Selene Nightshade had three nights left to learn what her pale eyes could do, or the hunter would find her heart with his stake. She knew this because he had already found her once. Two nights ago he had missed her throat by an inch. Now she stood before her family's crypt, a chapel vault choked with vines and moss, hoping the dead knew a secret the living had never taught her. She was a vampire who could not fight. Her fangs were sharp and useless. The old blood in her, the power that had made her family feared, slept somewhere behind her eyes and would not wake. She had begged it. She had bled for it. Nothing answered. A white dog waited at the vault's mouth. It had followed her for a week, thick-coated, blue-eyed, calm as stone. She had stopped shooing it away. Tonight it pressed against her leg and would not let her pass until she looked at it. Inside, moonlight fell through a broken arch. Dark blossoms grew along the far wall, glossy leaves and black berries, the nightshade her family took its name from. Selene knelt and touched the flowers. Her mother had told her once that the bloom fed on their blood. She had thought it a story. She bit her own wrist and let the blood fall on the roots. The plant drank. The berries darkened. And the taste of her own blood, warm on her tongue, cracked something open behind her eyes. Heat flooded her skull. The crypt sharpened. She saw every crack in the stone, every insect in the moss, the dog's heartbeat like a drum. Her reflection in a shard of glass showed her eyes gone white and burning. The power had woken. It had woken because she fed it her own blood, not a victim's. That was the secret her family kept. The bloodline did not take life. It gave. Then she heard boots on the path outside. The dog spun toward the sound and growled, low and deep. Selene rose. Through the vault's mouth she saw a shape between the trees, a man with a crossbow raised, aiming for her chest. The hunter had not waited three nights. He had come tonight. Her new sight showed her his finger tighten on the trigger. She moved without deciding to. She was across the vault before the bolt left the bow, and it struck stone where her heart had been. The hunter stared. He had never seen her move like that. Neither had she. But the power was raw and hungry, and it was already draining her. The heat behind her eyes flickered. Her legs shook. She had woken the bloodline, and now it demanded more blood than she had to give. The dog stood between her and the hunter, growling, buying her the seconds she needed to run. She ran.