Slayer (Slayer 1)

“Shh. Don’t wake up.” He smiles, his expression painfully tender. Those dimples that had held all my romantic hopes and had haunted my dreams were there, perfect, alive. “I know you tried to save me. That was more than I deserved. And I can never make it up to you, can never apologize enough for what she did to you. What I helped her do. Someday, maybe, I can explain. But no explanation excuses it. Nothing was worth hurting you.” Then his smile brightens, with a hint of mischief. “In the meantime, I have a present that I hope makes up for some of it and that will help make sure nothing can hurt you ever again.”

He leans forward, closing the distance between us. Darkness cloaks him, transforming him. But his darkness is less nightmare and more the velvet secret of night. A caress of cool air and a prickling of goose bumps. His lips touch mine, and finally I can move. I press mine against his, so happy, so confused.

And then everything is lit in brilliant white as I’m flooded with something that is both familiar and oddly new. If the feeling of it as it left my body was brightest sunshine, this feels more like . . . lightning. Power and brilliance with a sense of chaotic destruction that hadn’t been there before. But I can’t stop, can’t ask him what it is. As the light becomes so bright I know I’ll wake up, Leo brushes my cheek with one more kiss. “Good-bye, Athena Jamison-Smythe. The last Slayer.”

• • •

I wake up with the taste of dream Leo still on my lips. Gasping, I reach out for my alarm clock.

It crumples in my hand.

Leo’s words ring in my mind. The last Slayer.

Again.