Free Shadow Keepers: Midnight by J. K. Beck

he’d lost healing Caris, and it would give him additional strength as well. For her, it was worth the horror of drinking from that which he despised.
    The only question remaining: Would it be enough?
    “Fiend!”
Baloch’s voice echoed through the atrium. “You dare drink from one of my men?”
    Tiberius rose, taking the weren’s body with him. Then he hurled it through the doorway. It hit Baloch’s approaching men, making them tumble backward. As they stumbled to regroup, Tiberius retrieved Antonio and turned back toward the stairs. “Go,” he shouted to Caris. “And do not stop until you reach the top.”
    “He is mine!” Baloch cried behind him. “He dies at my hand, and mine alone.”
    Those odds were fine with Tiberius, but not here, not now. He turned and raced up the stairs, taking Caris’s hand as he did and pulling her along with him.
    It was treacherous going. The stones were slick with age and the steps were narrow and uneven. The moon might be close to full, but the tower had only the smallest of slits for windows, and only a few shafts of palemoonlight filtered through. They pushed forward, though, and eventually emerged onto the roof of the tower, a low stone wall the only thing separating them from a long fall to the hard ground.
    “You cannot transform,” Baloch said, emerging behind them. “Even now, you stand upon hematite.”
    Tiberius took a step to the side, so that Caris was behind him, then a step backward, so that they were at the edge of the tower.
    “I don’t need to transform to kill you,” Tiberius said, and right then he was certain it was true. The weren’s blood was powerful, ripe as it was from the waxing fullness of the moon. He might not be able to transform, not with his feet planted on hematite-infused stones, but he was stronger than Baloch knew, and the element of surprise could be a powerful ally.
    His fingers twitched with the desire to go for his knife, now back in the sheath at his hip. He wanted it, wanted so desperately to thrust the blade deep into this vile weren creature who thought nothing of torturing and starving and abusing an innocent boy.
    He wanted—but he couldn’t. The risk was too great, because if he lost, Caris and Antonio were surely dead.
    “Attack, then,” Baloch said. “You want to hurt me? To kill me? Try your best, vampire. Try now, because you are not leaving this tower unless I am dead upon it.”
    “I wish that were so,” Tiberius said. “But I think that in this regard you are mistaken.”
    And while Baloch’s face shifted comically into confusion, Tiberius tightened his grip on Antonio with his left hand, then clutched Caris around the waist with his right.
    “What are we—” she began, but she didn’t finish the question. By then he had begun the leap off the tower, and her question had turned to a scream.
    “No!” Baloch said, and as Tiberius sprang away, he felt a tug on his leg and realized that Baloch had leapt, too, catching him in midair as they cleared the tower.
    As they hurtled toward the ground, Tiberius shook his leg, but it was no use, and as he was about to give up, Caris reached over, yanked out Tiberius’s dagger, and thrust it hard and fast through Baloch’s eye.
    The werewolf howled and let go—and began to tumble alone to the hard ground below.
    Tiberius didn’t see him fall. They were free of the hematite walls now, and as the ground rose up fast beneath them, he held tight to Caris and Antonio, then transformed into the sentient mist that would carry them away, safe at last.
    He took them only a few miles, his strength still diminished by the hematite and now strained by the burden of transforming not only himself but two humans. Beside him, Caris sat wide-eyed, her hands exploring her body, her lips parted in wonder. “Tend to your brother,” Tiberius said. “It will have been roughest on him, I fear.”
    Something like pain flashed through her eyes, and he thought that she would linger, but