethan flashed a crooked smile. "I thought you were going to eat me for a second there."

So much for fairytales. A kiss can't cure a damn thing.

The Honda was still parked out front. I searched for keys and found a spare in the rubbish drawer. "Take the car in the driveway. Go as far as it'll take you," I ordered, tossing the key at him.

He caught it with little effort. "What about you?"

"I told you, I have to go. I have to save the wolves." There was little chance I could save them. After all, I was meant to end them, but that wouldn't stop me from trying.

"I'll come with you," he offered.

Confused, I narrowed my eyes at him. I didn't know who I was talking to anymore. One minute he was berating me for being a wolf and begging me not to eat him. The next, he was kissing me back and offering help.

"You can't come. You haven't healed yet," I pointed out.

Ethan shook his head. "I'm not letting you go against the hunters by yourself."

"Who are you?" I snapped, maybe I had jogged something loose. Or he'd just hit his head really hard when we'd fallen over.

He stood up, bracing himself against the wall. "I'm just a vampire with a vendetta. Those hunters captured me too, and don't forget they tortured me for answers I didn't have. You had it easy in there. I'm going to get vengeance on them."

Yep, not my Ethan.

"Fine, we better go. I'm not gonna wait up for you though. I can't afford to let you slow me down," it sounded more bitter than I had intended it to be, but it was the truth.

"I'll be right behind you," he said, gesturing me to lead.

His sudden allegiance made me uneasy, but it was better than hearing him gripe about werewolves.

After running upstairs to dig for my cell phone, I dialed in Coen's number just in case. He didn't answer again, and I actually hoped it was only because he hated me. I didn't want to think of any other reason he wouldn't answer.

There was no way I would've remembered how to get back to the campsite if my sense of smell hadn't recovered. Being kicked in the face and drugged with poisoned silver had taken its toll on me. My attempts to shift failed, even after I tried to muster up the anger that had gotten me to shift before. So we walked and stumbled through the forest, following a faint scent of wolves.

Then the smell of smoke swallowed everything. Panic rose in my chest. The dream of the harbinger of death and his fire pit of bodies came to mind. I ran with every ounce of power I had left in me until the fire came into view.

The cabins were burning.

I rushed into the blaze, ignoring my own safety and ripped open door after door, fearing to find bodies inside.

No one.

I inhaled a breath of relief and gagged on the smoke consuming the air.

Ethan caught up to me and pulled at my arm, dragging me to safety. "No one's here," he shouted over the sound of the cabins crackling and collapsing under the burning inferno.

Cradling my knees on the ground, I stared into the flames in wild disbelief. "Did they get out?" I asked aloud.

"There aren't any bodies, and I don't smell any blood. I don't think anyone's here anymore, not even the hunters," he answered.

I had entirely forgotten about the hunters.

My hands shook as I reached for my phone and dialed Coen's number again. "Please tell me you're okay," I begged the voicemail. He still wasn't answering my calls. I hung up and put the phone back into my pocket.

"Who do you keep calling?" Ethan asked.

"No one." It wasn't the time or place to explain. "We have to get out of here. The hunters are going to find out we're missing any second now."

Ethan held out his hand, offering to help me up. "We can take my car. I'm parked just outside of town."

"Your car?" I asked bewildered, "Why didn't you mention you have a car?"

He laughed, which seemed out of place and almost menacing with the backdrop of the fire rising behind him. "You're really demanding when you play the role of hero. It just slipped my mind." He smiled wryly.

"Argh!" I groaned. "Well, where do you plan on going?"

"Anywhere but here," he answered.

I cautiously took his hand and stood up, quickly releasing it to dust my pants off. "I have to find my mom," but I had no idea where to even begin to look for her.

He scratched at the back of his head. "I don't know if what the hunters said is true, but if Aldrich does have her then I can get in and out, maybe even without a fight."

Finally, there was some hope in the world. "We have to find out. Please, take me there," I begged.

"It's a ways away." Ethan's eyes met mine and for a second the fire brought them to life with the same sparkle they'd had before his change.

"How far?" I squinted at him, fighting to ignore the semblance of humanity.

"Three thousand miles, give or take." He shrugged.

"Three thousand miles?" My mouth dropped open. "How long will it take to get there?"

"About four to five days." He lifted an eyebrow. "Ready for an adventure?"

I looked back at the burning cabins. They had disintegrated much faster than I would have thought possible. Their blackened husks stood like ghosts of their former selves. Soon they would just be embers glowing against the night sky.

There was nothing left for me here.

"I guess I follow your lead now." I tried to smile but the weight of the unknown warped it into a grimace. This was my only option. Follow the boy I no longer knew into the lair of a terrible monster in hopes of finding my mother. And hope Callum would call me back.

Leading the way to his car, Ethan limped with every step. We tried our best to keep a steady pace through the forest in case the hunters caught up to us, but it was difficult with Ethan's injuries.

A smell caught my attention, instantly filling me with dread.

Strawberries laced with venom.

Ethan paused in his tracks just as sudden as I did.

"My, my," called a familiar voice. "Wouldn't have guessed you'd pick up a lost puppy on your little excursion."

"Persephone," Ethan groaned.

The girl stepped out from behind a tree in front of us. Her mahogany hair was twisted into a stern bun on top of her head. The dress she wore reminded me of a posh model, heels and all. It was an odd wardrobe choice for standing in the middle of the forest.

My stomach twisted and my body quivered with anger, and yet it still refused to shift. I cursed under my breath.

Persephone looked me up and down with a scowl. "Why do you persist on loving this girl?" Her nostrils flared angrily.

Ethan looked taken aback. "You know who she is?"

"Of course I know." She glowered, turning her gaze to me. "Has he told you he ate your annoying friend?" She smirked.

My heart stopped. "What?"

Ethan shook his head, pulling his hands through his hair. "You don't understand. Persephone led me to her. I couldn't stop myself."

"You killed Maeve." Tears rushed down my cheeks and I replayed the night of Maeve's murder in my head. I watched him murder Maeve.

Persephone laughed with the enthusiasm of a wicked witch. "He's a vampire, sweetie. What did you expect? You should've taken Maeve's advice and moved on."

"He's dead, Gingy, in the ground. Dead and buried. Honestly, you have to move on." I replayed the last thing Maeve had said to me before she died.

"How do you know what Maeve told me?" I asked, wondering if she'd been watching me that whole first night I'd met her.

Her face relaxed into an even smile. "Because, I told her to say it."

The last words she'd ever said to me and they weren't even her words. They were the reason I'd left her. The reason I had fled to the cemetery. The reason she followed me there and was killed.

"How?" I demanded.

She waved her hand in the air. "Hypnotic suggestion. Glamour. Call it what you will, but it helps." She winked.

Ethan interjected, "You planned that night out, didn't you? You knew who they were, you wanted me to kill Maeve."

"Aldrich wanted you to kill Maeve." She laughed. "And the best part is, she watched you do it," she pointed to me.

Ethan's face was tortured. "I'm so sorry, Gingy."

He remembers me

I wanted to reach for him. I wanted him to be my Ethan, but the truth was he killed Maeve. He couldn't be my Ethan, not anymore.

"Why would you make him kill Maeve?" I asked Persephone, ignoring Ethan's pleading eyes.

She scoffed. "I didn't make him do anything."

"You pointed him in her direction," I argued.

She cruelly laughed. "I couldn't care less who dies and who lives, sweetie. But I must admit, knowing you were there watching was deliciously satisfying. It's too easy a thing to hurt you both when your weakness is each other."

My eyes narrowed. "But why even bother? How did you know he cared for me? That was the first night I ever met you and I didn't even know he was there."

"That was not the first night I had met you, in a way." She smiled. "I came to collect him. His choice was simple. Come with us to live eternally, or everyone he knew would die. Such a compassionate boy, he chose to come. His only wish was to say goodbye and we allowed it. We gave him one hour to get ready and I discreetly followed him to make sure he didn't try to run. To my surprise, he simply tucked his sister in and gave his father a quick peck on the cheek as he lay in a drunken stupor on the couch. Then he went to you. I could hear your sickening need for each other from the street where I waited for him. While he had been at his family's house for only a few short minutes, he spent the majority of that hour with you."

The night I thought he'd died, it was all a lie. "But why hurt him further? What did it matter to you if he killed someone from his past?" I begged.

"So he couldn't return to it," she spat. "He's not supposed to want to come back here. I had to make sure he wouldn't have a past to return to. I followed you to Chico, I called him to meet me there for some fun." Her smile spread more wickedly. "You'll never take him back now."

It was true. I hated it, but it was true.

Ethan turned to Persephone, spite burned in his eyes. "If you leave now, I won't kill you," he offered, although I could tell it was a bluff. His body hadn't healed any further.

She threw her head back in laughter. "I'd rather not incur the wrath of Aldrich by challenging his favorite son. Besides, you could never kill me. You're weak," she sneered.

"Then leave. Go tell Aldrich I'm done being his favorite son. Tell him that he can threaten to kill people from my past all he wants, because I don't care anymore," he ended flatly.

Persephone eyed him. "I'll send him your best wishes then." She turned to leave and called over her shoulder, "Your little wolf is gonna be first on his list."

It took all of two seconds for her to disappear into the forest.

Ethan and I stood in silence, unable to look at each other. I wanted to confront him about Maeve, but what was the use? Somehow vampirism caused amnesia, so could I really blame him for what happened? As it was my nature to shift into a wolf, it was his nature to devour human blood. We were monsters.

"Gingy," he begged.

"Don't," I stopped him. There wasn't anything he could say to make me feel better about what he'd done. Persephone was right. I would never love him again.

The attitude in his voice went from remorseful to angry, "I'm getting out of here before the hunters find me."

Before he could disappear into the forest, I corrected him, "We're getting out of here before the hunters find us." I watched the muscles in his jaw clench. "I got you out of that cell, the least you could do is help me find my mother."

His eyes tightened. "It's going to be a lot harder than I thought," he warned. "If your mom is even in there, we're going to have to fight our way out. Especially now that Aldrich knows I'm not on his side."

"Whose side are you on?" I asked out of curiosity.

"I don't know, mine?" He shrugged. "It doesn't matter anyway, if you're not on Aldrich's side you're dead."

"Who is this guy?" Aldrich was becoming more intimidating by the second; I already wanted to avoid him at all costs.

Ethan shook his head. "We have to keep moving. Car first, Aldrich later." He pointed through the forest, and I followed him in silence, listening to the quiet that surrounded us. If there were anyone else lurking in the shadows, we would know.

After clearing the forest, we followed the highway, keeping to the edge of the trees for cover. I could tell Ethan was in pain and exhausted. A few more miles down the road we came across a sleek black muscle car with two white stripes down its hood. It was parked in a random turnout along the highway.

"Voila," Ethan gestured grandly toward the car. "My most prized possession." He opened the passenger door for me, and I bounced into the plush red seat, a smile fighting at my lips.

"Since when do you have a car this classy?" My Ethan had never been able to afford a car, not even after working nights at the local diner. His family had been lucky enough to afford a house in the gates.

He turned the key and revved the engine. "Oh, you mean my 1970 tuxedo black Chevelle Super Sport? It's Aldrich's, or at least it was until I borrowed it with intent to keep." He smiled and rapidly pulled out onto the highway.

"Are you going to tell me about Aldrich now? Why he might have my mom? Why he's apparently obsessed with you?" I pressed.

Ethan shifted the car into a speed so fast I wasn't sure if we were moving or the earth was moving around us. "Aldrich is many things, what he is not is obsessed with me," he clarified. "It's my mom."

One thing I knew not to bring up around Ethan was his mom. Although she'd been gone for some time, any mention of her sent Ethan into a dark hole for days on end. This Ethan sounded almost inconvenienced by his mother. "Your mom?" I asked tentatively.

He steadily glared into the road ahead. "Yep, mommy dearest fell in love with Aldrich."

I didn't want to sound like I was pointing out the obvious, but it didn't make any sense. "I thought your mom had passed away." I tenderly stepped around the word suicide.

"Yeah, about that. It's sort of the oldest vampire trick in the world. Fake death, move on." He tapped his thumb against the steering wheel as he accelerated even faster. "Aldrich has many homes across the world, he's very old and very nostalgic. One of his favorite homes is Soundless Cove. He came back for a hundred year check up on his old haunt and met my mother." He rubbed his thumb into his temple causing the car to jerk stiffly to the right. "Why bother with a messy divorce if you can just become a vampire, jump over a cliff, and be presumed dead?"

"It's pretty clever. Not something I would have expected when I was a simple human." And how I longed to be a simple human again. "So, how old is very old? Is Aldrich from Soundless?"

Ethan bit into his thumbnail, picking off a tiny piece with his teeth. "He came over with some of the first settlers there, but he's older than that. He's the oldest."

"What? There's no one older than him?" I asked skeptically.

He shook his head with a blank stare. "Not possible. He's the first."

It was dumbfounding. The very first vampire was alive and well from what it sounded like. In all the movies I'd seen, the older the vampire, the sicklier and more crazed. This was apparently not the case with Aldrich. "So how did it start? What turned him?"

Ethan's stomach growled and he clenched onto the steering wheel with both hands and groaned.

"Are you okay?"

The look on his face twisted, if he hadn't been so pale I would've thought he'd turned green. "I need blood."

My first reaction was panic as the image of him tearing into Maeve crept across my mind.

"I won't kill anyone," he promised, seeing the look on my face. "I just need a little for now. The aconite in my body is keeping me from healing. They must have given me more than I thought," his voice was becoming dry and hoarse. He sped up, pushing the car to dangerous speeds.

I forced myself to respond sensibly, "What do we do?"

"Hotel," he answered. "It's going to be daylight soon anyway."

Daylight. I hadn't even considered what the other disadvantages to being a vampire were. "Hotel it is then." I bit into my lip, torn between his immediate need for blood and rest, and my mother's immediate need for rescue.

"There's only one problem," he amended, looking more unwell by the second. His eyelids drooped almost closed, causing him to jerk the car to the side once again.

"What?"

"I—" His words cut out as he slumped over in the driver's seat and careened over an embankment.

♪

Something wet dripped steadily up my face, or down depending on perspective. The car was overturned. The blood had rushed to my head, and I felt the pressure of its weight on my temples, threatening to burst through. My body hung from my seatbelt like an overturned ragdoll.

Ethan.

He wasn't in the car with me, and I desperately struggled to free myself from what was beginning to feel a lot like a death trap. Claustrophobia was setting in and I was having a hard time calming down enough to figure out a way to get the seatbelt off. After a heavy sigh to relax myself, I used my right arm to cling to the seat, forcing my body to sit against the cushion. Then I carefully unbuckled myself with my left hand causing my body to slam into the hard metal ceiling below me. Glass covered every inch, and I crawled my way out through the side window, shards cutting into my hands.

"Ethan?" I called, searching for his body among the wreckage.

A small moan came from the shoulder of the road, and I ran to his unmoving body.

"Are you okay?" I asked as I scanned his body for major injuries. Small lacerations covered his face. The injuries he'd received from the hunters still hadn't healed. The smell of his blood watered my mouth. It was starting to become apparent that the wolf in me really did want to devour him.

"No. You?" He pressed his hand to his stomach as it protested in hunger.

I shook my head. "We have to get you blood." As much as it pained me to say, he was fading too quickly without it.

Headlights flooded the night road, and I jumped to my feet to hail the driver for aid. The car came to an abrupt stop and for a moment I feared the hunters had found us.

A portly man stepped out of the dark colored sedan. A button-up shirt clung to his bulging belly, threatening to pop open with the slightest of movements. His balding head shone with sweat against the illumination of the headlights as he stared at me in panic.

"Hold tight, I'm going to call 9-1-1," he instructed.

Before I could stop him, Ethan bolted to the man's side and sank his teeth deep into his neck.

"No—" but it was too late.

The man had given little struggle and was now slumped to the pavement. Ethan dragged the man's body over to the crashed Chevelle.

"What are you doing?" I asked with disgust.

Ethan searched through the man's pockets. Not finding what he was looking for, he ran to the car parked in the middle of the road, headlights still blaring. "Getting us a new car," he answered coldly.

Not my Ethan, I reminded myself.

"I thought you said you wouldn't kill anyone," I said bitterly.

Ethan slid behind the wheel, and I grudgingly got into the passenger seat, crossing my arms in disapproval.

"I didn't kill him," blood dripped from his mouth. "Someone will find him and think he was in the car accident, and he'll get all the help he needs. Don't worry about him," he ordered.

I scoffed, rolling my eyes. "Who should I worry about then, if not for the poor schmuck who was just trying to help?"

"Worry about us," he licked away some of the blood around his mouth.

"Why?" I asked, although I didn't want to know the answer.

He pointed to the sky outside. The inky black of night was tinged with the hazy pink of morning. "Because, the sun is coming up."