Prologue

ZHANG JUNJIE

18 BCE

Luoyang, Zhang clan home

A summer breeze swept through the plum orchard, stirring the dense covering of leaves. Junjie tensed, waiting for another sharp burn of pain as the fading sunlight shot through a fresh break in the foliage. Sunset was still more than an hour away, but his torture wouldn’t stop just because the sun had disappeared below the horizon.

“Attack now!” Jiang Chong ordered, his voice as sharp and cutting as a blade.

Across from Junjie, Xiang stared at him with an expression of frustration and pain. As a daywalker, the sun offered Xiang no torment, so Jiang Chong liked to use him as a training weapon for the rest of the clan. He expected them to fight and defeat Xiang despite being constantly burned by the sun.

“Attack now, while he’s weak!” Jiang Chong bellowed from his haven in a thick bank of shadows.

“Junjie is not my enemy,” Xiang gritted out between clenched teeth. “He’s suffered enough. The wind is picking up. There’s no way he can avoid the sun.”

“Then he must learn to fight through the pain,” Jiang Chong snapped. His hard, lean features twisted into a sneer. “This entire sect is soft and weak. Your last shifu? 1 coddled you, allowing endless excuses to stunt your ultimate potential. Even after all my tireless dedication to your training, it’s clear that not one of you will ever be more than a mediocre fighter.”

Junjie tightened his hold on the hilt of his sword to stop the trembling in his hand. Shifu Zhang Shi Lei had been both a brilliant teacher and a loving uncle. He couldn’t stomach another harsh word against him.

Before he could take a step toward Jiang Chong, he caught a tiny movement out of the corner of his eye. He peeked at another shaded spot where Xiao Dan stood under a tree, ever so slightly shaking his head. His dark eyes were full of fear and warning.

“Now attack him, Xiang! I am your creator, and you will obey me!” Jiang Chong’s fierce words rang through the orchard.

But it was Xiang’s low, icy words that struck them all. “No. I’d much rather kill you.”

No one had a chance to react, let alone stop him. Xiang lunged at Jiang Chong, aiming to slice the vampire’s head clean off his body. A surprised cry broke from Jiang Chong as he leaped back and raised his sword in time to block Xiang’s blow.

Junjie hesitated for a heartbeat of indecision. To attack Jiang Chong and fail to kill him meant putting the entire clan in danger. Retribution in Jiang Chong’s eyes was whatever inflicted the most pain. And most of the time that was harming the innocent.

But doing nothing meant abandoning Xiang. It also meant staying trapped under Jiang Chong’s control for another night, and none of them wanted that.

This might be their one chance.

Junjie shot forward as Jiang Chong forced Xiang to retreat. He moved too close to a dancing shaft of golden sunlight, and searing pain cut across his cheek, but he ignored it. He fought Jiang Chong, driving him out of his pocket of shadows, but it didn’t last long. The vampire was older and faster.

Yet, before his blade could touch Junjie, another stopped it. Junjie gazed up to find that Xiao Dan had stepped in to save him.

“Leave now or we will destroy you,” Xiao Dan said evenly to Jiang Chong.

“Never!”

“Good. I was hoping you’d say that,” Yichen growled. He jumped in to fight alongside Xiao Dan.

The battle ranged all over the orchard, various members of the clan leaping in to join the fight when one had to retreat. They attempted to herd Jiang Chong toward the sunlight. If they could injure him, they might create an opening to end his life once and for all. It was amazing that he wasn’t disappearing into the dead realm to escape them.

Of course, if he ran now, he had to know he’d never be able to reclaim control of the clan. His cowardice would undermine his every order from this day forward.

To Junjie, it didn’t matter if he ran or died here. This was a turning point. Jiang Chong had pushed them too far for too long. They would reclaim their freedom from him or die in the attempt, but there was no going back to being his tormented “student.”

Chen sent spikes of ice hurtling through the air, but Jiang Chong darted away at the last second to miss being impaled. Ming Yu and Mei Lian stepped up to drive him into the fray. When he found himself overwhelmed yet again, Jiang Chong sliced a hole between the dead and living realms and slipped away.

“Be careful! Protect each other!” Xiao Dan shouted. As he spoke, he waved his hand across the surrounding orchard. For a moment, the world seemed to waver and shimmer as Shixiong’s? 2 glamour washed over everything. He’d placed a forest scene on top of the orchard but kept the time of day the same, so they knew where the sunlight and shadows fell.

“Where is he?” Mei Lian demanded. She clenched a spear in both hands while pressing her shoulders against Ming Yu’s.

“Stay calm. He’ll reveal himself, eventually. There’s no way he’d leave without killing one of us.”

“He’s not leaving here at all,” Xiang snarled.

Junjie tried to calm his racing heart and slow his breathing. Desperation and fear would hinder his reactions and weaken him as a fighter. He had to be at his best for the sake of his clan mates and for the honor of his clan.

A slight ripple in a deep shadow beside Chen caught Junjie’s attention. He palmed a throwing knife and sent it flying past Chen’s cheek. It narrowly missed Chen and disappeared into the opening Jiang Chong had created. A soft grunt slipped from the opening before it closed.

“You couldn’t have just said, ‘Move’?” Chen asked, though it came with a smirk.

“It was faster to throw a knife.”

Jiang Chong continued this frustrating game of hide-and-seek until he found a weakness to exploit. A snap of a branch from a powerful gust of wind drew too much of their attention. Jiang Chong surged through a black doorway to strike at Yichen. Chen barely pulled their shidi? 3 away as the monster’s blade kissed Yichen’s arm.

Junjie threw himself at Jiang Chong. Their blades clashed again and again as Junjie went through the same moves that had been drilled into his head for decades. And as he expected, Jiang Chong deflected every one of them. Junjie grew tired, and Jiang Chong knocked Junjie’s sword out of his hand. A gasp left Junjie. Pain surged through his gut as Jiang Chong shoved his sword deep. At the same time, Junjie plunged a dagger he’d kept hidden through bone and muscle in the center of Jiang Chong’s chest.

The monster tumbled back on a shout, and Junjie went with him. He pulled the knife from Jiang Chong and slammed his free hand into the opening. His fingers brushed what felt like a frozen stone that faintly pulsed.

Jiang Chong’s heart.

He wrapped his fingers around the organ and attempted to pull it from the monster even as Jiang Chong twisted the sword in Junjie’s stomach. A scream erupted from Junjie’s lips, but he kept digging and pulling at the heart. Nothing was going to stop him.

“I may die, but I’m taking you with me,” Jiang Chong threatened through clenched teeth.

“I’m happy to die for my clan.”

The words had barely left his tongue when he noticed the darkness falling over them. Jiang Chong had pierced the veil between worlds, opening a doorway around them. He planned to trap Junjie there with his corpse.

Should Junjie release Jiang Chong and save himself?

Or stay and finish him?

Stay. End this. Save his clan.

The thought had formed in his mind as two sets of hands grabbed his legs and pulled. The unexpected sensation jolted him into loosening his hold on Jiang Chong’s heart. As the monster’s sword slid free of his stomach and his grip on Jiang Chong faltered, Junjie took a final swipe at his creator with the blade in his left hand, cutting him across the throat.

Those black eyes—filled with icy hatred—held Junjie’s as the doorway between the living and dead realms closed. Should he survive his injuries, the unspoken promise of torment and death rested in Jiang Chong’s cold stare.

“Jun-Jun, are you okay?”

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“Is he dead? Do you know if he’s dead?”

It was Mei Lian’s frantic question about Jiang Chong that snapped Junjie out of his daze.

“Why did you pull me out?” he shouted as Xiao Dan and Chen helped him sit up. He winced at the painful tug of the open wound in his gut. “I had his heart in my hand! In my hand!” As he shouted, he shook his blood-and-gore slicked hand at his shixiong. “I almost had him.”

“And we would have lost you,” Chen argued.

“Who cares! It would have been over! We would have been free.”

“How do you know we’re not?” Xiang pointed out.

“Jun-Jun, drink,” Xiao Dan ordered, placing his wrist to Junjie’s lips, but Junjie turned his head to avoid it.

“But—”

“Shidi, shut up and drink,” Xiao Dan snapped. “You’re bleeding from several wounds and covered in burns.”

Junjie wanted to argue that they were all in terrible shape, but a quick glance revealed he had suffered the worst injuries. It was only when he carefully took his first drink of Xiao Dan’s blood that Shixiong released a sigh of relief.

“Chen, Xiang, keep watch for any sign that Jiang Chong has returned. Yichen, please take Mei Lian and Ming Yu to the villa. Tell the others what occurred here,” Xiao Dan ordered.

Junjie watched as Yichen, Mei Lian, and Ming Yu slipped out of the orchard in the growing darkness, while Xiang and Chen took up a defensive position near them.

In the fight’s chaos, the sun had finished its descent, disappearing below the horizon. The sky that was visible between the tree branches was darkening from orange and pink to deeper shades of blue and purple. The first stars were peeking out. Even the wind had calmed, as if nature were holding its breath against the return of the monster.

Xiao Dan lowered his face to the top of Junjie’s head and whispered, “You scared me to death, Didi.”? 4

His heart squeezed. It was rare for Xiao Dan to call him that. Zhang Shi Lei had always treated them like sons, and Xiao Dan had taken the role of older brother seriously.

“I had his heart in my hand, Gege.? 5 I could have saved our clan. It’s what Shifu would have wanted,” Junjie replied around the knot of unshed tears growing in his throat. He licked away the last drop of blood from Xiao Dan’s wrist. He would need to go into town to feed more, but at least he’d regained his strength.

“Shifu would have wanted you to survive so you can go on fighting for your clan,” Xiao Dan countered.

“How do you know you didn’t kill him?” Chen inquired in a low, even voice. “You nearly pulled his heart out, and I saw that final gash you opened in his neck. Right now, he’s trapped in the ghost realm with no access to the blood he needs to heal. How long could he possibly survive there before becoming a ghost himself?”

“He’s dead. He has to be dead,” Xiang declared.

“Only time will tell. For now, the clan will remain vigilant. Everyone must report any sign that Jiang Chong is lurking about. The important thing is that he now knows that we will not go back to being under his control. That life is over.” Xiao Dan wrapped an arm around Junjie and squeezed. His words grew rough. “We will celebrate every night we have free of him, whether it is one or a thousand. We are free and we will remain that way.”

1 ? Shifu – master of a clan or sect

2 ? Shixiong – elder martial brother

3 ? Shidi – junior disciple/brother

4 ? Didi – younger brother

5 ? Gege – older brother, denotes familiarity and not necessarily a family relation. Can sometimes be added to a name such as Chen-ge