When Nicklaus bit me, it was with careful. His fangs found the pulse at my throat, and I felt the world tilt on its axis. Cold spread through my veins like spilled mercury, and for one suspended moment, everything stopped.
Then the shadows began to die.
They screamed as they unraveled, not the triumphant shriek they had made when they tore through Malachi, but something smaller, more desperate.
The sound of a thing that knows its end has come. They writhed and twisted, reaching for something to anchor themselves to, before dissolving like sugar in rain.
When they were gone, the silence that remained felt heavier than their presence had been.
Nicklaus stumbled away from me as though my blood had scalded him.
The color had drained from his already pale face, and dark veins mapped themselves beneath his skin like rivers on a drought-stricken landscape.
"Are you in pain?" he asked.
