Embrace the Night

Has he fallen for a succubus?

Cole can’t deny the truth any longer, not when he sees it before his very eyes. He won’t let Maddie deceive him. He can’t let her hurt anyone else—despite how he feels about her.

The hunt is on. But who will be hunter and who will be prey?

Will anyone survive this game of dark desire?

Complete the final, action-packed part of Maddie and Cole's dangerous romance in the Art of Darkness trilogy!

Cole

My hand shook as I held the blade to Maddie’s throat. Do it!

I’d already nicked her. A rivulet of crimson blood rolled down her sleek throat, pale beneath the moonlight in the graveyard.

As she stared at me with resignation, the sounds of downtown Boston at night surrounded us, muted in the background. Cars drove past and people walked by the cemetery gates engrossed in conversation. Although we were in the middle of the city, we seemed dozens of miles away from it back here, almost in another world. The trees cloaked the gravestones, casting eerie shadows. The dank soil smelled of recent rain and rotting potted plants. If someone stared hard enough, they might see us here in the darkness, but most people avoided cemeteries at night.

When I’d set out to follow Maddie tonight, I never imagined we’d end up in an old graveyard, surrounded by decaying corpses from centuries past. And I never thought I’d have a need for this dagger, but it all sort of happened as I pursued her and realized that what Raphael had been telling could be true.

I didn’t believe it was possible until I saw her in action at the hotel. Or I didn’t want to believe it. But I couldn’t deny the truth when it stared me in the face. She’d lied to me about where she was when I’d called her. She’d then gone out to seduce someone else. I saw her go up to a room in a hotel with a man and leave soon after without him. Where was he now? Out cold, the way I’d been with for hours, if not days, after sleeping with Maddie? Or worse—dead?

The sting of betrayal cut as sharp as the tip of my blade at her throat. Maddie’s beautiful blue eyes, ones that had looked at me with warmth and desire in the past, now pleaded with me. For what—to carry out my threat to kill her?

She admitted her guilt. She’s a monster, no better than what killed Taline.

Wasn’t that why I’d gone to the club the night I met Maddie—looking for more information on who or what could have killed my sister? Yes, and apparently, I’d stumbled right into a dark creature but with a different manner of destruction. She didn’t deny draining me or others. She didn’t deny anything. In fact, she admitted she was a monster and didn’t deserve to live.

But the torment in her gaze warred with that description. A monster would fight me. Lash out. Do anything to survive.

The incongruence didn’t fit. I was missing a vital piece of this puzzle, which planted doubt.

"Don’t be a fool," I told myself. "She’s playing you. You know what she did to you. You’re lucky you’re alive. How many others weren’t as lucky?"

I turned the dagger so that the flat part pressed against her neck, an unmistakable threat.

Her eyes moistened as she stared at me. Watching.

Waiting.

Would I do it?