Chapter 30 · On the Hunter's Kill List

I hit the ground hard. Stone scrapes my palms, and the fall knocks the air clean out of my lungs. For a second I just lie there, tasting dust and old blood.

Drake lands next to me. He rolls, comes up on one knee, gun already out.

"Move," he says.

I don't ask where. The staircase we just fell through is collapsing, stone grinding against stone, and somewhere above us Vera's shouting orders. I grab Drake's arm and pull him into the passage to our left. It's narrow, walls close enough I can touch both sides if I spread my arms. The kind of tunnel my mother built for when everything went wrong.

We run. My shoulder slams into the wall when the passage turns, and I bite down on the curse. Behind us, boots hit stone. Flashlight beams cut through the dark.

"Ella." Drake's breathing rough, each word costs him. "Where does this go."

"I don't know." The truth. I've never been down here. My mother didn't exactly leave a map. Just the memory she shoved into my head the night she died: *If the monastery falls, go down. The old paths remember.*

Great. Cryptic vampire mom advice.