He smiled at me, and took off in a sprint, heading north.

I’d be damned if I lost him again.

•   •   •

With the House’s gate clanking closed behind me, I followed him down Fifty-third toward the lake. He barreled past bars and twenty-four-hour restaurants where patrons still lingered, me in his wake.

All the while, I checked my pace, kept my gaze trained on his back, and wished to God I’d had my katana. But it was in the House, parked in our apartments, because I hadn’t thought I’d need it in a meeting of friends.

I’d been half right.

He ran toward the Metra Station, then inside the lobby. A train had just arrived; people streamed through the station, trying to get outside. I lost him in the crowd, scanned heads and shoulders frantically to catch sight of him.

I just saw his skullcap as he jumped the turnstile, then headed up the long, jagged staircase that led to the platform. I hustled through the crowd and over the turnstile as people yelled behind me, promising to send Metra the fare. Humanity pressed back against me like a tsunami.

He slipped into the train heading north. I did the same, managing to get inside just before the doors closed, and found him standing alone inside the empty car.

There, in the cold light of the train, I got my first real look at the vampire who had killed Caleb Franklin.

He’d lost his skullcap in the bustle, and stood with his legs apart, braced like a captain on a ship. His hair was thick, straight, and brown, and it was pulled into a knot atop his head. His face was handsome. But there was a coldness in his expression, a deadness in his brown eyes.

And there was something familiar.

Memories flooded back, slicked over sudden and battling bursts of fear and fury.

Freshly cut grass, still wet with dew. His fingers, rough against tender skin. The sharp shock of pain as his fangs tore into skin, spilled blood. And the speed with which he’d abandoned me, his quarry, when Ethan and Malik found me, saved me, and made me immortal.

This was the vampire who’d killed Caleb Franklin . . . and the vampire who’d attacked me on the Quad one year ago.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

MAKER’S MARK

Many times I’d wondered if this moment would ever come—if I’d ever look into the eyes of the man who’d tried to kill me, the vampire who’d changed my life forever.

We’d believed he’d been a Rogue, a vampire not affiliated with Cadogan, Grey, or Navarre. He didn’t look vampirically familiar, for what that was worth.

Enough time had passed that I figured he was dead or gone, had left Chicago in order to avoid a run-in with me or Ethan. I hadn’t expected that run-in would come on a northbound train a year after the attack.

But a year was a long time, and I wasn’t the girl he’d found that first night. I was vampire. I was Cadogan Novitiate. I was Sentinel, and I knew how to push down fear. I braced my legs just as he’d done to keep myself upright against the swaying of the train, and I faced him, this man who’d tried to take my life, who seemed to value life so little.

“Hello, Merit,” he said.

Stick to the facts, I told myself. We’d have only a few minutes before we reached the next stop. He might disappear, or humans might jump on, which wouldn’t help matters. “Who are you?”

“You know who I am.”

I swallowed hard against the bile that threatened to rise. “No, I know what you did to me and to Caleb Franklin. I’m pretty sure I know the why and for whom. But I don’t know who you are.”

In answer, he pulled a matte black dagger from a sheath beneath his T-shirt. His smile was slick and confident, and it made my skin crawl, sent a line of cold sweat down my back.

For the first time since I’d seen his face, I stopped thinking about that night, and started thinking about this one—the fact that I’d chased him onto an empty train. That he’d managed to lead me away from my House, my partners, my allies.

Reed couldn’t have planned it better himself. Unless he had planned it himself.

What, exactly, was I going to do? What was my play? I’d survived the vampire’s attacks. Was I going to kill him then and there for what he’d done to me? Did I even have the right?

I swallowed hard, made myself focus. “Once upon a time,” I said, preparing to relive my darkest fairy tale, “you did Celina Desaulniers’s bidding. You attacked me because she paid you. Who’s paying you this time?”

He made a clucking sound. “Let’s say this one is a freebie.”

Something about the cockiness of his tone, the jocularity, spurred my anger.

And God, anger was so much better than fear.

“For Adrien Reed?”

His eyes tightened, just for a moment. Long enough to know I was on the right track—if the most dangerous one.

I might have been conflicted about the fight, but he wasn’t. Blade at the ready, he moved toward me, began with a swipe of the knife that would have sliced my abdomen if I hadn’t jumped back quickly enough.

While he reset, I remembered the dagger I’d stashed—as always—in my boot, and pivoted to keep him in front of me. He slashed out again, nimble and fast.

As the city blurred past the windows, I took the offensive, feinting to the right before dropping, slicing the dagger along his leg. I made contact, scraped metal against skin. Blood seeped through denim and plopped in heavy droplets onto the metal floor, scenting the air with the tang of fresh blood. If not the type I had any interest in.