I awoke to the screaming silence. Tucked in the heat of my mother’s quilt, I blinked in the dark, waiting for the reason I had awoken to wash over me, whether it had been a sound cracking through the night or I’d just remembered I owed my father an extra assignment.

Faint moonlight slipped into the dorm room from the windows, the curtains thrown open. I groaned. Blaise probably hadn’t bothered to close them. Thinking of Blaise… Why didn’t I hear his snores sawing through the air, instead of… silence. No faint creaks of movement, no hushed, deep breaths, not even the echoing tick of a clock hand moving.

Just silence, as if I were the only man in existence.

Blaise had put me to bed. I exhaled again, my breath rasping against the cool air. I must have fallen asleep as soon as I had hit the bed.

I turned over with bated breath as I waited for Blaise’s next metal-rasping snore to break the eerie silence. I almost chuckled. As if Blaise’s snores meant everything was right in the world.

No, I was just being lazy. I’d slept the whole day away, all that time when I should have been studying — but Blaise had sworn to Le Savant, hadn’t he? No more exams loomed over me, taunting me with their questions about obscure facts and dates and symbols.

I only had one task remaining – presenting my grades to Vespasian. If he even cared to see them. My humble school desk was empty of books he used to send me, my blank paper contained in a desk drawer instead of waiting for my next assigned essay.

Blaise’s desk was even more bereft, not needing the supplements and having taken everything he cared about home with him. The only books piled on his desk were mandatory reading. He spent only a quarter of the time I did studying, yet he still managed to get much better grades. Good for him. At least one of us had a future.

A whisper reached my ear, or what I thought was a whisper, like someone in a noisy room calling my name. Except it wasn’t a noisy room, but a silent one. I must be the only one left on my floor, if not all the dorms. So why couldn’t I…

Probably just the howl of the wind. I pulled the quilt up further, as if the wind was about to break through the panes and ravage the dorm room.

Gravel crunched below my window. My fingers clenched the edge of the blanket. That hadn’t been the crunch of a servant walking, or a student sneaking in past curfew, but a staccato series of steps. I pushed down the quilt and slid out of bed, the cool air attacking my bed-warmed skin.

I hurried to the window, the frigid floor burning my feet, and looked down.

In the distance, over the forests surrounding the West Ridge Academy estate, faint traces of purple and reds started to paint over the black sky. The sliver of a moon still cast faint light over the lawns beside the dorms, catching on the grey gravel path.

A path that a night-shirted man ran down, jagged rocks scraping his bare feet. I winced. What was he doing out there?

The figure stopped, bracing with his feet, as if he sensed me watching. He turned back to me, face as pale as his shirt.

Levi, with his black hair and red roots. What was he doing? Why hadn’t he returned home? Couldn’t he have paused to at least don a coat and shoes?

He met my eyes, his lips moved in a scream I barely heard. “Help me!”

My mouth opened, but before I could think of anything, Levi dropped his gaze to something on the lawn, his face paling even more. Levi didn’t wait for me. He turned and darted away, like a rabbit with a hunting dog on its tail.

A vampire? No, they couldn’t break through the academy’s wards, designed and laid by Le Savant himself. But what other sort of monster would chase Levi? What else could Levi possibly be so afraid of?

Why had he left the safety of the academy walls?

My breath stalled in my chest, but I had to help him. I started to turn, reaching for something — anything — to protect him or me with, when it arrived.

Darkness, death itself, devouring his very soul…

My body trembled, but otherwise I couldn’t move. It wasn’t the darkness, not like in that stupid kissing nightmare.

A white demonic flash had appeared, dashing across on the lawn, too fast for me to tell who it was. The hound to Levi’s rabbit.

It would catch him. It would devour him. I had to do something. I had to help him. I had to — but what could I possibly do—

The demonic flash stopped at the same spot Levi had, and just like Levi, turned to look up at me…