Blood Ascendant
Author: Tracy Cooper-Posey
Date: 2017-11-17 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Menage; M M F; Vampires; Paranormal Romance; Fantasy; M M Romance
Description: The Summanus eat humans. There are more of them every day. Humanity can’t win. Rory Rafferty, theoretical physicist and stunning beauty, is an eight hundred year old vampire with no time for men who want to control her. At night, she kicks Summanus butt. Dante Santana is a recently retired pro football player in love with Rory, and more than eager to kill Summanus while he’s waiting for her. Sasha Mikhailov spies for the GRU, roams the world, an independent man with a gun…until he meets Rory and Dante. Humans, vampires and the Elah face the end of the world in the series reviewers call “fantas

Table of Contents

Title Page

About Blood Ascendant

Praise for The Blood Stone Series.

Who’s Who and What’s What

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

More Vampire Menage Urban Fantasy Romance by Tracy Cooper-Posey

About the Author

Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Copyright Information

About Blood Ascendant

The wildly explosive finale to the Blood Stone series!

The Summanus eat humans. There are more of them every day. Humanity can’t win.

Rory Rafferty, theoretical physicist and stunning beauty, is an eight hundred year old vampire with no time for men who want to control her. At night, she kicks Summanus butt.

Dante Santana is a recently retired pro football player in love with Rory, and more than eager to kill Summanus while he’s waiting for her.

Sasha Mikhailov spies for the GRU, roams the world, an independent man with a gun…until he meets Rory and Dante.

Humans, vampires and the Elah face the end of the world in the series reviewers call “fantastic”, “a knockout” and “definitely a keeper series”. Get your copy today!

WARNING: Contains frequent, explicit, heart-stopping MMF sex between two sexy alpha heroes and their feisty heroine, including ménage and anal. Also contains some violence, but no actual vampires were harmed in the making of this novel.
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This is Book 5 and the final book of the Blood Stone series.

Blood Stone 1.0: Blood Knot (#1 Amazon Best Seller, Fantasy Romance)
Blood Drops 1.1: Southampton Swindle*
Blood Drops 1.2: Broken Promise*
Blood Drops 1.3: Vale*
Blood Drops 1.5: Amor Meus*
Blood Stone 2.0: Blood Stone
Blood Stone 3.0: Blood Unleashed
Blood Stone 3.5: Blood Drive – Blood Stone Boxed Set 1
Blood Stone 4.0: Blood Revealed
Blood Stone 5.0: Blood Ascendant

[*Blood Drops are short and novella length stories featuring the characters and situations in the Blood Stone series.  Droplet sized morsels for your reading pleasure.]

These are continuing characters and storylines. Reading the series in order is strongly recommended.

Praise for The Blood Stone Series.

I've really enjoying this series as a whole. Watching Nial maneuver his pieces on the board as he and the other vampires prepare to reveal themselves is interesting.

I highly recommend this series because it is a knockout.

I can't tell you how glad I was to find Tracy Cooper-Posey. I haven't been a big fan of vampire romance, but she does it for me. Read this series and you won't be sorry.

This whole series has been fantastic.

I recommend the entire Blood Stone series 100%!! Great!

I’m rapidly falling in lust with all these characters and stories and can’t wait to read more.—Carrie Reads a Lot

As always a cracking story– definitely a keeper series—Jeannie Zelos Book reviews.

Who’s Who and What’s What
abd Al-Malik: Agent with Dairat al-Mukhabarat al-Ammah (General Intelligence Bureau) of Jordan.

Azarel: A member of the immortal and apparently omnipotent race called The Serene Ones, who takes mortal, human form to fully understand the human experience.

Blood Stone, The: A stone created in antiquity by the Serena to contain three war-like species that once preyed upon humans; the Elah, the Ĉiela and the Summanus.

Blythe Murray: Heroine, Blood Revealed.

Bradley, Elizabeth: Female lead in Warrior King.

Bryon: Human CEO of the League for Humanity.

Ĉiela, the: One of three ancient races contained within the Blood Stone. Ĉiela = “from the sky”. Army of winged creatures. Deadly. It’s where the idea of angels came from. They were led by An. “An” = Sumerian god of the heavens. He was immortal, but he had a weakness: He could not be away from the sun for too long. Locking him up in the Blood Stone killed him. The Ĉiela were defeated by the Summanus, despite being the superior and immortal force. There were few left when the Blood Stone was created.

Curandero: A species that can heal and adjust the physiology and biology of others through their touch. Winter is a Curandero.

Danich Wulfson: a.k.a. Dan Wilson. Vampire president of the League for Humanity. Originally from Vinland, circa 1000 AD

Dante Santana: Hero, Blood Ascendant.

Dominic Castellano: The deaf mute hero of Blood Revealed.

Elah, the: One of three ancient races contained within the Blood Stone. Elah = mighty, tree. They were the inspiration for elves and elven lore. But they’re not as user friendly as the mythology paints them. Led by the Emperor Dai Chi (dye-chee), who was immortal, but not a god like An, the god of the Ĉiela. The emperor held sway over dozens of kingdoms and minor holdings. They were earth oriented -- of the earth and grounded. They were defeated by the Summanus, and by treachery within. Much civil strife that was their undoing.

Euphrasia: The Ancient One who was the Greek child of Nial’s maker. She lived until the Second World War on an island in the Aegean. She was treated as a prisoner of war by the Germans.

Fettercairn: The distiller of single malt and blended Scotches, located in Kincardineshire, Scotland, where the Bruce Clan (and Calum Garrett) originates.

Finka Zupan: Serbian immigrant, who once knew Winter when she lived there as a child. In Blood Stone Finka attempts to blackmail Winter.

Francesca: Dominic Castellano’s sister.

Garrett: Calum Micheil Garrett. Hero, Blood Stone. Vampire.

Greg Evershot: Hollywood A-List Actor and film star. In Blood Stone, he is considered for the lead in Kate Lindenstream’s movie.

Heru: Menes Heru Asar Iah, a.k.a. The Deadly Moon. Vampire – An Ancient One originating out of Akkad circa the third millennium BC. Antagonist, Blood Stone and Blood Unleashed.
Asar means Osiris = god of the dead. Iah = moon.

Ilaria Scavo: a.k.a. The Whisper. Heroine of Blood Unleashed.

Jake Murray: Blythe Murray’s son.

Kate: Kathrine Lindenstream: Human. Heroine, Blood Stone. Action thriller movie director.

Khurshid Tabrizi Amirmoez: Madam Kurshid is an Ancient One, who can drink alcohol. She is an empath.

League for Humanity, the: Vampire political group opposed to Nial’s plans for revelation. They believe in and practice the old ways, that includes human servitude

Marcus Anderson: Human. Hero of Blood Unleashed. Kate’s CIA handler.

McLaren: Marcus Anderson’s supervisor. Division director, CIA

Morena: Winter’s birth name, which she was known by in Serbia. “Morena” means "death" in Slavic. In Slavic mythology this was the name of the goddess of winter and death.

Narish: A human who is permanently in the company of a vampire, for that vampire to feed upon as needed.

Nial: Nathanial Aquila Valerius Aurelius. Vampire. Hero, Blood Knot. Leader of the Revolutionaries. Born 559 A.D., northern Italian mountains. Married to Sebastian and Winter.

Nizari Ismailis: The original Assassins. Hassan bin Sabbah was the first leader. Alamut was their central fort (castle). Alamut (Persian: الموت‎, transliterated Alamūt) was a mountain fortress located in Alamut region in the South Caspian province of Daylam near the Rudbar region in Iran, approximately 100 km (60 mi) from present-day Tehran. The name means "Eagle's Nest".

Patrick Sauvage: Hollywood A-List Actor and film star. Works with Kate Lindenstream in Blood Stone.

Peter and Marcy Mathur: Blythe Murray’s neighbors.

Pro Libertatus: Vampire political group opposed to Nial’s plans for revelation - comprised of powerful shadowy vampires – politicians and government personnel around the globe.

Pyrrhus: An explosive/corrosive that kills vampires. Anything under a cupful is highly corrosive, and can ignite and burn with intense red flames (from the strontium chloride). Anything over a cupful explodes. More stable than nitroglycerine. More powerful than TNT. Contains Strontium chloride, oil and a few other controlling agents.

Reggie Yima: Host of a Saturday Night Live style entertainment show.

Richard Lowenstein: Speaker of the House, Vampire. Suspected leader of the Pro Libertatus

Rick: Cyneric Pæga, a.k.a Cyneric the Assassin. Hero, Blood Unleashed. Vampire. Pronounced Sin-er-rick

Roman: Adrian Romanus (“Roman”) Xerus: Hero, Blood Stone. Vampire. Born 1437. Enslaved 1453 (16 y.o.), during the Fall of Constantinople.

Rory Rafferty: Heroine, Blood Ascendant.

Sasha: Marlen Alexandrovich Mikhailov. Hero, Blood Ascendant.

Sebastian Worthington III: a.k.a. Bastian. Former vampire, hero of Blood Knot. Married to Nial and Winter.

Serena, the: a.k.a. “The Serene Ones” A mythical species with omnipotent powers. Not gods, but servants of unnamed higher powers. They take human form, and they’re ethereal and beautiful...and frightening. White to vampires’ black. Unreasonable and unreasoning. They mete justice with no regard for the human equation. The Serena created the Blood Stone.

Simone and Eloise Murray: Blythe Murray’s twin daughters.

Summanus, the: One of three ancient races contained within the Blood Stone. A race of blood shifters. An older power, and older creatures -- the predecessors of vampires. Instinctual, nocturnal, powerful. A private army. They’re shifters, too. They can imitate humans, but only those who are asleep, and for the length of their REM cycle. (10 minutes to one hour). They were led by Abiram (= ‘swallowed by the earth’). They were of the ground and under it -- the Underworld. None of the Summanus were immortal. They were considered the weakest and most despised race among the others, but they won the ages long struggle for supremacy (to the despair of humans). They were the only race that needed to renew itself and its energy, which they did by drinking blood. They used humans because humans were weak and easy to overcome. They used human “recruits” to bolster their armies in the final battles, and that is how the humans finally rid themselves of all of the Others. The Summanus did not pay their dues and the humans called upon the Serena and demanded retribution.

Suresh Harris: a.k.a. “Sushi”. Danich Wulfson’s narish.

Warrior King: The name of the movie that Kate Lindenstream wrote and directed in Blood Stone. Post-production occurs during Blood Unleashed.

William Donnelly (Billy): Kate Lindenstream’s former husband.

Winter: Winter Menon Kennedy. Human. Heroine, Blood Knot. Former professional thief, married to Sebastian and Nial.

Chapter One

There were not many people who earned Rory’s respect. Benjamin Lyon was one of them—not because he was her boss and certainly not because he was once a lover. Among all the super-smart and over-intelligent people that worked at the NASA Ames Research Centre, Ben was one of those who knew how to think. In her opinion, at least.

When Ben pushed open the heavy glass door and dropped into the visitor chair next to her desk, Rory sat back and gave him her full attention. It was usually worth the time to do so. “You look tired,” she told him.

“Three states in three days. My brain is fried,” he confessed and scrubbed at his face with both hands.

“New Mexico, Houston and…?” Those were the two other NASA facilities that Ben was usually called to.

“Louisiana, this time.” He sat up again. “I didn’t get a chance to talk to you before I left last week.”

“You left very clear instructions,” she assured him.

“I mean, talk.” His gaze met hers.

Rory drew in a slow, controlled breath. “About?” Was Ben going to be a problem after all? He had been very adult about the end of their relationship and that had been a year ago. Rory had learned, though, that men were often possessive about women they had slept with. They often felt they had a claim on them. However, Rory had been very clear about the end of the affair. She had learned to do it that way.

“It’s about Corbin,” Ben said and grimaced.

“Ah.”

Corbin Parish was a different matter. If anyone might be inclined to cause trouble, it would be him. She had cut all ties to him only a week into their relationship when she had discovered his unforgiveable flaw. “What has Corbin done now?”

He leaned forward with a heavy sigh. “He came and saw me the day before I left last week, in a total muck sweat about you. He wanted me to fire you.”

“I don’t believe that is a call Corbin gets to make.” Corbin was less senior than her and in a different department.

Ben lifted his head to look at her with blood-shot eyes. “He’d just found out you are…are….”

“You can say it. I am a vampire.”

Ben shook his head. “It still feels too surreal to say it aloud,” he confessed. “Although, as soon as I found out that you were, it was as if a huge thing clicked together in my mind. It made perfect sense, given what I know about you.”

“Then you are not bigoted the way Corbin is,” Rory surmised.

“Not even close. That’s why he wants you fired, you know. He quoted a lot of standard contract terms like failure to disclose and conflict of interest. I think he even tried non-performance.”

“I do my work and then some, as we all do.”

“Corbin seemed to feel that as you are a vampire, you should be working longer because you don’t sleep.”

Rory laughed. “His arguments are conflicting. What, exactly, is he objecting to? My nature or my performance?”

“I think what it comes down to is, he’s just an asshole with an axe to grind and this gives him an excuse. I sent him away.”

“Yet you still felt it necessary to tell me at the first possible moment and in person, too.”

Ben nodded. “It’s Corbin Parish. I don’t like the guy and I didn’t, even before he decided your ‘no’ wasn’t good enough. I just can’t object about him officially because he’s a talented scientist. That doesn’t mean I wouldn’t watch my back if I ever got on the wrong side of him. You’ve got on his wrong side, Rory.”

She sighed. “What is it about men like him? If I’d known, I would never have…well…” She gave Ben a tight smile.

“It’s the hormones, honey.” He grinned back. “We just haven’t evolved enough yet, I guess.”

“Present company excepted.”

“Thanks.” He got to his feet and rotated his head, stretching the neck muscles. “Watch your back, Rory. I mean, your actual back. Corbin is the type of guy that, a hundred years ago, would have been running around in a white sheet, lynching black people. Now, with all this bullshit about vampires in the news, he can hate vampires right out in the open and not be slaughtered for it.”

“Thank you. I appreciate the warning.”

“Back to work, then.” He left her alone.

Rory returned to her current project and promptly forgot about Corbin Parish. Everything Ben said about him was true and had been true of a great many people in her life. She didn’t let it worry her. She had learned how to handle the Corbin Parishes of the world long ago.

When the Santa Clara police knocked on her door, three hours later, Rory realized she should have paid more attention, after all.

* * * * *

It was close to sunset when the detective rapped on the glass, holding up his ID for her to see. Then, just as Ben had, he pushed his way into her office before Rory could tell him to come in. There was a civilian with him, a young-looking woman with steel gray hair and eyes and a perfectly conservative skirt suit from Armani’s prêt-à-porter collection from two years ago. The shirt was synthetic silk, a gray that matched her hair and eyes. Rory knew she was not another detective or this man’s partner because the body language was all wrong. So were the clothes. Detectives didn’t wear skirt suits.

Rory looked at the woman more sharply as the absence of pheromones and body-heat made itself felt. The woman looked back at her steadily.

“Ms. Rafferty,” the cop said.

“Doctor Rafferty,” she corrected automatically.

“Doctor Rafferty. I am Detective Tom Plank, with the Santa Clara Police Department. This is Christine Perugia, a civilian consultant from San Francisco.”

“Consultant?” Rory asked politely.

“Vampire Relations,” Perugia said, confirming Rory’s guess. She was a vampire. “I happened to be in the area today and thought I would give a helping hand.”

“I see.” Rory looked at Plank once more. “What can I do for you, Detective?”

He pulled out a thick notebook. “The department received an anonymous tip early this morning, with enough information in it that we were obliged to follow up. The tip said someone had been murdered at 44 College Avenue.” He looked up at her.

That was Rory’s address. “You broke into my home?”

“The patrol unit that investigated could see someone lying on the floor in the living room. They forced open the front door to investigate. The victim was taken to Emergency and was pronounced dead upon arrival.” He put the notebook back in his breast pocket and looked at her. “The victim died from exsanguination. There were what appears to be bite marks on her neck.”

“Who is the victim?” Rory asked. “Is it someone you believe I might know?”

“We’re waiting for prints to be confirmed,” Plank said. “You don’t care how she died?”

“I care that she was dumped on my living room floor,” Rory said. “As I did not leave her there, that is the extent of my concern for her.” She looked at the consultant, Perugia. “Were they vampire bites?”

Perugia’s gaze flickered toward the cop. “No,” she said shortly.

Rory looked at the cop. “I am sure Ms. Perugia has informed you that vampires, if they are ever forced to feed from live victims, never drain them of blood. They also clean up after themselves and heal the donor’s wounds. No vampire has the capacity to ingest all the blood of a single human at one feeding. Draining a victim to the point of death was a punishment used in antiquity and has long since fallen out of favor. There are faster and cleaner ways to kill someone, Sergeant.”

“I’m sure you know some of them, too,” Plank said evenly.

“Of course. I am a vampire. I have lived long enough to have passed through periods of history where defending myself was necessary.”

Plank glanced at Perugia. “So Ms. Perugia told us. Do you know of any reason why someone would acquire a body and leave it in your house, then phone in a complaint?”

Rory shrugged. “I can think of several people. Only one of them might bear me enough ill will to actually go through with such a scheme.” She frowned. “You said ‘acquired’. Does that mean whoever did this didn’t actually kill the victim?”

“The doctor in Emergency said the body was too old. We think it might have been…um…stolen.”

“From a morgue?” Rory felt a touch of relief. Corbin was, at least, not a murderer. Her judgement of his character had not been completely skewed by his pretty looks.

“We’re still looking into that.” Corbin pulled out his notebook again. “This one person you think it might be. Give me their name and contact details. We’ll look into it.”

Rory reeled off Corbin’s name and home address, his cellphone number and his office number here in the Research Centre.

Plank raised his brow at that. “Disgruntled co-worker?” he asked.

“A dumped lover that doesn’t understand ‘no’ and doesn’t like vampires,” Rory said.

Perugia’s nose wrinkled. She understood. Of course she did.

Plank cleared his throat. He stuffed the notebook away once more and nodded. “We’ll be in touch again, I’m sure,” he told her. “While the investigation is on-going, I have to ask you to stay in the county and hold yourself available for interviews as and when.”

“I get called down to Houston for my work, sometimes with little notice,” she pointed out.

“Let us know if you do and we’ll take it from there,” Plank said.

“Am I a suspect?” Rory demanded. “You really believe I had anything to do with this?”

Plank bristled. “Until we know a lot more, we can’t say.” His tone was stiff. “The investigating team will likely want to talk to you, just to begin. I’d cooperate, ma’am. It won’t look good if you don’t.”

“I did not say, even by implication, that I would not cooperate,” Rory said quickly and firmly. “It is inappropriate for you to indicate that I did.”

Plank’s jaw squared itself and flexed. “I apologize,” he said stiffly.

Perugia was smiling and hiding it. There was a warmth in her eyes that hadn’t been there until now.

Was Plank another official who didn’t like vampires, didn’t trust them and would do anything to keep them contained? That prejudice was swiftly overtaking any other racial or religious bias as the world’s most popular, these days. Some people would prefer that vampires spend their nights fighting the Summanus and their days locked up. Coffins were optional.

Plank seemed to feel the interview was at an end, or perhaps he was leaving the field, defeated. Either way, he gave her a short nod and strode to the door.

Perugia’s smile was a touch warmer. She turned and left with Plank. Rory understood why she had remained mostly silent. It was better that her loyalties not be questioned, which they would be if she defended other vampires too vigorously. It was enough that she was there to shift suspicion away from vampires as the aggressors in this case and lingered to assure the information didn’t get “lost” in the police department’s zealousness to close another case.

After they were gone, Rory watched the last of the sun sink down behind the hills in a spectacular display of orange, red and purple. It had been another sweltering day she had been happy to miss, here inside a climate-controlled building. If she worked for a few more hours, the afternoon sea breeze would have cooled everything a little more, making it more comfortable to be outside.

She didn’t settle back to work straight away. She considered what Corbin had done. She had no doubt it was him who had put the body there. It was a more extreme form of harassment that suited his style. It also had a matching degree of carelessness about it—the clumsy marks on the neck that even Sergeant Plank had not believed were vampire bites, a body that was too old to be fresh kill…it was all too easy to discredit.

For a moment, she considered phoning Corbin and demanding an explanation, except she suspected it was what he wanted her to do. He wanted the chance to crow over her, to witness her anger and helplessness. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

Instead, she deliberately dismissed the matter and got back to work once more.

* * * * *

Around seven p.m., Dante phoned. By that time, Rory was more than willing to stop for the night. She smiled as she connected. “You’re back from Denver. How did the game go?” It was preseason and the exhibition matches were in full swing. Dante had retired from active playing last March, not long after the Superbowl, which they had been forced to hold during daylight hours to give everyone time to get home before dark. The Summanus were making wholesale shifts in everyone’s lives. The advertising for the Superbowl had been less than stellar, too. That wasn’t why Dante had retired, though.

She sat back, happy to settle in and talk football with him.

“Turn on your TV,” Dante said, his deep voice rumbling in her ear.

Rory sat up again and reached for her big screen tablet. “Which channel?” There was something in his voice that told her not to stop to ask questions.

He told her the channel and Rory brought the live feed up on her tablet. It was the nightly news program. They had reached the point of reporting on small local news. The anchor was gravely intoning about water restrictions and record heat.

“What am I supposed to be looking at?” Rory asked.

Dante sighed. “You missed it. They were talking about you.”

Her heart fell. “Me?”

“Something about a body and vampire feeding. They were showing the front of your house.” He paused.

Corbin Parish. The clumsy attempt to frame her for murder had just been the first phase of his harassment.

“Rory, they said it out loud,” Dante added gently. “Right there on the screen.”

“They said I was a vampire?”

“They had your driver’s license photo, too. They outed you in the most public way possible.” His voice hardened. “They can’t get away with that, can they?”

“There are no laws giving vampires privacy protection,” Rory said quietly. “Vampires aren’t even classified as legal entities yet. The bill is still in the House.”

“So they can get away with it.” Dante sounded pissed.

Rory thought it through. “It was inevitable that this would happen one day,” she said finally. “Once I told my employer about my true nature, it was bound to emerge elsewhere.”

“You don’t get it, do you?”

“I didn’t see the clip,” she reminded him.

“That you’re a vampire isn’t the really big news,” he said patiently. “It’s that you drained a human dry and left them strewn on your living room floor they’re screaming about.”

“Allegedly drained.”

“You really think a ratings-driven TV show is going to remember to say that every single time? They’re crucifying you without benefit of a trial, Rory.”

“The police don’t believe I’m involved. I pointed them toward the man who probably did it.” Even as angry as she was growing, she still wouldn’t condemn Corbin absolutely, not until she knew her suspicions were right.

“That asshole you dated twice? The one with a slang name for every race, breed and genome on the planet?”

“Corbin Parish,” she confirmed.

“I’ll kill him.”

“Don’t do anything, Dante,” she said quickly, for she had no doubt that Dante would try to fix this for her if she didn’t. “The police are involved. Stay out of the way and let them sort it out.”

She listened to his breath even out as he tried to calm himself down. Then he blew gustily into the phone. “You don’t deserve this,” he said stiffly. “You work hard, you pay taxes and you’re sweet to old ladies and pets.”

“The ones that don’t run whimpering into the night when I get near them,” she said, smiling. “Have you had dinner yet?”

“On the plane, although that’s hardly food.”

“First class food is pretty good, I’m told.”

“I’d rather have drunk a pint of warmed blood.” He sighed. “I’m wiped. If you’re not going to smear the asshole across the pavement tonight and you won’t let me do it, I’m going to go to bed and sleep off the jetlag. See you for breakfast?”

“Training camp? Wouldn’t miss it. Anyone I should be keeping an eye on?”

Dante had been helping out with training and coaching during the summer’s training camps. He went through all the potential stars among the new recruits and Rory listened happily. The 49ers might have a very good year, if the Summanus let them. This would be the second season of daylight-only events and perhaps the public would appreciate distraction from a world filled with real monsters and come see more live games.

After twenty minutes of pleasant conversation broken up by Dante’s yawns, she made Dante hang up and go to bed.

Then she packed up her things and drove home. Her house was near the university, in a pleasant, tree-lined street, although even the trees looked wilted under the effects of the lingering heat wave.

From nearly a block away from her house, Rory saw the lights and the cars almost closing in the street ahead. Police cars were closest to the house. There were also network TV vans and unmarked cars of all types.

They had to be waiting for her. They wouldn’t have been able to access the grounds of the research Centre so they had camped out here, where she would be accessible.

Rory didn’t brake. She didn’t speed up. She let the Audi roll forward at the same speed and put on her indicator for the next intersection, as if that had been her intended direction all along.

She settled in for the drive up to San Francisco. It didn’t take nearly as long as it usually did, because traffic dropped radically at night, these days.

Dante’s house was a modest two million dollar multi-story on Russian Hill. She parked next to his black Viper and climbed up to the front door, looking around for anyone taking more than casual interest in her. The winding road could be hiding all sorts of covert observers, with its plants and shrubs thrusting into the middle, making the road twist snake-like down the hill. Media people would be more open about their interest. There was no one standing around with a camera or recorder in hand, though. Most people were sensible about the dark and didn’t take risks once the sun had set, even though hunters had all but cleared out the inner city areas of Summanus.

Hatching season was drawing closer, though.

It took Dante a while to answer the door. He would have been deeply asleep. When he opened the door, he was wearing pajama pants that she knew he had put on just to answer the door. His huge shoulders gleamed in the low light from the porch. He scrubbed at his black hair and beard sleepily. “Rory.” He pushed the door open wider, so she could step in.

“There were journalists and police outside my house,” she said.

Dante grimaced. “I should have thought of that. Sorry.”

“You could barely string words together as it was.”

“I’ve already got used to the idea that people don’t go out after dark. I guess the media congregate and figure they’re safe, that way.”

She went through to the gracious loungeroom. “Can I use your sofa?”

“If you can work with all this going on, sure,” he said. “Do you want company?”

“Are you kidding? Go back to bed. I have my laptop and my tablet. I’ll be more comfortable here than my office.” She put her satchel down on the coffee table.

Dante rubbed at his eyes, trying to wake up. His black eyes and olive skin he had inherited from his Italian mother. The thick black hair and build came from his father’s side of the family, who could count ancestors all the way back to ancient Greece. His physical strength and dexterity were the product of hard work and incredible self-discipline, developed over a fifteen year career as a professional football player.

These days, he was using that skill and dexterity for other things.

“You’re not going to go hunting tonight?” he asked her.

“All my gear is in the house.” She grimaced.

“Right. Of course.” He looked toward the stairs. “I can’t even think straight.”

“I’ll be fine. My needs are few.”

“Lucky you. Right now I would give anything to not have to sleep. My unit is out there for the second night without me.”

“They’ll be fine,” Rory assured him. “You’ve taught them well.”

He gave her a grin and headed upstairs, his bare feet soft on the carpet.

* * * * *

Nine hours later, when Rory heard Dante moving around upstairs, she made coffee for him and turned on the TV to catch up on news.

She was the subject of the third item after the first ad break. Puzzled, Rory watched the anchor flip to a journalist standing in front of her house, talking to Mr. Washanksy from three doors up, who told him he’d seen a body being pulled out of her house yesterday morning and the police had been there ever since.

“Did you know your neighbor was a vampire?” the journalist asked.

Mr. Washanksy looked troubled. “She lied to all of us here. Living among us and not saying anything. People’s pets have gone missing for years around here.”

“Because they don’t tag them, you moron!” Rory told the screen.

“Of course, the El Camino Real running right past the end of your street has nothing to do with pets going missing,” Dante said, from just behind her.

Rory nearly jumped. She had been focused on the TV and missed his panther-like stroll into the room. He carrying his big coffee mug, which he lifted slightly. “Thanks,” he added. He nodded toward the screen. “Still don’t want to cream the guy?”

“He’s not worth it. If I react, I’ll be giving him what he wants, anyway.”

Dante considered her. “Attention?”

“And confirmation that he’s getting to me.” She switched off the TV and put the remote down. “I’m going to have to let the office know what is happening.”

“You figure Ben Lyon doesn’t already know? Every network is running it.”

“A courtesy call then.” She pulled her cellphone out of her bag and glanced at the time. It was past seven. Early, but not outrageously early to call Ben. She hit the speed dial button and waited.

Ben didn’t bother with small talk. He had learned long ago she wasn’t interested in it. “You’re all over the news,” he said. He didn’t bother with hello. They both knew each other.

“Hence the call.”

“Is this Corbin’s doing?”

“Then it’s as obvious to you as it is to me,” Rory said. “I hope the police think so, too. I got a visit from them yesterday.”

“Security told me,” Ben admitted. “I’m going to have to talk to Corbin’s director, find out what he plans to do about it. Thing is, Rory, Corbin was trying to find a way to get you out of the Centre and it looks as though he found one.”

“You’re firing me?” she breathed.

Dante’s head jerked up from the tablet he had been reading. His eyes narrowed.

“Not until and only if the police lay any charges. It’s the moral clause in your contract. We all signed the same contract, so Corbin knows it as well as you should. The suspicion of criminal behavior calls for automatic suspension. He got you, Rory.”

She gripped the phone. “What about him? He’s being questioned, too.”

“That’s why I’m going to talk to his director, to make sure he’s in the loop.”

“And aware of the contract clause?” she asked.

“I might manage to work it into the conversation.” Ben sighed. In the background, she could hear kids arguing over cereal flavors and a breakfast show TV host talking about a festival happening in the Mission District over the weekend.

“The detective investigating the body in my living room isn’t sympathetic,” she added. “He’ll drag his heels over this.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben said heavily. “Until you’re officially cleared of any charges, I can’t let you back in through security. You know why. You’re working with highly classified information every day.”

“I know.”

“Think of it as vacation time,” Ben said. “I don’t think you’ve taken a real vacation in years.” He hung up.

Rory put the phone down slowly.

“Fired?” Dante repeated cautiously.

“Suspended. It’s a security thing.” She pressed her lips together. “So much for playing by the rules. Corbin used them against me.”

“Sticking to the rules is the only sensible strategy,” Dante reminded her.

“Until there is a benefit in breaking them that outweighs the consequences.” It was basic game theory and Corbin Parish was as well versed in game theory as she was.

Dante grimaced. “I just realized. Training camp. It’s media day there, too.”

Rory sighed. “There goes our breakfast.”

Dante pushed the tablet away from him. “What are you going to do?” he asked curiously.

She considered it. “Corbin will win this game if I stay on the board. He’s aiming to pay me back for dumping him, so he outed me in the most public way possible. The body in my living room ensured the media would pick it up and bray the news across the bay. They’ll do it for as long as I’m in the city.” She looked up at Dante. “I have to get off the board.”

“Leave town? Will the police let you do that?”

“If they know where I’m going to be. There’s someone next to Detective Plank who will lean on him to make sure he doesn’t say no just to make my life difficult,” she said, thinking of Christine Perugia.

“So you’re going to run away?” Dante asked. There was no judgement in his voice. No disapproval.

“I’m going to step off this board and onto another one. The Summanus are everywhere, Dante. I can kill them in Los Angeles as well as I can kill them here.”

“You’re going to L.A.?”

“There’s a man I know, there. A vampire.” She picked up her phone. “Nathanial Aquila Valerius Aurelius.”

“Sounds Roman.”

“He is.”

“Sounds familiar, too,” Dante added. “Has he been on the news, as well?”

Rory dialed. “He has, but not for draining humans. If there is a vampire you could call the leader of the resistance against the Summanus, he’s the one you’d be pointing at.”

Chapter Two

Marcus stepped away from the body with the elongated, bony head and shook his head. “I’m a chemist, Rick. How the hell am I supposed to know what killed it? It’s dead. End of story.”

Cyneric straightened up from his slump against the wall. He had been standing with his arms crossed and one shoulder pressed against the wall, waiting for Marcus to complete his inspection of the Ĉiela body the local police had brought to the cottage that afternoon. “The village see us as experts,” he said, his tone patient, in contrast to Marcus’ seething frustration over being dumped with a body that he had no idea what to do with.

“And the cops found this where?” Marcus asked, looking down at the thing. He couldn’t tell if it was male or female. No one knew much about the Ĉiela, except they were dying, unable to survive without their god leader, An.

“At the bottom of Marshall Brown’s hay field.”

“That fetid little swamp? They didn’t wonder if the stench is what killed it?” Marcus leaned closer and sniffed. “Phew.”

The door to the little kitchen pushed inward and Ilaria strode in, to come to a halt with her hand to her nose. “Oh my God!” she cried, waving her other hand in front of it. “It stinks in here!”

“No kidding,” Marcus breathed.

She came a half step closer and looked up at him. “You have to get it out of here. I’m not kidding. You can’t leave a dead body on my kitchen table. It’s unsanitary!”

“I tend to agree,” Rick said evenly. “We can phone and tell them to come and collect the thing. They can hand it in to the police morgue at Stow.”

“Then why did you accept delivery in the first place?” Marcus asked.

Rick shrugged. “I was curious. I’ve never seen one up close. I wanted to see the details.”

“That brain of yours is going to get you killed one day,” Ilaria muttered.

“Most likely,” Rick agreed.

“Because I’ll be the one who kills you,” Ilaria added. “Call them now. Now. I want it gone!”

Rick smiled. He put his hand on Marcus’ shoulder, heavy and reassuring. The long fingers squeezed. “I’m sorry,” he said, speaking to them both.

Marcus shrugged. “I probably would have wanted to look, too. Only, looking isn’t telling us anything other than it’s dead and it doesn’t look even remotely human. I don’t even know if this thing is armor or some sort of carapace.” He pointed at the rigid breast plate. “Not without a lab full of equipment. Now that would tell us things.”

“They’re very tall, aren’t they?” Ilaria said, tilting her head to look at the head and feet, which were both hanging off the end of the table by quite a bit.

From the front room of the cottage came an loud shattering of glass and a series of heavy thuds.

All three of them jumped.

Rick turned Ilaria toward the back door she had just come through. “Out,” he said quietly. “No arguments. We’ll slow them down. Head for the village. Ask Peter Guinness for one of his rooms.” Peter Guiness ran the local pub.

Ilaria’s eyes were wide. She nodded. “Be careful.” She stretched up on her toes and kissed him quickly. Then she moved toward Marcus.

“No time,” Rick said sharply. “There are six of them in the living room now.”

Marcus gave her a grim smile. “Later,” he promised.

Ilaria nodded and hurried to the door. Rick locked it behind her. The Summanus were often puzzled by simple things such as locks and bolts, while showing a deep understanding of more complex ideas like politics and human community structures. They knew how to find the most populated human centers without scouting, too.

Marcus looked at Rick. “Engage them, or wait?” He pulled out his main gun, which was loaded with Pyrrhus bullets.

Rick reached under his jacket and pulled out the knife he preferred. “Engage. It’ll keep them busy and give Ilaria time to get away.” He moved even as he was speaking, heading for the closed door that separated the kitchen, a more modern add-on, from the rest of the cottage.

Beyond the door was what had once been a wood storage room but was now the hallway where the stairs to the upper floor began and from where doors to all the main floor rooms could be accessed. The door that had been added to the living room, nearly a century ago, had been removed in a more recent renovation, when efficient central heating and windows had been installed, making sealing off the warmth in a single room no longer necessary.

Because of the open doorway, as soon as Rick wrenched the kitchen door open, they could see straight into the big living room that took up the whole front of the house. The Summanus had caved in all four of the big, lead-lined windows. Rick had counted the thuds of bodies hitting the floor accurately. There were six of them digging up the old Persian rug with their sharp toes, their bony heads almost scraping the ceiling.

More were coming in the windows.

Marcus fired off three shots, taking careful aim. The Pyrrhus bullets took a lot of work to produce and he didn’t like to waste them.

Three of the Summanus dropped to the rug and writhed, making the strained, high-pitched sound everyone figured was their version of screaming in pain. The Summanus bodies were too filled with mucous for the Pyrrhus to do more than burn away their insides. The Summanus didn’t explode into flames the way vampires and humans did, yet it was clear the Pyrrhus hurt like hell and that was fine by him.

In reaction to Marcus’ shots, the still-standing Summanus turned and lunged toward them. With their long legs, they crossed the living room in two big strides.

“Split up!” Rick shouted, pushing Marcus toward the cellar door. He leapt for the stairs.

Under normal circumstances, heading for a dead end like a basement would make no sense. However, they were trying to give Ilaria time to get away. Splitting the Summanus up this way left fewer for each of them to deal with. Plus, both the basement and the rooms upstairs were cramped, with low ceilings. The Summanus would find them difficult to navigate.

So Marcus rammed his shoulder against the cellar door, wrenching it open. It slammed up against the interior wall inside. Marcus rattled down the old wooden steps, making as much noise as he could to draw some of them after him.

Rick was also clomping up the main staircase, his boots landing heavily. Normally, he was incredibly light and agile on his feet. He was drawing attention to himself, too.

Marcus slapped the light switch as he hit the last step, then moved onto the old concrete floor. The cement floor, the English called it. The whole cellar structure was another add-on. Ilaria had spent weeks researching the history of the cottage, which was older than Rick’s possession of it. It had originally been an earth-floor building, dating back to nearly the Anglo-Saxon period. Sometime in the past, the original earth floor had been excavated and a cellar built for defense and storage, while the wooden floor had been added over the top of it. The cellar would have been earth-only for a long time. In later years, the concrete would have been poured in deference to modern human living standards.

Even later still, someone had added a number of interior walls, dividing the cellar up into cramped little rooms, most of them with the studs still showing on one side of the wall.

Rick had ignored the cellar for decades. Ilaria, though, had been slowly renovating, doing a lot of the work herself at nights, while Marcus slept and Rick studied his thought-walls.

At the end of the corridor there was a slate-tiled bathroom, with a big, old-fashioned clawfoot bath, decent lighting and a huge walk-in shower. All three of them preferred this bathroom to the miniscule washroom upstairs, with its shower cubicle that could shoot the user out into the middle of the room if they bent over the wrong way and their backside hit the wall.

Marcus put his back to the bathroom and watched the stairs. He had eight bullets, because he always made sure to put one in the chamber and reload the clip with an eleventh bullet. He had used three already. If he aimed carefully, he could take care of anything that came down the stairs.

He had left the cellar door swinging open and the Summanus had learned how to operate doors. The first came through at great speed. Marcus was ready for that. He calmly put a bullet into its middle and it tumbled down the rest of the stairs, stopping at the bottom in a tangle of wrongly bent limbs, writhing and screaming.

The second slipped through the doorway right behind the first. Marcus plugged it, making it lurch forward and fall, to land on top of the first.

There was a pause.

That was when Marcus realized Rick had anticipated even this aspect of splitting up, in the short less-than-second he had considered it. The stairs were so narrow only one Summani at a time could traverse them.

Those chasing Rick upstairs would have the same problem. The main stairs were not much wider than these and they had a sharp turn in the middle, too. Rick could sit at the top of the stairs and pop them off like ducks in a shooting gallery, for as long as his ammunition lasted. As Rick kept a Glock in his jacket beside the knife and a spare clip besides, he could sit there quite a while. Long enough to make the Summanus pause and reconsider.

Marcus grinned, as the third Summani appeared at the top of the stairs. He waited until it had committed itself and went for the same easy chest shot and watched it cascade down the stairs with satisfaction.

The only deciding factor here was how many Summanus were in the house. They had learned in the last year that the Summanus preferred to hunt alone. They only cooperated with each other during full-scale battle conditions, when thousands of them would gather together.

Working in small guerilla units had not seemed to occur to them. However, they were scary fast learners and might have picked up the idea from the hunter units that spent every night tracking them down and routing them from human cities and other population centers.

There was certainly more than one inside Rick’s cottage right now. How many of them, though?

Marcus didn’t let himself grow complacent. Rick had maneuvered them both into perfect positions of strength but a mistake could easily change that. He stayed alert and took them one by one.

He had four bullets left and the pile of Summanus bodies on the stairs had obscured nearly every step, when he heard Rick on the main stairs. He was moving down them.

Marcus shook his head. “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded, addressing the air. Rick wouldn’t hear him with all the Summanus screeching going on.

Then Rick’s heavy caliber gun fired and it sound loud even down here.

There was scrabbling outside the cellar door at the head of the stairs. More screeching. The clip of Summanus toes on the old wooden floor. They were moving quickly.

Rick’s gun fired again and Marcus saw one of them stagger backward, arms flailing. The elbow spike slammed into the doorframe, digging out a narrow trench in the wood.

Then it was gone. There were more of them up there, though. The hallway was dark with their bodies, cutting off the little overhead light.

Marcus wondered how many of them were in the house. Were they pouring in through the windows like a river?

What did they want?

Rick’s gun bellowed three more times, the shots close together. The Summanus Marcus could see through the doorway were swarming, circling in a manner that made him think they had been surprised and were trying to regroup.

The gun fired twice more, herding them back toward the living room.

Then Rick dived through the door and nearly overbalanced when his foot struck the first Summani body at the top of the stairs. He flailed, then his hand slapped on the worn balustrade. He leapt over the beam like a high jumper and dropped to the concrete not far away from Marcus and straightened up.

“What are you doing?” Marcus demanded, lowering his own gun.

Rick turned and opened the door nearest him. It was Marcus’ lab. “None of them came after me. None at all,” he said over his shoulder. “Watch the stairs!” he added from inside the room.

Marcus moved up level with the open door, his gun trained on the stairs. “What do you mean, none of them?”

Rick stepped out of the room. In his arm he had two of the Molotov cocktails that Marcus had made out of milk bottles. The pale reddish liquid inside them, sloshing around beneath the rag stoppers, was Pyrrhus.

“Rick?” Marcus had to lift his voice above the noise the Summanus were making. Then he shot the next Summani to try the door. Their attempts were slowing down. They were thinking it through.

Rick put the bottles on the floor next to the open door and grabbed Marcus’ arm. “Come with me.” He pulled, nearly wrenching Marcus off his feet, back down the passage, away from the stairs.

“What the fuck, Rick?” Marcus said. He fired at the Summani that appeared at the top of the stairs and missed, because of Rick’s yanking on his arm. He pulled his arm out of Rick’s grip, which required all his strength and almost dislocated his shoulder in the process. He stopped and took better aim and dropped the Summani this time.

Rick hauled him backward again, through the bathroom door. Their feet crunched on the slate. “Watch the door!” Rick demanded, letting go of his arm. He went over to the claw-foot bath and bent over it, gripped both sides and heaved.

“What the hell?” Marcus spared a glance down the passage. It was clear, but it wouldn’t be for long, as he couldn’t see the top of the stairs from here. The Summanus would be able to descend without resistance. “What are you doing?”

“The Summanus didn’t follow me up the stairs. None of them. They want you, Marcus.”

“Me?” Marcus frowned. “The Summanus don’t take prisoners. They don’t kill strategically. They feed and they destroy the enemy. Why would they want me?”

“I don’t know,” Rick said, sounding breathless. He was hauling at the sides of the tub, his fingers white on the edges. “They left Ilaria alone—I saw her heading into the village from the window on the top landing. They didn’t come after me. Yet there are dozens of them trying to figure out how to get down here and reach you.” He clamped his jaw, making the muscle in the corner of it flex.

The tub gave a long, low groan, then came up from the floor. There was a tearing sound and a grinding of metal. The drain was being ripped from the bottom of it.

Marcus glanced along the passage. Nothing yet.

Then he looked back over his shoulder, fascinated at the display of Rick’s overwhelming strength. He still had no idea what Rick was doing.

When Rick turned the heavy, cast-iron tub over and dropped it onto the floor with a crash, Marcus understood. He shook his head.

Rick lifted the edge of the tub up by two feet. “Get in,” he said shortly.

“And leave you to face them alone? Not happening.”

“They don’t want me,” Rick said patiently and quickly. “We’re both about to run out of bullets. Fire is the only thing that will stop them now. They’re in the house and contained. This old place will go up like a bonfire. The tub is fireproof. So is the floor. Get in Marcus. We don’t have time to argue.”

Marcus shook his head. He couldn’t think of a single logical reason why he should stay right where he was. He just knew he wasn’t going to hide and leave this all on Rick’s shoulders. No way.

Rick dropped the tub with a crash that was muffled beneath the keening and screaming the Summanus on the stairs were doing. He came toward Marcus, scowling. “This is not open to debate.”

“Exactly,” Marcus said and reached for the spare clip in his pocket.

Rick hit him with the sharp point of his elbow, just under the ear. Marcus slumped, his knees no longer holding him up, as his head buzzed and thoughts jumbled and fragmented. He couldn’t speak. Even his vision was fading.

“I’m sorry,” Rick said gently. “Your relentless courage is one of the things I love most about you, but it will only get you killed right now. You’re going to have to trust me.”

He was hauling Marcus back toward the tub. Marcus tried to struggle. Nothing was working properly. He couldn’t even make a fist.

Rick lowered him to the floor. Marcus could see grit right in front of his nose. Ilaria would be mad about the mess they were making.

Rick pushed his knees up closer to his chest. Then the tub squealed as it scraped over the floor.

The last thing Marcus saw was Rick’s face. His black eyes and the tiny smile he used just for Marcus and Ilaria, the one that said he was thinking about how much he loved them and how fortunate that made him.

“I’ll see you later,” Rick told him.

The tub was lowered over the top of Marcus, cutting out the light. Marcus tried to scream in protest, but the lack of light was stealing his thoughts.

Then there was nothing.

* * * * *

Rick stuffed the drain hole with a wet towel. That would stop smoke from entering. He propped one edge of the tub up a quarter of an inch, sitting it on a toothbrush he thought might be Ilaria’s. The crack at floor level would let in fresh air for as long as the air remained free of smoke, which rose to the ceiling first and would, with luck, vent out through the cellar door before filling the basement itself.

Rick rested his hand on the bare iron shell for a moment. Marcus would be angry for a week over this. It was better he be alive and angry, than dead, though.

Then Rick pulled out his gun once more, reloaded it and ran for the passage and scooped up the two Pyrrhus bombs in his spare arm.

Three Summanus were negotiating the stairs. Rick shot them all, then waited for them to roll to a halt before climbing the stairs himself, keeping one eye on the door as he went.

Another Summani showed as he reached the top. Rick’s shot sent it staggering backward, screaming.

He burst through the door and looked around for targets. The tiny hallway held four of them and there were more in the living room, trying to squeeze into the hallway, trying to reach Marcus.

Rick shot the four in the hallway. He barely had to aim for they were crammed into the space like sardines. They would have dropped to the floor, except there was no room. They jigged and squirmed, held on their feet. They were no longer interested in Rick.

He put one of the bombs down between his feet and swung the other, judging his throw. He was naturally left-handed, except that when he had been a child, left-handedness had been the mark of the devil and he had been forced to use his right hand for everything. He still shot with his left hand although now, after so long, his right hand was just as dexterous. He swung the bottle one last time, in a gentle, underarm swing. The bottle arched up over the heads of the four Summanus in the hallway, sliding through the gap between them. It just cleared the door lintel and kept arching up into the air of the living room beyond where even more of the Summanus milled.

As the bottle began to drop, Rick took careful aim and shot it.

The explosion ripped apart the living room. Rick could see what was left of the windows blow out like horizontal geysers.

The shock wave slammed into the inner walls, making them groan. This old place had stood for centuries, though. A little explosion wasn’t going to knock it off its feet.

The building remained standing, while fire bellowed in the front room. Those Summanus who had survived the explosion surged away from the fire, panicked. That pushed more of them through the hallway door. Others would be tearing through the kitchen door, too. The ones shoving their way into the hall, away from the fire, rammed the wounded ones forward.

Rick bent and grabbed the neck of the other bottle and lunged for the stairs. Up was the only way out. From the turn in the stairs, he could throw the other bottle.

One of the falling wounded landed against his back and he shoved himself through the air, out of the way.

Sharp pain speared the back of his thigh. The hot agony that grabbed at his leg told him one of the falling Summanus had scraped him with their claws or their elbow hook.

Summanus toxin was just as disabling for vampires as it was for humans. Rick fell forward, his knees connecting sharply with the edge of the first stair. More pain exploded through him, pushing a hard breath out of him.

His vampire healing set to work to fix the damage to his knees but it couldn’t overcome the Summanus toxin. Not straight away. He grabbed the knee of his useless leg and dragged it forward, then lifted himself up onto the next step.

More pain, this time just to the right of his spine, on his lower back. He could tell by the force of the blow that it was no falling body. A live Summani was behind him.

Rick twisted around onto his back, breathing hard. The Summani was standing over him, taking its time. It knew he was helpless. Rick had watched the fuckers toy with humans the way cats did with mice, once they had them at their mercy.

Behind the Summani, roaring flame licked at the door lintel with white tongues and bright red hearts. Pyrrhus fire burned hotter than anything else. Nothing could survive that conflagration. Except there were too many Summanus standing in the hall, out of reach of the fire. He had to deal with them separately.

Rick pulled the bottle out from under him and held it up. “Checkmate, asshole.” With the gun in his other hand, he fired at the bottle. This close, there was no way he could miss, even with pain making his vision swim.

He didn’t miss. He felt the fire bloom in his hands.

In his thoughts, Rick reached out for Marcus and Ilaria and held them.

Then he felt nothing more.

Chapter Three

There was nothing to distinguish the office building on Crocker Street in downtown Los Angeles from any other building around it, except for the Marines guarding the doors and the thorough screening everyone who wanted to enter the building went through.

There was no signage to indicate the building hosted the unofficial headquarters of the American effort to defeat the Summanus. In the last year, the offices had become the busy junction point for the US military, the civilian hunter coordinators and vampires. Non-human species were lumped together under the title of “others” as there were fewer of them than the first three groups, although between the Curandero and oddities like Dominic with his telepathy, they were not a token group.

Nial was a frequent visitor to the building, although he didn’t like downtown L.A. and found dealing with the military a strain. Today, none of that registered. He barely noticed the heat, which at this extreme could be draining. He could only keep half his attention on the uniformed Colonel talking at the end of the fold-up table they were sitting around.

“The loss of Singapore is making most of south east Asia uneasy,” Colonel Kurtz said, “and they were reluctant to cooperate in the first place. How long before they decide that China had the right idea and carpet bomb the islands from India to Papua New Guinea and everything in between?”

China’s solution to the Summanus problem had been to build a wall the size of the Great Wall across the Shanghai promontory, then destroy all Summanus inside the wall. For a week, they dropped napalm on the rest of the city lying outside the walls, regardless of the civilians there. The residents living behind the wall were now operating under siege conditions, killing anyone who tried to enter without the proper authority.

No one had dared to count how many humans had been killed in the razing of Shanghai. It was still too enormous a loss to understand. Now other cities in China were building their own walls, or fortifying whole islands on the coast.

Nial nodded sympathetically.

The Air Force general, Price, stirred. “Bombing doesn’t do a damn thing, anyway,” he said. “Our fighters are just burning jet juice up there.”

“They provide valuable reconnaissance,” the Colonel pointed out. “The Summanus show up nicely on thermal imaging.”

The general snorted. “The civilian hunters are doing better with their guerilla units. Maybe I should get your people in to train mine, hey, Ford?”

Lucas Ford had emerged in the last few months as a coordinator for all human hunter groups along the west coast, right up to and including British Columbia. He had become the informal general of the hunters. He nodded now, his gray hair glinting in the overhead strip lights. “Thank you, General,” he said gravely, his normally cynical smile absent. He knew how to deal with the military, how to speak their language, as he was former military himself. He had become a useful go-between for Nial, too. He was good with military strategy, yet often missed the big picture.

Colonel Kurtz pulled down on the bottom of his shirt. It was his way of changing subjects. “Nathanial, I heard you lost one of your own yesterday. My condolences.”

Nial breathed in and let it out, controlling his reaction. “Thank you, Colonel,” he said, borrowing Ford’s pleasant tone.

Ford frowned. “Damn, Nial. That’s too bad. All that knowledge, that history…. Sorry, man.” Ford seemed to have a better understanding of vampires than any of the military did. He, at least, realized just how much was lost when a vampire died.

“Someone key to your efforts?” General Price asked.

Irritation touched Nial. It was the first real feeling he’d experienced since Marcus had phoned and given him the news with a strained , harshly controlled voice. “Cyneric Pæga was born in the early ninth century. He survived countless wars and battles. He was a strategist and thinker, better than anyone the world has ever seen. More than that, Rick was a friend. The blow to ‘our efforts’ is terrible. Only he wasn’t just ours, General. The entire world and everyone on it will feel the draft left by his absence and it might yet prove to be fatal for us all.”

He made himself stop there, even though more hot words and anger were pushing at him, looking for a way to get out. He could hear Winter in his mind, telling him to breathe, to meditate through the moment. Relations with the US military were strained enough without him having a hissy fit because he had lost someone he hadn’t realized he would even miss, until now when Rick was gone. Everyone was losing loved ones, every day. It wasn’t even unusual, anymore.

Both military officers were staring at him. Ford, though, just looked grim, empathy in his eyes. He lived with the same equations Nial did, every single night, while the military persisted with traditional methods, that were wasted on an enemy who didn’t think as humans did. They couldn’t adapt.

The need to go home and find Sebastian and see the life in his eyes was almost overwhelming. Nial made himself sit still, though. “Sorry, General. Colonel.”

“We’ve seen it all before, Nathanial,” Kurtz said gruffly. “It happens in war time.”

The General nodded agreement.

Ford leaned back in his chair. “Maybe we should get on with this.”

“Yes, indeed,” Kurtz said easily. “Do you want to go next?”

Ford nodded. “It’s been a quiet week. Only the outer suburbs in most of the cities are working as steadily as we all were a year ago. No losses to report, either. We were wondering if it was some sort of lull before the storm. The hatching season is soon.” His gaze flickered toward Nial.

“It might be,” Nial said carefully. “We had barely seen our first Summani when the larva hatched last year, so there is no way to tell for certain if they do go quiet before the hatching.”

“We are all still gathering intelligence about the enemy,” Kurtz added. He hesitated. “We had our first Elah ask to join up this week.”

“Did you recruit them?” Ford asked curiously.

“We’re still assessing. They’re faster than humans in reaction speed and across land, but they’re not as strong.” He rubbed the back of his head. “First it was women, then gays, now a whole other species we might have to integrate. When I was a green recruit, I thought my sergeant was the biggest challenge I would ever face.”

The general gave a snorting laugh. “If they’re that fast, they could be good at infiltration.”

“That is a thought we’re toying with,” Kurtz admitted. “It’s the idea of handing them a AK47 that bothers the hell out of me and not just because I don’t know what they’ll do with it. They came out of the same box as the Summanus. I can’t forget that.”

“They were in the Blood Stone only because they were the enemy the Summanus used humans to defeat,” Nial reminded him. “The Ĉiela, too, but they will not survive their re-emergence. The Elah are doing their best to adapt to a human-dominant world. I admire them for it.”

“Maybe they are an intelligence source we’ve overlooked?” the General said, interest building in his voice.

Nial got to his feet. “Unfortunately, one of only two human contacts with access to the Elah’s leader is somewhere in Russia right now, at the beck and call of the GRU, who are showing signs they want to roll up the drawbridge the same way China did. We’ve lost contact with him.”

“One of two?” Kurtz said. “What about the other one, then?”

Nial looked at him, cold gripping his belly. “When Marcus has recovered from Cyneric’s passing, I will ask him. Not a moment before.”

Kurtz had the grace to look uncomfortable. It didn’t help much, either.

Nial excused himself and left the room, even though the meeting could and often did wind on for hours yet. Week after week, they debated strategies and tactics that might defeat the Summanus, while the lack of understanding about the Summanus stopped them from settling on anything resembling a plan.

The General was right. The civilian hunters were more effective than any military, anywhere. They didn’t concern themselves with knowing the enemy. They just killed it. They were getting very good at it, too.

Nial would head out with Patrick’s troop tonight and burn up some of the useless, acid-bearing energy swirling through him by killing as many of the Summanus as he could.

He stepped out onto the pavement and took in another sharp breath, this time as the heat seemed to swirl up and slap him in the face. He pulled out his sunglasses and put them on quickly. The light was overwhelming. He could feel the heat stroking his bare forearms, making the skin tighten.

Vampires couldn’t sweat in reaction to heat or exertion. He had to get out of this and fast.

He turned and headed for the garage where he had left his car, moving quickly while keeping himself to human speeds. As he walked, his phone vibrated against his chest. He kept moving. The heat seemed to blast up from the sidewalk itself, as well as pulse down from the sun. He wanted to get out of it.

The garage was shaded because it was in a basement, yet the heat seemed to be even worse. Moist air was trapped inside the concrete walls, making the heat a fetid thing that gripped his throat and clung with damp fingers.

Nial almost threw himself in the car, started it and turned the air conditioning up to maximum. As the cold air bathed his face and body, he relaxed back in the drivers’ seat and closed his eyes.

Rick’s death was part of what was wrong with him today. Nial was old enough and wise enough to know he was reacting badly. It wasn’t just the loss of a master tactician to the war effort, either, or the passing of another great vampire and friend. Something else was at work that had yet to make itself known. He knew better than to try digging it up, though. That would bury it even deeper.

Besides, he was too busy to stop for psycho-analysis just because once more he had proved he didn’t know himself any better than the average human understood their own psyche. For a fifteen hundred year old vampire, it was pathetic.

Then he remembered the alert on his phone and reached for it, pleased to have a distraction. The text from Sebastian was typically short, full of hacker idiom and to the point.

Rory R. e’d u. Wants in. I say Y.

Rory Rafferty had emailed him. As Nial hadn’t received the email on his phone, she had used one of his old message drops, which made sense. He hadn’t spoken to Rory for a long time. She had been in Scandinavia, the last he had heard about her, passing as human as they all had been, honing her winter sports skills. The old email address she had used was still viable, although only vampires knew of it. She was reaching out via the vampire backdoor, rather than the public contact a human would have. That tended to prove she was who she said she was.

She apparently wanted to help. Of course Sebastian would be enthusiastic about that. Rory Rafferty always left a trail of stumbling, stuttering men in her wake. Even Sebastian had been caught by her charm and he was close to being in the same caliber as her when it came to connecting with others. Winter had related more than one story about watching Sebastian walk into a room full of lovely people and take his pick. Rory was his female equivalent and even Sebastian had not been immune to her effect.

Nial smiled as he rested his head back on the headrest once more. Sebastian’s endorsement of her offer to help had clear motivations. Nial, though, valued her for more than her midnight blue eyes and clear white skin.

Rick’s loss really was incalculable. Rory, though, might just help bridge that yawning chasm. She was a different sort of expert and maybe even the one they needed, now.

Nial put the car in gear and headed for home, feeling the stirring of something in his heart. It was far too small and too early to call it hope. Yet it did feel like the appearance of a single star upon a velvet black night sky with nothing else in it but impenetrable darkness.

Chapter Four

Even though it was after midnight in Los Angeles, the big house behind the high walls was still showing many lights in its windows.

Sasha looked up at them, pleased that he would not be waking anyone.

The guard handed him back his passport. “It does appear you’re on the list, Mr. Mikhailov.” He stumbled over the pronunciation. Sasha had heard worse efforts and didn’t comment.

“I’ll let you through the gate,” the guard said. “Another guard will let you into the house. You’ll have to go down to the back door, though. This late at night, all the humans will be asleep.”

Sasha blinked at the man’s implied referral to vampires. It was very casual. If the man had been working for Patrick Sauvage for very long, then he might well be used to vampires.

In Russia, vampires were still spoken of in whispers. None had declared themselves publicly. They were afraid to. The GRU and other Russian authorities were keeping a careful eye on them, anyway. That had made Marcus incredibly angry, when he had learned about it. “You lot are so freaking paranoid, you make people become enemies because of it!” he’d railed.

Sasha thought of Rick. He had seen the report on his seat screen on the flight over from Russia. It had not upset him that Marcus had not reached out to him, that he’d learned about Rick’s death via a public news broadcast. No one would have known how to find him, anyway. For the last four months he had kept moving. The passport he had used at LAX was not the same one he had just shown the guard. Such measures were habits, now. Purely automatic.

He made his way around the house, following a path set with Spanish tiles. There were flower borders on either side and little lights set in among the leaves, illuminating the path. As he moved, Sasha looked up at the house. It was much larger than it appeared even at the gate. There was far more of it going farther back than there was facing the gate.

The path split, with one half of it heading off in the same direction, to bend around what looked like a greenhouse attached to the back of the house. The other turned and ran up to a door with a little portico over it and a light shining on the step below.

The door opened as Sasha stood deciding which path to take. A man held the door open. “You’re Marlen?” he asked, keeping his voice down.

“Sasha Mikhailov.”

“Mikhailov. That’s the name Jerry said. Come in.”

Sasha went over to the door. Over the man’s shoulder, he could see a big country-style kitchen, with copper pots hanging over the large gas range built into the island in the middle. There were café curtains on a bay window and an oval table tucked into the curve of the bay, that matched the bow of the window precisely. There was a laptop open on the table.

Sasha let his gaze flicker over the man holding the door open for him. He was wearing a cotton jacket, even though the night was still sweltering. That would be where he had his main gun. From the hang of his jeans, Sasha guessed there was another smaller gun strapped to his ankle.

This, then, was the interior guard.

“How come you say Sasha when your passport says something else?” the guard asked as Sasha drew closer.

His tone was friendly, although Sasha wasn’t fooled. “My full name is Marlen Alexandrovich Mikhailov,” he explained.

The guard didn’t move out of the way. “So?” he said, puzzled.

Sasha resisted rolling his eyes. This was the States, he reminded himself. “Sasha is short for Alexander,” he said.

“Alex is short for Alexander,” the guard replied.

“Not in Russia.” Sasha waited patiently, not forcing the issue.

The guard finally relented. “The house is full of vampires,” he said. “If you try anything you won’t get far.”

“They’re not out hunting right now?” Sasha said and stepped into the kitchen. The air conditioning was on, making the room cool and comfortable.

“Not tonight,” the guard said. “There’s been a family upset.”

“I heard about it on the plane.” Sasha let out a heavy breath.

The guard sat back at the table. “Mr. Sauvage will be down in a moment. The front gate would have alerted him you were coming in. Take a seat, if you want.”

“I have been sitting for far too long already, thank you.” He leaned against the island, keeping his hands down by his sides. The guard was good. He was watching Sasha even while he appeared to be staring at the laptop. He would keep Sasha in his sight until Patrick had cleared him. So Sasha kept his hands in view for the guy, so he could relax a bit.

Sasha didn’t bother engaging him in small talk for the same reason. Besides, it always took a few hours for his English to reassert itself when he was back in an English-speaking country. He was too tired to reach for nouns and pronouns and all the slippery exceptions and rules.

His heart was heavy for Marcus, too. They had never formally been brothers-in-law, yet in practice, they were. Sasha knew Marcus better than anyone else on the planet. Marcus would be devastated by Rick’s passing. The second great loss in his life…Marcus was too good a man to deserve such sorrow.

Patrick Sauvage came into the room. He moved with a cat-like silence and Sasha jerked upright, startled by his sudden appearance.

Patrick came right up to him. “Sasha. I remember you from Nial’s house, before the Summanus broke out of the stone.”

“I was there when the stone was broken, too,” Sasha reminded him.

Patrick nodded slowly. “Yes, I recall that now.” He grimaced. “Things have changed since then, haven’t they?”

Sasha shrugged. “Things do change, if you wait long enough.”

Patrick gave him a small smile. “That sounds very fatalistic. Very Russian. Are you here because of Rick? I mean…you and Marcus are related, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” Sasha said shortly, not bothering with the long tale that the strict truth would involve. “Marcus is in England, though.”

“He and Ilaria have been in the air for forty minutes,” Patrick said. “They’ll be here by morning. We thought it best to keep them here, surrounded by vampires and the best security money can buy.”

Sasha nodded. “Good. That is very good, yes. I would like to see him, to speak of my regret.”

Patrick looked at him with a patient expression.

Sasha shrugged. “I am not here for anything, although if I can help with anything at all, I will.”

Patrick frowned. “Running away, Sasha?”

“Something like that,” Sasha said. “A strategic retreat.”

“I know what those are all too well.” Patrick’s smile this time was warmer. Sasha remembered from the American TV and internet that the most famous star in Hollywood was now the most successful Summanus hunter in America, which had only made him even more famous and beloved.

Patrick stirred and let his arms drop from the defensive cross over his chest he had been holding them in. “There’s room here, if you’d like to stay. Do you have luggage?”

“My bag is with the gate guard,” Sasha said. He’d left it there so he wouldn’t be slowed down and would have both hands free. That had also been automatic, for he had been heading into unknown territory.

“I’ll have it sent to the house,” Patrick told him, “although you might not get it until tomorrow. We don’t insist anyone move around too much at night. I imagine it’s like that in Russia, too.”

“In Russia, there is a curfew. The patrols shoot anything that moves after dark and are not challenged if they do. It only took two civilian deaths for the people to realize the curfew was not negotiable and stay indoors.”

Patrick looked at him sideways as he led him through a very large room with a very high roof and huge windows on either side. It appeared that this room was the center of the house. It took up the entire width of the house. There were groups of sofas and armchairs here and there and a gleaming grand piano in one corner by the window.

There were rooms on the other side of the big one, with closed doors, all except one, from where normal incandescent light shone. Sasha could hear the murmur of voices. Patrick was leading him there.

From the big windows on the west side of the room came a muffled, thudding bass beat.

Sasha looked at it, frowning. For the windows to vibrate with the beat of the music playing outside, the music had to be very loud. Out in the open, without walls to bounce off, sound played at a normal volume dispersed too quickly.

“The neighbors don’t complain about the noise?” he asked.

Patrick grimaced. “They’ve given up. It’s directional, anyway—it doesn’t sound nearly as loud on either side of the house. Just here, where the pool house directs the sound right against the windows. I think it’s louder than it is in the pool house. Not that I’ve tested it.”

“You have someone out in the pool house?” The idea of a whole house devoted to swimming pursuits and the activities that took place next to a pool was a strange one. In Russia, people pursued leisure activities indoors, or they took them right out into the country. Swimming was not high on that list. Despite visiting western worlds frequently and living in the States for a whole year, Sasha still found little oddities like this one amusing.

Patrick actually sighed. “You haven’t met Azarel yet, have you?”

Sasha knew the name from conversations with Marcus. “The Serene One who became human to experience humanity properly? So we could all be judged fairly by the Serene Ones?”

“That’s him.” Patrick glanced out the window once more, his frown growing deeper.

“If he is human, shouldn’t he be sleeping?” Sasha asked. “It is only fools like me who have been using heavier-than-air travelling machines that are still awake.”

Patrick shook his head. “When you meet him, you’ll understand. Azarel has embraced humanity more thoroughly than any of us expected.” He turned his back on the windows deliberately and started moving again. “Nial and the others are in the office. You should say hello before you go upstairs.”

They stepped into the room where the light was shining. There were banks of computer servers in the far corner and long tables holding up a small army of computers and peripherals, supplies and equipment. One of the long tables ran down the middle of the room and Sebastian and Nial were sitting behind a computer each.

Nial was reading his screen, while Sebastian typed with dexterous speed. They both looked up as they entered.

Sebastian got to his feet. He didn’t smile. “Sasha. You heard then.” He held out his hand, over the top of the screen. “It’s good to see you.”

Sasha shook his hand. Sebastian didn’t crush his fingers. Vampires, as a rule, tended to overcompensate for their great strength and most often, their handshakes were pathetic things.

“I was already on my way here when I heard about Rick. I’m sorry, Nial. His loss is enormous. Not just in the war against the Summanus do I mean, either.”

Nial got to his feet. “We’re all sorry. It’s a blow. Although, if that is not what brought you here, what did? No one has been able to find you for weeks.”

“I did a deep dive,” Sasha said. “Even that wasn’t enough, so I bailed completely.” He took a breath and let it out. “The GRU are going to make a move against vampires, Nial. I thought you and your friends should know, only I couldn’t reach out from Russia or the GRU would have found me.”

“You’re on the run from the GRU?” Sebastian said. He blew out his breath. “Wow.”

“I did not agree with them that vampires are the reason we have been blighted with the Summanus.” Sasha rubbed his neck, feeling the dull, impotent anger that had been his status quo for weeks. “You must understand. It is a Russian thing. We cannot defeat the Summanus. Therefore, those who decide such things will ignore them. At the same time, doing nothing is also intolerable, so they will focus on what they can do. Dealing with vampires is something they can do, so they will do it with zeal.”

Nial pinched the skin over the bridge of his nose. “I’m guessing ‘dealing’ with vampires will not be simple interrogation, either.”

“Russian interrogation is anything but simple,” Sasha said gently. “The problem is, even though we have registered and kept track of vampires inside Russia for the last ten years, my leaders in the GRU are convinced there are far more out there they are not aware of.”

Patrick shook his head. “That’s bad. Wholesale paranoia distorts judgement.”

Sasha sighed. “I do not remember the cold war. It was before my time, although I suspect the secrecy and suspicion driving the GRU is much as it was back in the days when they thought there was an American under every bed.”

“How soon before they start rounding people up?” Nial asked quietly.

“I do not know,” Sasha told him truthfully. “When my opposition to their plans drew the attention of the wrong people, I took a sudden vacation and never arrived in Kaliningrad, where I said I was going.” He shrugged. “There are others in the GRU who also think their plans are wrong, although they will be more circumspect in their opposition and will merely slow down the decision process. My personal history with vampires would have made them look at me sideways anyway. I could afford to be vocal, only it cut me off from all but emergency communications. I will hear when the operation begins, not before. I am sorry.”

“For what?” Sebastian asked.

“If I had been more careful, I could still be there, a resource that would actually be useful to you.”

“Not if they were already suspicious about you,” Nial said. “Don’t worry about it. We can use you here, if you’ve a mind to help us.”

“Of course,” Sasha told him, relieved. If Nial was making the offer unprompted, then his help was genuinely needed. He had been uncomfortable about arriving unheralded and expecting them to welcome him freely.

Patrick rested his hand on Sasha’s shoulder. “Come on. I’ll show you to a room. You can get a few hours’ sleep before the morning madness begins.”

“Madness?” Sasha asked as Patrick headed back to the big room and over to the grand, sweeping stairs that curved up to the second floor, there.

“I had no idea how much noise three teenagers getting ready for school could generate,” Patrick said. “Even in this big house, they seem to rattle the architraves.”

“Azarel at night, teenagers in the morning. You have your hands full,” Sasha said politely. He didn’t mind children. There were no children in his life, although at one point, he had been braced to become an uncle. Katya and the child she had been carrying were years dead.

“Oh, my three put Azarel to shame,” Patrick said, sounding suddenly wise and old. “If you sleep through it, count your blessings.”

Chapter Five

Francesca cracked open the sliding glass door of the pool house and wrinkled her nose at the aroma that washed over her like an invisible, billowing cloud. She recognized stale macoña and resisted the need to cross herself. Marijuana was no longer a thing of the devil.

Then she corrected herself. The world was not black and white. Things were never simply good or bad. There were shades and variations and degrees. So said Dominic. He had been saying such things all his life, teasing her when she was a child. Now she was in America, though. Dominic was once more alive when she had thought him dead, so now she tended to listen more carefully to his advice.

So Francesca pushed the door fully aside to let the room air out and stepped inside, hauling the heavy bucket of cleaning supplies inside with her. She put it on the floor and looked around, wondering where to start.

The room was blazing with sunshine, for the early morning sun was almost directly in front of the pool house. The pool house was all glass walls on this side, looking out over the big blue-green curved pool. Opposite the pool was the big house, where Francesca was lucky enough to live.

This room was her focus, for now. It was a mess. There were dirty glasses littering the coffee table in front of the sofa. The sofa cushions were scattered over the tiled floor. Pizza boxes were strewn across the sofa, the table and the floor. At least one of them had the remains of pizza still inside, which added to the stench.

The ashtrays were full and the tequila bottles were not. The glass bong sitting on the table still had dirty green water swirling at the bottom of it.

There was also a plastic bag with capsules and tablets in a range of different sizes and colors. It lay open, the contents spilled onto the table, among the ashes and pizza bones and sticky rings of dried-up alcohol.

Francesca might have supposed a party had happened last night, except this was the sight that greeted her every morning. She had learned to come prepared.

With a sigh, she went back to the bucket and pulled out one of the plastic garbage bags at the bottom and unfolded it. First, the garbage. Then clean. Then decide on the best way to wake him.

She only now glanced at the bed in the corner of the room, a flickering look to confirm he was there. He always was, although sometimes his sleep was so uneasy that not even the sheets survived his tossing. As he slept naked, Francesca had learned to just peek, first. Then, if it was safe, she could look more thoroughly and assure herself he had lived through the previous night’s excesses.

Azarel was asleep, as always, lying face down. This morning the sheet was hooked up over his buttocks, hiding his bare flesh, so Francesca took a moment to listen for his breathing.

He wasn’t alone in the bed. That was also usual. This morning there were two of them, both women, which seemed almost too ordinary for Azarel. Francesca had seen men, women and combinations before, including a man and two women, all tangled up with Azarel on the big bed like sleeping kittens exhausted from the night’s activities.

She carefully didn’t speculate on what those activities were. She was a good Catholic girl and these days she needed her faith more than ever. She set about picking up the garbage, not worrying too much about the noise she made. Azarel could sleep through just about anything.

She was almost done wiping down the coffee table surface when she heard the bed shift.

“You know there are people who are paid to do that, don’t you?” Azarel asked. His voice was hoarse. Strained.

Francesca straightened and dropped the dirty cloth into the side of the bucket where the water was. “The cleaners don’t arrive until nine. You can’t live in this mess until nine. It doesn’t take long, anyway.”

Azarel rubbed the heel of his hand against one eye, grinding it in, as if he was trying to wake himself with pain. He’d at least brought the sheet with him, so all she could see was one powerful thigh and his bare chest. His flesh was perfect—there were no scars, no markings and no spare fat. He spent hours swimming naked in the pool yet never tanned, either. His flesh was as pale as a newborn’s. He had explained that in a way, he had only been born not even a year ago, so that explained the lack of scars, but not why he didn’t tan. That, she put down to his not-really-human state.

He was a very beautiful man, which only a creature who could take on any shape they wanted to could choose. A fine jaw, thick brows and the most astonishing eyes. Nathanial, in the big house, had amazing eyes, too. Although, Nial’s were blue, while Azarel had very pale brown eyes, so pale they were mesmerizing.

His eyes were bloodshot right now. He was very human at the same time he was inhumanly perfect. He looked at her, almost annoyed. “Paying your penance, right?”

The first time he had told her she wasn’t a paid cleaner, she had explained as carefully as she could, but her English had not been as strong then as it was now. She had borrowed a term she had heard at Mass. “I am grateful to my brother for taking me away from Chile. I am grateful to Mr. Sauvage for letting me stay here with Dominic,” she had told Azarel. “I must pay my penance for their generosity.”

Now, Francesca just smiled and bent to straighten the cushions on the sofa.

“They want me in the big house?” Azarel asked.

“It is nearly eight o’clock,” she told him. “There was a visitor during the night, too. I saw luggage in the kitchen this morning.”

“Who is the visitor?”

“I haven’t seen them yet. If they came in late in the night, then they will sleep longer than even you do.” As she worked, her pendant slipped out of her shirt and she tucked it back inside absently.

“Why isn’t that a crucifix?” Azarel asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

Azarel got to his feet, winding the sheet around his hips. He was tall and lean and ridged with muscle and Francesca was pleased he’d remembered to cover himself up. He often didn’t. Only now, the two ladies in the bed were bare. Oh well, she could live with that.

Azarel opened the stacked pizza boxes one at a time, until he found a slice. With a grunt of satisfaction, he sat on the sofa with it. “You are a Christian, aren’t you? One of the sects called Catholic. You wear a chain that you touch for comfort when you’re uneasy. I thought it would be a crucifix, yet it is a sea shell and it means much to you.”

Francesca touched the shell inside her shirt. “It is a cowrie shell, that my brother gave to me when I was fifteen, just before his first public concert. That was ten years ago.” She bit her lip. A lot had happened in those ten years. “It reminds me that miracles are possible.”

Azarel chewed and swallowed. “Miracles.” He rolled his eyes. “I could create a real miracle, right now, if you are really so fond of them.”

Francesca shook her head. She was used to this sort of teasing from Azarel. He didn’t realize he was being confrontational. Besides, he was always genuinely curious to hear her answer. “I know you can arrange the world any way you want to, although if you did it now, it would be cheating.”

“Cheating?” he lowered the pizza, staring at her. “Why?”

“You would be doing it just because you could do it, while no one else can. You wouldn’t be playing by the rules you agreed to.”

Azarel sighed. “I do wonder how long this farce must continue. As if I could not have learned everything there is to learn about humans in the first month. Week. Day!”

“You know that is not true,” Francesca reminded him.

“It is. Humans are boring in their monotonousness.”

“If they were, you would not still be finding them such a distraction at night.” She glanced at the bed.

Azarel grinned. “Ah, now, that is different.”

“If you are so bored, why do you not just will yourself back to wherever it is you go, when you are not where humans can see you?”

“You mean, give up this human form?” He took another enormous bite of the pizza, then picked up a slice of pepperoni from the portion left in his fingers and pushed it into his mouth as well. Azarel also seemed to have an infinite capacity for food.

“Is that what you do?” she asked. “Then yes. Why do you not just go home if you are so tired of it all?”

“I can’t,” Azarel said, his mouth still full.

“Going home is not a miracle you can perform?” Francesca teased.

He swallowed hard. “I can’t perform what you call miracles. No...magic. Nothing a human cannot do.” His scowl returned, yet even that negative expression merely made him look more interesting.

Francesca realized she was holding the shell once more. She didn’t let it go. She thought of the concerts she had heard Dominic play and the adulation he had received. She remembered the diving accident that had left him deaf. She remembered her husband, Jose, relishing her despair when he gave her the news that Dominic was probably dead in some bar brawl in Argentina. She remembered—oh, so clearly!—her joy when Dominic had arrived at her little house in Santiago, more alive than he had ever been, his hearing restored in the most astounding way. Dominic had patched up her cuts and bruises and used a private jet to fly her back to America with him. She had been unable to hide the truth about her husband’s ill treatment from Dominic the way she had hid her shame from the rest of the family. He had seen it in her mind. The largest miracle among all those many marvels was that he had understood. He had not told her it was her fault, or that she must remain by her husband’s side and ask God for forgiveness. He had delivered her from evil.

“Humans are capable of magic,” Francesca told Azarel firmly. “You just have to learn to recognize it.”

Azarel considered her for a moment. “I bow to your superior knowledge.”

“You should get dressed. Nathanial will be waiting for you very soon now. There will be coffee waiting, too.” She would make it herself, if it was not. Azarel was just as addicted to coffee as any other human.

Azarel rolled his eyes. “More planning. More strategies.”

“It is important,” Francesca reminded him. “Humans have to find a way to defeat the Summanus. They have to.” She picked up her things and dropped them into the dry side of the bucket. “Isn’t that why you are here? To learn how humans and the Summanus deal with each other? To understand the nature of the war?”

Azarel sighed, dropping the remains of the pizza slice onto the table. “War. Trouble, strife, turmoil and torment. That is all anyone ever talks about. The only time anyone ever wants to deal with us, it is because of plight and sorrow and anger.”

“That is also your job,” Francesca told him lightly. Azarel would slide into a dark mood if she let him continue this way.

“I’d rather be doing something else. Anything else would be more fun.” His gaze slid toward the bed.

“I thought humans had become monotonous?” Francesca reminded him.

He almost threw himself back against the cushion and growled.

“Coffee. Ten minutes. I’ll see you there,” Francesca said and shut the door behind her, fully confident he would show up at the big house, now. The power of coffee to move a person to action despite their inclinations had never yet failed her. It was another sort of miracle.

* * * * *

The deep, muted rumble of a powerful car engine drew Sasha to the window of his borrowed bedroom, which looked out over the front of the house. It was the quiet end of the house, Patrick had assured him, for he and Dominic and their partner, Blythe, all lived in a suite at the back end, overlooking the conservatory. That was the source of most of the noise in the morning, before Blythe’s three children left for school.

Sasha had been roused by their cheerful sounds as they clattered down the stairs, about two hours ago, then had let himself drift back to sleep.

Now, he was fully awake and it sounded as if the rest of the house was, too. There were people talking out by the big, industrial-strength front gates and the guard box there. More people were talking, downstairs.

It was the car engine that caught Sasha’s attention.

He looked down at the wide driveway and parking spot at the front of the house. There was a low-slung car there. The roof was gunmetal gray. Sasha could see just enough of the side profile to suspect the car was the 2016 Dodge Viper, which explained the low thunder coming from it. The Viper had a 645 horsepower engine, one of the most powerful on the US domestic market, although some of the European sports cars were being built with 700HP.

Sasha looked down at the beautiful machine with a touch of envy. Someone knew their cars. Someone had the money to indulge their tastes, too.

There were two gate guards standing next to the open driver’s door of the vehicle, their heads nearly together as they pumped their fists once, twice, then displayed their hands.

They were drawing to decide who got to drive it.

Sasha hid his grin as the winner got into the car and backed it up carefully. He drove it around the corner of the house, heading toward the back of the property. There was probably some sort of permanent shelter for cars back there. The guard who had lost the draw trudged back to the gate.

Sasha dropped the curtain, letting it fall back into place. Who owned the Viper? They were probably one of the voices he could hear, in the big room downstairs. Time to go and meet them.

He made his way downstairs. The big curve of the stairs meant that as he rounded the curve, he could look straight down into the room and was startled. There was more than a dozen people there, far more than the quiet murmur he had heard from the bedroom had hinted there would be.

They were either all being very quiet, or the soundproofing in this house was efficient, which meant that the noise Patrick’s three teenagers had been making was all the more remarkable.

Either way, Sasha was walking down into a room of strangers and semi-strangers. He had not been here long enough to get to know everyone, the last time he had been here, for they had been whisked off to Turkey in the big military transport shortly after he had arrived. From Turkey, with the Blood Stone opened and the three enemy species loose, he had thought it best to return to Russia and let them know what had happened.

Many of the faces were familiar, though, so Sasha kept moving down the stairs.

Nial was standing with two of the strangers, while everyone else was sitting or sprawled on the many chairs and sofas and ottomans that had been pulled into a ragged group in the middle of the room.

The two strangers with Nial were a man and a woman. He was very tall, almost as tall as Nial, who was an inch taller than Sasha. It wasn’t his height that was remarkable, though. It was his build. He was solid through the shoulders with body-builder style muscles and bulk, with a thick, powerful neck. He had tight hips and strong thighs under the designer jeans he wore. His skin was olive, that most Americans would automatically assume meant he was Hispanic. Sasha had seen Armenians and Georgian Russians with skin of that color, so he wouldn’t assume the man was Hispanic until he learned more.

He had a scrubby black beard and very black eyes, with a refined nose. It was a very ordinary looking face. Almost ugly, in fact. Yet there was intelligence in his eyes.

Then Sasha looked at the woman standing next to the man and almost stumbled down the last step into the room.

She was beautiful, in a glowing film-star sort of way that made Sasha think of the golden Hollywood movies he had watched as a student, learning English the natural way. She had that sort of perfection. Her hair was black and hung over her shoulders in gentle, soft waves. She had strong arching brows over eyes the blue of shadows and midnight, royalty and oceans.

Her mouth was mobile, expressive and full, the lips parted right now to show a hint of white teeth. Her chin was pointed, almost elfin in its delicateness, above the narrow column of her throat.

She was not petite. Her head was above Nial’s shoulder. Neither was she freakishly tall. She was wearing a dress that seemed to float around her, in hues of blue and green that drew attention to her eyes and the curves of her body, too.

In that room of jeans and yoga pants, she stood out. Indeed, everyone was looking at her. Sasha realized that Nial was introducing the pair around the room, so he moved over to stand behind the back of the sofa closest to the stairs and tried to calm his heart.

The sight of such beauty shouldn’t bother him that much. There were beautiful women in Russia, too. Marcus’ Ilaria was stunning, in a miniature way. Kate Lindenstream, the director, who was sitting on one of the ottomans next to Garrett, was a beautiful peaches-and-cream blonde. Even Winter, with her fiery red hair and matching temper, was extremely attractive, especially when she let down her guard and allowed her softer side to show.

Sasha let his gaze turn back to the woman, as Nial lifted his hand to point to Roman, who sat closest to them. Sasha had missed her introduction, then. He would have to find out later what her name was and why she was here, if those facts didn’t emerge from normal conversation.

“Adrian Romanus Xerus, originally of Constantinople,” Nial said.

“Roman, it is good to see you again,” the woman said.

“You know each other?” Nial asked.

“From long, long ago,” Roman confirmed. “I heard you were dead,” he told the woman. “In France, during the first world war.”

Sasha drew in a breath, settling himself down as he jumped in reaction. She was a vampire.

“It was close. I holed up in a deserted trench for nearly a month, recovering,” she admitted, with a small smile. “I was behind German lines and close enough to hear just about everything they said, for there was a command post only a quarter of a mile away. When I finally made it back to Allied HQ in London, they were very impressed.” She smiled, showing a dimple.

A dimple.

Something loosened in Sasha’s belly, making him shift on his feet. He felt hot. Too hot, even though the heat of the day hadn’t kicked in yet.

“Then, if you know Roman, you probably know Garrett as well,” Nial said.

“I do.” The woman smiled again. “Have you two finally stopped squabbling?”

Garrett’s jaw rippled.

“They argue,” Kate Lindenstream said. She laughed. “All the time, but the make-up sex is great. Hi, Rory. I’m Kate.”

The two women met each other’s gaze. Sasha thought he could almost see something pass between them. An understanding.

Rory smiled back. “I don’t watch movies. I hope you don’t mind that. I have heard people speak of your movies and of your talent with awe and enthusiasm.”

Who doesn’t watch movies? Sasha though, baffled. Everyone watched movies, often. He liked the older ones, himself, although he knew enough about Hollywood to know that Kathrine Lindenstream was carving a name for herself that would pass into history as one of the big change-makers of the decade.

Kate’s smile was even more brilliant. “It’s nice of you to say so,” she told the woman. Rory. It was an intriguing name, Sasha thought.

“Sebastian, you know,” Nial said.

Sebastian nodded. His gaze was steady upon Rory. “It’s good to have you here.”

“And Winter, our wife,” Nial added.

Winter nodded.

“If you don’t do movies, then you probably don’t know who Patrick Sauvage is, beyond this house being his,” Nial said.

Patrick lifted his hand. He was sitting on the sofa that Sasha was standing behind. A woman with dark, short hair was leaning against his shoulder as if she was very tired.

“Of course I do,” Rory said easily, with another glowing smile. “The best hunter on the west coast. Your record for kills in a single six hour hunt has been unbroken for six months, so far.”

“Don’t get her going on statistics,” the man standing next to Rory said, rolling his eyes.

The deaf man called Dominic, who was sprawled in the armchair next to the sofa with his knees over the arm, sat up a bit straighter. “Don’t you hold a few records, yourself?” he asked the man.

The man grinned, showing white, even teeth. “A few. They’ll eventually all fall, now I’ve retired.”

Sasha reassessed the man’s physique. Was he someone famous? Here in Los Angeles, that wasn’t too unusual. Another film star?

Dominic put his feet on the ground and sat up. “Most NFL career passing touchdowns. Longest passing yards. Single season touchdown record. Highest consecutive passes without an interception.” Admiration colored his voice.

Sasha sighed. Football. The man was a professional football player, a sport that Sasha didn’t understand and had no time for. He had spent a whole ten minutes watching a NFL game. Once. He had given up with a grimace, still waiting for something to happen, while dozens of people stood around on the field, shouting at each other.

Still, that explained the shoulders.

“And, Dante is the leader of his own hunter squad,” Rory added.

“Leader?” the woman leaning on Patrick’s shoulder said, also sitting up.

“Blythe Murray,” Nial murmured, “and Dominic Castellano. Dom reads minds to hear what you say. He won’t intrude farther than that. We warn everyone, anyway.”

Rory raised a brow, looking at Dominic.

“No, wait,” Blythe said. “You lead your own squad?” she demanded of the man Rory had called Dante.

Dante gave a tiny shrug. “Sure. Although I’ve had to hand off to my 2IC, now.”

“Dante trained him well,” Rory said, her voice mellow and smooth. “The squad is in good hands.”

“And you trained them?” There was admiration in Blythe’s voice. She looked at Patrick Sauvage. “We need a decent leader to run a unit covering the eastern end of the ranges, up by the aqueduct. We’re vulnerable there.”

Patrick leaned forward, as if to speak.

“Hold off on the shop talk just for a minute,” Nial said. “You can shove a sword in Dante’s hand afterward, if he wants to cooperate, although Lucas Ford might have something to say about that. First, let’s finish this. Dante, Rory, this is Francesca, Dominic’s sister. She came out from Chile about six months ago.”

Francesca nodded to the newcomers. “I don’t fight. I don’t play sports. I clean very well, though.” She had a light accent and a bright smile, which changed her face from that of a plain, middle-aged woman showing signs of long term exhaustion, making her seem much younger and prettier.

“I like cleaning,” Rory told her. “It’s therapeutic.”

Francesca’s face lit up once more. “Yes,” she agreed. “It is. And people tell me I am crazy when I say that.”

“The man sitting next to Francesca is Azarel,” Nial said.

“No last name?” Dante asked Azarel, who nodded at them both.

“I didn’t have a first name, until Nial gave me one,” Azarel said.

“You’re not vampire,” Dante said. His tone said he was sure of himself on that point.

“I am…” Azarel sighed and looked at Nial.

“You’re the Serene One,” Rory said softly. There was awe in her voice.

Sasha looked at the man. He had noticed his eyes already. Now he took a longer look at him. It didn’t pay to underestimate anyone he met in Nial’s circle of friends and acquaintances. Azarel was slender and looked weak and if he had met him anywhere else, Sasha would have dismissed him as harmless.

Yet if he was the Serene Ones’ representative here, then no one could afford to ignore him for a moment. He had the ability to change the world as they knew it, if he wanted to.

However, no one else was looking at him with the same awe that Rory and Dante were. Nial’s expression was neutral, while Roman looked irritated. Sebastian rolled his eyes. “Not that serene,” he said in a quiet voice.

Dominic snorted, then smothered his laugh.

Azarel ignored all the reactions. “If we must use that silly name, then yes, that is I.”

“What do you call yourself, then?” Rory asked.

“Only humans insist on naming things.”

“You are human right now, aren’t you?”

Azarel smiled. It was a gorgeous smile. “Very human,” he said, his voice low.

Rory’s smile back was slow and heated.

Dante put his hand on Rory’s arm. “Dissect him later,” he said quietly.

She nodded.

Interesting, Sasha thought. He wondered what the relationship was between the two of them. It wasn’t intimate, or Dante would have objected strenuously to the little by-play between Rory and Azarel. She had virtually stripped him with her eyes and smile and he’d had no objections at all.

Yet Dante had deflected her attention. That spoke of intimate knowledge and a high degree of trust.

Garrett cleared his throat. “Nial, you missed Sasha.”

Nial gave Sasha a small smile. “No, I just hadn’t got to him yet. Rory, Dante, this is Marlen Alexandrovich Mikhailov. He’s human, a GRU member and vampire loyalist.” Nial did not mispronounce any of his names.

Rory’s smile was small. “I am pleased to meet you,” she told him. Her smile faded and her gaze moved on.

Sasha felt a jolt as if he’d touched bare wires.

“You’re a spy?” Dante said. “I’ve always thought it must be far less glamorous than James Bond makes it look like.”

There was a pressure in the middle of Sasha’s chest, making his torso ache. In the far reaches of his mind, nearly out of the range of conscious thought, was the knowledge that this man could command Rory’s attention, as apparently he could not. Sasha knew he needed to step away from the crowd and think about it. He had to figure out what the hell was eating him. It made him careless. He shrugged. “I don’t do it for the ratings,” he said shortly and turned away.

Dante’s lips parted in surprise.

Sasha headed for the kitchen, the one place where he was sure no one else would be, because they were all in this room.

Chapter Six

Kate tried all the front rooms first, because the chances that Garrett would be in one of them was highest. Nial and the others were gathered around Rory, who was checking out Sebastian’s hacker’s wet dream in the front office. Kate let her gaze flicker over Dante one more time. His shoulders really were that big. Holy cow bells.

She had watched Dante Santana tearing up the field more than once. She had been a Rams fan. The ‘49ers had whooped their ass more than once. She had often left a game running in the background while working on edits and other post-production tasks and paperwork, pausing to watch replays.

It wasn’t a big surprise to her that he actively hunted, although it had not been the public reason he had given for retiring from football. It did surprise her that he was so good at it. Athletic ability didn’t always transfer over to other skills, although the very natural athletes were able to pick up a new skill more quickly than less physical people. Clearly, Dante was born to compete.

More curious for her was the relationship between Dante and Rory. Kate had caught his glance at the vampire, when he had thought himself unobserved. There had been a degree of feeling in it that belied the just-good-friends status they showed the world. It didn’t look as though his feelings for her were returned.

Garrett was not in the office with the rest, ogling either Dante or Rory. Kate wondered if the demarcation lines of awe were as obvious to everyone else as they were to her. She was used to reading faces, though, so perhaps no one else had realized that all the vampires were gaga over Rory, while all the humans were admiring Dante and his sports prowess.

Kate went to the back of the house, to try the kitchen, although the only reason Garrett would have for being there was to get her something to eat. As Garrett had slid a plate of bacon and tomatoes in front of her less than two hours ago, the chances he would be in the kitchen were fractional at best.

The day-time guard, Efraim, was sitting at the table. “Where’s Kimball?” she asked him, for the two of them seemed to be joined at the hip at times.

“He went to the airport to pick up Marcus and Ilaria. Should be back soon.”

Sadness touched Kate, along with the little jump that came with the reminder that even vampires were not invulnerable. Garrett and Roman went out hunting with the local unit almost every night, unless Nial specifically asked them to hunt with Patrick’s units. Most nights, Kate went to sleep with the knowledge that they were both stronger, older and smarter than almost everything walking the earth and that gave them an edge. Only, Rick had been older than either of them.

She still didn’t have details on how he had died. She didn’t want to ask Nial. There was a fine edge to his control these days that she didn’t want to test. No one else had any details, yet.

“Have you seen Garrett?” she asked Efraim, deliberately closing down any speculation about Rick and vampire vulnerabilities.

Efraim shook his head. “Sorry.”

Kate nodded toward the door over his shoulder. “What is back there? The pool?”

“Conservatory. Feel free to look around.”

“Thanks.” She moved passed him. The door was open behind him. There was a broad step just beyond the door, then two steps down to a floor of natural slate. The air was warmer here and it was much brighter.

She looked up. The roof overhead was all glass and steel support struts. Because of the time of year, every second pane had been slid open. Even so, she could still feel the humidity in the conservatory. The skin over her nose and cheeks relaxed in the moist air.

There were green plants everywhere—broad-leafed palms and the delicate swirl of ferns. Water trickled somewhere ahead and the floor was damp. Someone had watered the plants not too long ago. The smell of damp earth and growing things was strong and Kate inhaled, enjoying it.

There was a corridor made of potted plants that she followed around a gentle bend. Beyond, the path opened up into a larger area. Two big doors stood open to one side. She could see the pool beyond them. There was a pair of sun loungers tucked into a corner made by the plants and a small table and two chairs out in the middle of the space, making her think of private courtyards in Paris.

Sasha was sitting at the table, his chin on his fist. There was a small mason jar in front of him, with brown liquid in it. It was too dark for alcohol. He looked up as she rounded the corner, a scowl on his face.

Kate remembered that Sasha had not been in awe of Dante at all. His put down and departure had broken up the meeting.

“Hiding?” she asked him.

“Thinking,” he said.

She glanced around. Clearly, Garrett was not here, unless he was crouched down behind a palm, because he didn’t want to be found. She studied Sasha. “have you see Garrett?”

“He was talking to his cellphone, out by the pool, about ten minutes ago.” Sasha’s scowl didn’t shift. “He didn’t look happy.”

“Probably one of Garrett’s calls to Boston. They’re becoming legendary,” Kate told him lightly. She hesitated, then, because a human mystery was irresistible to her, she added, “What you said to Dante was pretty legendary, too.”

Sasha grimaced and picked up the jar by the top edge and swirled it. “It got out by itself,” he admitted.

“You don’t like sportsmen, then?”

“Football isn’t a sport,” he replied. “Gymnastics is a sport. Swimming, diving, track and field. They are all sports. They are achievements. Football is entertainment.”

The derision in his voice was strong.

“Ouch,” Kate said lightly.

“What you do…that is not entertainment. It’s not just entertainment.”

“You’re a movie fan,” she guessed.

“I have never paid for a movie ticket in my life.”

“You like story-telling,” she guessed, teasing out the qualification and what it meant. “Patrick leaves you cold, yet the characters he plays you like watching. Fame has nothing to do with it.”

Sasha considered it, then he nodded and sipped at the jar.

“Favorite director?” Kate asked.

“Fellini, Verhoeven, Chaplin, Hitchcock and you…almost.”

“Almost?”

He shook his head. “That zombie thing….”

She laughed. “Everyone has a clunker in their closet, even Hitchcock. Besides, that zombie thing bankrolled most of the finance for this one I’m working on now. It was a fantastic success if you’re only looking at box office.”

“What story are you doing now?”

Kate was on the verge of spitting out the elevator pitch she used with financiers and others in the industry, then stopped. Sasha wanted to know what story she was working on. He wasn’t interested in high concept or genre. She dropped back to the original inspiration that had started the project, because she knew he would understand. “Remember the old war-time movies?”

“Man Hunt, Desperate Journey, Mrs. Miniver, Bataan. Edge of Darkness.” He smiled. “Song of Russia.”

“Don’t forget Casablanca,” she added, smiling. Only a true aficionado of film stories could rattle off a list like that.

“That’s what you’re making? A war story? About the Summanus?”

He did understand. She was pleased. “Bravery. Courage. Loss, heartbreak and….”

“Victory,” he finished softly. “I would pay to see a movie like that,” he added.

“Thank you,” she said, touched and pleased.

Sasha sipped from the mason jar.

“Tea?” Kate asked, remembering the Russian preference for tea in a glass.

“I couldn’t find a glass.”

“A coffee mug would have saved your fingers,” she pointed out.

“I’m not that Westernized,” he protested.

She held up a hand. “So you are hiding out here. From Dante and Rory, I’m guessing.”

Sasha shook his head. “From everyone. I told you. I wanted to think.”

Ah… She pointed to the other chair and he nodded, so she pulled it out and sat down. “You’re a classic introvert,” she said. “You have to get away from people to re-energize. Too many people in the room this morning, Sasha?”

He stared at her. Then his gaze dropped. “If I know in advance, I’m fine.” He looked at her again. “I did not understand this about myself until you said it just now. How did you know?”

She smiled. “You would be stunned at the number of really big Hollywood stars who break into a sweat in a room full of people, if they have to stay there for long. Introverts, all of them.”

Sasha shook his head, the thick black brows coming together. “That doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would someone like them…us…seek out fame?”

“They don’t,” Kate said flatly. “Or, they don’t understand what fame really means until they’re in the middle of the worst of it. They get into acting because it is the ultimate face mask. They’re not being themselves when they’re working. Most of them learn to deal with public functions as just more work, too. You do that as well, I think. Marcus said you were one of the very best at what you do. That’s a type of mask.”

Sasha nodded. “It is. There’s just no spotlight to go with it.” He shuddered and drank deeply.

“Then you and Dante really are opposites,” Kate said. “That makes what you said all the more understandable.” She got to her feet.

“I should apologize.”

“I think he’s heard worse, before.”

There was crunching on the steps beyond the open doors, drawing her attention. It was Garrett. He had his cellphone in his hand and he looked thunderous.

Her heart squeezed. It took a lot to rattle Garrett these days. Any day, really. He was the ultimate in cool-headedness, after so many years of in-fighting over boardroom tables.

Kate gave Sasha a small smile and hurried over to Garrett. “Everything okay?” she asked quietly.

“I can’t raise anyone in Boston.”

“No signal?”

“I get through just fine. I’m reaching voicemail all over the place. No one is picking up, though.”

“No one at all? Not even that assistant, what’s his name?”

“Jared. His voicemail is the default message, which is a bad sign.” He sighed. “I’ve been away too long.”

Kate turned him around and led him back out onto the tiles around the swimming pool, out of range of Sasha’s hearing. “Then the reason I came looking for you isn’t going to make you any happier.”

Garrett looked down at her and for a sharp moment, she remembered the first day they had ever met in person, after months of chatting on-line without knowing it was really him. She had almost worshipped his business acumen, in her own version of fan adoration.

Now she could look at him and remember his kisses, his caresses and a whole parade of emotions on his face and in his eyes, that only Roman and she ever got to see. Her love swelled in her chest.

“Kate?”

She shook her head. “Your credit card bounced.” She dug the card out of her pocket and held it out.

“There you are. Kate, you went missing.”

She looked over her shoulder. Patrick bounced down the wide brick steps to where they were standing. He looked tanned, fit and energetic. Becoming a vampire had done more for him than minimizing his addiction issues to next to zero. He had found a purpose in life beyond acting and it had made a huge difference. So had falling in love.

“I didn’t think American Express bounced anything,” Kate said in an undertone to Garrett, sliding it in before Patrick reached them.

“They don’t, for me,” Garrett said. “They shouldn’t, anyway.” He took the card, frowning. “This isn’t good. What do you need? What were you trying to buy?”

“Sebastian says he knows where we can get a good Thunderbolt hard drive for the editing computer, which we really need…and we can go into it later,” she said quickly.

“I heard all that, sorry,” Patrick said. He looked at Garrett. “We do need the drive. It’s painful watching Kate change something, then wait thirty seconds for the screen to respond. She could work much faster with another hard drive…or so Sebastian says.”

“I’d work much better with a full editing studio, too, instead of trying to do this on Patrick’s dining room table….” She shrugged.

“The joys of independent film making.” Patrick grinned.

Garrett lifted the card. “I’ll find out why they bounced this and sort it out, as quickly as I can.”

“I can buy the drive in the meantime,” Patrick said.

“No, Pat,” Kate said quickly. “You’re in on this movie deep enough. I won’t take any more of your personal reserves. Garrett is loaded, anyway. I could buy a dozen drives and he wouldn’t notice.”

“True,” Garrett said easily. Once, any discussion of money in front of anyone, including her and Roman, would have made him deeply uneasy. He was a private man, yet he was learning how to trust, at last.

“I’ve spent decades stockpiling record-breaking contract fees,” Patrick assured her. “I fully expect to make it all back and then some, anyway.”

Garrett held up the card. “Until I look into this, Patrick is your best bet. The silence in Boston is probably connected.”

Pat touched her shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go buy this thing.”

Kate gave up with a sigh. “Okay. Only because we really need it.”

“In that case, I’ll buy two.”

“Patrick!”

“Okay, five then.”

It wasn’t until much later, when the drives had been delivered and Sebastian was helping them with installation, that Kate had a moment to wonder about Sasha and his unprovoked antipathy toward Rory and Dante.

By then, other matters had got in the way, including Marcus and Ilaria’s return.

Chapter Seven

Sasha had finished his tea and was considering going and finding Nial to see what he could do, when Patrick came looking for him.

“The gatehouse says Kimball just pulled up, with Marcus and Ilaria.”

Sasha sighed. “Thank you. Kitchen door?”

“It’s the only one out of sight of the paparazzi,” Patrick told him.

Sasha had seen a group of photographers on the verge of the road opposite the gate when he had arrived, huddled together between cars. They had spotted him and turned away, disinterested. He was no one. He had kept his head averted, anyway. Digital photos had a way of living on forever.

“Even at night,” Sasha said, now. “I thought the Summanus would keep them away at night at least.”

“At night, more than ever,” Patrick said and grimaced. “It’s the sword, I think.”

Sasha looked at him, puzzled. The reference to a sword meant nothing to him. Time was ticking on, though. “I will be there for Marcus and Ilaria, when they come in,” he told Patrick.

“That’s what I figured. Everyone else is going to give you a moment or two. We’ll wait in the main room.” He nodded and walked back to the kitchen with Sasha. Sasha brought the jar with him and put it in the sink. Even the guard who sat at the table was gone.

Sasha nodded at Patrick, who left silently. There were sounds outside the kitchen door now. Footsteps on the tiles.

His heart beating heavily, Sasha watched the door.

Marcus pushed it open, his head down, watching his step. Then he turned and held it open for Ilaria.

Sasha had forgotten how tiny Ilaria was. She was a name in the military world, rated as one of the top three snipers in the world. She was also one of the fashion icons of Europe. Sasha had seen women officers of the GRU pouring over fashion blogs featuring Ilaria and her clothing choices. That made her a powerful global influence in at least two realms of interest, yet her physical stature was the complete opposite—in appearance, anyway. She was a vampire and could probably toss Sasha across the room with one hand.

He wouldn’t test the theory. Ilaria looked frail. She wore enormous sunglasses that hid most of her face, yet her cheeks were drawn. She moved slowly, as if every step was an enormous effort and once she was properly inside the kitchen she stopped, looking down at her feet, as if she had lost the willpower to move any farther.

Marcus looked up and his eyes widened when he saw Sasha standing there. For just a moment, his face worked. Sasha saw agony and raw pain, there. Then it was all gone, wiped away like snow on a window.

“Sasha….” He came over and hugged him.

Sasha held him tightly.

“I don’t know why you’re here and I don’t care,” Marcus said roughly. “It is so good to see you.” His voice was rough. Then he stepped back and just looked at him.

Despite the stoical expression, Marcus looked wretched. He was pale, as drawn as Ilaria was. He looked shell-shocked, which he probably was.

“I’m here for a while,” Sasha told him. “Possibly, a long while.”

“Things are bad then?” Marcus asked.

Not as bad as they are for you. Sasha shrugged. “Interesting, is closer.”

“Tell me later?” Marcus picked up Ilaria’s hand.

“Hello Ilaria,” Sasha said gently.

“Alexander,” she said, her voice bodiless.

“Sasha,” he corrected. “You’re practically family, after all.”

She drew in a breath and let it out. It was a silent sigh.

“We’re both…well, tired,” Marcus said awkwardly. “It has been a long few days. We just want to relax.”

“You should know that everyone is in the big room, waiting for you,” Sasha warned him.

He glanced at the door that led out to the main living room. Then he looked down at Ilaria and squeezed her hand. “No problem,” he said with stiff joviality. “They’re all friends.”

Sasha wanted to sigh just as Ilaria had done. Marcus was a tightly bound bundle of emotions, most of them toxic. He was holding it all in for Ilaria’s sake.

“Most of them are friends,” Sasha said darkly.

Marcus frowned. “Most?”

Sasha chided himself. “Pay no mind. I am being too Russian.”

Marcus smiled and it might even have been genuine. “I see you’re making friends everywhere you go, Alexandrovich. Lead the way.”

* * * * *

Dante stayed by Rory’s side, both of them standing slightly apart from the quiet group of people who greeted the man and woman with hugs and tears and soft voices.

“Did you know the one who died?” Dante asked her, speaking very softly. He knew she could hear him even if he whispered.

“By reputation,” Rory told him. Cyneric Pæga had been infamous. For centuries, no one had been certain of his loyalties. His association with Heru, the Deadly Moon, had made him a pariah among more modern vampires. It was only in the last year that the extremely long game Pæga had been playing, worming his way into Heru’s confidence, had become common knowledge. “I always told myself that one day we would cross paths and then I would be able to find out how his mind works. He was brilliant, they say. A human computer.”

“I can see why you wanted to meet him.” Dante was smiling.

“That’s not possible anymore, alas. If he was even half as smart as they say he was, then I can understand Nial’s concern over losing him at this point in the war.”

“I’m sure it wasn’t just the loss of a tactical advantage to Nial. He looks just as unhappy as the others,” Dante said, looking over to where Nial stood with Winter and Sebastian.

Nial’s shoulder was touching Sebastian’s and Winter stood in front of both of them, almost in contact with them, too. She was certainly close enough for her body heat to reach them. They were a tightly clustered little group, waiting to say hello to Marcus and Ilaria.

“Don’t underestimate Nathaniel,” Rory told him. “He is utterly ruthless when he needs to be. He has lived a very long time. He does not think in normal ways anymore.”

Dante looked at her. “Yet he fell in love.”

Rory rolled her eyes. “It is not falling in love that is the flaw, it is the cozy little domestic arrangement that goes with it I find deplorable. It is a weakness the enemy can exploit. They nearly killed Sebastian last year, yet Nial has not changed as a result.”

“And now they have killed his friend. Be nice, Rory. Your hard-ass act isn’t fooling me. You find the idea of a very old vampire dying as unsettling as they do.”

Rory swallowed. Dante had put his finger on the core of the hard little knot in her chest. This was affecting her. “Waste always offends me,” she muttered.

Dante rolled his eyes. “You old softie.”

“I am not,” she said stiffly.

“Then why did I have to talk you down from taking a bite out of Sasha’s neck this morning, when he was a jerk-off? It’s not as if he insulted your profession of choice.”

Rory breathed steadily. “We should remain silent and respectful.”

She could feel Dante chuckling silently next to her. She kept her eyes ahead, watching the man called Marcus and Ilaria Scavo move around the room, greeting everyone.

Cyneric’s death was a waste. In all ways. Those two looked as if the world had fallen on them from a great height. Even after the pair went upstairs to “rest”, the other people in the room remained sad and preoccupied.

Then three more people appeared. They were young adults in size and behavior. Perhaps older teenagers, on the verge of adulthood. The two girls were nearly identical in appearance. Twins, clearly, while the boy with them had enough similar genetic markers to be their brother. All three dumped backpacks and bags on the floor by the door to the kitchen and utility rooms at the back of the house.

The girls hugged the deaf man, Dominic, while the boy arrowed directly over to Patrick Sauvage and sat on the arm of the chair Patrick was using and spoke in low tones.

The woman, Blythe, who was the mate of Patrick and Dominic, got to her feet and stood by the pair on the armchair for a moment, her hand on the boy’s shoulder. Then she went over to Dominic and the two girls and crouched down next to the big cushions they were all sitting on, to talk to them quietly.

Then she got to her feet and said more loudly; “Cookies and homework in the kitchen, please.”

The boy groaned. Patrick pushed him to his feet, while the girls chatted to each other as they picked up their bags and headed back into the kitchen.

It was a very domestic scene, which Rory found extraordinary, here among a house full of vampires and non-traditional living arrangements. The fact that their mother had two partners did not seem to disrupt the children’s’ perfectly normal life in the slightest.

Then Rory saw Kate’s face.

The blonde woman was standing by the big buffet sideboard against the back wall. She had just poured herself a glass of mineral water, which she held untouched in her hand. She was watching the three teenagers with close attention. The expression on her face was one of sad yearning.

Rory studied her more carefully, startled at the hunger in her eyes. Nial had given Rory a quick and dirty breakdown of the people living in the house and their partners, so Rory knew exactly who Kate Lindenstream was and her relationship to Garrett and Roman Xerus. The woman was loved, professionally successful, financially stable and above all, personally powerful. Did she really believe that children would make her life more complete?

Kate was only human yet she had extraordinary perception. Her gaze swung to meet Rory’s and her face shifted to perfectly neutral. Her chin lifted, as if she was daring Rory to say anything.

Then Roman came up to speak to Kate and she turned her head away. The moment was broken.

“Those sandwiches look pretty good,” Dante said, nodding toward the tray on the sideboard.

“You should eat,” Rory told him. “It seems that eating, here, is a secondary activity that happens in the background.”

Dante shrugged. “There are more vampires than there are humans. That figures.”

“Does it bother you?” Rory asked. “To be among so many of us?”

“Should it?” He was smiling now. “They’re all house-broken, just like you.” He headed for the buffet. He was not the only human drawn to the food there.

“You do that a lot, don’t you?”

Rory turned to look at the dark-haired man who had asked the question. He was standing to one side. She had not noticed his approach at all and chided herself. She was usually better at tracking where everyone was in a room. “Sasha Mikhailov,” she said. “The man who does not like football.”

Sasha lifted a brow, the corner of his mouth quirking upward. “You make it sound as though I am a freak of nature. There are plenty of other people on the planet who don’t like football, who have never seen a game of football.”

“Then how do they know they do not like it? Have you tried watching a game?”

“Ten minutes of one. Nothing happened that entire time.” He considered her. “Sebastian says you actually own the ‘49ers.”

“I am a minority owner.” Very minority. The ‘49ers corporation was worth millions.

“You like football that much?”

“I like games that much.”

“Game theory, yes?”

Rory was startled. “Sebastian’s report on me was thorough, I see.”

Sasha shook his head. “That was something I learned from the GRU file on you.”

“They have a file?”

“The GRU have been monitoring vampires in Russia for over a decade.”

Rory frowned. She had lived in Moscow for nearly twenty years, before leaving just over nine years ago to pick up a new life thread in the United States. “I see…” she said slowly. It didn’t surprise her that the GRU had a file on her, although it was a small shock to know they knew she was a vampire. She had only revealed her true nature a year ago, when vampires all over the world had stepped out.

Sasha’s smile held a touch of mischief. “There was a file but no photo. Everyone on the project thought you were a man.”

“While I thought that with a name like Sasha, you would be more feminine.”

Sasha’s smile broadened. “You lived in Russia. You should know that Sasha is the short form of Alexander there.”

He had reacted exactly as she had expected him to. It was almost a disappointment. Rory finished the gambit, anyway. She smiled sweetly. “You prefer shortness, then.” She let her gaze almost reach his belt, then brought it back up to his face.

Sasha’s lips parted and surprise widened his eyes. Anger glinted in them.

* * * * *

Dante loaded up the plate with sandwiches. He didn’t know when he would next get an opportunity to eat. His basic calorie needs for a day were still huge, even though he wasn’t as active as he had once been.

This house of vampires was a fascinating one, primarily because everyone seemed to work with a different set of principles and values to the ones he was used to measuring people by. The way they almost ignored standard meal times was just a minor example.

Work and play and relaxation seemed to flow seamlessly in and around each other. There was nothing like a nine-to-five mentality here, yet the amount of work that got done was prodigious.

Dante had peeked into one room earlier that morning, to see Kate, Patrick Sauvage and the vampire with the tattoos that he thought was Roman, all working on computers that had the same image on the screen. It looked like the frozen frame of a movie.

Later, when he had been talking to Nial, Nial had confirmed that yes, it was a movie they were editing for commercial release. In the next room, where Nial had been, Sebastian and a human called Lucas Ford had been setting up a map grid of coordinates for the hunter units going out that evening.

On another computer in the same room, Dominic Castellano had sheet music up on one flat screen, while he coded a computer program on the other. He was humming and he had perfect pitch, which was impossible for a deaf man—but then, so was hearing and he seemed to be able to do that, too.

The range of projects and work being done was staggering. From the purely creative at one end of the spectrum, to pure hard work at the other. Dante had noticed that Francesca didn’t talk much to anyone, yet she had an uncanny ability to be where help was needed, including arriving at his borrowed bedroom door with fresh towels that morning, just as Dante had considered taking a shower.

There was an energy to the atmosphere in the big house. It was motivating and inspiring to be among such unusual people. Dante had always thought Rory to be utterly unique. She was still very different from the average human and so was everyone else that Dante had met so far.

When Rory’s voice lifted sharply, Dante whirled to see what was wrong, nearly upsetting the plate in his hands.

Sasha Mikhailov was talking to her and Dante’s belly clamped. Even though he had told Rory the Russian’s insult that morning had meant nothing, it had bothered him just a little bit. Mostly it bothered him that he was being measured and found inadequate in front of Rory.

Now the jerk was talking to her directly. Was he upsetting her? Rory always pretended nothing touched her.

She was speaking rapidly and Dante realized he couldn’t understand what she was saying because she was using Russian. It was a staccato language and even the calmest speech sounded clipped and angry. She might simply be discussing the weather.

Yet he didn’t think so. Sasha’s expression, even seen from a sharp angle as Dante was seeing it, said the man was angry. Embarrassed, even.

Rory stepped around him and walked over to the stairs, her head up. She was wearing one of her beautiful dresses that seemed to float around her, making the most of her excellent figure. Even while Dante was trying to figure out what had just happened, half his mind was busy watching her hips sway and marveling once more over the size of her waist and the length of her legs.

Sasha cleared his throat. The room had fallen silent. His discomfort was being observed by everyone.

“What was that about, Sasha?” Winter said softly. “Serbian is sort of the same. She was talking about thinking….”

Sasha gave a self-conscious shrug. Dante realized with a start of surprise that his cheeks had reddened. “It was an insult,” he said. “In idiomatic Russian.” He let out a gusty breath. “About the size of both my brains.”

There was a tiny silence, while everyone stared at him again.

Then Sebastian laughed. “Russian is the best language in the world for insulting people. So inventive and colorful.”

Everyone shifted, their attention turning to Sebastian or back to their previous conversations.

Dante watched Sasha, instead. It seemed that Rory had paid back his debt from that morning, after all.

Sasha glanced at him and his gaze skittered away. Then it came back to meet Dante’s stare.

Dante could guess his thoughts, too. He had to agree completely. In a world of increasingly complex women with multiple roles and responsibilities and several identities, Rory was one of the most complicated.

She could leave a trail of men behind her, all of them confused and frustrated by the conflicting signals she gave out, because Rory insisted on living her life her way, with no compromises.

Sasha had just bumped up against her concrete walls of demarcation.

Dante took a bite of his sandwich, contemplating. Did that mean Sasha had tried to hit on her?

The poor fool, if he had.

Chapter Eight

Dominic took Blythe’s plate away from her and picked up her hand. “Come and say goodnight to the kids,” he said firmly. “You’re wilting.”

Blythe stifled a yawn as he hauled her up from the sofa and drew her toward the kitchen. They weren’t the only ones leaving the room. The other humans in the house would also be heading upstairs to sleep until around nine tonight, when hunting started for the night.

Patrick was already in the kitchen, sitting in the chair at the head of the table, while Jake, Simone and Eloise were ranged on either side, their books out in front of them. However, all four of them were talking, their faces serious.

Simone seemed to be upset. Blythe went to her and touched her arm. “What’s wrong, honey?”

Dominic pulled out the chair next to Eloise and sat down.

Simone bit her lip.

“There’s a boy at school. He asked her out on a date.” Eloise rolled her eyes.

Patrick didn’t smile. He was watching Blythe and she could almost feel his caution.

Tendrils of wariness threaded through her. Blythe said carefully, “Well, I hate the idea of any boy going out with you, sweetheart, although that’s just me being a mother. You’re sixteen. It’s kinda natural to think about dating at your age.”

“You don’t get it, Mom,” Jake said. His voice came out unevenly. Since it had broken, a month ago, it was inclined to give out on him whenever he was tense. He was going to end up with a beautiful baritone once it settled out.

Why was Jake tense? Even though he was younger, he was protective of the twins. This, though, was something more.

“What don’t I get?” Blythe asked.

“It’s Kiati,” Eloise said, as if that explained everything.

Simone chewed her lip. Her gaze flickered up toward Blythe and away.

Blythe frowned.

Patrick caught her gaze. “He’s Elah,” he said gently.

Ooohhhh…. Blythe mentally sighed as the tensions and stress around the table explained themselves.

Dominic rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “What do you want to do?” he asked Simone. “Do you want to go out with him?”

“It’s not that simple,” Blythe said.

“Why not?” Jake asked, puzzled.

“Mom, you live with a vampire and a telepath,” Simone said defensively.

“A difference that makes no material difference at all,” Blythe replied. “This is completely different.”

“Is it?” Dominic asked. He wasn’t smiling anymore.

“We don’t even know if the Elah can interbreed with humans,” Blythe said hotly.

“Mom, it’s just a date!” Simone cried. “We’re not even thinking about sex, for God’s sake!”

“Simone!” Blythe said, shocked.

“She’s saving that for the third date,” Eloise said.

“Eloise!” It was Dominic using the chiding tone this time.

“What?” Eloise demanded. “Like we don’t know what kinky sex is, with the three of you around us?”

Patrick muffled a laugh and turned it into a cough, while Blythe floundered mentally for an answer. When had her kids become so damn sophisticated? Had she done this to them?

She grasped for the one fact in the sea of surprise and speculation her brain was paddling in. “You can’t date an Elah, Simone,” she said flatly.

“Why not?” Simone shot back.

“There’s a bigger issue here,” Patrick said, using his commander-in-chief voice, that could bring a whole room to attention. “Is Kiati the only Elah at the school, still?”

“There are three others,” Jake said, his voice flat.

“And how do they fit in?” Patrick asked him.

Jake shrugged. “Most people like ‘em just fine. Some though…”

“How many kids pick on them and make fun of them?” Patrick said, his voice harsh.

Jake glanced at Simone, almost as if he was apologizing. “Lots of them.”

“And how many humans have dated one of them?” Patrick demanded.

Jake didn’t answer. He just sighed.

Patrick looked at Simone. “If you go out with him, Simone, you’re going to be vulnerable to all the teasing, the harassment. It will go even worse for you because some people will think you’re betraying them.”

“Betraying who?” Simone shot back. She was getting angry.

“Humans,” Patrick said softly. “Think about this. Think about it hard. If you really like him, then go out with him. Just do it knowing there will be backlash. Don’t open yourself up to trouble because you think it might be cool.”

Simone looked unhappy. “It’s just a date,” she repeated.

“It’s never going to be just a date,” Dominic said gently. “Not with him. Make sure it’s worth it before you say yes.”

Simone looked up at Blythe. “Mom?”

“I have to think about this,” she said honestly. “I have to wrap my head around it. Don’t give him an answer yet, Simone. In a day or two, I’ll let you know.”

Simone shook her head. “You were fine about it when you thought it was a human. Now you’re not. That’s…it’s hypocritical.”

“I’m not saying wait because he’s Elah,” Blythe said hotly. “I’m saying wait, because there’s a real chance you could end up hurt. I mean physically hurt. People react badly to change, honey. It’s not unreasonable to want to protect you from unnecessary harm.”

Simone was back to biting her lip again. Then she nodded.

Relief touched her. Blythe gave her an effortful smile. “Thank you.”

“Two days, Mom. Okay?”

Dominic got to his feet. “Your mother said she would. I trust her with my life. You should at least trust her to keep her word.”

Simone flushed a heated red. “I guess…I’m sorry.” She glanced at Blythe.

Blythe hugged her. “It’s tough sweetheart. I know it is. Even normal dating is like water torture at times. Hang in there. We’ll sort it out.”

Then Dominic picked up her hand and drew her away from the table. “Bedtime,” he said in his musical voice.

Patrick smiled up at both of them as Dominic pulled her out of the kitchen and toward the stairs. Blythe knew she would get very little sleep, now.

Yet, halfway up the stairs, Dominic stopped and pulled her up against him, his hands sliding under her tank top, making her shiver at his touch. His gaze was heated. “You will sleep,” he assured her.

Blythe sighed. “Privacy,” she chided him.

“You were shouting it. I couldn’t not hear your thoughts.” He kissed her. “I know exactly what will make you sleep,” he murmured against her lips.

Blythe shivered again, her body tightening. “Prove it,” she whispered.

He did.

* * * * *

Sasha moved through the big house, looking for people. He found Kate in the dining room, bent over a computer and looking harried. He withdrew without distracting her. The next room he tried was full of computer equipment and was empty of people.

There were soft voices in the next room and Sasha stepped through the interconnecting doors. The room looked like a typical business conference room, with a big table, chairs all around it and not much else.

Sasha scanned the room. There were a number of people he already knew lived in the house that were not here. He had not located them anywhere else in the house, either.

Nial looked up from the table. “Come in, Sasha. This is an open discussion.”

Marcus was sitting next to Nial, his hands linked loosely together. He looked even more haggard than he had when he had arrived at the house four hours earlier. Whatever rest he had got had not done him any favors.

Sasha’s gut squeezed. He slid onto the spare chair next to Garrett. “It is very quiet in this house, now, yet there are even more people in it than there was this morning.”

“All those who hunt at night that still must sleep are sleeping,” Roman said.

“Sebastian must sleep?”

“It’s a sort of sleep,” Nial said dismissively. “Marcus, they were really after you? Not just focusing their efforts to take you both down one by one?”

Marcus had a book of matches hidden behind his twined fingers. Now he picked it up and started shredding the cover into tiny pieces. “Rick fired four bullets when he came back downstairs. He waded into the middle of them and they still didn’t take any notice of him. He had to haul them away from the cellar door where I was, in order to reach me.” He gave Nial a hard smile. “They were after me, personally.”

“Why you?” Patrick asked, his tone reasonable. “CIA?” he added.

Marcus shrugged. “It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“It does if they still want you,” Nial said. “Knowing why would give us an edge.”

Marcus shrugged again. “Sorry.” Half the matchbook was a tiny pile between his hands, now. There was a tremor in his fingers that made tearing the card a challenge, yet he was persisting.

Sasha had seen Marcus working delicate lab equipment, his fingers steadier than a surgeon’s as he dealt with some of the most noxious and lethal substances known to man. He handled them as if they were of no more concern to him than cold tea.

“What if it’s the Pyrrhus they want?” Sasha asked.

Everyone looked at him, even Marcus. Marcus blinked and drew in a heavy breath.

Nial sat back. “That’s a possibility.”

Marcus shook his head. “They’ve never shown that much imagination before,” he said, his voice strained. “Kill, eat, repeat. That’s all they do.”

“Maybe they’ve learned how to think strategically,” Garrett said.

“Or someone is training them how to think that way,” Roman said darkly.

Everyone looked at him.

Roman’s smile was wry. “You think someone out there hasn’t weighed up the odds of humans winning this war and decided to help the best prospects, instead?”

“We’re not losing,” Nial said sharply.

“We’re not winning, either,” Roman replied. “I’ve seen a shit-ton of wars, Nial. By my estimation, we’re at a stalemate. Soon, something has to give. It could go either way when it does. If the Summanus have learned how to strategize, that could be the deadlock breaker.”

Sasha stayed silent. He had heard such predictions a year ago, by GRU analysts who, at the time, he had considered to be typically pessimistic Russians. Now, Roman was saying the same thing and he was a clear-sighted man.

Nial shifted uneasily on his chair. “It doesn’t matter if they have developed an ability to think or not. It doesn’t matter if they were after Marcus, or not, either. Their tactics speak volumes regardless. A small unit that broke into a human habitat. That alone, is unusual enough to warrant consideration.”

“They’re acclimating,” Patrick said softly. “Learning how we think. How we live.”

Nial nodded. “I’ll bring this to the attention of the cross-concern committee next week. In the meantime, Marcus, you’re grounded. Right here, where we can all keep an eye on you.”

Marcus gave a small nod.

Nial looked around the table. “No war talk while half the house is sleeping. We’ll end up having to repeat ourselves later, if we do. We’re all hunting tonight. I suggest everyone relax until then.” He got to his feet.

Patrick rose to his and plucked the shirt away from his chest. “There’s a swimming pool out there, calling my name.”

“In this heat?” Roman asked, rolling his eyes.

“Best time to swim,” Patrick replied.

“I think he meant the sunlight. It’s dazzling out there,” Garrett said.

“That’s why sunglasses were invented.”

“You wear them while you’re swimming?”

“It’s not so much swimming as floating.” Patrick smiled. “Now I don’t have to breathe much, I can float fully submerged. It’s better than an isolation tank.” He left.

“Whatever cranks your dial,” Roman muttered. He stood up.

“Where are you going?” Garrett asked sharply.

“Swimming,” Roman said. “Coming?”

Garrett hesitated. “Kate’s in the middle of editing….”

“So she can do without you hovering over her, jogging her elbow,” Roman said. “Come and get wet, you cranky old Highlander.”

Garrett got to his feet and followed Roman from the room. That left Sasha alone with Marcus.

There wasn’t much left of the matchbook, except the matches themselves. Marcus peeled one off the pack and started shaving the head off with his fingernails.

“Building a bonfire?” Sasha asked. He moved around the table to the chair at the top, where Nial had been sitting. It was also next to Marcus.

Marcus looked down at the small pile of paper flakes and red powder, surprised.

“You never could resist things that burn and explode,” Sasha said, with a smile. “And now you have sulphur all over your fingers.”

“Actually, it’s mostly potassium chlorate,” Marcus said absently. He turned the remaining matches over and over in his fingers.

“Marcus.”

He looked up at Sasha, then away again.

Sasha reached out and gripped his hands, holding them still.

Marcus sighed.

“Was it very bad?” Sasha asked him, although he could guess most of it just from the very little he already knew. It might get Marcus talking if he led up to it sideways.

Marcus didn’t answer. Not straight away. His lips worked. Then, very low, “He died, Sasha. He died. He should have outlived all of us.”

“Is that what’s biting you? The injustice of his death?”

Marcus flinched. Then his jaw rippled. “Oh, I’ll even up the score on that count.”

Sasha sat back, puzzled. “Then I don’t understand. You’re hiding something. I’ve known you long enough to know that silence of yours. You normally talk the ears off people. Anyone who will listen. Yet you’ve barely said a hundred words since you got here.”

Marcus looked at him directly for the first time since Sasha had stepped into the room. “He died. I loved him and he died. You want me to party down?”

Sasha shook his head. “I’m the one who stays in the corner, remember? Yes, you loved him. Yes, he died. Only, this is not how I expected you to mourn him.” Sasha hesitated. “You’re not mourning him at all.”

Anger made Marcus stiffen. “What would you know about it?” he ground out.

“I know that when my sister died, ten years ago, the man who loved her came and found me and made me face her death because up until that moment, I was in full denial.”

Marcus swallowed. “That was a long time ago.”

“And you found others to love and I was very happy for you. You’re the one doing it now,” Sasha said. “There’s a reason why you won’t acknowledge Rick is really dead and it’s not just because you loved him. You’re too smart to not be able to recognize something that simple, so it’s more complex than that. It’s something you don’t want to admit, even to yourself.”

Marcus shook his head. “I’m just tired.”

“You’re beyond tired. When did you last sleep?”

“This morning.”

“You’re lying. You might have laid down, but you didn’t sleep any more than Ilaria did.”

“You have no idea how I’m feeling.”

“I can guess.”

Marcus scowled. “Stop badgering me. I don’t need psychoanalyzing.”

“You need a punch to the jaw, my friend,” Sasha said grimly. “Ilaria needs you. You’re not doing her any favors, damming up everything inside you like this.”

“Don’t you dare try to use Ilaria against me.”

“What happened when Rick came back to find you in the cellar?” Sasha asked.

Marcus slumped, all the anger draining from him.

“What happened?” Sasha repeated.

Marcus shook his head.

“Something happened. I mean, before he died. How did Rick really die?”

“The fucking Summanus killed him!” Marcus cried.

“Why?”

“He was in the way!”

Sasha stared at Marcus, putting it together, his heart squeezing painfully. “He protected you….” he whispered. His admiration for Cyneric Pæga soared.

Marcus was shaking. “He knocked me out and stuffed me under a cast iron bathtub, then blew the entire fucking building up around him. He took every single Summanus out with him and I didn’t have a fucking scratch on me!” His eyes filled with tears. “He died because of me!” he said helplessly and covered his face with his hands. His shoulders shook.

Sasha sighed and gripped the back of Marcus’ neck. “It was not your fault,” he said firmly. “He made a decision, the only decision someone like Rick could have made.”

“He fucked up,” Marcus said hoarsely, his voice muffled. “He miscalculated.”

Sasha grimaced. “I don’t think he calculated anything. He knew they wanted you and had no intention of letting them have you. So he reacted.” He patted Marcus’ shoulder. “You would have done the same, had the positions been reversed.”

Marcus dropped his hands. His eyes were red. “Yes,” he said softly. Wonderingly.

Finally, he was thinking. Feeling.

Sasha sighed. “Ilaria, too. She’s a fighter. If she had been there, she would have thrown herself at them, to save either of you.”

Marcus nodded. Fresh tears spilled and he wiped them away impatiently. “Screaming blue murder while she did it,” he whispered.

“I bet Rick was cursing them, too,” Sasha said gently.

“In Anglo Saxon, probably,” Marcus added. His face worked and he covered his eyes once more. “Shit…”

Sasha waited. When he thought Marcus would hear him once more, he said, “You need to go upstairs and hold Ilaria.”

Marcus drew in a deep breath and let it out. He got slowly to his feet and stood swaying with exhaustion. The tension had gone. Acceptance had taken its place. He looked down at Sasha. “Did you know vampires could cry?”

“No.” He was genuinely surprised.

“I watched her do it. After I told her. Then she…passed out.” He swallowed. “I thought she wouldn’t look at me because it was my fault.”

“Maybe you should ask her.”

Marcus nodded. “Maybe I will.” He gave Sasha a small smile. “After I’ve slept for a week.”

Sasha watched him go. He was walking with an easy gait, albeit a tired one.

That left Sasha in the room with only his thoughts for company.

Chapter Nine

In the sideboard in the big room, where the trays of sandwiches had been earlier, was another tray laden with bottles, among them a familiar green label. The tray of bottles was inside the cupboard beneath the row of drawers. The cupboard had been locked, only locks were seldom a barrier for Sasha and usually only incited his curiosity to learn what someone thought was worth hiding away from the world. That was what had led to this discovery.

Sasha turned the bottle until he could see the label properly and gave a silent whistle. It was Zelyonaya Marka, a domestic Russian vodka. He had drunk many bottles of it.

Was it pure coincidence that Patrick Sauvage would have a bottle of the stuff in his house? It wasn’t an export. Someone must have brought the bottle out of Russia and given it to him. If Patrick Sauvage had visited Russia himself, Sasha would have heard of it. Sauvage was a huge star in Russia. His movies were incredibly popular there.

Sasha picked up the bottle by the neck and grabbed one of the shot glasses. Through the closed windows, he could hear the splash of water and calls and laughter, so he made his way through to the conservatory, where he knew there was a door to the outside.

The doors were open as they had been this morning, although now the heat was pulsing through them, warming the conservatory. California summers were uncomfortable. Sasha wasn’t used to the torrid blast of the sun at this latitude, so he tended to stay indoors where there was air conditioning, on the very few occasions he had been forced to visit in summer. Now, though, the draw of noise and chatter and distraction from his own thoughts was stronger. He could find a seat in the shade and drink by himself.

There were many people in the pool, churning up the water and making it slop against the sides. Water was all over the brickwork surrounding the pool.

Rory stood on the low diving board at the end of the pool. She was quite wet, wearing a one piece bathing suit that brought Sasha to a halt on the top step, his heart doing the same little tumble and free fall it had that morning.

She was so very, very beautiful. Even with her wet hair streaming behind her, her body slick with water, she still seemed to glow despite the dazzling sunlight around her.

“Twist and full somersault!” Dante called out, from where he was sitting at the shallow end of the pool.

“Not possible!” Patrick yelled, where he was clinging to the side, halfway down the pool. “The board is too low.”

“Want to make it more interesting?” Dante called.

Rory put her hands on her hips. “How interesting?” she asked.

Sasha traced the curve of her hips under her hands, the graceful arc down to her thighs, which were slender, but muscular.

He swallowed and made himself move over to the tables. Nial was sitting at the one with the umbrella. Sasha sat next to him and put the bottle and glass on the table in front of him.

Nial glanced at him. “Did you dig it out of Marcus?”

Sasha stared at him, surprised. “I…yes. I think so.”

Nial nodded. “Good.” He turned his gaze back to the pool.

Rory was still waiting for an answer. Patrick had both arms resting on the brick edge while he considered the matter. “You two are too calm. It’s not hard enough,” he declared. “Two somersaults.”

“How much?” Dante pressed.

Roman and Garrett were floating in chairs, paddling with their hands. Both wore sunglasses. “Careful, Pat,” Roman called. “His last contract was over five million. The guy is loaded.”

“So he can afford to lose more,” Patrick said. “I need more money for the movie, anyway. A hundred.”

“Dollars?” Rory asked.

“Thousand,” Patrick said.

Sasha choked over his vodka. A hundred thousand dollars riding on a dive into a pool?

“I’ll take that bet,” Rory said quickly.

“You can’t bet, you’re a participant,” Garrett protested.

“Wait, wait, wait…” Patrick said. “You know you can do it. So put the twist back into it and we’ve got a bet.”

Dante snorted.

Rory considered him, her beautiful blue eyes narrowed. “A double somersault and a twist?” she said.

“And a clean entry,” Patrick added.

“Impossible,” Sasha breathed.

“I’ll take that bet,” Roman said. “There is no way you can do it from that little board.”

“Double it,” Garrett said calmly. “My money is on the lady.”

Nial looked at Sasha. The corner of his mouth lifted. “Watch,” he murmured.

“Done!” Rory cried. “Nial, you’re adjudicating.”

“I think they’re all good for the money,” Nial said.

Sasha sat up, his attention on the board and Rory. She walked to the very back of it and considered the end of the board.

Everyone fell silent. The only sound was the slap of the water against the sides of the pool. The astringent smell of chlorine was strong. The vodka was stronger. Sasha gripped the glass, barely breathing.

There was no wind, not even a breath of a breeze. Crickets were chirping in the garden bed at the corner of the house.

Rory lifted herself up on her toes, concentrating on the end of the board, then ran forward.

As soon as she moved, Patrick surged through the water, moving faster than Sasha had ever seen anyone move before. He came up under the board, reaching up with his hands.

As Rory jumped up into the air and landed on the very end of the board for the maximum amount of lift, the board bowed down under the impact. Patrick gripped the edges of it, holding it so it didn’t spring back up and couldn’t give Rory the lift she needed to complete the complicated dive.

She gave a startled shriek as her impetus evaporated. Then, with a presence of mind that Sasha wasn’t sure he could have imitated in the same circumstances, she curled herself into a ball, tucking her knees up under her chin and hugging them.

Rory hit the water in a perfectly executed cannonball that sprayed water up into a geyser that showered everyone. Sasha could feel the chill touch of the water against his exposed ankles, ten feet away from the pool.

“Cheating! Flat out, bare faced cheating!” Dante yelled at Patrick as he did a lazy overarm stroke back to the side of the pool through the choppy water. Patrick was grinning.

Roman started laughing, in great big guffaws that made him clutch his stomach and made the chair tilt alarmingly. He pointed at Garrett. “Two hundred thousand! You owe me!”

Garrett reached out and lifted the arm of Roman’s chair and dumped him in the water.

Rory emerged from beneath the surface and swam for the ladder next to the board. “Again!” she cried. “Double or nothing.”

“Peter and his saints….” Sasha breathed, awed.

Rory climbed out onto the brickwork, her body streaming water and pointed at Patrick. “Someone hold him back.”

Roman came up alongside Patrick. “I will.”

“Conflict of interest,” Garrett said. “Dante, you hold him down.”

Dante grinned. “With pleasure.” He hopped up onto the bricks and padded around to where Patrick was clinging to the side. He whipped his arm around Patrick’s chin, lifting him up out of the water. Patrick scrabbled at his arm with his fingers. Dante held tight.

Rory only paused for a brief moment, this time, then ran forward and took a high leap into the air, looking down to spot her landing. She flexed her knees as the board bowed under the impact and flung herself up high into the air, assisted by the spring board.

Sasha held his breath as she rose into the air, already twisting before she reached the apex of her leap. At the top she folded over and tucked her head into her knees and rolled…and rolled again. With a snap of her limbs, she straightened out, her fingers cleaving the water. She slipped into the pool like an otter, with barely a splash.

Sasha sat back, letting out his breath in a rush.

Dante let go of Patrick’s chin, then planted his hand on the top of his head and pushed him down beneath the water.

Patrick came up spluttering.

Dante got to his feet. “You owe me a ton, even.”

Roman was grinning.

Rory climbed out of the water and walked over to the table where Nial and Sasha sat, trailing a river of water behind her, picked up the sunglasses sitting on the table and put them on.

“You should come in the water,” she told Sasha.

“I regret…I do not know how to swim,” he said.

She studied him. “What can you do?”

Sasha curled his hand into a fist, under the table, where no one could see it. “I can shoot a gun,” he said calmly.

Nial smiled. “His sister was a sniper,” he said. “Sasha is being modest.”

Rory sniffed. “Guns….” she said and walked over to one of the loungers farther along and settled on it.

Nial considered Sasha. “What did you say to her? I’ve never seen Rory take such an instant dislike to anyone, before.”

Sasha shook his head. “She merely defends her friend.” He looked over to where Dante was, on the other side of the pool. He wore what looked like basketball shorts and nothing else. He was flexing and working his powerful shoulders as he moved around the pool.

“Dante can take care of himself,” Nial said, almost as if he had followed Sasha’s thoughts.

Sasha poured himself another shot and sipped it. The other three men were floating in the pool, splashing and dunking each other. It was hard to remember that two of them were over five hundred years old. They looked like college kids, cavorting in the pool during spring break.

Dante stretched hard as he stepped onto the manicured lawn at the edge of the brickwork. Then he deliberately fell forward, toppling like a tree, only to bring himself up short with his hands on the grass, holding him up.

He did a series of press-ups, very slow and even, with no apparent effort, the muscles in his arms and shoulders and back flexing in hard mounds.

Sasha watched, fascinated. The strength of the man! He was no vampire, yet he’d had power to spare to hold Patrick still.

Dante shifted to one-handed push-ups, his legs spread to maintain balance. Fifteen of them, still without any sign of fatigue. Then he swapped arms.

Now everyone was watching him. Sasha couldn’t read minds the way Dominic could, yet he thought he could detect a degree of awe in the way they were watching Dante pump out the repetitions.

Patrick hauled himself up onto the edge of the pool and slicked back his hair, to watch Dante more closely. Even Nial was studying his every move.

Dante switched to a full plank, then turned on his side, propping himself up with one arm. He slowly bent the elbow of his supporting arm, lowering himself down, then back up.

“Oh, man…” Roman breathed. He was speaking for Garrett’s ears only, although as no one else was talking, his voice carried.

Garrett nodded soberly. “I think he might even put you to shame.”

Sasha had seen world class gymnasts perform such feats. They earned the respect of other gymnasts because of the strength and dexterity needed to complete the moves. Dante, who had muscle to spare and would be disparaged for the clumsiness such bulk would generate, was showing all the coordination and skill of an Olympic competitor.

“One hundred pull-ups,” Roman called.

Dante flipped himself to his feet and stood up. “You or me?”

Roman grinned. “I know I could do ‘em. Can you?”

“Where’s the bar?” Dante said, looking around.

“Here,” Patrick said. He opened a wooden cabinet built next to the pool house and reached inside.

Sasha saw Azarel standing in the open door of the pool house. How long had he been watching the antics around the pool?

Patrick pulled out a length of hollow metal tubing. “Vacuum handle,” he said, holding it up. “Roman, come and hold it up with me.”

“I’ll do that,” Garrett said. “Roman needs to preserve his strength for his turn.”

The two of them stood with the bar between them. Dante took a grip of the bar, his hands spread. He nodded.

They hauled the bar up into the air, until Dante’s feet were no longer touching the bricks.

Dante raised himself up until his chin touched. the bar.

“One,” Roman said. “Two…three…four…”

Dante lifted and lowered himself like a machine, showing no signs of stress. Even as the count reached the eighties, his form did not falter. Sasha watched him, refusing to be impressed.

Dante didn’t drop to the bricks when Roman called one hundred. He lowered himself until his feet were touching the ground, then stepped back from the bar with a nod at the two men holding it up.

When he turned away, he was smiling. “Next!” he called out, looking at Roman.

Roman shook his head. “Freak,” he muttered and moved to stand beneath the bar.

“You don’t get tired or build up lactic acid in your muscles,” Dante said. “So you only win if you do it faster than I did.”

Roman rolled his eyes. “Anyone would think you’ve never met a vampire before. Give me room, here.” He waved Dante away and reached for the bar.

This time, Patrick and Garrett counted the repetitions. Roman was powerfully built, too. Sasha watched with interest the way the tattoos on his shoulders flexed and squeezed as he pulled himself up and let himself down. He also showed absolutely no effort, which was as it should be for a vampire.

As he neared the eighty mark, though, Nial called out, “Forty-five seconds left!”

Roman increased the speed of his lifts and for the first time showed a hint of effort.

“Your chin isn’t hitting the bar,” Dante growled. “It’s called a chin-up for a reason, you know.”

Roman growled. He kept moving, lifting himself up a touch higher each time.

As Garrett and Patrick chorused “Ninety-seven,” together, Nial called, “Time!”

Roman dropped to the bricks with a hiss of frustration.

Dante just grinned. Then he tilted his head, as something caught his attention. He moved over to the open cabinet where all the pool cleaning equipment was, from where Patrick had pulled out the vacuum pole. Dante bent and reached inside and emerged with a football in his big hand.

Roman shook his head. “With you a professional football player? I’m not going near that thing.”

Dante tossed the ball up high, so it drilled through the air in a corkscrew motion. He caught it barely without looking. “Chicken,” he said softly.

“Yep,” Roman agreed.

“Just how good are you, anyway?” Garrett asked curiously.

Patrick took the vacuum pole back to the cabinet. “Unbelievably good. He can aim that thing like a bullet. I’ve seen him do it.”

“Throwing it?” Roman said, disbelief tinging his voice.

Dante tossed the ball again. “Professional, remember?”

“Dante’s throw was powerful, when he first started playing professionally,” Rory said from her lounger. She sounded almost disinterested. “Then someone pointed out that a long throw was not useful if he couldn’t land it exactly where he needed it to go, so he spent a year learning to perfect his aim.”

The others looked at Dante. He wasn’t smiling anymore. Instead, he shrugged. “All part of the job.”

Garrett considered him. “So, not only could you hit that barn over there, you could also make it bounce off, say, the space between the two windows?”

Sasha looked at the building Garrett was referring to. Garrett called it a barn, although Sasha had seen cars being driven into it, earlier that morning. It might once have housed animals, but it was shelter for automobiles now. The barn was at the end of the property, a good fifty yards away. Between the house and pool and the barn was an acre of neatly mowed, emerald green grass. There were three windows along the short side of the barn that were visible from the end of the pool. The space between them, from this distance, looked very small.

Dante considered the distance and the target, still tossing the ball absently. “No warm up….” he said, almost to himself.

“You need to warm up in this weather?” Roman asked.

Dante shrugged. “I can do it,” he said. “How much?” he added, looking at Roman, Patrick and Garrett.

Rory made a sound that might have been a sigh or a growl…or a groan. “Now you’re just showing off,” she told Dante.

He shrugged. “They’re vampires. They had no respect for human prowess until ten minutes ago.”

True. Sasha had to agree with him on that point, although he had no intention of saying it aloud. The vampires did consider themselves physically superior and usually with reason.

“I still don’t think you can do it,” Garrett said flatly. “Like you said. No warm up, not even a practice throw, with a strange football that doesn’t even look is if it’s properly inflated. It’s impossible.”

Dante raised both brows. “Double or nothing,” he said. “I have a hundred thou on the line.”

“Two hundred thousand on a kick?” Garrett considered him, then the barn.

The barn suddenly looked like it was miles away, to Sasha.

“Prove it,” Garrett told Dante.

Rory gave an impatient sound, got up from her lounger and headed back inside through the conservatory doors. The view as she walked away was just as good as when she was facing him. Sasha sighed and poured another drink. It would take more than a couple of shots for the vodka to kick in, even in this heat.

Dante moved over to the middle of the grassed area, facing the barn. He studied the barn, his eyes narrowed.

Nial got to his feet and moved over to the edge of the brickwork so he could see better. The others ranged alongside him. Sasha stayed where he was, in the shade of the umbrella.

Dante took his time, considering the barn and the ball, mentally rehearsing the throw in his mind. Then he ran forward, in three long strides. He threw the ball, his whole body weight behind it.

The four men standing by the end of the pool watching the ball streak like a bullet toward the barn. Sasha watched Dante, instead. The man didn’t wait to see if the ball struck the barn between the windows as requested. He was sure enough of his aim and his skill that he didn’t need the confirmation. He turned away almost immediately after the throw, walked back to the pool and climbed up onto the board.

When the ball thudded into the side of the barn, Roman swore softly.

“Right between them,” Garrett added.

It was the admiration in his voice that irritated Sasha the most. It was the last straw. Sasha found himself moving with no clear decision to do so anywhere in his mind. “I can do that,” he said flatly.

Everyone turned to look at him. Dante lifted his head, his black eyes narrowed.

“Do what?” Nial asked.

“Hit the barn with the football.”

Dante snorted. “You?”

Sasha walked over to the grass, his heart working harder than it should, his jaw aching from gritting his teeth together. “Which space between the windows?” he demanded of the others. “The first or second?”

Nial crossed his arms. “The first one. The one on the left.”

The football rested on the grass about twelve feet away from the barn, where it had landed after bouncing off the wall. Sasha considered it.

“Want me to get the ball for you?” Roman asked.

“No,” Sasha said flatly.

“You don’t get to move closer to the barn,” Dante said.

Sasha looked at him. “I don’t need to.” He reached under his jacket for the Makarov, aimed and fired, all in one smooth motion that needed absolutely no thought at all. He had done it so many times, the gun was an extension of his arm now. His aim, adjusting for the angle of the ball and how it lay on the lawn and the elliptical shape and how it would respond...all of it went through his mind as invisible, instant computations.

As the gun appeared, the three of them standing on the edge of the brickwork—Garrett, Roman and Patrick—all shifted back in surprise. Only Nial didn’t flinch.

The bullet tore through the stretched leather of the football and the inner bladder. The explosive evacuation of air shot the ball up into the air just as if someone had kicked it. Sasha had aimed for the bottom of the ball, just beneath the sharp end, creating a rocket ship reaction with the bullet.

The ball slammed into the wall, an almost flat piece of leather, slid down into the bushes and plants in the garden bed below and disappeared.

Silence.

Sasha looked at Dante as he put the gun away. “I hit the side of the barn,” he pointed out.

“Damn, I should have put money on it,” Roman said softly.

Patrick smothered a laugh.

Dante, though, looked pissed and that was fine by Sasha. He went back to the table and poured himself another drink, sat down and sipped it. Suddenly, he felt good. His jet lag had disappeared, too.

Shooting the ball seemed to signal the end of the entertainment to everyone else. Nial came over and picked up the book he had been reading and patted Sasha’s shoulder and headed back inside.

Azarel, who had not moved from the open door, now shut it softly and turned back into the shadowed interior of the pool house, out of sight.

Patrick, Roman and Garrett were standing with their heads together. They, too, turned and headed back into the house, talking quietly.

That left Dante, sitting on the board with his feet dangling just above the softly lapping water. He waved away a bug from his face, watching Sasha.

Sasha ignored him.

Finally, Dante slid off the board into the water. His head popped back up, then he did a lazy overarm crawl down to the shallow end of the pool and climbed out, slicking back his thick hair. He came around to the table where Sasha was sitting, rivulets of water trailing him. He stood looking down at Sasha. “You couldn’t have just kicked the ball?”

“I did kick your ball.” Sasha looked him in the eye. Then he knocked back the shot and slammed the glass back on the table.

Dante grabbed the bottle and filled the glass, then picked it up and knocked it back in one smooth movement. He hissed and grimaced, then slammed the glass down just as Sasha had done.

Right.

Sasha refilled the glass and looked at Dante expectantly.

Dante grinned and picked it up and drank. Then he pushed the glass toward Sasha. “You.” His voice was hoarse. Zelyonaya Marka was not a smooth drink.

Sasha poured and drank. He put the glass in front of Dante again.

Dante pulled out the chair next to Sasha and sat. He reached for the bottle and held it up. There was only a few inches of colorless liquid left in it. “You’ve had a head start. I’ll have to catch up.”

“You couldn’t keep up. Not with me.”

“The bottle won’t last that long.”

“There’s plenty more where that came from,” Sasha assured him, thinking of the tray of bottles from which he had plucked the vodka.

“Get another glass while you’re getting the next bottle,” Dante said, pouring himself another glassful.

Sasha considered him for a long moment. Then he went and got another bottle and another glass.

Chapter Ten

Sasha knew he was very drunk. It wasn’t often he felt secure enough to drink even a little bit. His life was usually so filled with paranoia that relaxing just wasn’t possible.

Here, in this big house, the threats were all known and understood. They were extrinsic, too. There was no one in the house who might be posing as a friend while plotting again him. Not these people. Here, Sasha could afford to let down his guard, just for a little while.

That came with its own dangers, though. Introvert, Kate had named him, yet Sasha knew himself well enough to know that alcohol slipped the noose off his tongue. It was another reason not to indulge. At least, not in company he didn’t trust.

Yet here he was, blasted out of his skull and just barely staying on top of his runaway mouth. The whisky, for that was what they were drinking now, made him not care that his lips were working independently of his good sense and caution.

That was okay, too, for Dante was just as pickled and just as chatty. It was staggering, the difference in him.

Dante reached for the bottle and carefully filled the two glasses once more. He took his time and didn’t spill a drop, but it was a close thing. Then he very carefully and slowly put the bottle down, finding the surface of the table by feel, rather than sight.

“Can’t afford to be prejudiced,” he said. He wasn’t slurring. Instead, he spoke with studied preciseness. Dante was drunk as a skunk, although his control wasn’t slipping a notch.

Somehow the conversation had turned to bigots and bastards and enemies they had known…and now Dante was talking about prejudice.

“Why not?” Sasha asked curiously. “In Russia, everyone hates someone or something. They love other things just as much. It’s all black and white. Hate. Love. We even hate indifference.”

Dante grinned. “My mother was almost pure Italian. My father though…his grandmother was Choctaw and one of his great grandfathers was a freed slave that came out of the south after the civil war. My grandmother was Mexican and her husband arrived on the boat from Spain after the second world war. I’m part black, part Hispanic, part Native American, part white. I can’t afford to hate anyone.”

“Not even your parents, for giving you that name?”

Dante shook his head. “My mother read. Everything. She hoped it would rub off on me.”

“Did it?”

“Sort of. Football pays better, though.”

The glasses had emptied themselves. Sasha poured more, moving slowly.

“You hate your parents?” Dante said.

“Hate?”

“For your name. Marlen. Right?”

“Marlen Alexandrovich Mikhailov.” He lifted his glass in salute.

“Mouthful.”

“Russian.”

“Still a mouthful.”

Sasha shrugged.

“Your parents were into movies?”

He reached for the bottle. “Marlen. Not Marlon. They were into socialism.”

Dante frowned. “Nope. Don’t get it.”

“Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin were their heroes.” Sasha sipped.

Dante was still staring at him, not putting it together.

“Mar…Len,” Sasha said, separating out the two components of his given name.

Dante’s brows rose. Sasha could almost hear the ooohhhhh in his mind. “And you still don’t hate them for it?”

“The Wall was pulled down not long after I got my name.” Sasha drew in a breath and let it out. “My parents never recovered from their disappointment in the world and in me.”

“You?”

“Things that come easy in the west are still difficult in Russia.”

“I hear you just fine. It’s not pulling together up here.” Dante tapped his temple with his finger, then drank and hissed, showing his white teeth. “Damn, I’m drunk.”

“Pay no mind. I’m drunk, too. I say things I shouldn’t when I am.”

“Makes up for all the things you don’t say, other times. I’ve noticed you not saying much.”

Sasha shrugged. “I can’t hear other people when I’m talking. So I don’t. Talk. Then I hear.”

“That a spy thing?”

“It’s a Sasha thing. So Kate says.”

“Kate? This Kate here? Movie lady?” Dante narrowed his eyes. They were blood shot. “You like her?”

“Not as much as I like Rory.”

Dante’s eyes opened wide.

Sasha sighed. “See?” He held up his empty glass and wiggled it. “Most people can’t talk straight when they drink. Me, I talk perfectly straight…and too damn much of it.”

Dante pushed on his wrist, making him put the glass back down. Then he filled it. “Don’t worry. Most of the rest of the world likes Rory, too. That’s just the way she is.”

“You don’t mind?”

Dante concentrated on filling the glasses. “So why were your parents disappointed in you?”

Sasha let him change the subject. Dante’s control was astonishing. Admirable, even. “I never settled down. Russia had let them down so they gave up their communism and looked to me to fill the gap. I never did.”

Dante just looked at him.

“A wife. Grandchildren. The family they had thought a good Communist should deny themselves for the sake of the Motherland.”

“You didn’t because of your work? Did they know what you were?”

“Nope.” Sasha drank. The whiskey tasted like nothing now. His taste buds were numb. “I could have married if I had really wanted to. Just never wanted to. After my sister died….” He paused, remembering that harrowing year and the first time he had met Marcus. Marcus had got him drunk that time, too. “After Katya died, I really didn’t want someone in my life. Not when it might easily end up the same way my sister’s life had.”

“So, no one special at all?”

“Lots of ‘em,” Sasha said, with a smile. “I was single. Not a monk.”

Dante’s smile was small. “Didn’t think you were. That strong, silent thing and your accent would make women swoon.”

“Men, too.”

Dante didn’t quite freeze. Sasha could feel his hesitation, though. Then he finished lifting the glass to his lips. “And I’m just a boring retired football player.” He put the glass down. “That’s what you meant about it being difficult in Russia?”

“There were certain freedoms I got to enjoy when I was posted elsewhere that in Russia are still not well tolerated.” Sasha shrugged again.

Dante reached for the bottle, his gaze on what he was doing. “Not tolerated well in football, either,” he muttered.

Sasha considered him. “Is that so?”

“They didn’t mind me fucking a different woman every night of the week. That was fine. I have no objections to that, either.” Dante grinned. “Occasionally, very carefully, I indulge myself in other ways.” His grin broadened. “Then I got here and found out the vampires have something to teach me, after all.”

“Three together. They make it work.” Sasha leaned forward. “I thought…you and Rory…?”

Dante’s smile faded. “Not that way,” he said simply.

“Why not? Don’t you love her?” Sasha had seen the way Dante had watched her. Watching people, breaking down their strengths and weaknesses, was his profession. If Sasha had been asked to provide a profile on Dante, he would have listed Rory as his major vulnerability.

“There’s a thing about Rory,” Dante said, looking into the bottom of his glass. “She’s like you. Like me, too, I guess. Independent to the point of phobia. Knows what she likes, though. She likes men. Lots of ‘em. I don’t want to be just another notch for her.”

Sasha knew he was in no danger of becoming one of her scores, either. He lifted his glass. “Here’s to not competing.”

Dante tilted his head. “Competition. Fuck it.” He knocked his glass against Sasha and threw his head back as he swallowed the shot whole. “That’s how Rory and I got to be friends,” he added.

“Fucking the competition?”

Dante’s grin returned. “That, too. The 49ers Goldrush cheerleaders are stunning. Fit, too. What they can do in bed is unbelievable.”

“That’s how you met Rory?”

Dante shook his head. “Knew her for years before we got to be friends. She owns my team. Part of it, anyway. Players and owners…it’s a cautious relationship. They’re the boss, right?”

Sasha nodded.

“So for years, not much more than nodding and ‘yes, ma’am’ if she ever said anything to me. Whole team wanted to get her in the sack. Locker room was obsessed about it. No one did who ever talked about it, though.” Dante shrugged. “Found out later, Rory likes players as much as she likes any other man. Happy hunting ground for her. Only, she’s very, very choosy. The ones she takes to bed…they’re smart. They don’t feel the need to boast. Found all this out later, though.”

“After you became friends because of fucking the competition?”

“Yeah. Cheerleader went wrong on me. Wouldn’t stop calling. Sobbing about love and all that stuff. Rory found out somehow.” Dante grinned. “She turned up at my place out of the blue, just when the cheerleader was throwing over-ripe avocados at my windows and screaming down the neighborhood. I figured I was in deep shit, right?”

“‘cause you didn’t clean up your mess?”

“Right. At that time, I thought Rory was the original Ice Queen. Everyone wanted to fuck her, only no one ever got passed the shield. That’s what I thought. Then she pulled the cheerleader inside, sat her down and explained to the girl that she was giving away her personal power. Wasting it on me, at that point in time. Also wasting it on any man she spent more than a nanosecond thinking about if he wasn’t really interested in her.” Dante ran his thumb around the edge of the glass, his gaze unfocused as he remembered. “Blew my mind, listening to it. I’d never thought about it from the other side like that. Rory went on about taking her pleasure then walking away with her nose in the air if necessary. Accepting the consequences of any decision she made, even if she didn’t like them. At the end of it, the cheerleader stopped sniffing and got up and went away, very quiet. Her nose was in the air, too. That was the end of it as far as she went.” Dante shook his head. “Only I was in deep shit after all.”

“For fucking the cheerleader?”

“For not picking more carefully. For letting my cock make decisions. For getting into the mess in the first place. If I was smarter, she said, I would have set it up so we both could have had fun then walked away with no regrets. Only I was stupid and male and probably beyond redemption, even though I was apparently smarter than everyone else on the team.”

Sasha could almost hear Rory saying it, in her rich voice.

“So you were smarter, after that?”

“No, I was a numb-nut fucking idiot. I told her at least I had a cock to make decisions with, which probably explained her lack of friends.”

Sasha drew in a sharp breath. “What did she do?”

Dante grinned. “She smiled. That’s the thing. Rory doesn’t boast. She doesn’t see the need to impress people. She just goes around arranging life to suit her and her personal tastes. If that means she sleeps alone, then fine. Except she doesn’t do that very often. So I found out, later. Right then all I could see was that this snotty bitch had to have the loneliest life on the planet with her superior attitude and nerdy profession.”

“She is a scientist?” Sasha asked curiously. “I thought she owned the team?”

“Minor owner, in her spare time. She’s a theoretical physicist. She works for NASA.”

Sasha blinked. “So she…just smiled?”

“When I said it, yeah. She just smiled and left. Next morning, I went to get in my car and that’s when I found out she had arranged life to suit herself.”

“What did she do to your car?”

“She got about a hundred shopping trolleys from the nearest supermarket and made a ring of them around my car.” Dante grinned. “They were the locking kind. One chained to the next, right around the ring. They were squeezed in so tight, I couldn’t pry ‘em apart, not without damaging the Ferrari.” He laughed. “Had to get a dozen other players to come muscle the carts out of the way, an inch at a time. Took hours. They all thought the cheerleader had done it. I knew it was Rory.”

“And that made you friends?” Sasha asked, amazed.

“That made me want vengeance,” Dante amended. “I spent the next six months thinking up ways to get back at her. Prank calls. Messing with her satellite navigator so it always sent her to the local police station. An elephant in her living room—”

“A real elephant?”

Dante nodded. “I rented it. We had to take the sliding doors out of their frames to get it in there, too. Every single time I thought up something brilliant, she went one better. Then I realized, that was the whole point.”

Sasha shook his head, then stopped and held still until the dizziness subsided. “What was the point?”

“The game was the point. It wasn’t about getting even. It was about coming up with better, unique, funnier comebacks. Over and over.”

Sasha stared at Dante. “She’s a player.”

“Game theory. That’s her specialty.” Dante nodded. “Theory and practice, I finally figured out. She didn’t buy the team just because she likes the tight pants.”

“She likes games.”

“She loves games. Playing them. Watching them. Analyzing them, too.”

Sasha thought about the dive she had made, to win the bet. Now it made sense. Now he understood why she had become annoyed when she thought that Dante was merely showing off. She had felt that Dante had proved his point. Anything more was an unnecessary gilding of the lily.

“So you are friends,” Sasha said.

“Way beyond friends,” Dante said flatly. “Just not lovers.” He reached for the bottle and shook the last inch in it. “Split this?”

Sasha pushed his glass forward. His hand was not quite steady. “To friends.”

“Friends, lovers and everything in between.”

They drank.

Chapter Eleven

After they had finished moving the almost comatose Sasha and Dante indoors, out of the sun, Roman went looking for Kate. It was close to sunset and he knew damn well that she had not stopped all day. He would find her hunched over the computer, her shoulders tense, her eyes bleary, as she worked with feverish intensity, aiming for perfection and nearly, almost, getting it. It was the tiny imperfections that obsessed her, that would have kept her working long after the average human had given up.

There was a lot riding on this movie, too. She and Patrick and Garrett had decided to go indie and finance the movie with their own personal funds. Not because the Hollywood system wouldn’t support Kate and Patrick. These days, Patrick especially was one of the hottest items in Los Angeles. He could have raised enough money for a blockbuster budget movie in three phone calls if he’d cared to try…and if the movie had been a special effects blockbuster. Which it wasn’t.

The small, intimate war-time drama was the antithesis of everything in the theaters these days. A rousing, values-driven story about courage under fire, resilience, sacrifice and loss…it just wasn’t sexy, according to those who “understood” Hollywood.

Roman happened to think it was the perfect time for such a film. But what did he know? He was just a props collector.

Kate was still sitting at the electronics-strewn dining table, only she wasn’t working.

Garrett sat in the chair Patrick usually used. His legs were propped out in front of him. He looked almost ill, which wasn’t possible for a vampire.

Roman’s gut clenched. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.

Garrett pushed his fingers through his red hair, which explained the disheveled appearance of it.

Kate turned the big screen around so Roman could read it. There was a letter there, with an official looking letterhead and a flourishing, illegible scrawl at the bottom.

He scanned the letter, picking out the guts of it. His gut squeezed harder. “What the fuck?” he breathed and came closer. This time, he read it word for word, absorbing the details. Then he realized he was sitting, too. He had lowered himself into a chair without noticing.

He looked at Garrett. “Jesus wept….”

“Can they do that?” Kate asked. “Sue him for false pretenses?”

Roman could feel all his rusty legal training grind back into active status in his mind. “It’s the Department of Labor doing the suing.”

“They say he earned all his money, everything he’s got, by false pretenses.”

“I read the summary,” Roman told her gently.

“Micheil isn’t a con man!”

“Garrett did lie about who and what he really was,” Roman replied. “We all did. Whether that constitutes fraud, is the huge, billion dollar question. We’re talking about vampires and the law, Kate. It’s…murky. There’s no precedence. They’re using Garrett as a test case, to make the laws.”

“In the meantime, they’ve frozen his assets,” she said stiffly.

“Which ones?”

“All of them,” Garrett said stiffly. He sounded as though someone had just driven a baseball bat into his stomach, end-on. “I get a stipend, administered by a third-party adjudicator, until this is all over. A thousand a month. That’s it.”

“That’s why your credit card bounced.” Roman winced. “Well, they’re being nice. They could have told you to fuck off until this was all over.”

“I was bankrolling Kate’s movie,” Garrett said stiffly.

Roman shrugged. “So, use my money instead. I’ll earn it back, guaranteed.”

Garret flinched and suddenly, Roman understood. He sighed. “Kate doesn’t care, Mikey,” he said gently.

“Care about what?” Kate asked quickly, looking from Garrett to him and back.

Roman got to his feet and moved around the table to where Garrett was slouched in the chair with all the fight pulled out of him. Roman hugged him, holding him hard. “She really doesn’t,” he whispered.

Garrett looked up at him. The expression on his face was wretched. “It feels….” He shook his head.

“Micheil?” Kate whispered. She was on her feet now, alarmed by Garrett’s face.

Roman sighed and leaned against the edge of the table between them and picked up Garrett’s hand. “You were drawn to him because of his financial acumen,” he said.

“Sure,” Kate said and shrugged. Then her mouth dropped open and she reached for Garrett, her hand cupping his jaw. “Micheil, no! That was the tiniest, the very smallest of the reasons why I fell in love with you. And I do love you! You really think this is going to make me…what? Change my mind, or something?”

Garrett licked his lips. “When you say it that way it sounds stupid.”

“It is stupid!” Kate declared. “I love you and that isn’t going away just because some fucking idiots are afraid vampires will take over their life if they don’t lock you all in legal boxes as soon as possible. As if humans haven’t got enough to worry about without becoming paranoid about you!”

Garrett swallowed. “It feels as if I’ve had the stuffing ripped out of me. I’m hollow inside.”

“You have been disemboweled, publicly and symbolically,” Roman told him. “It’s temporary, Mikey. You’ve lived through worse.”

“It’s been a while and never in front of people I love,” Garrett admitted. “That’s the worst of it.”

“You never could deal with humiliation very well,” Roman said. He gave Garrett a smile. “High-tempered highlander,” he teased. “Fling your sword around tonight. You’ll feel better.”

Garrett gave a small smile of his own. “I might if I get to wiggle it around in you. Byzantine.”

There was a knock on the door and it cracked open a couple of inches. “Kate? Can I come in?” The voice was high and light.

“Yes, come in,” Kate said.

Roman hung on to Garrett’s hand, even though Garrett normally hated public displays of affection. Garrett didn’t protest or try to take his hand back, either.

One of Blythe’s daughters came into the room, carrying a tray with a plate of food and a bottle of mineral water on it. “Patrick said I should stand over you and make sure you eat it,” she told Kate.

“I can do that,” Roman told her. He wasn’t sure which twin it was. He thought it might be Eloise, because Simone was in trouble over some boy or something. The voices coming from the kitchen just after lunch had not been modulated at all.

“You can put it here, thanks, Eloise,” Kate said, putting the keyboard on top of the stack of external hard drives next to the computer’s big CPU and clearing the space in front of the monitor. “Please tell Patrick thank you.”

“No problems.” Eloise put the tray down and stood back, hesitating.

“Something else?” Kate prompted her gently.

Eloise her bottom lip. “It’s stupid.”

Roman almost laughed aloud. He carefully didn’t look at Garrett.

“Stupid is something I hear every day,” Kate assured the girl.

Eloise nodded. “When you started going out with Roman and Garrett, did everyone pick on you?”

“Is someone being mean to your mom about Patrick and Dominic?” Kate asked.

“It’s Simone. There’s a boy at school.” Eloise sighed. “He’s Elah.”

“And that’s what your mom and Patrick and Dominic said? That Simone would be bullied if she went out with him?”

“Not by everyone,” Eloise said. “Enough people to make it tough. Now Mom is thinking about it, because she doesn’t want Simone to get hurt.” It came out in a rush, as if Eloise was getting it all off her chest.

“Your mom is a smart lady,” Roman told Eloise. She glanced at him and blushed, then looked back at Kate expectantly.

Kate gave her a small smile. “Your mom is right, sweetheart. When I first starting dating Roman and Garrett, I didn’t have people calling me names—”

“Yes, you did,” Roman interrupted.

Kate sighed. “Yes, I suppose I did. Not to my face, but on TV and the Internet and everywhere in between. I was bullied by studio executives, who withheld financing because they didn’t like who I was sleeping with, too. At the time, it did feel as if everyone was picking on me.”

Eloise chewed at her lip. “That’s what will happen to Simone, then?”

“Possibly,” Kate said carefully.

“Probably,” Roman amended. “Kids can be vicious. They don’t always know when enough is enough.”

Eloise swallowed.

Kate leaned toward her. “The thing is, Eloise, I didn’t care about any of that…well, except when it stopped me making movies, only that was a spoiled brat thing. I didn’t care about what people thought of me personally, because I was so very, very happy living my life with Roman and Garrett in it. I was in love and that was enough to make it all worthwhile.”

Garrett’s hand clamped down on Roman’s. He heard Garrett suck in a deep breath. He didn’t take his eyes off Kate.

Eloise was staring at Kate. “That’s what Patrick and Dominic said. Make sure it’s worth the trouble.”

Kate nodded. “It’s good advice. Tell Simone that. I think she’d like to know she has her sister’s support, no matter what she chooses.”

“If my Mom says yes,” Eloise said.

“If Simone really wants to date the Elah boy, I know your Mom will understand. She’s had to go through the same garbage I did when she and Patrick and Dominic got together.”

“Except everyone could only talk about Patrick, that whole time,” Eloise said primly. “I don’t think they could even spell Mom’s name right. It was the fact that Patrick was living with two people at once.” Her nose wrinkled. “If they got to see what a slob he is in the bathroom, they’d stop being all gaga about him.”

Roman gave up then. He let himself laugh. Even Garrett chuckled.

Kate smiled sunnily. “Then they’d stop coming to my movies. We can’t have that,” she said lightly.

Eloise grinned, too. “Then we wouldn’t be able to sell Patrick’s autographs for twenty bucks a copy, either.”

“You’re faking his autograph?” Kate asked, appalled.

“Hell, no. He signs photos for us. Ten at a time. Simone and I pay him a buck per sale.” She smiled happily. “I bought all new make-up from my half.”

She left, looking happier than she had when she had carried the tray into the room.

Roman watched Kate as she followed the girl with her gaze, then gave a sigh that would have been inaudible to anyone except a vampire. Garrett missed it because he was getting to his feet and untangling his hand from Roman’s. He bent over Kate and kissed her. “Thank you,” he said softly.

“For what?” Kate asked, tearing her gaze away from the door.

“For reminding me of what I do have and will always have, so long as I stop being an idiot.”

Kate’s expression softened. “Always have,” she amended, “even when you are an idiot.”

“Do you think I can finance the movie with sweat equity, instead?” Garrett asked. “It seems I’m out of a job right now.”

“I could always use another PA,” Kate said judiciously.

“No, wait,” Roman said urgently. “You’re changing the subject.”

“We are not,” Kate said.

“No…wait.” Roman frowned, holding up his hand. “It almost slid by just then. You’ve been managing to do that way too often, lately, Kate. You move the conversation on before we can nail you on it.”

Kate’s gaze flickered away from Roman.

“What are you talking about?” Garrett demanded. “Eloise getting a second opinion about her sister’s dating choices?”

“Motherhood,” Roman said flatly.

Kate licked her lips and refused to meet his gaze.

Garrett turned to look at her, as though she had suddenly changed in front of him. “Kate?”

Kate sighed and glared at them. “It’s not a topic that is even worth discussing.”

“You’re hurting about it. Of course it’s worth discussing,” Roman shot back.

Garrett was back to looking as if someone had kicked him in the chest. “Because we can’t give you children, is why ye won’t talk about it,” he said, his brogue thick. “Ye not mean enough to blame us for that, so you’re ducking it because you don’t want to upset either of us over something we can’t change.”

Kate hung her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled. “It’s not even fair to think that I’m missing anything at all. I see Blythe’s kids and how they’ve…how all five of them—Patrick and Dominic, too—how they all work together and I get this horrible ache in my chest. I feel sick with it.”

She lifted her head and there were tears sparkling in her eyes.

Roman let out an uneven breath. His chest was hurting, now.

Garrett dropped to a crouch next to Kate’s chair, which brought his face even with hers. He brushed the tendrils of hair that had escaped the casual top knot she’d twisted her hair into on top of her head and secured with two pencils. “You know we’d both saw off a limb instantly if it would change things.”

She nodded. “I know that. I do. It’s not your fault. I keep telling myself I’m so damn fucking lucky to have you. That should be enough. Most days and most of the day, it is. It’s more than enough.” Her smile was weak.

“Only, sometimes it’s not,” Garrett said. His voice was low and rough.

Her tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m selfish. I can’t have a child in my life. It’s too busy, too demanding. I’d make a shitty mother, anyway. I’ve never raised so much as a kitten.”

“I have, though,” Roman said.

They both looked at him, equally startled.

“You…have had children?” Garrett said, amazed. And yes, there was a note of envy there, too.

Roman grimaced. “My own? No. I was turned before I even had a chance to think about a wife and children and we married young in those days. I helped raise cousins and some of the…some of my wives had children from previous relationships. One way or another, I’ve been around kids a lot.”

Garrett got to his feet, moving slowly. “I think, Kate, I now understand exactly how you feel. Just for a moment, then, I envied Roman his chance at being a father. It seems we’re both inflicted.”

“All of us are,” Roman said gently.

They looked at him again.

Roman grimaced. “It doesn’t ever go away completely. Now I have both of you, so lately it’s been prodding me.”

“Except now is such a bad time,” Kate said softly. “The war….”

“Yes, the war,” Garrett agreed with a sigh.

“Whoever says ‘when this cruel war is over’ gets pelted with my chicken dinner,” Kate warned.

No one said it, yet it hung there between them while Kate ate, Garrett poured her water for her and Roman worked on her shoulders, smoothing out the knots and kinks.

When the war was over, everything would change.

Again.

Chapter Twelve

Dante didn’t so much wake up as return to consciousness, an inch at a time. His head hurt like a dozen concussions at once and his mouth and throat were drier than the Mojave.

He was on his back, propped up at a slight tilt. His arms and legs were flung out at odd angles, almost as if he had been dumped on his back by someone and hadn’t moved from the position for what felt like hours. Every joint and muscle was as stiff as a board.

He groaned as he crept toward full awareness. The whisky. The vodka. Sasha’s blue eyes, drilling into him. Seeing way too much in his quiet, miss-nothing way.

What had Dante said? He couldn’t remember much right now. He couldn’t remember getting here. He wasn’t sure where ‘here’ was, either.

There was a breeze playing over his skin, which was sweaty. Was he still outside? He could smell green, growing things. Damp soil. Only, there was an absence of sound he would normally associate with the outdoors. It felt muffled, like a closed room, yet not exactly.

He poured effort into it and cracked one eye open a small sliver. It was nighttime. The dark might have been complete except there was a full moon overhead. Dante coupled that up with casual comments he’d heard that morning about waiting until the moon rose to hunt, tonight.

The hunters in the house would have left for their night’s work. That left very few people behind. Even Winter, the red-headed healer, headed out with the hunters to act as a field medic. Kate would still be here as she acted as babysitter for Blythe’s children while Blythe, Dominic and Patrick were all out hunting. Marcus and Ilaria, who had arrived that morning, would still be here. Rory and Dante would be setting up a unit of their own in the next few days. Hunting as a single pair until then was madness, especially here in the northwest hills of L.A., where the Summanus were thick and persistent. It was likely Rory had gone out with Patrick’s units, instead.

There were guards at the gate and there would be one in the kitchen. Otherwise, Dante was alone here.

“Here” was the conservatory. The panels in the glass walls that could be unsealed were all fully open, so the cool of the evening could pass through the room. That was why a breeze was playing on his face and why he could smell growing things and soil.

Carefully, he sat up. Considering how much he’d drunk, he didn’t have nearly enough of a headache. He should have been comprehensively sick, but wasn’t. His head hurt like crazy and that was all. A gallon of water would fix that.

As he sat up, he found he had been dumped on one of the pair of loungers that sat tucked away behind a pocket of big, green leafy palms. Sasha was sitting on the other of the pair. He was drinking a bottle of water and there were another five of them at his feet. In the moonlight, he looked ghostly, his pale flesh glowing.

Dante’s throat closed up tight at the sight of the water.

Silently, Sasha bent and picked up one of the sealed bottles and held it out to him.

Dante took it eagerly. He cracked the lid and drank quickly, almost draining the bottle in three big swallows. It tasted heavenly.

When Sasha handed him another bottle, he put the empty one down, opened the second and took a few more deep swallows. His throat no longer felt like it would hurt if he tried to talk.

Sasha opened a third bottle and sipped. “I think it’s after midnight,” he said softly. “None of the humans left in the house are up, that I can hear.”

“This is a unique way of adjusting our sleep patterns for nighttime hunting,” Dante observed. He winced as his head pounded. “Not that I would recommend it.”

Sasha shook his head. “It’s ten in the morning, Moscow time. I was already adjusted. What I do want is coffee. Lots of it.”

“Black coffee. Yes.” Dante finished the second bottle and put it on the floor.

Sasha looked offended. “Strong coffee, with lots of cream and sugar. Black is an offence to the palate.”

“Do you know your way around the kitchen at all?” He had moved straight through the kitchen that morning, with no chance to do more than look around.

Sasha shook his head. “I keep walking through it, that’s all. There’s a big pot hanging overhead that we can use.”

“For what?”

“To make the coffee,” Sasha said, as if it was perfectly obvious.

“You don’t want to use the espresso machine on the counter?” Dante asked, amused.

Sasha grimaced. “You don’t know how to make real coffee. I will show you.”

“With a saucepan?” Dante asked.

Sasha got to his feet. “With a pan,” he said in agreement. “Come.” He moved toward the kitchen. Slowly.

Dante followed just as slowly. The ache in his limbs disappeared as he moved, which left him with just the headache, which was a doozy. Coffee would fix a lot of that. So would food.

The kitchen was dimly lit, with only the little lights under the overhead cupboards turned on. Dante found the light switches and flicked them all on one by one, then adjusted them, until there was a good working light over the island and the range, while the table in the alcove was left in shadows.

Sasha reached up for the copper pot he had referred to and unhooked it from the cast iron frame hanging from the ceiling. He put the pot on the range. “Find the coffee,” he told Dante.

Dante tried the narrow, full length door in the corner of the kitchen. It was the pantry, as he had suspected it would be. He found three different types of coffee in bags and took them all out to the kitchen and dumped them on the counter. “Take your pick.”

Sasha read the labels and pushed two of them away. “Fine grind will have to do,” he said and scooped spoonfuls of it into the pot. He added water, then salt from the shaker sitting in the middle of the counter.

“Anything I can do?” Dante asked, as Sasha turned the burner on underneath the pot.

“Is there cream in the fridge?” Sasha asked.

Dante checked. “Coffee cream,” he said, pulling out the carton. “If you want whipping cream, you’re out of luck.”

“It will do. Put it in another pot, about two cups of it. Four spoons of sugar and vanilla essence and stir it up.”

Dante followed his directions, then settled the pot next to the big one Sasha was stirring.

“Keep stirring it,” Sasha said as he turned the burner on.

“What do you do if there’s only one of you when you want a cup of this stuff? Stir with both hands?”

“You make the coffee, then cook the cream.” Sasha shrugged. “This is faster.”

They stood and stirred for a few minutes. Dante could already feel a difference from all the water he had drunk. The cinched-in spiked band that had been squeezing his head had loosened up. “Was the water there when you woke up?” he asked.

“It was.”

“Someone was thinking ahead,” Dante said.

“They do that a lot, these people.”

“You know them well?”

“I was here, nearly two years ago. I got to know many of them, then. I have known Marcus for much longer, though.”

“Then you knew Rick, the vampire who died?”

“I don’t think anyone knew him as well as they thought they did, except for Marcus and Ilaria.” Sasha kept his gaze on the coffee. There was a tiny frown between his eyes. The blue of his eyes under the overhead light was very clear. Most blue-eyed people had flecks in their eyes, spoiling the color. There was nothing marring the tone of Sasha’s eyes. His jaw was very square and shadowed with growth.

“Watch the cream,” he murmured.

Dante pulled his gaze back to the saucepan and stirred carefully. He wasn’t much of a cook. He did know how to warm milk because it was one of the go-to sleep remedies he used instead of chemical inducements.

“You’re a full time hunter, now you have retired?” Sasha asked.

“That’s why I retired,” Dante said flatly. “So I could hunt. Only vampires don’t need sleep.”

“It bothered you, then, to give up your career.” It wasn’t a question.

“Not when I made the decision.”

“After, then. When you realized what it really meant.”

“It was a no-brainer decision,” Dante said roughly. “People don’t get killed playing football, while people were being killed for food, every single night, out in the streets and suburbs. The idea of running out onto the field with pretty girls cheering me on…it made me feel sick, to think that was how I got to spend my time, while others were dying. So I quit. Easiest decision in the world.”

“But…?”

Dante sighed. “But I miss the game,” he admitted, his voice rough.

Sasha nodded thoughtfully. After a minute, he said, “I will not miss my job at all.” He sounded almost surprised by that.

“Then you’ve quit the spy business, too?”

Sasha gave him a look that seemed to hold infinite wisdom and weariness. “You don’t get to quit the business. Not until they say you can and usually, they don’t like to let you go. Ask Marcus. He’s still tied to the CIA, despite handing in a formal resignation. For now, though, I am here and I will help Nial and his people because like you, it seems to me to be a more honorable way of spending my time.”

The cream began to simmer and Dante turned his attention to keeping it from boiling over, while Sasha did something with the coffee in the pot that involved it boiling furiously while he stirred and stirred. The smell of coffee in the kitchen was enticing.

“Glasses!” Sasha said.

“Fuck that. We’re using mugs with handles,” Dante told him. He had spotted the mugs while looking for a spoon to stir the milk. He got out two of them. “You’re not going to strain the grinds out of that?” he asked Sasha as he poured the thick coffee into the mugs straight out of the pot.

“No.” Sasha looked offended again. “You leave the dregs at the bottom, like a civilized man.”

“Excuse my pointy head, then,” Dante shot back.

Sasha grinned and pushed the mugs toward him. They were both two-thirds full. Dante topped them off with the cream mixture. A layer of froth settled at the top of each cup.

His mouth watered. “I usually hate these frou-frou drinks.”

Sasha picked up his mug and leaned against the counter. “This is as far away from Starbucks as you can get. This is real coffee. Na Zdorovie.”

Dante leaned back against the counter opposite Sasha and took a cautious sip of the piping hot liquid. Rich flavors registered, along with the silky smooth taste of warmed cream. The sugar, which should have made him gag, seemed to be the perfect accent, mixed up with the vanilla as it was. He couldn’t taste the salt at all. The coffee flavor was smooth and delicious. “Damn, that’s good,” he said softly, surprised.

“Of course.” Sasha shrugged.

“What does the salt do?”

“It takes out the bitterness. It just leaves coffee taste behind.”

“I guess you know something about how to make coffee after all. Not that I could drink this every day.”

“It’s better with vodka,” Sasha said judiciously.

“In the coffee?” Dante was startled.

“Next to it. Everything is better with vodka next to it.” Sasha grinned. “I have had enough vodka for today, though.”

“Hell, yeah,” Dante said. He drank again, feeling the warmth in his belly. This was food and caffeine in one hit. It was great.

As he reached the bottom of the mug, he realized that Sasha was watching him. There was speculation in his glance.

Dante’s heart gave a little flip of surprise and a quickening of pleasure. Then he realized that the whole time they had been standing at the stove, working on the coffee, his body had been growing tighter with anticipation. He had been subconsciously measuring Sasha, taking in his fine features, listening to the hint of exotic accent and foreign attitudes and liking them.

Only now he was aware of the potential. He could see in Sasha’s eyes that he had recognized what was happening, too.

Sasha put his cup down, very slowly, his gaze not moving away from Dante’s face. He took the three steps that separated them, stopping very close in front of him. Sasha was not much shorter than Dante, which surprised him.

Dante put his cup down, almost fumbling it because he didn’t look at what he was doing with it. “Don’t you think,” he said and his voice was hoarse, “that this is just a bit too convenient?”

Sasha wasn’t smiling. “I think flying all the way from Russia to get laid is stretching the meaning of ‘convenient’ out of proportion.”

Something deep in Dante’s belly jumped and fizzed. “Who said anything about getting laid?” he demanded. His voice was heavy with lust. His cock was stirring. His body had already decided that this was a very good idea.

“Would you prefer I seduce you into a more agreeable mood?” Sasha asked. He still hadn’t moved. His hands hung by his sides.

Yet something grabbed at Dante’s throat and squeezed his heart, too. He couldn’t look away from him and marveled at the flawless color of his eyes once more. “I’m agreeable,” Dante said roughly.

Sasha brought his hand up against Dante’s jaw, cupping his cheek. His thumb slid over his cheekbone. “Just for the record,” he said softly. “I came here to kill Summanus and help my friends. You, I did not expect.”

That did make a difference. Dante pushed forward, pressing his mouth to Sasha’s. The first contact was electrifying, full of sensory novelties. The shape and taste of Sasha’s mouth, the smell of him and the sound of his uneven breath. He explored it all. Enjoyed it all.

Their bodies were still not touching. It was purely their mouths that were driving the building tension between them. Even Sasha’s hand had fallen away. Yet Dante’s blood was thundering in his veins, building the pressure in his body, making his nerves sizzle.

He pressed his tongue between Sasha’s lips and met his. Unexpected softness. Lingering traces of cream and coffee. Heat.

Someone groaned and Dante realized with a small shock that it was him making that sound. It acted like a signal. They shifted and their bodies came together. The single thought Dante had was one of muted approval because Sasha seemed to fit against him so well. It had been a very long time since he had felt a man’s hard angles against him. Women tended to fold into him with ease, their pliant curves and smaller sizes made for him to plunder. Sasha, though, was not giving way and melting. He was an iron column beneath warm flesh. It felt as though Dante was coming up against the true core of his nature, the one he’d only caught the barest glimpses of today. He had spotted it when Sasha had dealt so peremptorily with the football, showing an off-hand marksmanship Dante doubted anyone could have matched. He had seen hints of his deep-running core of values and honor in little comments, like his reasons for coming to America.

That made kissing him all the more powerful and arousing. That made this more than just getting laid. It should have scared the crap out of him, yet Dante didn’t care.

Where their hips met, the heat of their cocks mashed together was delicious.

Sasha’s arm pulled him up against him more tightly. They were both breathing heavily. The layers of denim and cotton between them were an encumbrance.

Reluctantly, Dante pulled his mouth from Sasha’s, withdrawing just enough to look at him. “I could drop you across the counter behind me and take you. Right now. Except…”

Sasha nodded. “There are children in this house.” He stepped away from him and picked up his hand and tugged. “Whoever’s room we get to first,” he said.

Dante let him lead him through the big living room and up the graceful curve of the staircase that looked as if it had been transplanted directly out of a grand costume drama. The house was dark around them, with moonlight shedding silvery beams through the windows they passed. They were two dark shapes moving among the other shadows, although Dante suspected that if someone had seen them through a heat sensitive lens, they both would have lit up the scene with brilliant white heat signatures.

As it turned out, it was his room they came to first. Dante opened the door and pulled Sasha inside, then closed it softly again.

Sasha pressed him up against the door, trapping him there with the weight of his body. It was a good pressure. The best.

Their mouths met again and this time Dante could feel the urgency in both of them. There was no time for play, for exploration and slow seduction. They were past that, now. Sasha held his head steady and kissed him, until they were both breathless again.

Then he reached for Dante’s jeans. Dante’s pulse zoomed. He held still, trying not to push himself into Sasha’s hands, even though his body ached for the contact. His cock was a steel rod, pulsing against his belly.

Sasha stripped his jeans down to his ankles, taking his shorts with them. He made Dante step out of them, yanked off his sneakers and tossed them away. Dante stood with his feet apart, his cock throbbing, feeling the touch of the air on his shaft like a cool breeze. His balls were two heavy masses.

Instead of taking advantage of his semi-naked state, Sasha ignored the jutting head of his cock, the flesh around it. Instead, he eased his shirt up his torso. Dante realized Sasha intended to strip him naked before he laid a hand on him.

Sasha removed the shirt and Dante reached for his belt buckle, intending to return the favor. Sasha slid out of his reach. He shook his head. In the ghostly light in the room, his eyes were unreadable. He pushed Dante’s hands out of the way and pressed up against him once more, his hand against his back. He kissed him and his hand slid down to cup his ass. The fingers stroked restlessly, then pushed between his cheeks, teasing and making his hips jerk.

Dante hissed in building frustration. The need to come was growing in his belly and his balls, curled up like a serpent about to explode into roaring fire. It was driven by the odd sensation of being naked in the arms of someone still fully dressed. It made him feel exposed.

Sasha turned him and walked him backward, until the bed came up against the back of his knees. He pushed.

Dante landed on the bed with Sasha right on top of him. Sasha was agile enough to keep his weight propped up. His knee, encased in cotton twill, pushed up against Dante’s crotch, pressing against his balls. Dante groaned as Sasha’s lips pressed against his chest. His tongue swiped over Dante’s flesh, leaving it super-heated, damp and sizzling.

Sasha worked his way south and Dante felt as though his entire body held its breath, waiting for him to reach his aching, so far untouched cock. He realized he was writhing helplessly on the bed, his head pressed back into the cover, panting as he gripped the cover in his fists and kneaded it. So close….

Sasha’s mouth hovered over his cock. He studied it and Dante groaned again at this terrible teasing. Before he could verbally protest, Sasha bent and encased the head of his cock in his mouth.

Heated moisture. The brush of teeth and the hard swipe of his tongue. Sparkling, bone-deep pleasure. Dante sucked in his breath, his eyes closing, as Sasha sucked and stroked, his lips bumping over the ridge of his cock, while his tongue fluttered.

He wasn’t going to last long at all. His climax was already gathering, ready to leap to life and destroy his nerves. It was a massive thing, building and building. It felt as if it would take the top of his head off.

Then Sasha cupped his testicles and squeezed. One knuckle pressed up against his ass.

It tipped Dante over into his climax. He was helpless to stop it even if he had wanted to. It ripped through his body, snapping his tendons taut, stealing his breath, making his brain explode with pleasure.

He could feel his throat straining and he might have cried out, only he couldn’t hear anything.

As soon as he could move independently, even while his heart was still clawing for calm and his belly was still shivering with the echoes of the climax, Dante drove himself off the bed with a low roar. He threw his arm around Sasha’s waist and turned, driving him down onto the bed instead.

Sasha landed face-first. He got his hands up underneath his body, propping himself up.

Dante kept his hand on the back of Sasha’s shoulder, pinning him down, while he ripped his shirt up and his pants down, mindless of belts and zippers and fastenings. He was strong enough to overcome minor inconveniences like that.

He reached underneath Sasha’s hip and gripped his cock, feeling the thick heaviness of it.

Sasha dropped his head, groaning. His cock jerked in Dante’s hand.

“Your turn,” Dante breathed, sliding his palm up the length of his cock and pausing to tease the thick ridge. Then back down again, until his little finger felt the heated sacs beneath.

Sasha’s hips shifted in response and his shoulders worked. They were trembling. Good.

Dante slid the nightstand drawer open and pulled out the little tub of lubricant and dipped into it. He kept Sasha bent over and slicked the lubricant between his taut cheeks and up against his ass and felt him push back, welcoming the invasion.

Dante pressed his fingers inside, priming him, all while his own cock throbbed in anticipation. When Sasha was ready, he used the last of the lubricant on his hand to coat his shaft. Then he brushed up against Sasha, not quite pushing inside. He heard Sasha hiss in frustration and grinned. The Russian could dish it out. He just couldn’t take it.

Dante eased inside him, opening him up. The clamp of Sasha’s muscles around his cock was glorious. He inched in until he was fully seated and paused to appreciate the sensation. Sasha was gasping, his whole body trembling. In the moonlight, his flesh was almost iridescent, against Dante’s darker tones.

Finally, Dante couldn’t put it off any more. He had to move. He thrust, keeping the strokes long and smooth, going deep, extracting every dollop of pleasure from every inch.

Sasha slapped the cover with the flat of his hand in a little series of quick, coaxing patters. He was losing it.

Dante might have grinned, except that Sasha’s desperation kicked off his own quickly building climax. He was going to come again, faster than he ever had. He gripped Sasha’s hip and reached beneath him and found his cock once more, as his own hips quivered and thrust with jerky, irregular movements. He was losing control.

They both came with a strained rush of mutual pleasure, as Dante slammed into him over and over, driven to it. Sasha arched hard, growing still as his climax gripped him, except for a tremor of muscles tensed to the extreme.

Wishing he had the capacity for more finesse, Dante found himself falling toward the bed. He pushed Sasha out from under him, before his muscles gave way entirely and they landed next to each other and were still, all except their breath and their hearts.

Chapter Thirteen

The generously sized suite that Kate shared with Garrett and Roman was at the front of the house, so when the wailing started up at the front gate, it woke her. She lay blinking in the dark, listening to the building, undulating cry, orienting herself. She flipped her phone face-up and checked the time. It was just gone three in the morning. The hunting units would still be mopping up, securing their areas before dawn and the Summanus withdrawal.

It was hard to think beneath the screaming, which seemed to be coming closer to the house. She rose and pulled on the first robe she found. From the thickness and warmth and faint scent, she guessed it was Garrett’s, although the moonlight was killing off her color perception. Not that it mattered, anyway.

Quickly, she hurried downstairs. As she went, she could hear the crying travelling along the side of the house. Whoever it was, they were heading for the kitchen door. Was someone injured? They would have to be horrendously wounded to be making that high pitched keening sound, in which case, why hadn’t Winter taken care of them out in the field?

Kate reached the kitchen door as Efraim opened it. She threw on the overhead light as Patrick stepped into the kitchen, the big sword strapped to his back so the handle jutted out above his shoulder. He had black Summanus ichor on his sleeves, but looked fine.

He looked up at the light. “Turn it off. It’ll hurt its eyes. Just the pilot lights.”

Kate wanted to ask who he was talking about, except that Patrick had spoken with urgency. The screaming was louder now, coming through the open door behind him. So she turned off the light and hit the switch that turned on the lights beneath the overhead cabinets. They were LEDs and emitted a soft blue glow instead of the unforgiving white of the neon overhead.

Patrick held open the screen door and Dominic came inside. There was a blanket-wrapped bundle in his arms and it was the source of the screaming. Kate backed up a step as it wriggled in his arms.

Patrick pulled out the chairs from around the table. Dominic laid the bundle on the table. The shirt over Dominic’s chest and the top of the blanket were soaked with dark stains that looked a lot like blood.

“She needs to hurry,” Dominic said.

Patrick pulled his cellphone out of the pouch at his waist and thumbed a speed dial number and listened.

Dominic pulled the blanket open. An Elah child laid in the folds of the blanket, squirming in pain. Its cries were growing weaker and softer. Dominic leaned over it and crooned softly. “Shh… Soon, the pain with stop, little one. Just hold on a moment more.”

Kate found herself moving forward, drawn by the agony of the little thing. If Elah children grew at the same rate as human children, then she judged this one to be no more than five years old.

Elah blood was the same color as human blood, she realized with a sinking sensation in her chest. The child was covered in it, hiding all but the tips of its bony head growth.

“Winter,” Garrett said. “How long?” Then he nodded. “I don’t think it will last too much longer. Hurry.” He put the phone away.

“What happened?” Kate whispered.

Dominic didn’t look away from the child. “Its parents stood in front of it. We didn’t get there in time.”

Then it was an orphan.

Winter burst through the door, almost running. She hurried over to the table, the thick plait of red hair bouncing off her back, pushing the sleeves of her light jacket up her arms. Without hesitation, she picked up the child’s bloody hand and held it. “I don’t know their physiology very well,” she warned.

“Whatever you do will help,” Patrick said calmly.

Winter closed her eyes.

Kate looked down at the child, who was now lying still. Her heart shifted and stirred in pity.

Then she realized what she was doing and backed away, horrified. As the other three stood in vigil around the tiny child, Kate turned and hurried away, as if hell hounds were on her heels.

* * * * *

Dante switched on the bedside lamp when the screaming started and sat up with a startled oath.

Sasha listened to the high pitched voice giving vent to pain and fear and his gut cramped. He reached for his clothes that he had finally shrugged off.

Dante caught his shoulder. “They have Winter. She’ll take care of it. We’ll just be in the way.”

Sasha hesitated. He had temporarily forgotten about Winter’s almost magical abilities to heal by her touch. The screaming had wiped almost everything from his thoughts except the need to go and help.

They sat listening to the sound, both tensed, ready to leap to action if anything changed. Eventually, the volume diminished, then silence returned.

Dante gripped Sasha’s elbow. “Where do you think you’re going?”

Sasha lifted up the handful of his clothing. “Where do you think?”

Dante shook his head. “Come here.” He was pulling on his elbow, giving him no chance to argue. Sasha was beginning to understand Dante’s true strength, which this afternoon’s demonstration had barely outlined. It wasn’t that he was simply strong. He was also indefatigable. He could power on longer than anyone, out-lasting short-haul opponents and wearing them down. Despite the fact that he had to be dropping with weariness, Dante was still alert and strong enough to pull Sasha across the bed.

He had mental strength, that never gave up. Perhaps that was what Sasha had sensed. Perhaps that was why he had indulged himself with what he had thought was a simple whim.

Dante settled down beside Sasha, his hand on his chest. “Relax,” he said. “We’ll find out tomorrow morning what that was all about.”

“Unless we’re needed.”

“So they’ll come and find us if they do need us.”

“Except I won’t be where they look for me.”

Dante rolled over on his side and propped his head on his hand. His eyes were very dark and glittering with feelings. “Do you point that out because you would rather they did find you where they expect you to be?”

Sasha considered that. “I think I said it because I’m trying to figure out if you would rather they find me in my room and not yours.”

Dante didn’t answer straight away. He blew out a breath, his gaze shifting away from Sasha, toward the door. “There’s a thing you must know about me,” he began.

“Rory?” Sasha asked.

Dante’s gaze jerked back to him.

Sasha shrugged. “You made yourself very clear this afternoon.”

“I didn’t think I was even speaking straight, let alone making sense,” Dante admitted softly. “Yet if it made sense to you, then why did we…you…”

“I like you,” Sasha said truthfully. “I think, more than I realized. Underneath that show-off jock attitude of yours, you’re a decent man.”

“Thank you, I think,” Dante said, smiling. His smile faded. “She’s the love of my life, Sasha. You have to know that. If she beckoned with the crook of her finger, I would mow down the entire NFL contingent to get to her. I would leave cartoon shapes of myself in doors and walls. If she even hinted that things might be different….” His voice grew unsteady and he looked away.

Sasha considered him. “I thought you didn’t want to be another notch to her?”

“That’s all I would be, for now.” Dante cleared his throat and looked at Sasha directly. “Hope is a powerful thing.”

“Do you really have hope?” Sasha asked. “Or is it something that just lets you sleep at night?”

Dante blew out his breath. “The year after the cheerleader thing, about three months after I had to replace the carpet in her loungeroom after the elephant thing, my contract came up for renewal. There was a lot of fancy negotiations going on and in the middle of it my manager phoned me and gave me shit for including a clause without running it by him first.” Dante shook his head. “I had no idea what he was talking about. Then he read out the new clause that had been inserted. It was a stopper. It prevented the team from trading me to any other team. They couldn’t even talk to another team about trading me, unless they had my express and written permission to do so.”

“Rory put the clause in?”

“I don’t know, not for sure. She was part of the negotiations, though. She’s part of every contract negotiation, for every player, because she’s ruthless enough to not flinch when the pressure is on. She was part of mine.” Dante shook his head. “There was no one—no one—who stood to benefit from that clause beside me and I didn’t put it in there.”

“Except that, if Rory did put in the clause, it says you’re right to hope,” Sasha finished. “She wanted you to stay around.”

Dante nodded. “So I gave up a lot of ground on that contract. I might even have lost money, with everything factored in. I took the losses because it gave me leverage to keep that clause in there.” He sighed and laid back down, his arm resting against his forehead, shading his eyes. “That was six years ago, now. Feels like a lifetime and like two nanoseconds, at once.”

Sasha pushed himself up on his elbow, so he could see Dante’s face. “Why are you telling me this?”

Dante met his gaze. His eyes were steady. “So you know, next time, where we stand.”

Sasha’s heart gave an odd jerk. “There will be a next time?” he said, as evenly as he could.

Dante curled his hand around the back of Sasha’s neck and drew him down to where he lay.

* * * * *

Marcus knew he was alone even before he opened his eyes. The empty feeling made him sit up almost before sleep had fully departed.

Ilaria was standing at the window, where dawn light was filling the room. She was absolutely still, in a way that made Marcus suspect she had been standing there for a long time. Perhaps since he had fallen asleep early last night.

“Ilaria.”

She didn’t move. “Rick would always watch the sun rise. Whenever he could. He said it gave him perspective.”

Marcus steeled himself against the internal hurt that started up. His chest ached. So did his eyes. “I didn’t know that,” he said honestly. “I guess, as the human of the three, I got to snore away the sunrises.”

Ilaria looked at him. “Rick said you snored in key. You can’t hold a note when you sing, while your snoring was pitch perfect.”

The laugh touched him unexpectedly, making him smile and breathe gustily, at the same time sadness grabbed at his chest once more. His eyes stung and he blinked hard. He thought he had shed all the tears he could stand. Was it always going to be like this? Would something always whack him in the sternum and make his heart creak and his eyes hurt?

Ilaria was watching him, as he was torn between laughter and tears. Amazingly, astonishingly, the corner of her mouth moved.

Marcus forgot about anything except the joy of seeing that microscopic smile. He held out his hand. “Come here.”

She hesitated. “I don’t know that I should,” she said slowly.

“Why not?”

“I feel so empty,” she confessed. “Cold. I don’t want to infect you with that.”

Marcus got out of the bed and came over to where she was standing. He put his arms around her from behind. She did feel colder than the normally cool room temperature she maintained. “You don’t understand,” he said softly by her ear. “We do this, so that I can help you feel better. We help each other, okay?”

She shivered in his arms. “That doesn’t seem fair, to use you to make myself feel better.”

“It works both ways,” he assured her truthfully. “Just holding you this way makes a difference.”

“It does?” She bit her lip.

“I don’t feel like crying when I’m doing this,” he confessed.

Ilaria sighed and let her head fall back against his shoulder. “I wish I could cry,” she breathed.

He kissed her temple. “It will pass,” he assured her.

“I don’t want it to.”

Neither did he. So Marcus stayed silent and just held her. He watched the sunrise, looking for the perspective Rick saw in it. He failed to find it.

* * * * *

Blythe, Dominic and Patrick all worked to get breakfast on the table each morning, even though Blythe and Dominic were usually at the last stages of weariness and more than ready for bed. Only, sitting down to breakfast with the kids gave them a precious hour of family time that was almost impossible to find at any other time of the day. Blythe kept one eye on the clock on the wall oven as they worked. The twins and Jake would be down, soon.

Kate was sitting at the end of the table, wrapped in an oversized tartan robe, with the sleeves rolled up three times, to keep her hands free. The collar was too large and revealed most of one creamy shoulder. She was sipping a coffee, her eyes bleary with lack of sleep.

Winter was at the other end, also bent over coffee, while Nial leaned against the dining table side of the island, listening to her report, his arms crossed.

Nial had showered and wore the elegant trousers and shirt he preferred, although Blythe had seen the other side of Nathanial Aquila while hunting the Summanus. He was a cold-blooded, ruthless killer, with superb instincts and reactions. Last night, he had got between a dozen Summanus and three human hunters and had driven the Summanus back with the fury and power of his defense, the short sword he favored and the long knife wielded like windmill blades, never still for a moment and always finding their target.

The same perfectly neutral expression he wore while fighting was on his face now as Winter spoke. He was busy calculating, even as she was talking.

“The fact that I could do anything at all is a miracle,” Winter told him. “Of course, the Elah have DNA. Every living thing in the universe does. They even have recognizable organs, with functions I could understand. Sex organs that look almost exactly like ours. Pain receptors…that’s what made the difference. I could numb the receptors, which let the poor girl relax while I worked. She took a lot of the toxin in through the scratches they gave her, so while I could heal the scratches, she’s going to have to wait for the toxin to dissipate from her system.”

“Just as humans do,” Nial said, his voice low. “How close is the DNA to ours?”

“Could they interbreed, do you mean?” Winter asked.

Blythe jerked, spilling the pancake mixture in a long trail across the hot pan. She swore.

“I’ll do that,” Patrick said gently, taking the jug of mixture out of her hand. “Why don’t you sit and relax?”

Blythe shook her head. “I’m fine.”

Patrick lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. “You should listen to Winter. It will help.”

Blythe could feel her shoulders slump. “I can live with Dominic reading my mind but both of you is too much.”

Patrick smiled. “Dom reads minds, then he talks in the shower.”

“Guilty,” Dominic said cheerfully, where he was standing by the toaster.

“You’ve been thinking about nothing else since Simone told you about Kiati yesterday,” Patrick added. “Go and listen. Go on.”

Blythe sighed and moved around the counter, out of the way of the cooking area. She stood next to Nial. She didn’t want to sit down because she wasn’t sure she would be able to get up again.

Winter glanced at her. “I was just telling Nial about Elah DNA. It’s very, very close to human.”

“Isn’t chimpanzee DNA close, too?” Blythe asked. “Yet they’re a completely different species.”

Winter nodded. “Every living thing on the planet has DNA that is ninety-nine percent identical to human DNA. It’s the variations in that remaining one percent that makes all the difference. Elah DNA is even closer than that. One hundredth of one percent variation. It’s so small, it’s negligible.”

“Yet they’re still a different species from humans,” Blythe insisted.

“If they can interbreed with humans, it makes the Elah a new race, not a different species,” Nial said.

Blythe shuddered. “Why does it matter, anyway?” she muttered.

“It’s a distinction that will make a difference to many humans,” Nial replied. “It will make the Elah’s integration into human culture easier.”

“And harder,” Winter said. “Blythe isn’t the only one who will find human-Elah relationships hard to accept.”

Blythe jumped. “You make me sound like a bigot.”

Nial shrugged. “You can’t help what you feel.”

Blythe stared at him. The dry answer was a product of the same ruthless mindset she had seen him display while hunting. He could look truth in the face and deal with it without flinching, no matter how unpalatable.

“That’s not fair, Nial. Simone is her daughter,” Winter protested. “Blythe is only trying to protect her.”

“No, he’s right,” Blythe said. She could feel everything shift in her mind, letting her see it differently. “I’ve been freaking out over Simone wanting to date a boy that is no more different than the black kid next to him, or the Puerto Rican on the other side. I wouldn’t have any issues about her dating either of them.”

“The problem isn’t you,” Nial said. “It’s everyone else, including teenagers who don’t know how to mind their own business.”

Blythe nodded. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

“You could be borrowing trouble,” Winter said quietly. “Maybe Simone will become the coolest girl in school because of this.”

“If Simone doesn’t give a damn what anyone else thinks, then their power over her evaporates,” Nial added. “Most teenagers are ruled by the need to conform, but she is your daughter. Perhaps she can rise above the peer pressure.”

Blythe let out a breath. Calm descended. Nial had handed Blythe the key to resolving this. Simone was strong. All of her kids were strong. They’d had to be, growing up without a father.

Then the three of them clattered into the kitchen, the volume of noise in the room leapt. Blythe could spare no more time thinking about anything except enjoying time with her kids, while she had the chance.

Nothing was a guarantee these days. All three of them would soon become adults and build their own lives. Everything was uncertain, now. Every day was precious. Even an hour over a noisy breakfast table, with Jake trying to steal all the pancakes, was a gift.

Chapter Fourteen

Even though it was eight in the morning, the heat of the coming day was already more than a promise. It was gathering in the air, thickening it, drying out plants that had just been watered.

When they withdrew from the kitchen because of Patrick’s family’s need for the table, Nial led Winter and Kate out into the conservatory, only here, with the sun already blasting through the glass roof, it was already uncomfortably hot.

So they moved on, Kate holding up the hem of her robe with one hand so she didn’t drag it in the dirt and juggling her coffee mug with the other.

Outside, the sun had not yet quite risen above the edge of the conservatory roof, so the light spilling over the still and silent pool was shot with colors from the sun filtering through the glass.

Nial turned to face them. “Where’s Sebastian?” he asked shortly.

“Asleep already, I’m sure,” Winter said. She wished she was beside him, only Nial had insisted on a full report about the Elah child as soon as he had emerged from the shower. Now, the day was extending even later. She said none of what she was thinking.

More and more often, lately, Winter found herself editing what she said to Nial. She knew why, too. She suspected Nial was not even aware of it. While the average human had many blind spots and weaknesses, Nial had only one.

Since Sebastian had been injured last year, Winter had watched Nial close up, gathering and shoring up his defenses. He had not spoken to her about it at all. He was old-fashioned. He didn’t believe in sharing his problems—most especially with those he loved. If he was even aware of the problem in the first place.

It had taken most of the year for Winter to realize that he couldn’t see it. After millennia of learning how to live forever, he had fallen prey to a very human response to threat.

He was in full defense mode and would stop at nothing to make sure Sebastian remained safe. Winter was inside that protective shield he was trying to build around the three of them, only it was not her who had been injured. It was not her that Nial thought of whenever he was awake, planning his plans. He had become obsessed about ending the war. It drove everything he did.

He was looking at both her and Kate, now, only Winter wasn’t sure he was seeing either one of them.

“Everyone’s schedules are too fractured to get all of us together at the same time to talk about this, so we’ll do it the old way,” Nial said. “Kate, if you could pass this on to Garrett and Roman? I’ll talk to Patrick and Blythe and Dominic.”

Winter saw movement out of the corner of her eye and turned her head. Azarel was standing at the door of the pool house, looking at them where they were gathered at the shallow end of the pool.

She waved him forward. “One less person to tell,” she said to Nial, as Azarel moved around the pool to join them.

Nial frowned. “I’m not sure…”

“The Serene Ones must know everything, Nial,” Kate said softly. “You can’t select what they get to see. You want them to judge us for what we really are, don’t you?”

Nial sighed and nodded. “At least he looks sober this morning,” he said shortly.

Azarel nodded as he came up to them. He was wearing pants and a simple shirt and no shoes. Winter wondered how long it had been since he shaved. They’d had to teach him how to do that. Dominic’s rendition of Azarel’s first encounter with a razor had been hilarious. For several months, Azarel had remained clean-shaved. When had that changed? Winter couldn’t remember the last time he had appeared with a clear chin.

She couldn’t remember the last time he had accompanied anyone on a hunt, either. He had seemed to lose interest in anything to do with the war. The mindless pursuits of a teenager were more his style these days. Drugs, women, booze and music.

Nial had been philosophical about Azarel’s retreat. “He’s experimenting. Figuring it out, just like any young adult.”

Azarel looked at Nial expectantly. He didn’t smile. Not that he smiled much around Nial, anyway. “Your night’s hunt went well?”

“No,” Nial said flatly. “There are too many Summanus and not enough of us. Except that was last night.” He waved the question away and said, “It’s nearly September.”

“If schools were still running the old system, the kids would be heading back next week,” Kate said. “And we would all be breathing a sigh of relief.”

During the January that had just passed, the state school authority had cut school attendance hours down to four core hours in the middle of the day, so kids could get to school and arrive home during daylight hours. As a result, the spring break and longer summer vacation were abandoned. School was all year round, now. Only on public holidays were they closed.

Blythe’s three kids had screamed and kicked in protest, as Winter imagined kids everywhere had done. Not a single parent disputed the change.

Nial shook his head. “Fall,” he said flatly. “Cooler weather.”

Winter drew in a sharp breath. “Hatching season,” she said, remembering the bloody, deathly night of terror they had gone through last year, when they had been caught completely unprepared for the locust-like descent of millions of newly hatched and ravenous Summanus hatchlings. They had fed upon anything with a pulse, anything they could reach.

Winter shivered. “We should start looking for larva soon.”

Azarel didn’t look puzzled or uncertain. When it came to the Summanus, Winter suspected he knew more about them than they did. It was the minor human details like shaving that were unknown to him.

“We still don’t know what to do with the hatchlings, when we find them,” Kate pointed out.

“I had a thought about that last night,” Nial said, confirming that while he was mechanically mowing down Summanus with his sword, he was mentally working five moves ahead of everyone else. “Marcus’ return made me think of it,” he admitted. “What do you think Pyrrhus would do to the larva?”

Horror burst through her. “No, you can’t, Nial,” Winter said quickly. “It’s far too dangerous, too volatile!”

“It’s a weapon that the Summanus don’t have,” Nial said calmly. Winter suspected he had considered every argument she might have against the use of the Pyrrhus, hours ago. He would have counters for every objection she made.

Still, she had to say it. She wasn’t going to just give up. “So the Pyrrhus eats through the larva and kills them,” she said flatly. “Then it eats through the wall behind them. They like the concrete walls in the culverts. So we dissolve whole culverts and shut down the city’s water supply, just to get at them?”

“It’s not just the culverts. What about the kids who might find the residue, afterward?” Kate said. “Pyrrhus has a three day half-life. You’re proposing we spray around like weed-killer a chemical that will chew off a kid’s sneakers, then start burning through the soles of their feet.” Kate swallowed. “Hands, too. What if they rub their eyes when the stink of the larva gets to them? They’ll go blind.”

Winter’s heart sank. “I haven’t thought of that, yet. That’s even worse.”

Nial’s expression didn’t change. “We could get rid of nearly a hundred percent of this year’s batch of Summanus. It would be a huge blow to them. Maybe even a fatal one.”

“It would be just as damaging for us,” Kate said flatly.

“It would be an insane risk,” Winter added. “Nial, you’re not seriously thinking we should do this, are you?”

Nial drew in a breath. “We’re running out of things to try,” he said softly. “And I think we’re running out of time.”

“You’re saying the Summanus are winning?” Winter breathed.

Nial’s jaw flexed. “No,” he said, his tone flat. “Even if they were I would not say it. I refuse to even consider it. Only…what is that expression, about a last chance?”

“They call it the Hail Mary pass in football,” Dante said, from behind Winter.

She glanced over her shoulder. He was as barefooted as Azarel and just as scruffy around the chin, although the symptoms of a hangover she had expected to see were not there. His dark eyes were twinkling.

“I heard most of that. I don’t know what this Pyrrhus is, that you two ladies seem to think is so evil.”

“It is evil,” Winter told him. “Marcus invented it. It eats through everything except for glass and a couple other materials. If there’s more than a cupful of the stuff, it can be made to explode and it’s stronger than TNT.”

“Why hasn’t every hunting unit the world over been given this stuff?” Dante demanded.

“It’s incredibly unstable,” Winter protested. “Not as bad as nitroglycerin, but getting there.”

Dante shook his head. “Nial is right. It’s a Hail Mary. We could turn the war around with it.”

“At what cost?” Winter demanded. “The consequences of using Pyrrhus in the volume we’d need to defeat the entire Summanus population would be untold destruction and deaths.”

“Maybe that’s a price we have to pay,” Nial said quietly.

Kate shook her head.

“No,” Winter said flatly. “It’s too much.”

Azarel frowned. “This chemical, this Pyrrhus…” he said. “It would give you certain victory?”

Winter shook her head. “I don’t give a fig what it would give us. I don’t care if the stuff is guaranteed to win the war for us. It’s too high a price, Nial.”

“You’d rather die?” he asked, his tone harsh.

Winter flinched.

Azarel looked at her. “She would,” he said, wonderingly. “Rather than use a weapon that would gain victory for you.”

Winter’s eyes were stinging. She blinked. The last thing she wanted to do was cry, especially in front of Nial, in this mood—this dark, sealed-up mood he had been in for nearly a year. “It’s not worth it,” she repeated.

Kate squeezed her arm. “I agree,” she said, her voice low.

“I think I’d want to know a bit more about the stuff first,” Dante added. “Before I start tossing it around.”

Nial shook his head. “Very well,” he said, his voice dry. “We’ll find another way to deal with hatching season. The time is coming, though, when moral qualms will no longer be a good enough reason.”

“They should be!” Winter cried. “Always! What are we, if we throw morals and values out the window at the first sign of trouble?”

Nial’s expression didn’t change an inch. “Survivors,” he said flatly.

Winter shook her head. Her tears spun away into the air on either side of her. “So we survive. What will we be then? Because we won’t be human anymore.”

“I’m not human,” Nial said harshly.

Winter wiped her cheeks. Her hand was shaking. Too late to wish this conversation was happening somewhere where no one could see her humiliation and the fear Nial was building in her.

Perhaps he saw her terror, too, because he seemed to relent. Something in his face softened. “I swore I would protect you,” he said gently. “You and Sebastian, both. Did you think I would not live up to that promise? Do you think I would not do anything, in order to keep you safe?”

Winter bit her lip. “You’re making a decision on behalf of the rest of the world. Maybe they don’t want to pay the price you are.”

Nial looked at Kate. “You think Garrett and Roman would hesitate for even a second, if you were in danger?”

Kate looked troubled. “I can’t answer that,” she said. “I don’t think they could, either. I’m not in danger right now.”

“Yes, you are,” Nial said flatly. “No one seems to truly understand in their bones how very close to danger we all are. We’re living almost normal days, in the same houses we were living in a few years ago. There are no bombs or descending armies. No tanks rattling the suburbs. You’re all complacent. You see it on TV at night, only you’ve grown up seeing wars on TV and they were always such a long way from here. Now, they’re not. The war is right here. Right in your homes, right out on the street out there. Yet you can’t adjust.” He shook his head.

Winter swallowed and her throat clicked with dryness. Nial had lived through far too many wars. He knew exactly how they happened, how they crept into the very fabric of people’s lives, just before tearing them apart.

“Is it really that bad?” she asked him. Her voice was weak.

“If you ask Rory about this, she’ll break down the odds for you,” Dante said, his voice calm. “Just don’t ask her just before bed. You won’t sleep.”

Nial brought his hand to Winter’s face. His fingertips slid over her cheek and along her jaw. “I won’t insist we use the Pyrrhus on the hatchlings,” he said. “Although we should be smart. We should have a store of the stuff on hand, just in case.”

“That’s what the Russians said, all through the cold war,” Kate pointed out.

“Because the Americans had the bombs, too,” Nial replied. “It was a stalemate. The Summanus don’t have Pyrrhus. If they happen to find out we do, then it will make them hesitate and that might be enough.”

Winter sighed. She wasn’t happy about the idea of the Pyrrhus existing at all. It just seemed incredibly naïve to not make sure they had it stashed, anyway.

Kate shook her head. “You’re going to ask Marcus to make it, when Pyrrhus killed Cyneric? You have more courage than I realized, Nial.”

“Nah, it’s not courage,” Dante said.

Nial glanced at him.

“What, then?” Kate demanded sharply.

Nial shrugged. “I refuse to lose. I have too much at stake.”

“I think I saw Marcus coming downstairs when I came out here,” Dante said. “I’d like to hear what he says when you ask him.”

Chapter Fifteen

Rory luxuriated in a long, hot shower, letting the tension of the night’s hunt drain away with the water. She had been used to leading her own unit, just as Dante did, while here she was a subordinate, taking orders from a man who had been human just over a year ago and was a movie industry icon, to boot.

She had seen the TV and Internet clips of Patrick Sauvage heading out to hunt at night, while the entertainment shows creamed themselves over his new found status as a warrior in truth. The big sword on his back had become as iconic as he was.

It had been a shock to Rory to find out that Patrick was not just a pretty face for the cameras. He really did coordinate six hunting units across the western Hollywood hills, as well as leading one of them himself. Rory had to admit that from what she had seen last night, he was a remarkably able hunter. He had a knack for anticipating the Summanus. That probably came from trying to empathize with and understand a huge range of characters over the years. Putting himself into another person’s boots and mind came naturally to him.

Not that the Summanus were in any way people, yet the skill transferred, just the same. Dominic’s ability to track the Summanus mental signature almost as though he had a mental radar, made him and Patrick a formidable partnership.

It had taken Rory most of the night to understand that she could trust Patrick to give sane and reasonable orders. Even Nial followed Patrick’s directions without question. If he had any doubts, he didn’t express them. Nial, Garrett and Roman, the three most senior vampires in Patrick’s hunting cadres, were all intermittent volunteers, pulled away by other demands, often without notice, so Patrick was the natural and most suitable leader. He was dedicated to the task.

Rory would have to subsume her need to maintain control until their own units were formed. She and Dante could then hunt as they used to. It just required patience.

It had been a tense and long night, all the same.

By the time she was dressed and went downstairs to find her laptop, to check messages and news, she was relaxed and balanced once more. Dante might still be up, too. If he intended to follow the household schedule for those who hunted and must also sleep, then he should be heading for bed within the hour, to get four hours sleep before rising for a late lunch, then heading back to bed for another four or five hours. A late supper, then then hunters would all head out around eight or nine pm.

The schedule was slightly different from the one the human hunters had been using in San Francisco. There, they would head for bed just after an early lunch and sleep until around seven, then get up to hunt.

The routine was split here to accommodate those humans in the household who did not hunt, with their daylight schedules, including the children arriving home from school.

Rory still found it interesting the way human society was adapting and shifting rapidly in response to the Summanus threat. Changes that would have been unthinkable two years ago were commonplace, now, including humans being divided into those who hunted and those who lived in daylight, all-year-round schools and colleges and the open wearing of bladed weapons. Street crime had dropped, despite the weapons being carried so freely. The nighttime that had hid so many petty crimes was no longer safe.

Sports games were all held during daylight hours, as were concerts and most other public events. The streets of any city fell almost completely quiet once the sun had set. City councils were spending billions on building subterranean tunnels to connect public buildings to underground carparks, to give pedestrians safer passage.

Internet usage was on the rise, to compensate for the lack of movement after sunset. Social networks had exploded. It was no longer optional to be online. It was a survival mechanism.

These were factors that Rory took note of every day. All the little yet interesting factoids, the changes, the human responses to the war, all were part of her on-going analysis.

As she settled down on the ottoman with her laptop on her knees, Rory remembered the one time she had tried to lay out for Dante the shape and pattern of the war as she had deconstructed it. She had not gone into detail. Just the twenty-thousand foot overview had unnerved him enough to make her stop. Dante couldn’t consider the war without equating it to his personal survival. It was an incredibly human response. So Rory had deliberately failed to give him the hundreds of little facts and patterns that added up to the big, ugly viewpoint. There was no need to worry him more than she had.

Sometime during the day, when the humans were sleeping, she must get Nial to one side and break it down for him. She had a feeling that Nial would be able to handle the truth with more equanimity than anyone else. He would see the facts as information. Useful data, that he could manipulate to bring about an end result that he wanted.

Game theory was just theory, after all.

Rory pulled up her email and wasn’t surprised to see a handful from Ben Lyon. There was one from Detective Plank, too. She opened that first.

The investigation had not been formally closed, yet. She was also still a person of interest in the matter, although it was unlikely she would need to be interviewed again.

Grimly pleased, Rory sent him an acknowledgement.

She saw movement in the very edge of her range of vision and didn’t look up from the screen. There were no genuine threats in this house and she was busy. She finished the email and sent it, then looked up.

Sasha Mikhailov was watching her. His arms were crossed.

Rory clamped down on the annoyance that tried to rise. There were no threats in the house, but there were irritants. “You want to speak to me?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Please don’t waste your charm on me.”

She could feel her brows pulling together. “I wasn’t.”

He shook his head, turning away. She wasn’t certain, yet she thought that perhaps his eyes had rolled as he looked away. A human dismissing her as trivial was unusual. There had been many men—hundreds of them—who had considered her merely material for conquest. She had changed all their minds, sometimes with force. It was rare to find a man who did not seem to care that she was a woman.

She stared as Sasha bent and pulled the other heavy ottoman closer to where she was sitting, in between the two groups of chairs and sofas. She had chosen this ottoman precisely because it was between the two islands of seating. It would discourage company. Now Sasha was making himself comfortable.

With a sigh, she put the laptop down on the floor at her feet. He was, after all, merely human. She could spare a moment to deal with him then send him on his way.

As Sasha sat on the thick cushion, she noticed he was wearing trousers that might be raw silk. They had a dull sheen that indicated they were made of some sort of expensive fabric that may or may not be manmade, although it was certainly luxurious to the touch. The shirt was a soft material that had some drape to it instead of the stiff cotton and polyester common in male garments.

Rory reassessed him. Yesterday, he had been wearing travel-rumpled clothes and was unshaved. This morning, he was neat and clean and showing preference for luxury that was unexpected in a man who spied for his country.

Although he was the first intelligence officer she had met…that she knew of.

“I’ll get to the point, as I was interrupting you,” he said. His eyes were steady. Rory liked the color. It was a very pure blue, made bluer by the thick black brows over them. His eyelashes were black and thick, too. It was a soft touch in a face made of plains and angles. So far she had only seen him scowl, or hold his face in a neutral, disguising mask. That was what he was doing now, too. “Dante won’t consider telling you, because he feels you won’t care. I think differently.”

Rory drew in a breath, as the man’s statement tripped off a dozen different lines of thought, or possibilities, all of them enough to make her heart give a little blip of movement, as if it had been alerted.

He implied that Dante had spoken to him about matters that were personal. About her. They had been talking about something that she wouldn’t like.

He continued speaking, giving her no more time to sort it out. All she could do was brace herself.

“Dante and I ended up together last night. Sooner or later, someone will probably tell you that. There were guards outside the house and a bedroom that hasn’t been used and other indicators and no one in this house is stupid, you least of all.”

Rory felt as if her lips had gone numb. She made her shoulders move in a casual, dismissive movement. “I can understand why you think this is something about which you must inform me, but really, it is none of my business. Dante is a free adult. He can fuck whoever he wants. He frequently does.”

She realized she had dropped down to the crudity to jolt him, the way he had jolted her. Only, why was it a shock? Why did she even care? It was quite true that Dante bedded anyone he took a fancy to. His tastes were varied and wide. She often helped him avoid the nastier fallouts by running interference. She had even helped him trip people up so they would fall into his arms. He had done the same thing for her.

So why did she care, even a little bit, this time?

Sasha smiled. “Dante told me the same thing. All the lovers and partners. He said it’s how he relaxes. He’s very good at it, too.”

Rory realized she had clenched her fist in reaction when Sasha’s gaze dropped down to her hands, then back up to her face. She had given herself away, to a man who read body language as part of his job.

She spoke before considering all the implications. It pushed out of her, almost hurried. “I knew the two of you would end up together.”

“You did?” For the first time, Sasha seemed surprised. He was hiding it, although she could hear his heart.

“After all that testosterone the two of you were generating, yesterday?” She shook her head. “It would have ended with you beating each other up or having sex. You’re not bruised, that I can see.”

“Perhaps Dante is the one with the bruises.” Sasha was almost laughing.

“Against you?” It came out drier than she had intended. All her usual control and calm had been momentarily upset. She railed at herself to find her centre once more and regain control.

Sasha really did laugh, this time. Loudly.

Rory just stared at him, genuinely puzzled. The last thing she had intended to be was amusing.

“You forget who won, yesterday, out by the pool,” he said.

“As far as I could tell, no one did.”

“Put the other way, we both did. It certainly feels that way from where I’m looking.” His smile faded. “You do that a lot.”

She frowned.

“Analyze people.”

“It’s part of my job.”

“Dante said you were a theoretical physicist, working for NASA.”

“I am, only NASA hired me because I am a game theory expert, too.”

“Why would NASA need game theory experts?”

“Because Russia, Germany, China, Italy, Iran, all the countries with space programs want to go to Mars, too.”

Sasha’s eyes narrowed, so that only a narrow slit of blue showed. “It’s a game. A race. The twenty-first century space race.”

She shook her head. “Not exactly. Do you know what game theory is?”

“You figure out what people…teams…will do next in a game situation?”

“You’re guessing.”

“Yes.” He smiled and she could see the amusement in his eyes. He was laughing at himself, not at all embarrassed about his ignorance.

“In any sphere of interest, where two or more groups are in any way competing, even at the mildest level, game theory predicts what rational opponents would do, in any given situation.”

“And this is what you and Dante talked about all the time?”

She blinked. “It helps Dante with his hunting squads. It helps him strategize.”

“Against the Summanus? Who said they are rational?” His voice had risen slightly. He was offended at the idea.

“The Summanus behave in ways that indicate they think and behave and respond to stimulus with rational decisions.”

Sasha’s mouth curled down. “You’re confusing instinct with thought.”

He was trying to criticize her. Rory just smiled. “I make allowances for that possible error.”

“You mean, you build into your predictions the chance that you’ve completely misunderstood the Summanus?”

“The war is not a perfect game, like chess,” she said. “We don’t know all the facts. Although with every passing day our knowledge becomes more complete, more predictive.”

Sasha leaned forward. “So does theirs.”

“You don’t like them.”

“No one does.” He scowled.

“I mean…you are far more passionate in your dislike than most.”

“They killed the man my very best friend loved.” Heated fury glowed in his eyes.

For a moment, Rory could easily imagine Sasha throttling a man with his bare hands, bearing his teeth as he did it. He was supposed to be a cold, calculating spy, with minimal human emotions to trip him up, yet Sasha was more complex than that. He was very good at his job, Sebastian had told her. Now he was showing the fire and passion that Russians were famous for.

Just for an instant, for a tiny moment, an image flickered through her mind, of Dante and Sasha together. Did Sasha show this sort of heat and emotion in those moments, too? It was easy to imagine the two of them together, when he was like this.

Rory scrambled to pull her thoughts together, to reorder them. She cleared her throat. “Thank you for telling me about you and Dante,” she said stiffly and reached for her laptop and opened it. “I am sure you will be a nice distraction for him.”

“You are being deliberately insulting,” Sasha said. “Why?”

“I don’t bother with insults when the truth is so much more powerful.”

Sasha tilted his head, looking at her. “Then say what you really mean.”

Very well, then. Rory closed the laptop. “I don’t understand why you got together. I mean, why you? You insulted him. You showed him up, out there by the pool. Then you drank him under the table. Dante is the most hopelessly competitive man I know. He can’t stand losing. He should be trying to bust your ass for you, right now. Only, he took you to bed.”

“That’s because he didn’t lose.”

She pressed her lips together. “Yet he did. He submitted. It’s a loss, in his eyes.”

“He gained. More than you understand.”

Rory spread her fingers on top of the laptop case. She shook her head.

“You’re working with incomplete information again,” Sasha said quietly. “I am surprised you don’t know this about yourself, not if you have lived as long as the file we have on you says you have.”

“What don’t I know?” She meant for the question to come out cold and disdainful, yet she sounded more like a lost child.

Sasha leaned forward. Rory realized with a start of surprise that he was bigger than her. He had always been, except now she noticed it. He was taller and his shoulders were broader. Not as wide as Dante’s of course, although no one had shoulders like Dante. Yet Sasha seemed to be filling her vision, dominating it.

She could smell his scent. Clean. The hint of soap. Spicy maleness.

Something shifted inside her.

“You and Dante both do it,” he said, his voice even lower. “You’re all about discipline and physical and mental excellence. It drives everything you do. It’s a fancy form of control.”

“You are saying we are control freaks?” She was amused. “You think we do not know this, either of us?”

“You hide behind it,” Sasha said. He gave a small shrug. “I do not. Feelings do not bother me. Not knowing everything does not make me afraid. That is what Dante gained.”

He was very close to her. Close enough for her to feel human warmth. She couldn’t help it. Her gaze drifted down to his full lips. The lips that Dante had kissed.

The images were playing in the back of her mind, driving her speculation. The two of them together. What was it like? She would have supposed, a few moment ago, that Dante would have dominated.

Now, she was not so sure.

She realized she wanted to kiss Sasha, to find out for herself. It wasn’t a search for intellectual enlightenment that drove the want.

Sasha straightened and got to his feet. For a moment, he looked down at her. Then he smiled. It was a knowing expression.

Rory sat with her hands on the cover of the laptop for long moments after he was gone.

The gameboard had shifted since she had looked up to see Sasha watching her. She wasn’t sure this was the game she’d thought she had been playing.

She didn’t like it, either. Not at all.

Chapter Sixteen

Garrett walked right into the middle of the argument and would have turned and slunk out quietly, except that it was Nial doing the shouting. Nial, who never lost his cool. He was standing at the far end of the office and the stance looked casual, although his hands were fisted by his sides.

Garrett paused, stunned to see Nial losing it. What on earth could shake him that way?

Marcus, Ilaria and Winter were there. Kate was standing next to Winter, almost as if she was supporting her. Dante was leaning back against the wall, his arms crossed, the coolest of everyone in the room. Sebastian, as usual, was sitting behind one of the computers. He didn’t look happy, either.

Marcus looked as though he wanted to throw up and explode at the same time. He was shaking. “It weakens structures. Destroys whole buildings. Roads. Nothing is invulnerable,” he said, his voice as uneven as his breathing. “Not even vampires are immune.”

“I know that,” Nial said. His voice was low, tight with control. Garrett suspected it would have been as rough as Marcus’ if he hadn’t been exerting so much discipline. “You think I haven’t thought this through? That I would even ask you if the circumstances weren’t what they are?”

“That stuff killed Rick,” Marcus said.

“I know that, goddamn it!” Nial shouted.

The room grew suddenly still and silent.

On the other side of the wall, someone screamed. It was a young voice. Garrett realized Winter must have put the Elah child in the little front office, the only room in the house that didn’t already have two or three functions.

Winter stirred. “I’ll see to her,” she said.

Kate hurried after her, as Winter slipped through the other door.

Garrett saw for the first time that Azarel was standing at the other end of the room. He had been hidden behind Winter and had not spoken at all.

Nial sucked in a breath and let it out, regaining control. Marcus had not looked away from him at all. Garrett didn’t think he’d even quivered at Nial’s shocking shout.

“I know how Rick died,” Nial said more quietly. “Which is exactly why we should make more of it.”

The Pyrrhus. Garrett understood now. Nial had asked Marcus to make more of it, which proved he had more guts than Garrett had credited him.

On the other side of the wall, the screaming was continuing. It was taxing, to have to listen to it. Garrett shifted on his feet uneasily.

Ilaria gripped Marcus’ hand with both of hers. She was shaking, too. Her eyes were enormous. Even in this room filled with high emotions, Garrett could still pick out her heart beat. She was just on the edge of over-exertion and barely holding herself together.

“We should destroy every last milliliter of the shit,” Marcus said. His voice shook.

“It could ensure we win against the Summanus,” Nial said.

“What good is victory when there’s no one left on the planet to appreciate it?”

“You’re exaggerating,” Nial said, sounding tired all of a sudden. “A few buildings, some casualties, yes. The Pyrrhus is not a nuclear warhead.”

“It’s worse,” Marcus said stiffly. “You would have to use a thousand metric tons of the stuff to destroy all the Summanus. You know what enough of it does to the earth, Nial?”

Nial just stared at him. He didn’t just look tired, Garrett decided. He looked haggard.

“It eats away everything,” Marcus said harshly. “In a nuclear winter, things still grow. They might grow three arms and glow in the dark, but they grow. Pyrrhus will kill everything. No seeds. Not mold, not even fungus to eat. No stone to build shelters. It will poison the water. Then, it gets worse.”

Garrett realized his own heart was racing, now. The picture Marcus was painting was horrible.

“Pyrrhus is an explosive and highly inflammable. The first time there is a lightning strike that hits the earth, it will burn.” Marcus grimaced. “The very ground itself will rise up in flame. If anyone survives long enough to see it, they will see the world burn in bright red fire. It will be the prettiest fireworks anyone has ever seen. It will also be the last.”

Nial pinched the skin over the bridge of his nose. “I’m not saying we use it. We need it as a deterrent against the Summanus. They will hesitate to attack us if they know we have it.”

“No, they won’t,” Marcus said shortly. “They might hold off a day or two, but when they’re hungry enough, they’ll attack and then they’ll be desperate, into the bargain. You’re betting against their survival instincts and you’re wrong.” He lifted his hand, bringing Ilaria’s with it. He tucked her arm under his. “I will not make more Pyrrhus. Don’t ask me again.”

He turned and headed for the door. Garrett stepped out of his way and let him pass.

Nial hung his head. He took in another deep breath and let it out.

“Still think it’s worth it, Nial?” Dante asked softly.

“Yes. You know why I do.” Nial straightened up. “Marcus is thinking in black and whites. In absolutes. He reasons that if we have the Pyrrhus, then it must be used and its use will bring ruin upon us all. It’s not his fault he’s thinking that way. He’s still in shock.”

“You really think it will make that much difference?” Dante asked.

Nial sighed again. “I’m hedging my bets,” he said softly. “If we have it, we don’t have to use it. I would prefer not to. If we don’t have it and need it, we’re screwed.” He looked at Dante. There was bitterness in his eyes. “You’re a game player, Dante. How would you play this?”

Dante pushed himself off the wall, letting his arms drop. “As your lab technician just refused to play, most people would say the game is over.”

Nial’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t say that?”

Dante shrugged. “It seems to me that all the skill needed to make the stuff went into inventing the recipe in the first place. It’s like the drug industry. The second and third and thirty thousandth pill costs pennies to make. It’s the first pill that needs millions of dollars to produce.”

“Rory,” Nial said flatly.

“Basic lab skills. Every scientist has them.”

Sebastian shook his head. “No one knows how to make it. Marcus kept it to himself.”

“Betcha he didn’t,” Dante said, sounding pleased with himself.

“He was paranoid. His lab was hidden in the basement. It was disguised,” Garrett said.

Dante whirled to look at him. He shook his head. “He’s a trained lab rat. Rory has told me enough about scientists for me to know that when he thought he had the formula nailed, he would have made sure the credit would be his.”

Sebastian frowned. Nial merely looked thoughtful.

Garrett already knew the answer because he had dealt with the US Patents Office more than once or twice. “He patented it,” he breathed.

“Which requires a full disclosure in order to be issued,” Dante finished.

Nial looked at Garrett. “Think you could dig it up?”

“If he did patent it, I’ll find it,” Garrett said.

“He’ll have used a false name, to hide his tracks from the FBI and he probably didn’t call it Pyrrhus in the application,” Nial said.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Sebastian asked Nial. “You’re going behind Marcus’ back, against his express wishes. He’s not wrong about how dangerous this is.”

“It’s dangerous just stepping out the door,” Nial said flatly. “Don’t ask me to stop. Not now.” He looked at Sebastian and Garrett’s gut squeezed. There was a look in Nial’s eyes that he’d never seen before. Half of it was open, profound love.

The other half was desperation.

* * * * *

The child wouldn’t settle down, even when Winter crouched down beside the temporary pallet she was resting on and placed her hands on the girl’s shoulder.

Kate winced. This close, the girl’s screaming had a note of agony that was hard to listen to.

“One of her wounds?” Kate asked, lifting her voice.

“They’re healing,” Winter said, sounding worried. “I don’t know what this is about.”

Kate watched the girl squirm on the pallet, trying to recall everything she had heard about the Elah and their ways. The girl’s long, delicate fingers were clutching at the blanket beneath her. No, not clutching. It was more of a digging motion, as if she was trying to scrape up the surface of the chenille.

Kate felt her lips part in surprise. “I think I know what she wants,” she said. “Let me at her.”

Winter looked at her, puzzled. “I can’t. I’m trying to calm her.”

“I can do that,” Kate said. “You wanna move out of the way?”

Winter frowned, considering her. Then she let go of the child and got up from her crouch and stepped away from the pallet.

Kate bent over the wriggly, writhing little girl and scooped her up. “Man, she weighs more than I thought she would.” She had to grip her hard to keep her in her arms. “Shhh.” she breathed. “We’re going to fix it for you, sweetheart.” She headed for the corridor and hurried along it. Nial and the others were still in the big office, although they were talking with softer voices now. Garrett was there and would tell her what happened, later.

For now, Kate had to deal with this more urgent need. She strode across the big living room. Rory was sitting on one of the ottomans, staring down at her laptop. She lifted her chin to watch Kate go by, although her beautiful blue eyes were unfocused, as if her thoughts were a million miles away. Her mouth was pulled into a hard little pout.

Someone was on her shit list, Kate theorized. She got a better grip on the child and kept moving, through the kitchen where Efraim was sitting at the table as usual, guarding the door, down the three steps into the conservatory.

The air in here was warm and thick, from the sun beating down on the glass, even though every moveable pane on the structure was open. It was stifling. The scent of growing things and rich, damp soil was strong.

The girl’s squirming slackened.

“What are you doing?” Winter asked softly, behind Kate.

“It’s a theory,” Kate said. “Let me see if I’m right.” She moved around the curving path, her shoes crunching leaf litter and dirt, the big leaves of the palms brushing over her shoulders. They drifted over the child, too. She didn’t react. She was almost still in her arms, now.

Kate moved over to where the sun loungers were parked. She had to ease around the sides of them because the wider corridor in between them was littered with empty water bottles.

At the back of the loungers, there was a section of the conservatory that had no floor. The palms and ferns here were planted directly into the soil, instead of living in big tubs and pots. Kate eased down onto her knees with awkward movements, for the girl was a completely limp, uncooperative bundle. Once she was on her knees, she eased the girl down onto the soil beneath a big palm leaf. It was shady under the leaf and the damp soil felt cool.

The girl rested on the soil for a moment. Her eyes were closed. She may have been sleeping, if the Elah did sleep at all. Then she turned on her side. Her legs drew up toward her chest and her arms hunched in beneath her knees. Her head tucked in, too, until she was a tightly rolled coil lying on the dirt. The circular shape her body was in made Kate think of the whorls of emerging fern leaves.

“They sleep in dirt?” Winter whispered.

Kate shook her head. “I don’t know.”

“Marcus told us all those stories about Dai Chi, when he went to Russia to talk to him,” Winter said. “They were living among the trees, there.”

“I remembered what Roman said about them, from ancient times. That they are of the trees and the earth. That they were the inspiration for stories about wood elves. I don’t know if they sleep in the dirt, still. Maybe they draw strength from it.”

“And when they’re wounded or sick, they turn back to it,” Winter finished. She looked at Kate, admiration in her face. “I wouldn’t have thought of it.”

“You don’t live with the world’s only expert on the Blood Stone,” Kate told her. She sat back, resting against the back of the lounger and let out a heavy breath, looking at the silent, still girl curled up on the soil. “We are living in strange days, aren’t we?”

“And then some,” Winter agreed.

* * * * *

Sasha drifted from sleep to wakefulness, lulled by a pleasant rocking sensation. It felt very much like being in a bunk on a small ship, which he remembered from his military training. While going anywhere near the edges of the tiny boat had filled him with trepidation, he had not suffered from violent sea-sickness the way many of the others in his unit had. Going to sleep lulled by the motion of the waves was the only positive aspect of his week aboard the ship.

Around two pm that afternoon, Dante had pushed Sasha toward the stairs. Jet lag had finally caught up with him and Sasha could barely keep his eyes open. He had stumbled up the stairs and found his way to the bedroom that he had barely used. It hadn’t felt right to use Dante’s while he was not there.

He had fallen onto the bed, barely remembering to remove his shoes and had passed out within three breaths.

Now he was properly awake, Sasha kept still with his eyes closed, trying to ascertain as much about his surroundings as possible before letting any potential observers know he was awake.

Something was not right. He knew he was no longer in his room. There was a tiny movement of air over his exposed face and shoulder that suggested he was outside. Also, his shoulder was bare and as far as he could tell, the rest of him was, too. There was a sheet covering him and if he was outside, that was a good thing.

Yet this felt like the bed he had fallen onto. The pillow was the same as the one he had used two nights ago. How could that be?

There was no sound around him, except for an odd watery, sucking noise that again reminded him of his single experience with boats. Nothing moved. No one coughed or made a sound that would let him locate them.

Silence…except for crickets and lapping water.

It was the smell that finally stirred him to action. It took a moment for him to recognize it.

Chlorine.

With a gasp, he sat up in the bed, then gripped the edge of the mattress as his motion made the bed yaw wildly. It was quite dark. Not even the moon was up, yet…or it was so late the moon had sunk already.

At his movement, the outside security lights switched on, bathing the swimming pool and the bricks around it in harsh, unforgiving beams of white, stark light, from four different directions, which eliminated all shadows and left Sasha in absolutely no doubt about his location.

Sometime while he had slept, someone had moved the bed upon which he was sleeping onto a rough, temporary raft of framing lumber and floated the raft and the bed in the pool.

That explained the sucking sounds. The water was nudging the edges of the raft, stirred by his movements.

There was a soft banging sound coming from the house, making Sasha look up. There were two windows in the big living room that looked directly upon the pool. Sasha could see at least five people standing at the windows. The tallest among them was Nial, a half head higher than Patrick. Patrick slapped his hand against the glass in a soft paddling sound that made Sasha think of someone applauding.

Running footsteps came from inside the conservatory. More people, coming to watch at closer quarters.

Sasha sighed, looking at the nearly twelve feet of water that lapped between the edge of the raft and the side of the pool. Dante could have made the edge with a single dive and a simple breast stroke.

For Sasha, though, it might as well have been the Grand Canyon.

I regret, I do not swim. He had told her that only yesterday. Or was that the day before, now?

It didn’t matter. She had zeroed in on his weakness and exposed it.

Winter, Sebastian and Dominic emerged from the conservatory. They were smiling hugely.

Well, he could sit here all night in this rocking contraption, or he could spring himself. The faster the better. First, he should look around and see if there was anything she had overlooked that he could take advantage of.

He tossed the sheet aside, then pulled it back quickly. He was naked beneath it.

Winter laughed, pressing her face into Sebastian’s shoulder.

Sasha gritted his teeth. “Would one of you mind retrieving the vacuum pole from the locker, over there, then pulling me over to the side?”

Sebastian’s shoulders were shaking. Dominic grinned as he went over to the cupboard and opened it. Then he stepped back, shaking his head. “There’s nothing here,” he said. “It’s completely empty.”

Rory had anticipated him.

Sasha considered his position once more.

“You could dog paddle over to the side,” Sebastian suggested.

“You could jump in and haul the bed over,” Winter told him, slapping his shoulder. “Have a pity on the man. He’s naked.”

Sasha shook his head. “I don’t know what the rules are, but I think you rescuing me will break at least one of them.”

“Rules?” Sebastian said and laughed. “You sound like Rory. She spent all night talking games and rules.”

“Who do you think put him there?” Winter said, looking at Sebastian with a fond expression that one might use with a stubborn child.

Sebastian’s mouth opened. “Ooooohhhh….” he breathed, sounding winded. “Fuck, none of us heard so much as a whisper!”

“I think that was the point,” Sasha said. He looked around. Carefully, for his smallest movement made the bed sway with an erratic motion that made his heart squeeze and his breath halt. “Is there anything under the bed?” he asked.

Winter ducked to look.

So did Sebastian. “Well, there are lots of planks,” he said helpfully.

Everyone was still standing at the windows. There may even have been more than when the lights first flashed on. Possibly, guards from the gate had been drawn in by the sound everyone was making. Even through the double-glazed, sound-proof windows, Sasha could hear their whooping and cheering.

He sighed. “I’m going to have to paddle over,” he said.

“With your hand?” Winter asked. “It’ll take you an hour!”

“Three minutes,” Sasha said. “Maybe less.”

Dominic was sitting on the bricks with his legs crossed and his hands linked together. Laughter was making his shoulders shake.

Sasha considered the sightlines from the pool to the acreage around the house. “Do you think the neighbors can see?”

“Not from that far away,” Sebastian said. “The nearest house is a quarter mile from here.”

“Good.” Sasha pushed the sheet aside once more and eased himself over the edge of the bed, trying to avoid any sharp movements or shifts of his weight. The bed shivered and the platform it was on dipped to one side, then righted itself once more. The surface of the pool rippled.

Keeping himself to slow movements, Sasha reached back and snagged the pillow in his fist and settled his weight more firmly on the platform. The planking was wet. He would have to watch his footing.

All three of his observers were silent now, watching him work. Even Dominic had lost all but a shadow of his smile.

Carefully, Sasha lowered himself to his knees, working to keep his weight balanced over the same spot, so the raft didn’t rock too badly. Once he was on his knees, he very slowly edged his upper body out over the water, taking his time, waiting for the raft to adjust to the shift.

Then, when the raft was still once more, he lowered the pillow into the water and let the water soak into the light inner filling, making it sink and grow very heavy in his hand.

“What the hell?” Winter breathed.

“Oh…smart!” Sebastian whispered. “Watch,” he added, speaking to Winter.

Once the pillow was as soaked as it could get and dragging his arm down, Sasha drew it through the water, along the edge of the raft, until he couldn’t reach any farther. Then he hauled it up, dripping heavily and back in front of him to pull it through the water once more.

The raft shivered and made little rocking sounds. It was sliding through the water, an inch a second.

“Oh…for heaven’s sake!” Winter breathed. “I wouldn’t have thought of that!”

“Not bad for someone who can’t swim,” Dominic added and Sasha knew he had plucked that fact out of his mind.

“He can’t? Bloody hell!” Sebastian breathed. “Talk about keeping your cool!”

Sasha let their comments wash over him, not reacting. He concentrated on keeping his movements slow and steady. The raft drifted just as slowly toward the shallow end of the pool.

Within the three minutes he had assured Winter it would take, he heard the corner of the raft butt up against the top step, an inch or two below the surface of the water.

He got up carefully. It didn’t matter now if he fell off. The water would be around his knees. He just didn’t want to step into the water. That would feel like a type of defeat. And why was he suddenly thinking in terms of defeat and rules? Had she really infected him that much?

He concentrated on moving up the edge of the raft to the head of the bed. He gripped the corner post and reached out with his foot and put it on the edge of the pool. He pushed off with his hand, to transfer his weight to his leading foot and that was nearly his undoing. He was not used to boats and water and had forgotten that if he pushed, the boat would respond. The raft drifted away, leaving him without the support he needed.

He threw himself forward, his arms wind milling, using all the strength in his torso to keep himself upright. It was close. Far too close. By the time he stood on the very edge of the pool with the brickwork firm beneath his feet, his heart was thundering, echoing in his temples.

His temper stirred.

Winter and Sebastian came over to him, both of them smiling and laughing. “You did it!” Winter said.

Sebastian patted his shoulder.

Dominic came up to them. “What do we do with the bed?” he asked, looking at the furniture floating in the pool.

Sasha shrugged. “Tell the person that put it there to put it back where she got it from. I care not.”

“Before you go inside, you might want to put some clothes on,” Winter suggested.

Sasha looked at her over his shoulder. “I am not shamed by this. I will not cover up.”

Winter raised a brow. “Okay, then.”

Sasha headed inside. There were people all through the house and every light seemed to be blazing. The clock on the wall oven said four-sixteen. It was nearly dawn, then. He had slept the afternoon and most of the night away and he wondered if someone had slipped him something to make him sleep with extraordinary soundness.

Not that it mattered.

Efraim and the gate guard who had let him in the first night were standing in the kitchen, talking about something that was making them both smile. As Sasha walked through, they applauded.

He nodded acknowledgement.

Most of the people Sasha had seen standing in the window were still in the big living room. Dante was among them. They also started clapping when they saw him. Someone whistled loudly. Dante was clapping as hard as any of them.

Sasha brought himself to attention and gave them a formal Russian bow.

The only person not on their feet was Rory. She was sitting on the same ottoman he had found her upon earlier that day. She did not look up as he walked over to her.

So he bent and lifted her chin, making her look at him. “Just one question,” he said quietly, so that no one else could hear. He knew she would hear him just fine.

Her face was like marble, the eyes deep blue and glittering like crystal.

“Did you do this because I nearly kissed you? Or because I didn’t kiss you?”

Her lips parted slightly. A reaction.

Sasha was content. He stood and headed for the stairs. The room was still clapping and cheering. At the foot of the stairs, he turned and gave them another short bow. Then he climbed the stairs. By the time he reached the top he was smiling, his anger gone.

All that remained was the memory of her blue eyes and her parted lips. When Dante joined him later, even that memory was pushed aside.

Almost.

Chapter Seventeen

It was another torrid, unbearable day, although the phone call from the cross alliance headquarters had been peremptory and mysterious, forcing Nial to drive downtown just to find out what they wanted. He didn’t like moving around the city during the day and there were things to do back home. Far too many things, these days.

He parked in the usual bay in the underground parking area and hurried into the building, eager to reach the air conditioning and take off his sunglasses. Now that everyone knew about vampires, a minor compensation was not having to think up reasons for not sweating even in this heat.

Lucas Ford was sitting at the big table, staring out the plate glass windows, when Nial reached the meeting room. He looked up and his eyes narrowed. “Want to tell me what the hell this is about?” he asked.

“I have no idea. I was told to report. I’m reporting.” Nial frowned. “This must be a military thing, then.”

General Price stepped into the room, every fold of his shirt sharp and not a touch of sweat showing anywhere. “Gentlemen,” he said.

“I hope this is critical,” Nial said dryly. “Screwing with human sleep patterns is the quickest way to get them killed out in the field.” He lifted his hand toward Lucas Ford, who had the heavy-eyed look of someone who had been hauled out of bed in the middle of a REM cycle.

“I guess we’ll find out when Kurtz gets here,” Price replied. “Now you know as much as I do.” He frowned. “And I assure you, the military knows exactly what sleep deprivation can do.”

The door opened and they all turned to look. Nial expected Colonel Kurtz to stride through as he usually did. It wasn’t Kurtz who stepped through the door, however.

Seven tall Elah filed into the room, their eyes wide. Nial judged using his limited experience that they were all male. Their eyes were naturally big, yet they did seem to be opened even wider than usual.

The most bizarre aspect of the group was their clothing. All seven of them were wearing suits. Ties and all.

Colonel Kurtz came in behind them. He wore a small smile, as if he found this to be amusing. “Sorry to haul you all away from your affairs,” he said shortly. “I figured this was worth it. This fellow here is Standis, the spokesman for the group.” He pointed to the shortest one of the group, who was nearly as tall as Nial anyway.

Standis looked quite comfortable in his human suit. The tie matched his brown eyes and the flecks in the suit were green. Colors of nature, Nial realized. None of the suits were blue. None of them were black, either. They were all colors that might be found out in a forest or the countryside. The Elah’s natural affinity for the earth and trees was showing.

He wondered if the choice was deliberate or subconscious. How self-aware were they?

This was the first time Nial had been close to an Elah, apart from the toddler whom Winter and Kate were tending back at the house. He had only looked in on her once. He was getting used to the bony, raked back protrusions on their heads that seemed to substitute for hair. Their skin had a naturally gray cast to it, although it wasn’t unpleasant to look at the way gray skin on a human would be. The flesh looked alive and healthy.

“Standis, when you presented yourself at the United Nations building, you asked to speak to representatives of the human alliance against the Summanus,” Kurtz said. “These are the people you should speak to.”

“You flew them in from New York?” Price said shortly.

Standis nodded. It was a purely human movement. “Thank you for speaking with us,” he said. His English was understandable and there was an accent to his words Nial had not heard before. “We began with the United Nations, because it represents all countries equally and we are making a global offer. However, Colonel Kurtz assures me that even though you work locally, you are the representatives of the global effort against the Summanus and can speak on behalf of those who look to you, from around the world.”

Lucas Ford frowned. “I’m not an official world representative of hunters, although I have contacts almost everywhere and they have contacts of their own, so word can pass down to all hunters, eventually.”

Price was stroking his chin thoughtfully. “There have been mechanisms in place for decades that allow world military organizations to share information. I happen to be part of two or three of those coalitions and committees, so that would be a fair statement about me, too.”

Nial crossed his arms. “Perhaps that is a conversation for later,” he said carefully. “If the Elah could not determine who to contact, it points to a weakness in our command structure. We should formalize global linkages, as fast as we can.”

Standis nodded. “That would be most useful to us. We are spread as far around the world as you, these days, although information flows more freely among us.” His lips moved in a way that made Nial think he was amused. It was a smile. Sort of. “The Elah all speak the same language, which helps.”

“You wished to speak to us?” Nial said.

“We do. I speak on behalf of Dai Chi, the one who leads us. You will accept my credentials?”

“You’re asking for diplomatic status?” Price said shortly. “That’s a bit out of our sphere.”

Standis frowned, sorting out Price’s analogy. “I apologize,” he said. “Diplomacy is the sphere of others. We speak to you for a specific reason. I want only to assure you we speak on behalf of all Summanus, that we have not taken this project on by ourselves.”

“Got it,” Price said. “Go ahead.”

“We would help you defeat the Summanus. Our knowledge of the enemy stretches back for many generations, yet we cannot build the force that you can. If we work together, we might defeat them at last.”

There was a little silence in the room, while Price and Lucas Ford stared at the assembled delegation in their formal suits and serene stance. Nial was staring, too.

Price stirred. “You have the knowledge, while we have the numbers, hey?”

Standis inclined his head. “Exactly. A wise human friend explained to our greatest one, some time ago, that we should stop fighting to maintain a life that has long gone. We should work with the life that is now presented to us.”

“You’re talking about assimilating,” Lucas Ford growled. “That’s why you’re getting jobs and going to school.”

“Indeed,” Standis said in his pleasant tenor voice. “The results of that assimilation have encouraged us to consider other ways of adapting to our new world. However, the Summanus are limiting us at every turn. We would be as glad to be rid of them as humans would be. Therefore, it seems wise to pool our efforts.”

“The Summanus eat you, too?” Price asked, sounding merely curious.

Standis’ face shifted. His mouth worked. He didn’t have lips the way humans did, although the flesh around his large mouth seemed to serve the same function, even though it was identical in color to the rest of his face. “The Summanus eat any creature with heat and blood. They are often hungry.”

“Then they’re not just traditional enemies?” Ford said.

“They have been our enemy long enough to call it a tradition,” Standis said. “The Ĉiela, too, spent weary days and years trying to contain a species that considers them food and nothing more. All three of us—human, Ĉiela and Elah…we have that in common, although humans were bred specifically to feed them. The Summanus were manageable for as long as their food supply was limited. Now humans have filled the world with their numbers and this will allow the Summanus to breed in numbers that will overwhelm us all in a year or two.”

Nial shivered as invisible fingers walked up his spine. He hadn’t shivered like that in decades and it shuddered through him, now, sending icy little stabs into his chest. “Hatching season,” he breathed. “There’s more food for them to eat, now, so more of the hatchlings with survive.”

Standis inclined his head in another regal nod. “You understand.”

Price rubbed at the back of his neck. “Hell and damnation,” he muttered. “Isn’t hatching season right around the corner?”

“A week or two, no more,” Standis said.

Lucas Ford grunted. “I guess you guys might be useful after all. No one else thought of hatching season as anything other than a pain in ass. And the numbers thing. Hell, I was just thinking that there’s more than enough of the fuckers already. I never connected it up with there being more humans on the planet.”

Kurtz stirred. “The Elah can provide us with an historical perspective that may help in ways we can’t anticipate right now. While we’re exploring those possibilities, we can certainly use whatever fighters they can field.”

Standis moved his mouth in the way that Nial had first suspected was a smile, or an indication of pleasure. “These are our thoughts, too. Humans have a grasp of technology developed over millennia that we were not privy to while locked in the Blood Stone. It is one of your strengths.”

“It’s also a damn weakness,” Price growled. “Computer guided this, that and the other, drones and more…they all have a tendency to fritz just when you need ‘em.” It was the complaint of a traditional military man. Price would have been much happier with war in simpler times, when a horse and a rapier were all that was needed.

“I have a geek friend or two you might speak with,” Nial said.

“Vampires like tech?” Price said and laughed softly.

“We take an interest in everything humans do, General,” Nial replied stiffly. “We were human.”

“Yeah, two thousand years ago. Didn’t you watch Rome fall? There wasn’t much technology around in those days.”

“ON the contrary,” Nial said, smiling. “The Romans invented indoor plumbing and false teeth, aqueducts, roads and bridges. They improved everything.” He carefully didn’t add that the lead-lined water pipes eventually sent most of the city mad. More tech startups failed than succeeded even in the twenty-first century.

One of the Elah leaned forward slightly, drawing Nial’s attention. “Do your friends know how to use the Commando application?”

“If that’s a computer program, then Sebastian probably can figure it out if he’s not already using it,” Nial said. “I couldn’t tell you exactly. Opening email is a big day for me.” He wasn’t embarrassed by his lack of computer savvy. He just hadn’t had time, yet, to master computers. One day, he would have time. There was always time, sooner or later.

Kurtz looked at Price, who nodded. Then Kurtz cleared his throat. “Nial, this is…Koca, if I remember the name properly.”

Koca nodded. “You remember properly.”

“Perhaps Koca should be assigned to you, Nial,” Kurtz said. “Everyone in the delegation, here, is in a position of authority in the Elah command structure, with access to communications channels. Embedding them in among our human and vampire organizations will help with coordination and the flow of information.”

Nial nodded. He wasn’t going to turn down such a unique source of intelligence and help.

Koca glanced at Standis, who gave a single blink of his big eyes. It was an Elah nod. That meant the nods and inclines of his head that Standis had used before had been merely imitations of human speech and body language.

Nial’s respect for the Elah shifted up a notch. They were smart, fast learners and adaptive. If anyone was to survive being enclosed in the Blood Stone, they would. They were determined to try, at the very least.

He beckoned Koca over to him with a wave of his hand. “If that’s all, Colonel, I’m heading back to the house.”

Kurtz waved him away. “Go back to your coffin, Nial. Sorry to drag you out on such a stinker of a day.”

Koca, who had been heading toward Nial, halted, looking at Kurtz with an expression that Nial had no trouble interpreting as alarm.

“He’s joking,” Nial told him. “Vampires have never slept in coffins, except in the movies.”

Koca stayed frozen, though. “It does not seem funny to me.”

So they understood humor, then. “It’s not funny to me, either,” Nial said flatly. “Although we must accommodate the eccentricities of all, yes?”

Koca tilted his bony head to the side. “Yes,” he said at last. “We must.”

Nial left, with Koca following.

He walked back to the car, deep in thought. Things were shifting. Moving. The game board was changing.

One of the first things he was going to do with Koca was sit him down with Rory and let her suck out all the tactical data she could about Elah strengths and weaknesses and patterns of thought and reaction. He badly wanted to know how having the Elah actively working with them against the Summanus would change things.

Or would Koca be like Azarel and dive into the deep end of human depravity, rolling around in it like a hormone-riddled teenager, experimenting with the best and worst of human behavior, trying them all on like coats in a clothing store?

Or would Koca help improve their odds against the Summanus, even a little bit? They needed all the help they could get.

Chapter Eighteen

Nial introduced Koca to Rory. The tall, spindly Elah bent from the waist in an old-fashioned form of acknowledgement.

Rory stared at him openly. He was the first Elah she had met in person, although she had seen many of them out on the streets, mingling with humans as they hurried to work. She had seen more of the Elah wearing the clothing of laborers and unskilled workers. An Elah made her coffee at the local coffee shop. Another worked behind the counter at the cleaners. More of them populated kitchens, cleaned offices and picked up garbage. She had seen a road construction crew that had been more than half Elah and they had not been leaning on their shovels, either.

This was the first Elah she had met who had been wearing a suit. He had loosened the tie and undone the top button of his shirt just as a human would, too. It looked strange on him, while at the same time, reassuringly normal.

She recognized her own discomfort in response to Koca’s appearance and made herself smile at him with as much warmth as she could muster. “Koca, it is very good to meet you. There are so many questions I want to ask you about your people and your ways.”

“Nial warned me that you would feel that way,” Koca said. “I will be very happy to answer all your questions, although first…I am sorry to make demands as soon as I enter your home, but I am hungry. There was not anything on the military transport that we could easily ingest.”

Rory glanced at Nial, startled all over again.

Nial frowned. “What can you eat, that humans would stock as food?”

“Vegetables, fruit. Most especially, nuts. Some of us can ingest dairy. I am not one of them.”

“There are many humans who can’t eat diary, either,” Rory told him. “What do you normally eat?”

“Much of the food we eat is based upon bark,” Koca said with quiet dignity. “That will sound strange to you, but we find the idea of mashed grass that you use for huge amounts of what you call food just as strange.”

Rory blinked.

“Wheat,” Koca added.

Nial gave a short laugh. “I don’t think anyone thinks of wheat as grass, anymore. It had been interbred and manipulated into something unrecognizable.”

“So, too, have we developed the food we once called—” He made a sound with his mouth that Rory realized was the Elah version of “bark”.

Nial waved his hand toward the kitchen door. “There are humans in the kitchen with more flare for cooking than Rory and I, as we no longer eat. Let’s find someone who can put a meal together for you.”

“Nial, I would speak to you, afterward,” Rory said quickly.

He nodded and walked Koca into the kitchen. He returned barely sixty seconds later and stood in front of her.

Rory got to her feet. She had been working all morning on her computer, manipulating models. Only now, with Koca and the Elah actively helping humans, those models would have to be adjusted all over again. That was the nature of game theory. Every time a move was made, the board changed and had to be reconsidered all over again.

She wanted to be on her feet to speak to Nial, this time. She wasn’t anywhere near his height and still couldn’t look him in the eye, even wearing heels, but she wouldn’t feel as inferior, standing up. “Dante told me about your plans to create more Pyrrhus.”

“It was his idea that you help us,” Nial said, his voice even. “Can you?”

“If my guess about the development of the compound is close, then it is basic chemistry. The most critical factor will be the handling of dangerous elements and good lab discipline covers most of that. That isn’t my objection, Nial.”

“Are you about to repeat everything everyone else has already said about the dangers of Pyrrhus? Mass destruction and extinction level events?”

“I would not be stupid enough to presume you have not considered those possibilities yourself.”

“Thank you.”

“It is strategic to have a stockpile of Pyrrhus, as long as it is sensibly stored and used only at the most desperate ends of need. Only, I am a theoretical physicist, Nial. Even my specialty is cerebral,” She glanced at the laptop, where her game theory models were revolving on the screen. “I haven’t been inside a chem lab since my college days. Those days are much farther in the past than my doctorate says. You would be better off insisting Marcus lead such a project. I would be willing to assist, but not to lead.”

Nial shook his head. “He won’t consider it. I understand why he will not. I won’t ask him again.”

Rory frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense. Neither does Marcus’ attitude. The Summanus are responsible for Cyneric’s death. Why does he deny humans a weapon against them?”

“Marcus feels that holding out and refusing to make the Pyrrhus is in some way marking Rick’s death. It gives it meaning. If he makes the Pyrrhus, he will feel as if he is betraying Rick’s memory.”

“That makes even less sense,” Rory declared.

“To you and me, perhaps. To Marcus it is a life buoy. It makes perfect sense to him.”

Irritation stirred in her chest. “Humans and their contortions over love drive me crazy. Even you, Nial, have distorted your life, bogged yourself down with humans and the messy effluence their affairs put you through. How can you stand it?”

“How can you not?”

Rory shook her head. “Rhetoric.”

“Truth.” Nial crossed his arms. “We’ve known each other a long time, Rory. I’ve seen you fall in love with kings and emperors, princes and thieves. You turn their lives upside down. You’ve destabilized kingdoms. Men have fought each other over you and in all that time, as deeply as you became entangled in messy human affairs, you’ve always walked away with your heart intact and your independence supreme. You have held yourself above them all.”

Rory didn’t like that judgement. It didn’t sound nice, put that way. “I have loved humans,” she said stiffly.

“No, you haven’t,” Nial shot back. “Not really. Not in a human way. If you had, you would not have been able to untangle yourself as easily as you do. Love—real love—is involuntary. It does mess up your life and it should. After that, it’s a matter of compromise, something you do not understand.”

It hurt, more than it should. Nial was a very old friend. He was one of the few she trusted absolutely and this felt as if he was cutting her legs out from under her. “It is far easier for you, Nial,” she said, trying to keep her tone civilized. “Women must compromise all the time, far more than men, especially in relationships. We have given way throughout history. We give up our names. For a long time, we had no choice about who we married, how many children we had to bear. A woman who dared take a lover, either inside or outside her marriage, was pilloried and shamed and often executed. A man could take any woman he wanted with little consequence. We were not permitted to work, except in a home maintained for the man’s comfort. When women were finally allowed to work, when the world could not turn if they did not contribute, we were relegated to feminine roles and told we were incapable of higher functions, victims of our hormones and vapors.”

Nial was smiling. “I have passed through as much history as you. You think I am not aware of this?”

“You have not been forced to live it,” Rory shot back.

“So you have spent a century proving all of history wrong, with your career that sits atop the highest peaks of intellectualism and science, while you take as many lovers as time permits and live with shields at maximum to protect your independence.”

Rory stared at him. Was that what she was doing? Paying history back? “I’ve earned my rights,” she said stiffly. “You’ve never had to.”

“You forget who you are speaking to,” Nial said coldly. “Slaves have no rights.”

She nodded. “You are correct. I forgot. My apologies.”

Nial dropped his arms, relaxing. “All I’m saying is, Rory, you should let love in, at least once. Love properly, wholeheartedly and let it mess up your life. Then you’ll be able to remember.”

“Remember what?”

“How to be fully human.”

“I remember perfectly well.”

“No, I don’t think you do,” Nial replied softly. “Time changes things. Even the way we get to love has changed.”

She shook her head. The idea was repulsive. “Love makes women pathetic.”

Nial came closer. He was smiling again. “Love makes men just as weak. That’s part of its charm. We’re all in it together.” He patted her shoulder and turned back to the kitchen, leaving her standing with her gut churning and her heart beating all by itself.

She wasn’t silly enough to give up her freedom for the emotion humans seemed to find such a comfort.

Love is involuntary.

Rory shook her head. He was wrong. That was all. He was simply wrong.

* * * * *

Roman spent ten seconds to look away from Marcus and Ilaria to glance over his shoulder and check their position. The moon was a flat disk in the cloudless sky and looked yellow, as if the heat of the day that had just passed had pulled all the stuffing out of it, too.

Even the night was still and airless.

Garrett caught his glance around and nodded. It was all clear on his side, then.

Roman relaxed just a bit and moved forward. They were clearing out the lower hills tonight as there had been reports of sightings much too close to home for comfort.

“It’s been a while since we did a full scale clearing,” Patrick declared before they had headed out. “Everyone is to spread out, up and down this line on the map, from Santa Monica to Ventura. We’ll head north a step at a time, no more than ten feet between each of us and see what we stir up.”

It was staggering to think there was enough regular hunters for Patrick to call on to create a line so many miles long, although units from all over the city were being called upon to help. Next week, another section of the city perimeter would be scoured and so on until the borders around the city were clear…for a while, anyway. Hunger always drove the Summanus back.

As the briefing broke up, Nial came up to Roman and said quietly, “Marcus and Ilaria are insisting they hunt tonight and I don’t have the heart to say no. Would you object to taking them with you and Garrett? I have Koca to watch and Sebastian will be assessing Dante.”

Roman didn’t bother asking why Patrick and Dominic couldn’t babysit. The two of them were the point pair. Without Dominic’s tuned senses, they would have no early warning system. Blythe would be shepherding the new human recruits in her unit. There were new recruits every week.

“Sure, we’ll watch them,” he told Nial. “Maybe some black on their blades will help.”

He’d warned Garrett, who had nodded without comment and the two of them had juggled Marcus and Ilaria, making sure they were always bracketed, while also trying to look over their shoulders and ahead into the dense summer-thick scrub, every sense alert.

It was weary work, for Marcus was human and stumbled in the dark, while Ilaria moved like an automaton and may as well have been human, too. Roman remembered Ilaria as a petite woman with expressive eyes and an interesting taste in clothes. All traces of the vivacious energy that she’d once had were gone. Her eyes were dead and she didn’t speak. Her clothes were utilitarian—jeans, a plain teeshirt and sneakers. Her hair lay flat, as if she might have run a comb through it and that was all. She didn’t move unless she had to and would stand with her gaze on her toes if someone did not give her a direction.

So Roman did his best to watch them both and scan the land ahead.

The Summani broke out of cover twenty feet ahead of them, on the steep upslope and far to the left, on Garrett’s side. Why it tried to move at all was a mystery. It would have been better off staying in among the thick bushes there and letting them pass by. Perhaps Marcus’ stumbling and heavy breathing unnerved it enough to want to get the hell out of there.

Because it was so high up the slope, it was over the top of Garrett. Garrett should have stepped back and let Ilaria or Marcus, who both had guns, or even Roman, who had the rifle slung over his shoulder as a fall back weapon, take the damn thing out.

Instead, the stupid fucking highlander threw himself forward and up the slope. He didn’t even draw his broadsword. Instead, he reached up with his hands.

What was he going to do? Throttle the thing?

It took Roman a second of frozen astonishment before he realized that was exactly what Garrett was going to do. As Roman fumbled for the rifle, trying to bring it around and aim at the Summani, a gun fired, the muzzle flash searing an imprint on his retinas and momentarily blinding him.

The Summani squealed in pain. The bullet had struck home. Roman suspected it was Ilaria who had fired. She was the faster of the two. He blinked furiously, trying to regain his night vision.

The colors washed out, the brightness faded. Roman could make out Garrett’s tall figure. The Summani looked like it was on top of Garrett because it had let itself fall down the slope. They were struggling, Garrett with his hands around its neck and the creature with its long fingers trying to get a grip on Garrett’s shoulders.

Roman felt ill. He had seen Summanus get a grip on one shoulder, curl their fingers around a human’s head and rip it right from the shoulder. Vampires would be just as vulnerable.

He staggered forward, trying to negotiate the slope sideways, while both Marcus and Ilaria climbed up and over to where the two were locked together. The Summani locked its arm and slashed sideways with its elbow, tearing into Garrett’s stomach. There was a soft sound of tearing cloth and Garrett gave a heavy, pain-filled gasp, yet he didn’t let go.

Marcus got to them before Roman. He didn’t try to separate them using purely human strength. Instead, showing more presence of mind that Roman suspected him capable of, he climbed up the slope, until he was higher than the Summani, put his boot behind the thin truck of a eucalyptus tree, wrapped his arms around the middle of the thing and hauled, using the tree for leverage and the power in his legs and his body weight to supplement the strength in his arms.

Ilaria climbed up until she stood level with its head, then calmly emptied her gun into the side of its head.

The creature let go of Garrett, its strength gone. It staggered back, then fell back against the slope. Marcus and Ilaria turned on the thing, almost leaping on it.

Roman grabbed Garrett, finally close enough to reach him. He yanked him back before he toppled down the slope to the road, which lay seventy feet away and far below them. Trying to stop him from rolling down the slope made Roman fall backward, too. Garrett landed on top of him, groaned and lay still.

Roman pushed him to one side and bent over him. “What the hell did you think you were doing? You should have let us take care of the fucker!”

Garrett was panting, his hand to his stomach. He grimaced in pain, then cracked one eye open to look at him. “It’s not enough I have to take your money? You’re going to fight my battles for me, too?”

Roman sat in the dirt, the strength in his legs suddenly gone. He felt winded.

Above them, Ilaria and Marcus were taking care of the Summani in ways that Roman didn’t want to see. The sound was bad enough.

Garrett groaned again.

“Jesus, Mikey,” Roman whispered. “You moronic idiot! That’s why you haven’t touched me or Kate in three days? You’re that tied up about the stupid fucking money?”

Garrett blew out a breath. “God, this hurts!” he muttered. He tried to sit up and failed.

Roman pushed him back onto the dirt. “Stay put. We’ll carry you down to the car. Hunting is over for now.” He glanced up the slope. Marcus and Ilaria were standing together, their arms around each other. “And I thought those two were going to be my biggest problem tonight.”

Chapter Nineteen

There was a garden shed on the other side of the pool house that had once contained actual garden equipment and tools. Over a week, during the day while humans slept, everyone else in the house emptied the shed and stripped it down and cleaned it. The twenty foot by twenty foot shed was explosively hot underneath the tin roof, so an air conditioner was installed in one of the windows. The walls were lined in fire-proof steel plating and rubber tiles laid on the floor.

They ordered most of the equipment on-line and it arrived in bits and pieces, from a variety of suppliers, which would not tip off any of them that a chemical lab was being built behind Patrick Sauvage’s house, even though the media still insisted on camping just outside the main gates, more convinced than ever that Patrick’s palatial estate was ground zero for all the news worthy of repeating.

“The problem is, they’re right,” Nial said, looking through the front windows as a supply van edged through the throng of reporters and in through the gates, before the guards shut them smartly behind it. “If they did know what was going on here, they’d think all their Christmases had arrived at once. I’m just glad that Patrick was famous before the war started. It means no one questions the walls and the gates and the guards.”

It took seven days for the lab to be set up to Rory’s specifications, while she worked through the formula for Pyrrhus that Garrett had retrieved from the patent, checking to make sure it was all there. She was using chemical equations she hadn’t had to deal with for over a century. It was exacting work, yet it was satisfying. Unlike theoretical physics, which supplied few concrete answers, a chemical equation was either right or wrong. She had a very simple goal, too. Make Pyrrhus, lots of it.

Rory threw herself into the work, while waiting for the lab to be completed. She also asked for at least two assistants who knew their way around a lab. Human or vampire, she didn’t care.

Nial showed her around the completed lab and she plugged in her laptop. While she was pulling up the single paged document with the formula, Dante and Sasha opened the newly installed fireproof door and stepped inside.

Sasha tapped Dante’s shoulder, then pointed to the tray to one side of the door. “Shoe covers,” he said and demonstrated, taking the plastic covers out and putting them over his own leather loafers.

Dante followed suit. He frowned. “I thought they were always paper, to stop tracking contamination in.”

“These are high grade plastic, so if you’re stupid enough to drip anything on your feet, you won’t lose a toe,” Sasha said.

“You’ve been in a lab before?” Rory asked.

“Meet your lab assistants,” Nial said.

Rory straightened up from the laptop with a snap. “No.” She shook her head.

“You said human or vampire, no preference,” Nial pointed out. “Sasha and Dante will forego hunting until this project is done. They’ll work all the hours you can.”

“Qualified assistants, is what I emphasized,” Rory said. “Dante wouldn’t know a beaker from a burette.”

“But I do,” Sasha said.

“You’re a spy.”

“Who once infiltrated a Persian science lab to figure out their fusion technology. I know my way around a mass spectrometer. I’m the only one in the house besides Marcus who does. Dante, at least, is willing to listen and follow directions.”

Rory shook her head again. “This won’t work—”

“Look,” Dante said, “I might not have a clue right now, only you know I’m smart enough to pick it up. Besides, if I understand what you’re doing, then once we’ve got the process down, it’s pretty much a mechanical assembly line, isn’t it?”

He had a point. Rory pressed her lips together. “Very well. With this first batch, until I know I can trust you to do what you should, neither of you gets to scratch your nose without checking with me first. Is that clear?”

“Yes ma’am,” Dante said. It was the same tone he had used when they had first met and he was introduced to the newest owner of the team.

Sasha shrugged. “Whatever you say.”

Rory stared at them. Neither of them had argued. Neither of them had protested about being told what to do. Yet they were both strong men, leaders in their own right and easily capable of working on their own.

She cleared her throat and glanced at Nial. “I suppose we should get to work.”

“Let me know when the first batch is made,” Nial said.

“That should be in about three days,” Rory called after him as he headed for the door.

It took five days, because the process had to be set up first, then streamlined for mass production. Plus, she was teaching both men what they needed to do as she went. There were mistakes made. There were three fussy stages in the development of Pyrrhus, including the glass still and evaporation and condensation process at the very end, when pure Pyrrhus dripped down into the big glass sphere. If the base liquid was evaporated too fast, the residue left behind became unstable and overheated and would implode inside the vats. That happened twice before they were able to adjust the still to produce the right temperature at a steady rate.

On day six, Rory called Nial into the lab and handed him the tiny beaker of pink liquid. “Careful!” she warned as he held it up to the light.

“It doesn’t look the same as the stuff Marcus made,” Nial said.

“You said he had gallons of it. That is a metric quarter cups’ worth. Drop it and you’ll take out the lab. It’s the same, Nial,” Rory assured him.

“You’ve tested it?”

She rolled her eyes and glanced at Sasha and Dante. Without speaking, they turned and pulled out the big ceramic tray they had been using for testing. Dante put a house brick in the middle of it.

“Go ahead,” Rory told Nial.

He leaned over the tray and carefully poured half of the Pyrrhus onto the brick. It spread out over the rough surface, filling the divots and cracks, then seemed to soak into the brick, leaving a wet spot behind.

Nial frowned.

“Watch,” Dante said softly.

The brick crumbled. It was like watching ice melt in the sun, speeded up a hundred times. The surface of the brick grew soft and bubbly, then sunk in on itself. As the middle turned into primordial ooze, the two outer ends of the brick toppled backward, exposing the runny insides. Steam and vapor rose up above it.

Rory had seen it happen a dozen times already and still found it fascinating, in a gruesome, unsettling way.

Nial put the remainder of the beaker on the counter very carefully and stepped away. “Scary,” he breathed.

“It is,” Rory agreed. “How much, do you think?”

He pushed his hand through his hair. “Who knows?” he said heavily. “If we never use it, any amount is enough. If we have to use it, then how much will we need?”

“How long is a length of leather?” Sasha asked.

“Piece of string,” Dante amended.

“That, too.”

Rory understood Nial’s quandary exactly. “We’ll make it until something interrupts us or gives us a reason to stop.”

Nial drew in a very deep breath, his chest rising. He let it out. “Good enough.” His voice was strained.

He didn’t step back inside the lab after that. Rory reported to him every few days on the rate of production and how much of the pink liquid had been stacked on the shelves in the corner of the lab. Nial always listened with an absent expression, as though he was concentrating on other things.

It seemed he had been affected by the fatalistic doomsday predictions everyone around him was crying. She wondered how long it would take him to quote Robert Oppenheimer and mutter about how he had become death, the destroyer of worlds.

Yet Nial didn’t tell her stop, so Rory made more, because death-bringer or no, without it, humans would fall.

* * * * *

Everyone liked Koca almost from the moment he met them, which Kate found interesting, because Azarel was in many respect still an outsider. It didn’t help that the Serene One insisted on living in the pool house, while Koca stayed in the house. Elah didn’t sleep the way humans did, he explained, but they did need down time, which included walking barefoot on earth.

Winter had glanced at Kate when he said that, hiding a smile.

So Kate introduced Koca to the child, both of them sitting on the sun loungers while she played in the earth beneath the palm. Koca talked to her in their clicking, chattering tongue. She stood and came toward him, then turned around, for him to look at.

She was wearing the overalls and teeshirt that Kate had bought for her although she tended to kick off her shoes at the first opportunity. The scratches on her stomach were completely healed.

Koca blinked at her, then turned to Kate. His big eyes seemed grave. “You have done well. Lini does not sag.” He blinked. “I mean, she is well.”

“I understand,” Kate said. “Only, now you are here, maybe we could find a way to get her back to Elah who care about her? Do you have extended families? Her…” She glanced at Lini and dropped her voice. “Her parents are dead. At least, we assume they were her parents.”

“You are her mother now,” Koca said, sounding puzzled.

Kate drew back. “No. I’m not. I can’t be.”

Koca shifted his head from side to side. “You laid her against the earth. I mean, you put her to rest. At her ease. She told me you did.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m her mother.” Something squeezed her throat. “You don’t understand. I can’t take care of a child, even if she thinks I should.”

“I see.” Koca looked at her. “In our culture, that is how it goes. An adult is lost, so another will take their place. The bond is created by the laying of the child against the earth, for comfort and for surcease. To soothe them and speed the bonding. Lini knows this instinctively.”

Kate could feel the heat creeping up her throat. “You mean, because I put her in the dirt that night, I’m now actually her mother?”

“Yes. It is biological.”

“It’s not what I intended!”

Koca was looking at her steadily again. “Are you sure?” he asked simply. “Of all the adults in the house, you were the one who answered her cries.”

“So did Winter,” Kate muttered.

“You knew what to do. You took her to the earth.”

“It was a guess. Pure luck!”

Koca shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think you were the one to meet Lini’s needs. That makes you her mother.”

“Then, even if we found someone, an Elah, to take care of her, she wouldn’t go?” Kate asked, horror building in her.

“Most likely, Lini would be troubled and upset that you do not want her. The bond would eventually fade but she would remember that you rejected her, all her life.”

The horror spilled over. Kate stared at him. “I can’t be a mother,” she said helplessly.

“You already are.” Koca pulled his mouth into the Elah version of a smile. “May I make a suggestion?”

Kate looked at him blankly.

“Teach Lini English. It would help both of you enormously.”

That night, Kate lay in bed with Garrett between her and Roman as they worked on the very last fading weals left from the Summanus scratch. The scratch itself had healed long ago, before Roman had even got him into the car, while the toxin had blistered, leaving long, red, painful inflammations across his stomach. Calamine lotion helped and so they had slathered it on each night, while chiding him for his foolishness.

Garrett accepted the teasing, his temper not stirring at all. Yet on the first night, after they had tended him, he had held them both down, one after the other and made love to them with an unusual intensity.

Life had been good since then.

Now Kate told them about Lini and Koca’s determination that she was Lini’s mother. Her voice trembled.

“So what are ye afraid of?” Garrett asked her. “That we’ll say no? Ye think we’re that black hearted we could refuse you this?”

“It’s your lives that will be impacted, too,” Kate pointed out.

“Isn’t discussing it a waste of time?” Roman asked. “You made yourself her mother. It’s a done deal. You can’t give her back, now. There’s no one else to give her too.”

“Yes, exactly!” Kate cried, sitting up. “I feel as though I cheated my way into this. I’m getting precisely what I wanted.”

“That is bad?” Garrett asked. “She’s such a pretty little thing, it’s hard to see the down side.”

“You mean…you’ll take her?”

Garrett rolled his eyes. “Why on earth wouldn’t I? She needs her mother and so do I.”

“Yep. Me, too,” Roman added.

Kate did cry, then.

The next morning, she started teaching Lini English, by walking around the house, pointing at objects and giving her their name. Lini held her hand the entire time.

Koca also came up with a way to deal with the hatchlings. Hatching season was only days away and humans reported finding caches of the immature larvae, tucked away in tunnels and drainage culverts, in all the dank, dark places humans wouldn’t go.

Trying to scrape the larvae away proved next to impossible. It took two men with jackhammers an hour to chisel away just one of the pods, for the shells were armored and impervious to almost everything, including fire.

“Pyrrhus would fix them,” Dominic had muttered, watching the news report.

Kate looked at Nial. He had proposed the same thing, not that long ago.

“Pyrrhus is not an option,” Nial said calmly.

Marcus glanced at him, but said nothing. Instead, he picked up Ilaria’s hand and she nestled into his side contentedly.

“There is a thing we used,” Koca said. He was sitting, sort of. Elah did not like sitting terribly much, although Koca would sit when everyone else did, most often on the very edge of the seat. He had knee joints, yet it took him a moment to arrange his legs the same as everyone else, as if he was not used to keeping them bent. He was sitting on the front end of the armchair cushion, his hands on his knees, staring straight ahead. It was the Elah version of frowning.

“What thing?” Marcus asked sharply.

“A thing…a recipe. Acid, salt, uhulu, cypress and sesame.”

“Does that mean anything, Marcus?” Nial asked.

Marcus frowned. “In ancient times, salting the earth was considered a curse. You only did it to those you considered mortal enemies, because the ground would not grow anything after that.”

“Perhaps the Elah’s use of it is where the curse comes from,” Nial suggested. “Ancient wisdom, handed down, with some of the bits lost, as usual.”

“It’s in the Bible,” Kate said. “I remember it from elementary school lessons. I thought it was pretty funny that salt you put on your fries was so big a deal.”

“What about the rest of the recipe, Marcus?”

“Acid, salt, uhulu, cypress and sesame,” Winter repeated. “It even sounds old. What is uhulu?”

Kate reached for her tablet and plugged the word into the search bar. The search engine suggested “uhulu” instead of “uhoola” and she accepted it and looked at the results.

“It’s Babylonian for ‘ashes’,” she told them.

Marcus sat up. “Ashes,” he repeated. “Cypress would be oil. Sesame is another oil.” He grinned. “It’s soap,” he said. “The Babylonian equivalent of it, anyway.”

“Would modern soap work?” Nial asked.

“It’s not just soap,” Marcus said. “Acid, salt and soap. The acid could be something as simple as vinegar, all the way up to hydrochloric acid, which is only a few degree away from Pyrrhus as a corrosive, so probably not that.”

“Vinegar, salt and soap. I’ve heard that somewhere before,” Patrick said. He sat up, lifting Blythe aside and held out his hand. “Could I use your tablet, Kate?”

She gave it to him and he tapped the screen. “Yes. I did remember it right. It’s weed killer.”

“Weed killer?” Blythe said with a gasp.

“Organic weed killer. All the do-it-yourself gurus suggest using it before destroying the earth with chemical weed killers. Although they talk about being careful with salt. This stuff apparently kills everything.”

“It would,” Marcus said. “The ancient were right about salting the ground. We keep finding the larvae in damp locations, so water is apparently essential to them. That’s why the salt works. Salt would dehydrate the larvae. The vinegar would speed up the process. The soap—the ashes and oils, that is—would make both the vinegar and the salt cling to the shells. This stuff basically starves them to death.”

“How long would it take?” Nial asked.

“It would depend on the strength of the solution and how high the water needs of the pods. A human dies in three days without water. Summanus larvae are a lot smaller, so it probably works quicker.”

“Adjusting the salt level higher makes it work faster still?” Kate asked.

Marcus shook his head. “There’s a point of diminishing returns and higher consequences. Salt is nasty stuff. You don’t want a lot of it in your ground water and the hatchlings are in locations vulnerable to contamination. It would take experimentation to get it right.”

“We have maybe three days,” Nial said. “You’d better get busy.”

Marcus found a working solution inside twenty-four hours. In that time, he barely moved from the kitchen, while Ilaria hovered next to his elbow, the perfect assistant. The two of them took Marcus’ range of solution strengths to the nearest known hatching ground, with Koca for guidance and tested every solution they had concocted.

They came back wearing smiles. “Here’s the full solution,” Marcus said, handing the torn out journal page to Nial. “It dissolves everything, right off the wall, as you’re watching it.”

“It was marvelous,” Ilaria added, her hands in her pockets. Her eyes were shining.

Nial handed the note to Sebastian. “Tell everyone you can think of. People can make this in their kitchens and they should. Everyone should hunt down hatching grounds and deal with them. Let’s avoid a repeat of last year.”

Kate shivered. She would never forget that terrible night, listening to the ravenous creatures beat themselves to death against the walls and windows, or the mass of dead bodies under the eaves and in the gutters, the next morning.

Lini touched her arm, looking up at her with her big eyes. “Okay?” she asked.

“More than,” Kate assured her and pulled her into her lap and held her tight. She was beginning to understand Blythe’s single-minded determination to beat up the entire world if it got between her and her kids. Just in the last day or so, Kate had begun to think of Nial’s determination to make and use Pyrrhus as a reasonable, perfectly justified response to threatening those he loved.

Only, it wouldn’t come to that. It couldn’t. She wouldn’t let it. Lini deserved to have a life.

Chapter Twenty

Rory lost track of days and nights. She didn’t need to stop to eat or drink, or sleep, so she kept working. Occasionally, she would go into the house to shower and change, when the feel of her clothes were driving her mad. Otherwise, she kept the Pyrrhus production line moving along steadily.

Sasha and Dante were always there, too. They were not always there at the same time, because they had to sleep. They would spell each other off, with several hours of overlap in between, when the work went much faster and smoother.

The three of them developed a routine that worked with the minimum of chatter. Sasha had known what he was doing, enough to grasp the process and become a genuine help more quickly than she had anticipated.

Dante was slower to learn, because he had zero experience in any sort of laboratory at all. His college major had been philosophy. Even so, he picked up the skills he needed with astonishing speed.

Rory looked up from her computer screen, realizing that some time had passed when Sasha had said nothing at all. She blinked. Dante was standing on the other side of the bench, wearing a coat and working with the pipette to add the strontium chloride to the batches on the tray.

“How long have you been here?” Rory demanded, annoyed that she had not noticed.

Dante grinned. “Forty minutes. I said hello. You were concentrating. So I got to work.”

Sasha shook his head as he lifted the basket of tubes up into the distiller manifold. “Don’t be an asshole.” He looked over his shoulder. “He didn’t say hello at all.”

Rory felt a trickle of relief. “Then I wasn’t that deep into it.” She put the lid down on the laptop and got to her feet. The high stool was the most uncomfortable seat she had ever used. It made her legs ache, which was really saying something for vampires, who didn’t have a normal circulation to start with. She stretched, to see if that helped.

Dante frowned. “Something wrong?” he asked. “I’ve never seen you do that before.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever sat so still for so long before. It’s nothing.”

“Normal human would have keeled over by now,” Sasha said. “I don’t think she’s moved for four hours or more.”

“You’ll congeal or something,” Dante said.

“I’m going to go up to the house and take a break,” Rory said. “Will you two be okay for a while?”

Dante rolled his eyes.

“We’re fine,” Sasha said. “Go.”

She nodded and peeled off the thick white cotton lab coat. It was supposed to protect scientists against the normal spills and accidents in a lab, although no one had ever anticipated the corrosive power of Pyrrhus. She had been examining the molecule chain and tracing out some of the thought behind its invention. Marcus was a genius, she had decided. There was nothing like this anywhere in the world. Nothing that even came close.

She moved silently through the conservatory, only now aware that the main house was dim and still. It was very late by anyone’s standards. Only vampires were abroad at this hour.

And two lab assistants, she reminded herself.

She stopped at the bottom of the three deep steps that rose up to the door connecting the back of the kitchen to the conservatory and paused with her foot on the bottom step when she heard her name spoken from somewhere inside the kitchen.

“…Rory Rafferty was a ball buster way back when, anyway,” came the soft remark.

She hesitated. If she went into the kitchen, they would know she had heard them. She didn’t care much what anyone thought of her. She had learned to not care, long ago. If she cared about someone’s good or bad opinion, then she would change her behavior or herself to please them. That came perilously close to giving up her freedom and independence and that was not to be tolerated. It was better to have people misunderstand her or even hate her, than give them any control over her.

Yet, if she went into the kitchen, which would tell them she had heard, they might feel guilty, or react badly. It was easier if she just waited for them to finish.

“You knew her back then?”

“By reputation. Some German duke was making a fool of himself over her, while she dangled him and an English lord…or so I heard it.”

“Hasn’t changed her ways, has she? She’s still dangling ‘em at the end of her string. Have you ever seen two men work so fucking hard? She doesn’t even notice them.”

Rory drew in a breath, as her heart stirred by itself. She should go back to the lab. Make up some lie about changing her mind about taking a break. Wait until daylight, when the presence of humans would halt the guards’ gossip.

“You know, I think she’s making them work like that so they can’t have time to themselves.”

“They’re together?”

“For about two days. She put a stop to that right fucking quick, though, didn’t she? Now, if one’s asleep, the other is working. She couldn’t stand it, knowing they were together.”

A hand on Rory’s arm made her jump and she stifled her shriek of surprise. She had been so immersed in the conversation she had failed to notice Sasha standing behind her.

He put his hand on her other shoulder and pushed her out of the way with firm insistence, as he looked up at the kitchen doorway. The light from the kitchen fell on his face. He was furious. His eyes were glittering with anger, the brows pushed together. His jaw was tight and his mouth held in a hard line.

“Sasha, no,” she whispered quickly. “Leave it alone. People say things about me all the time. It’s not import—”

He pressed the tip of his finger to her lips, silencing her. He didn’t have to press hard. Just his touch alone, as shocking as it was, was enough to silence her. Then he shook his head. “It’s important to me,” he said very quietly. “And to Dante.”

He climbed the three steps and went into the kitchen, as Rory heard the terrible pronouncements roll on.

“…working like slaves while she doesn’t lift a finger and not a breath of a complaint from either one of them. Talk about pussy-whipped ass—fuck, where did you come from?”

Rory couldn’t stay out of it now. She bounced up into the kitchen, moving at more than human speed. She was in time to see the two guards, Efraim and Kimball, stepping backward as Sasha walked straight up to them. Just for a moment, fear flickered in Efraim’s eyes. He was a vampire, but he was a coward at heart. She had heard of him before, too.

Sasha didn’t stop. He didn’t hesitate, even though either one of them could have torn his limbs from his body if they really wanted to. He grabbed Efraim by the neck and smashed him down onto the table on his back, with a powerful overarm movement. He pinned him down, while Kimball hesitated.

Kimball glanced up and saw Rory standing there and while he didn’t quite lose all his color, for he had none to lose in the first place, he did look shocked and a little ill.

“Stay right there,” Rory told him. “Or I’ll rip your throat out.”

He licked his lips, looking to where Efraim was lying on the table, trying to babble and tug at Sasha’s hand where he had him pinned down.

“Don’t think I won’t do it, if you so much as twitch in his direction,” Rory added.

Kimball swallowed. He stayed where he was.

Sasha reached into his trouser pocket and brought out a flat silver oblong. Rory recognized it from descriptions she had heard. It was a butterfly knife. Sasha gave it a flip with the one hand and it twirled in his palm with a hissing ‘schnick’ sound as the blades moved through the air. The knife unfolded and the handles came together. Three inches of split blade gleamed in the low light.

Sasha held it up so Efraim would have a clear view of the blade. He brought it down very slowly, until the point of the blade was hovering only an inch away from the curved surface of Efraim’s eye. Efraim stared at it, mesmerized.

“You’re a vampire, so you’ll recover from just about any wound I could inflict on you. Only, there’s a thing I learned about vampires, oh, a couple of years ago. It happened because there was a tiny accident in one of the basement interrogation rooms in the old Kremlin. We discovered this very interesting thing about vampires. It’s been extremely useful to us, so all the senior officers of the GRU were taught the method.” He waggled the knife so the point wavered from one corner of Efraim’s eye to the other. “Did you know that if a rigid, sharp object is thrust deeply enough into a vampire’s brain, their human physiology is rebooted?”

Rory held her breath. The conversation was gruesome, but she could no more walk away and ignore it now than she could fly.

Sasha nodded. “It is quite true,” he said, his accent suddenly thicker, as if he was concentrating on something else instead of pronouncing words clearly. “Of course, it’s only the autonomic systems that twitch into life, just for a brief moment or two. That’s usually more than enough time. You know what a human’s autonomic systems do when a sharp, rigid object is thrust into their brainpan?”

Efraim was breathing hard. He tried to shake his head, then thought better of it.

Sasha grinned and it was a horrible expression. Just for a moment, in the low light, with his eyes glittering the way they were, he looked quite mad. “It’s very cool,” he crooned. “First they piss themselves. Then they defecate. It’s more of an expulsion of the bowels, but still, out is out. Males also ejaculate.” Sasha grinned. “All that pleasure could be yours, if you don’t listen to me very carefully now.”

“Fuck,” Kimball breathed. He sounded stressed. He hadn’t moved a muscle, per Rory’s orders.

Sasha hadn’t finished yet. He waved the point of the knife a little bit. “You might be thinking right now, well, that’s fine for humans, only vampires haven’t got anything left in their system to evacuate, so all that would happen to you would be a shiv in your brain that you’d have to gouge out later. You would be wrong.” He tapped the knife against Efraim’s cheek and Efraim flinched. “Vampires don’t have any digestive remains, it’s true. Except the pressure on your liver and kidneys is so immense and so sudden, after centuries of lying dormant, that they can’t cope. They go into stressed overload. So what you do pee is blood. Not pinkish urine, my friend. Actual blood. You will eject blood from your rectum, when your liver fails and the body tries to compensate. The pain, I’m told, is off the charts and for a vampire that hasn’t felt any real pain in a few centuries or so…well, that’s why we were all taught how to do it properly, you see. Because it’s so useful.” He waved the knife again, this time back over the eye. “In through the eye and about twelve pounds of pressure. I’m just a weak human of course. Do you think I could exert twelve pounds of downward pressure on this blade? Do you think I should try?”

Efraim moved his head from side to side, a miniscule movement.

Sasha smiled at him. “Good. Lay still then, while I finish up here. I don’t know you very well. You don’t know me very well, either, yet you feel free to make assumptions about me and that’s your prerogative. People talk. They speculate. It’s a free country, I’m told. So I am not going to concern myself about what you said about me. I’m not going to tell Dante what you said about him, either, because then you’ll just have to go through this tiresome discussion all over again.”

Rory pressed her lips together, hiding her smile. The idea of a pair of humans “explaining” anything to vampires was mildly laughable. Except that was exactly what Sasha was doing, right now. He was puny in comparison to even the weakest vampires and Efraim was certainly one of the those. Yet Sasha had the upper hand. He’d gained it as soon as he walked into the kitchen.

How had he done that?

He wasn’t finished with Efraim yet. “There’s just one more thing,” he said. His smile disappeared. The amusement in his eyes evaporated. His stare was cold and hard, with the warmth gone. “Rory is a lady above all else. She’s done nothing to you and therefore deserves your respect, even when she’s not around to hear it. If I hear either of you mouthing off about her again, if you even roll your eyes in her direction, then I will come at you again and next time, I will use twelve pounds of pressure. I will shove this knife into your head and wriggle it around and make you dance like a fish on a hook. For as long as I have the blade in there, you will live in a blaze of agony so intense, you’ll wish you’d never been born. Got it?”

Efraim swallowed. “Yes,” he breathed.

Sasha lifted the knife away. He patted Efraim’s cheek with his other hand and stood up. “Good boy.” He folded the knife and put it in his pocket and took Rory’s arm. “Let’s sort you out,” he said gently and led her through the kitchen, skirting Kimball, who still hadn’t moved an inch.

Rory let him take her into the big room, which was empty right now, for which she was incredibly grateful. She pulled her arm out of Sasha’s grip and turned to face him. “I didn’t know. I didn’t realize that was what I was doing. If I had, I would have…I don’t know, changed things around. Taken breaks. Something. You’re both so good at just….”

Working with me and my strange ways.

“What didn’t you know?”

Rory took a deep breath, for her heart was still stuttering in her chest, trying to start itself up despite her best efforts to contain it. “That I was keeping you apart,” she said, each word costing her a small pound of flesh, wrapped up in guilt.

Sasha smiled. “You think we wouldn’t have said something if we found it to be such a burden? The work has to be done, Rory. We’re getting it done. All other considerations are selfish and beneath notice.”

“If that is true, then you shouldn’t have done what you did just then.”

“Ah, well, I am a selfish man. He offended me, so I indulged myself.” He shrugged.

It was often Rory found herself confused and unsure about why someone had done or said something. She felt that rare bewilderment now and tried to ignore it. She could self-analyze later. “Thank you for what you did. With Efraim,” she added. “You say you did it for you, but it was kind of you, anyway.”

“It was nothing.” He headed for the stairs, moving fast. Just for a moment, Rory recalled another occasion when she had watched him climb the stairs. His back and his ass had been bare and she had found herself unable to look away from the tight, hard buttocks and the sleek muscles in his back.

He walked up the stairs the same way, now, with his shoulders square, looking ahead. Rory remained where she was, unmoving until her heart was silent once more.

It took a while.

Chapter Twenty-One

The work went on. Rory tried to schedule shifts for Dante and Sasha that would result in a few hours each day when both of them were not required in the lab. It would slow down the rate of production, although it would alleviate her guilt for not realizing what she had been doing to their lives.

Neither of them would accept the new schedule she devised.

“It’s working just fine the way it is now,” Dante said. “Why would you want to change it?” His dark gaze was steady, as he waited for an answer.

Rory couldn’t answer that without telling him what Sasha had done to Efraim. While she thought Dante should know about such an interesting facet of his current lover, she did mind him learning why Sasha had done it.

That was a novelty, the caring. She couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t been able to detach her feelings and keep them isolated and safe. Life constantly barraged anyone, human or vampire, with remarks, insults, petty betrayals, unintentional hurtful comments, scorn, even hatred—all of them enough to ruffle feelings. Guilt, anxiety, remorse…they were horrible to experience and so she had learned to pack them away and ignore them. Most of the time, she succeeded.

Instead of directing her behavior in ways designed to illicit approval from others, she had built her own moral code and rules. Principal among those was a determination to never intentionally hurt anyone, either physically or emotionally. Perhaps that was why she was writhing with guilt now. She had hurt Dante and Sasha. Unintentionally, it was true. Yet she had inconvenienced them. They really had worked liked slaves and without a breath of complaint.

And now they refused to adjust their schedules.

Rory didn’t tell Dante what Sasha had done, in the end. She had retreated, because she didn’t want him to hear what Efraim had said. She didn’t want Dante to perhaps agree with the vampire guard.

So she swallowed her arguments and returned to the same twenty-four hour routine they had been using all along, with Dante and Sasha taking alternating sleep breaks.

They were not sleeping a full eight hours, either, which wasn’t sustainable over the long term. Rory worried about that, too. Long term sleep deprivation had serious health effects for humans. When she tried to suggest they take longer breaks, they ignored her.

Rory didn’t pursue the matter. Sleep had a way of catching up with humans whether they liked it or not. She had seen it happen before and knew that time would win her argument for her. So she waited.

The day did come when both of them were too exhausted to stand, although at first, Rory didn’t realize that was what was happening. She rarely looked at the clock or the calendar anymore. She knew it was nighttime because her innate sense of the sun’s position told her it was below the horizon. There was no light coming in the little window, either.

Dante picked up the tray of petri dishes and staggered a bit, before regaining his balance. The dishes in the tray slid together with solid little clicks and taps. He held still, looking at the tray to see what damage had occurred. “Ooops,” he murmured.

“Tap, tap, tap,” Sasha said absently. He was setting up the second still, which took careful arrangement.

“Knock, knock, knock,” Dante echoed, his tone one of agreement. He put the tray down and leaned on the edge of the bench and flexed his shoulders.

“Knock, knock,” Sasha said.

“Who’s there?” Dante’s tone was distant. It was a purely automatic response.

“Arch.”

Dante looked up, for the first time realizing what was happening. “Arch who?” he asked curiously.

“Bless you.” Sasha didn’t look up from setting up the Bunsen burner.

Dante rolled his eyes.

Rory shook her head and got back to work.

A few minutes later, Dante said softly. “Knock. Knock.”

After a moment, Sasha said, “Who’s there?”

“Bless.”

“Bless who?”

Dante shrugged. “Well, I didn’t sneeze.”

Sasha looked up at the ceiling and clicked his tongue, while Dante chuckled softly to himself. Then Dante shook it off and got back to work, resetting the petri dishes.

“Knock. Knock,” Sasha said softly.

“Who’s there?”

“Opportunity.”

“Opportunity who?”

Sasha glanced over his shoulder. “Don’t be stupid. Opportunity only knocks once.”

Dante bent his head, laughing in big, silent guffaws, while Sasha grinned.

Then Dante straightened up. “Knock. Knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Wurlitzer.”

“What the fuck is Wurlitzer?” Sasha said.

“Just say it.”

“Wurlitzer who?”

Dante lifted his hand to his mouth, as if he was holding a microphone. “Wurlitzer one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready—”

Sasha’s face lit up. “Now go, cat go!” he sang, in a pretty good Elvis impersonation, if Rory ignored the accent.

The two of them sang into invisible mics, their voices lifting. “But don’t you, step on my blue suede shoes. You can do anything, but stay off of my blue suede shoes!!!”

Dante did a perfect Elvis bump and grind and Rory gritted her teeth together to stop from braying with laughter.

Dante and Sasha bent over, holding their sides and bellies, as they laughed. Then they turned back to their benches, their backs to each other.

The silence lasted perhaps two seconds.

“Knock. Knock,” Dante declared.

“Who’s there?”

“Cowsgo.”

“Cowsgo who?”

Dante shook his head. “Nope. Cowsgo moooo!”

They both cracked up. Sasha hung onto the bench, his shoulders shaking. He drew in an enormous breath, then, “Knock, Knock!”

“Who’s there?”

“Interrupting cow.”

Dante shook his head, puzzled. “Interupt—”

Sasha whirled to look at him. “Moooo!” he said loudly.

Dante bent over from the waist, holding himself up with his hands on his knees, as laughter exploded from him. He gripped the edge of the bench and straightened up, shaking with merriment. “Why did the chicken cross the road?”

Sasha’s eyes were shining. “The vodka is better over here?”

“To get to the idiot’s house,” Dante corrected him.

“The idiot had the better vodka?”

Dante gusted out another whoop. “Knock. Knock.” He had to take two breaths to get it out.

“Who’s there?”

“The chicken!” Dante shouted.

Both of them almost collapsed with laugher, panting with it.

Rory watched them, unable to help smiling at the pure silliness of it.

Dante waved his hand, as if he was clearing the air, or trying to calm down. “Knock….Knock,” he breathed.

Sasha wiped his eyes. “Who’s there?”

“Nobel.”

“Nobel who?”

“No bell, so I’ll knock.”

They wheezed out more laughter. They were shaking with it.

Sasha held up a long finger. “Wait. Wait!”

Dante got himself under control. He was still shaking with laughter, though.

“Famous Russian knock knock joke,” Sasha declared.

“Okay. Go.”

“No, no, it’s so good, this one,” Sasha assured him. “You start.”

“Knock. Knock,” Dante said instantly.

“Who’s there?” Sasha demanded.

They looked at each other. Then they burst out laughing again. Sasha pummeled the steel bench with his hand, while Dante held his forehead in his hand, leaning on his.

“Knock. Knock,” Rory said.

Both of them snapped upright, surprised into it. They looked at her, then at each other. “Who’s there?” they chorused together.

“The guy who finished second,” Rory told them.

“The guy who finished second who?” they responded.

Rory shrugged. “Exactly.”

This time, they really did collapse. Sasha sagged onto the floor, as his knees gave way. Dante doubled over, then lost his balance and thrust out a hand, then gave up and folded up onto the floor next to Sasha.

Sasha slapped Dante’s shoulder. “What do you call a Lada on the top of a hill?”

Rory smiled. She had owned a Lada when she had lived in Russia. They were cheap and that had been the problem with them.

“I don’t know,” Dante told Sasha. “What?”

“A bloody miracle,” Sasha said gravely, then started laughing again.

Rory laughed, too. Dante grinned.

Sasha was on a roll. “What did the Russian people light their houses with before they started using candles?” he demanded.

They both looked at him.

“Electricity.”

Dante hid his face in his hands.

“I’m really starting to hate those stupid little Russian dolls,” Rory said conversationally.

Sasha looked up. “Matryoshka dolls?” he clarified.

“Those,” Rory agreed. “They’re just so full of themselves.”

Dante and Sasha fell together, holding each other up. Then Dante levered himself up into a sitting position. His hand rested on Sasha’s knee and Rory stared at it, all her amusement fading.

“Knock. Knock,” Dante said to Sasha.

Sasha sighed and ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, wiping them. “Who’s there?”

“Keith.”

“Keith who?”

“Keith me, my thweet preenth,” Dante lisped, leaning toward him.

And Sasha did.

For a moment, Rory was frozen on the high stool. Even thought stopped. Fire whooshed up from her toes, enveloping her body in white hot flames. The air in her lungs evaporated. Her flesh sizzled. Nerves crackled with more life than she had felt for a long time.

Rory gripped her fingers in a tight fist, riding out the reaction, while Dante and Sasha’s kiss seemed to stretch on for a small ice age. Perhaps two.

When the kiss ended, Dante rested his head against Sasha’s and they looked into each other’s eyes.

Rory spoke before she even considered what she was about to say. It was pulled out of her. “Do you do that in front of me because you’re pissed I didn’t kiss you?”

They looked at her. Dante leaned back on one arm, making it look casual. “Why would we be pissed?”

Sasha’s expression was wary. He was watching her closely.

Rory shook her head. “Never mind.” She turned back to the computer, regretting speaking at all.

“No.” Dante got to his feet. “No more never minds. No more denial. For once, just for this one moment, say what you really feel, Rory. It’s just us. No one can hear. No one will ever know what you say now.” He glanced at Sasha.

Sasha shook his head. “I keep secrets for a living,” he said and eased up on to his feet.

“The truth doesn’t serve anyone,” Rory assured them.

“Except you,” Dante finished. “So for once in your life, reach out for what you want. No more distractions. No more petty entertainments.”

He knew. He knew already, or else he would not be speaking that way. She could tell by Sasha’s expression that he knew, too. So what was the harm in saying it? Yet she didn’t have the courage to expose herself completely, not even with these two men. So she came at it backward. “You both want me. That’s why you’re compensating with each other.”

Fear gripped her throat, shutting it down. This was why she hated messy emotions. They made her vulnerable. They exposed her to hurt and worse.

Sasha shrugged, though. “Of course we want you.”

“You’ve always known that,” Dante said, his voice low and rough.

Rory swallowed. “Why haven’t you come to me, if you want me? Any other man would…would….”

“What?” Sasha demanded. “Would try to seduce you? Force you into compliance? Bend your will until you see it his way?”

She flinched.

Dante came closer to the stool. “Any other man would try to own you. Shape your life to match his. Tangle you up in trivial intimacies and resent your independent ways. He’d try to change you.”

Rory stared at him. Dante had never done any of those things. Not once, in the nearly ten years she had known him.

“I kept the clause in my contract,” he added.

To anyone else, that might have sounded like a non sequitur. Rory, though, knew exactly what he was saying. She stared up at him, her heart working harder than it ever had. She could feel it throwing itself against her chest. It was almost hurting.

He knew she had put the clause in there. He’d known all along and he’d left it in there, anyway. He’d chosen to stay.

Sasha rested his hand on Dante’s shoulder. He was looking at her though. “I didn’t kiss you,” he said. “Twice.”

Dante nodded.

“Why?” Rory asked them both.

They looked at each other. It was almost as if they were mind-reading.

“No, you do it,” Dante said, as if Sasha had already spoken.

Sasha looked at her. “If either of us had pushed, if we had insisted on answers from you, then we would be distorting what it is we like about you. If you had given us answers, then you would not be the Rory we know.”

“And love,” Dante added, almost in a whisper.

Sasha’s hand tightened on his shoulder.

“You like that I keep you at arm’s length?” Her voice trembled because now she was speaking the fundamental truth. She was revealing her weaknesses and it scared her.

“It’s a part of who you are,” Dante said. “You drive me fucking nuts at times, but I’ve never met anyone like you.”

Rory couldn’t help it. Her gaze swiveled to Sasha.

He smiled. “No one else in the world could have put me in the middle of a swimming pool and lived to tell the tale.”

Rory kissed him. There was no other sane response she could give.

She had kissed many men in the past. This was different. To begin, Dante was watching and she could feel his gaze on her and Sasha, adding a tension to the kiss. Making it better.

Secondly, Sasha didn’t let her kiss him for very long. He stirred. His hands caught her face and held it. He was kissing her. His tongue pressed into her mouth, soft and firm at once. Rory usually didn’t like to have control taken away from her that way. This time, it seemed right. It felt safe to let go.

She sighed into his mouth.

Sasha released her. His eyes were very blue, this close. Then he turned her gently to face Dante.

Dante drew in a deep breath and let it out. “I think I just forgot how to kiss.” His voice was uneven.

“I’ll do it,” Rory said and wound her arms around his neck. She’d had reason to touch him many times in the past. Dressing wounds, massaging sore muscles, even occasional hugs. Every time, she had been able to appreciate the magnificent strength and beauty of his body, only it had never been like this. Even though she was simply putting her arms around him, she trembled.

Dante held her. “This should feel strange…” he whispered.

“Yet it doesn’t,” she finished and kissed him.

Like Sasha, he did not passively accept the kiss. He dominated it and her, too. He was a big man, although in her mind, he seemed to grow larger and even stronger than his true strength.

When he let her go, he was breathing heavily. “Sasha,” he breathed.

Sasha pressed against her from behind. “Not here, among chemicals and steel.”

“No,” Rory said. “Not here.”

The oven alarm began beeping in its high, demanding series of notes and all three of them jumped.

“Jesus, that was the fastest hour ever,” Dante breathed.

Sasha moved away. He turned the oven alarm off and Rory shivered as the cooler air in the room bathed her back, where Sasha had been pressing.

She stirred and dropped her arms. “I’ll shut down the lab. You two go into the house. I’ll come and find you there.”

“Shut it down?” Dante asked.

“We can’t leave any processes running if at least one of us is not here. They’re too unstable. We’ll have to shut down everything, throw out any batches in progress and start fresh later. I think we deserve a break, anyway. A day or two.”

“Or three,” Sasha said, his lips pressing against her shoulder.

“Or more. Perhaps this is the natural break we spoke of that first day we started this,” Rory told them. “Go on, both of you. I’ll take care of this. I’m awake and alert and I can move faster than either of you.”

“You heard the lady,” Dante said.

Sasha followed him out of the shed and they shut the door silently behind them. Rory heard them step onto the bricks surrounding the swimming pool, on the other side of the pool house, as she moved around the lab turning off equipment and breaking down the stages of the process, making sure any chemicals left were inert and safe to leave alone.

As she worked, her heart wouldn’t settle and there was a heat in her belly, pushing her into hurrying. She refused to rush, though. The chemicals they handled were all toxic or corrosive, all of them dangerous to one degree or another and there were children in the house, now. She would lock the door, only inquisitive kids had accessed places adults thought were safely barred to them so she wouldn’t assume a locked door was any sort of barrier..

So Rory took her time, making sure everything remotely dangerous was tucked away inside the second steel cabinet. The first was already full of recycled water drums, each of them containing newly made Pyrrhus.

Finally, she stepped out of the shed and locked the door and tested it. She pushed the key into her pocket. Now, she let herself hurry. Not too much, because maintaining human speed was purely automatic. She let her heart loose to beat as it wished and it leapt about her chest.

She had experienced only a few short moments pressed up against the both of them. It was all she could think about now. Their hot, hard bodies. Their hands and mouths.

The taste of them. They tasted different and both of them were delicious.

She would let herself have this one indulgence, this one moment with them. What harm could it do? Dante was right. She had spent too long dallying with the safe choices, the uncomplicated men.

Although she had never tasted a potato chip in her life, she suspected a diet of nothing but potato chips would leave her feeling somewhat like she had felt for several years now. Full, but unsatisfied and uncertain about what she really craved.

She didn’t stop to consider which bedroom she would find them in. She went straight to her own and pushed the door open, her heart zooming into the stratosphere.

Dante and Sasha were there. Both of them lay on the bed.

Both of them were sound asleep.

Rory backed out of the room and quietly shut the door, then leaned against the closed door, considering her options. She could wake them, of course, yet both of them had been so short on sleep for so long she might end up dealing with a pair of zombies.

Better to let them sleep.

Although, what happened after that?

Slowly, she walked back down the passage toward the sitting area at the top of the stairs, thinking it through, forcing herself to consider options and weigh the consequences, while her heart settled down.

It was always possible to pick up where they had left off. She was sure that both Dante and Sasha would be amenable. Only, it was possible they would sleep for hours and hours, now. How would they feel about a dalliance with her in the cold light of day? How would she feel?

This had been a moment of madness, unprompted, stolen out of time. It was the product of strange circumstances. Considered soberly, it was a really stupid idea. She knew Dante too well. Could she do this to him when she couldn’t offer the same level of feelings he had for her?

And Sasha…this was not a casual thing for him either. Sasha was not the sort of man to do casual, not with someone he knew. He would take care of such physical needs coldly. An escort. An arrangement with a stranger in a bar. Remote friends with benefits. He guarded his heart as much as she and Dante did.

Besides, he and Dante were already lovers. Was it fair of her to step into the middle of that?

Rory moved down the stairs to the main floor, gripping the bannister harder than she needed to.

It was perhaps a good thing they had both been tired enough to sleep instantly. It gave her a way out. She could simply fail to follow up and they would not pursue it without her encouragement.

Yes, it was better this way.

Only, a queer sense of regret lingered, anyway.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sasha came awake knowing he was in the wrong place, again. He kept his eyes shut while he put together the last moments he could remember. It was foggy and far off, as if he was seeing the memories through a filtered lens.

Then he remembered. Tiredness. Laughter that seemed to spill out of him, uncontrolled and too close to sleep-deprived hysteria.

And Rory.

He sat up with a jerk, a silent curse on his lips.

Dante was sitting on the opposite corner of the bed, his legs crossed. He had been watching Sasha sleep. He didn’t smile.

Sasha frowned. “Ooops.”

“Yeah.” Dante let out his breath. “We never should have sat down. We should have stalked the room until she got here.” He grimaced.

“So, we’ll go find her.” Sasha hesitated, his physical needs making themselves felt, loudly. “We’ll shower and eat and then go and find her.”

Dante shook his head. “We’re too late. We were only ever going to get the one chance at this. We blew it.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do.” He let out a ragged breath. “Rory has had time to think. We’ve nearly slept the clock around. In that time, she’ll have argued herself out of it. She’ll remember all the reasons why risking herself is a really bad idea. She will have all her reasons laid out, one after another in a neat row and they’ll be logical and reasonable and they’ll hide the fact that she’s gone back to fear mode.”

Sasha considered him for a long moment. He wanted to hold him, or kiss him, something to ease the pain in his face. He had a feeling that Dante wouldn’t welcome his touch right now. “I’m sorry,” he said, inadequately.

“It’s not your fault.” Dante gave the same stunted smile as before. “In the ten years I’ve known her, this is the closest I have ever come to getting inside her shield and I think the reason for that is you. You change the equation, somehow.”

Sasha knew very little about higher order mathematics, although he’d heard experts expounding theory more than once. “Strange attractor?” he suggested.

Dante snorted. “That’s quantum physics, idiot.”

Sasha shrugged. “I am better with a gun than a calculator.”

“Yes, you are.” Dante untangled his legs and leaned forward to kiss him. Briefly. “Let’s get that shower and meal, then figure out where we go from here.”

Sasha caught him and held his shoulders, so he couldn’t pull away. “Are you sure that is how Rory will feel?” he asked.

Dante’s jaw rippled. “Care to bet on it? I’d like a chance to earn my two hundred thousand back.”

* * * * *

When Rory asked Nial for something to do, Sebastian pulled her over to the other side of the worktable and pointed at a spreadsheet of data on the big central screen. “It’s a compilation of every Summanus sighting and encounter, anywhere in the greater L.A. area, for the last year,” he said. “I’m trying to figure out how to display the data in a way that shows trends and patterns, only the size of the data pool is so ginormous, I can’t wrap my head around it. You use big databanks at NASA all the time. Figure you could pull something meaningful out of this?”

Rory looked at the table headings, working out relationships between one field and another, getting a feel for the data.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then,” Sebastian said.

She blinked and looked at him. “I guess, yes. Sorry. I do that sometimes. It’s the challenge, I think.”

Sebastian smiled. “It reminds me of Rick. He would do that. Zone out while his mind went into hyper drive.” He stepped away from the chair. “Knock yourself out.”

Rory dropped into the chair and used the mouse to zoom out on the data. It was always worth getting the big picture, first, before diving into the details.

She glanced up again. The office was empty. Sebastian had left her alone and she wasn’t even sure how long ago he had left. She had not noticed.

It left her alone and that was fine. That was good. She could engage her mind, keep it focused and that would stop her thinking about anything else.

She didn’t know how long after that it was before Sasha came in. She glanced up and back at the data, before she lost her place. Then she looked up again, for Sasha’s face was blank. He looked like shell-shock victims from World War I.

Rory stood up. “What’s wrong?” she demanded.

“He’s leaving,” Sasha said. His voice was hoarse.

“What? Who’s leaving?” Yet she knew. She knew. Somehow, this was her fault.

“Dante,” Sasha said. His throat worked and his gaze skittered. He was barely holding it together. “We were talking about a bet. It was a stupid thing and I wouldn’t touch it. He just seemed to…he just started shouting, all at once. It was as if he was just looking for an excuse. He called me a coward and a lot of other things. Then he grabbed his keys.”

“He’s leaving?” She glanced at the window. It was night out there. It was no time for anyone to be wandering the streets. Her heart was back to jumping around again as she hurried over to the window and looked down at the flood-lit gate area. The Viper was easing through the gates and she pressed her hand against the window, her breath venting in a gasp. “He really is leaving,” she breathed. “What in hell does he think he’s doing?” Then she realized. “He’s not thinking at all,” she added softly. She let the curtain fall and looked back at Sasha.

“It doesn’t make any sense.” He still sounded shocked.

“It doesn’t make sense to you,” she said gently. “You didn’t do anything wrong. This is my fault.”

His eyes narrowed. “No,” he said flatly. Denial.

Rory put her hand on his shoulder. “I know you don’t like that, but it’s the truth. I will fix this, Sasha. Where did he say he was going?”

“He didn’t.” His gaze was searching her face. “You can fix this?” he asked and she could see the dawning of hope in his face.

Her heart gave a queer little jerk. Sasha cared for Dante. Maybe more than cared. The blaze of hope in his eyes was hard to look at. It made it even more imperative that she get Dante back for him.

She nodded. “Do you have a car here, Sasha?”

“I…um…I rented one. It’s in the barn.”

“Keys.” She held out her hand.

Sasha reached into his pants pocket. “No one is supposed to drive it except me. Something about insurance.” His mind was starting to work again.

“Come with me, then. I can drive better and faster than you, trust me.” She kept her hand out.

Sasha dropped the key onto her palm, with the rental company logo on the big square tab attached to it.

“Come on,” she told him, heading for the back of the house.

“To where?” he demanded.

“We’ll figure that out on the way. You have to tell me exactly what he said. There’ll be a clue in there somewhere.”

They hurried through the kitchen, Sasha barely keeping up with her speed because she was going slightly faster than human.

Efraim was not at the table. The guard sitting there was human and not someone Rory had seen before. She wondered if Efraim had refused to take another shift in the kitchen or if Nial had learned of what happened in the mysterious way he heard about so many things and had moved Efraim and Kimball somewhere else.

Then she corrected herself. Patrick would have moved them. It was his house. And Patrick was Dominic’s lover and Dominic read minds….

The mystery solved, Rory return to this other greater problem. “What did Dante say to you?”

Sasha shook his head. “A lot of stuff that doesn’t need repeating. He was angry,” he added.

“I’m sure he was. There’s no greater fury than that generated by fear.”

Sasha looked at her, puzzled.

“I wasn’t there when he woke,” she said, as gently as she could.

Sasha’s mouth opened. Then he closed it. “I see,” he said stiffly.

“I said it wasn’t your fault,” she reminded him. “What did he say when he left? Dante can’t stop talking when he’s angry.”

“I noticed,” Sasha said dryly.

Their steps crunched on the gravel in front of the barn.

“Which door?” Rory asked, looking at the four big doors.

“Third one,” Sasha said.

She walked over to the third door and bent and pushed her fingers under the bottom of it.

“There’s a remote control inside—” Sasha begun.

She hauled upward. The door groaned and protested, then the automatic opening system gave way with a clunking sound and the door rose up without resistance. “Don’t bother,” she told him.

“The Audi,” he said, pointing.

She tripped the lock on the key remote and the Audi’s lights flickered and the doors unlocked. “Good car,” she told him. “I own one, myself.”

“An A3?”

“R8,” she said.

“Of course.” He didn’t smile.

“Get in,” she told him and went up to the driver’s door and opened it. Sasha settled in the passenger seat as she started the car, then backed it out. “Think,” she said. “What did Dante say as he left?”

The guards at the gate waved them through after opening the gates.

There were no paparazzi out in the street. It was too late and too dark. There was no moon tonight. The lack of moonlight increased the risk of Summanus attacks on inner suburbs. That was why Patrick had been so keen on clearing out the borders of the city while the moon was full.

Sasha was frowning as he looked ahead at the curving road as it wound through the hills. “He said he wanted to be alone. Somewhere where he could think.”

“Ah.” Rory smiled. “I know where he will be, then.”

“You do? I thought you two were strangers to the city?”

“We both live in San Francisco, but Dante spent ten years touring the country with the team. There’s a hotel room in every football town in America that has his name on it.”

“Including Los Angeles,” Sasha finished.

“The Ritz-Carlton. Room 283 is his usual room. He’ll pick another room, though, just in case I figure it out. Probably room 307.”

Sasha stared at her. “How can you be so certain?” Then he rolled his eyes. “Prime numbers. Yes?”

“Right. Dante has a thing for prime numbers. He thinks he’s picking random numbers out of his head, although the pattern is ingrained.”

“Does he know that?”

Rory shook her head. “I don’t think so. I didn’t tell him.” She smiled. “He wouldn’t like knowing he’s so predictable.”

“You like it, though.” It wasn’t a question.

“I do. There’s comfort in patterns, inside the chaos.”

“Spoken like a true quantum theorist,” Sasha said dryly.

“I am that,” Rory said. She eased out onto the parkway and settled in for the drive downtown. She kept her speed just above the limit and took advantage of any openings to surge ahead and make better time.

Sasha was sitting silently, his face barely visible in the dim dash lights.

“I’m also sorry,” Rory said. “About all of this. This is just a taste of what I can do to your life. You’re better off without me in it.”

Sasha turned to face her. “Have you ever stopped to think that you cause chaos because you refuse to let life flow as it wants? You resist and rechannel and divert and that is what screws up everything.”

Rory sighed. “Of course it is. I know that very well. Only, letting life flow as it wants, as you say, means giving up my freedom to choose how I want to live my life.”

“To live alone,” Sasha said harshly.

“If that’s the cost of the choices I make, then so be it,” she said gently. “Better to live alone than to compromise and adjust and give in. Eventually, after all that giving way, what I am left with would look nothing like what I want.”

Silence.

Rory risked another glance at him. Sasha sat staring ahead again. He was frowning.

“Have you never loved anyone?” he asked.

“I have loved many people,” she replied.

“I mean, really loved them. To the point where you can’t think of living without them, when you would do anything to have them in your life and anything for them?”

“Once, I loved like that,” Rory admitted. Something grabbed at her throat and squeezed and her eyes ached. Tightness bound her chest and squeezed harder and harder.

She gripped the steering wheel.

“What was his name?” Sasha asked very softly.

Rory hadn’t spoken his name in centuries and wasn’t sure she could now. She gasped in a breath, then pushed it out. “Armand.”

Just speaking the name brought back the images. Sights, sounds. All of them dim because they were human memories. She gasped as they bubbled up in her mind and brought with them the wretched misery of that time. She couldn’t speak. She wouldn’t recreate his memory in anyone else’s mind.

“He was French?” Sasha asked.

“There was no France then. It was the Holy Roman Empire.”

“Did you marry him?” Sasha asked.

Rory clamped her teeth together. This hurt. It hurt too much to speak of it. Yet she had upset Sasha’s life. It was only fair she explain why. “My father, the Count, arranged my marriage to a prince.”

“An advantageous marriage, for those times,” Sasha said carefully.

“The Prince was fifty-three. I was his third wife. On the wedding night, when he discovered I was not a virgin, he beat me into a coma. He beat me every night after that. My mother, when I told her, said I should pray to God for forgiveness for I must surely have sinned to make my husband so angry.”

Sasha pushed out a heavy breath. “Please tell me a stray arrow got him through the eye and he died of gangrene and screaming in pain.”

“He lived another ten years,” Rory said. “He beat me every single night. I lost every child I conceived, one after another. There were eight tiny graves in the graveyard before he petitioned to the Church to release him from his marriage because his wife had failed to live up to her vows and give him an heir. The Church refused because he had made the same request two times already. Yet they still did not question if the fault lay with him, despite his previous two wives also failing to bear a child to term.”

Sasha rested his elbow on the window ledge and put his hand over his eyes. “Saint Christopher and sinners,” he muttered. “What happened?”

“Armand….” She swallowed, as her throat tightened. “He came back from the war.”

“He killed him?”

“He wanted to,” Rory said. “Edmund was his lord and master, but he would have done it, anyway. War had hardened him, although he said it was the thought of seeing me once more that got him through the horror of it all. We met in secret, of course.”

“You were discovered.”

“I don’t know,” Rory admitted. “Nothing was ever said. Only, Armand….” She couldn’t close her eyes, so she squeezed the steering wheel even harder. “He was found dead in the middle of the road to Bourge-en-Bresse, with a crossbow bolt through his neck. They told me marauding Vikings had killed him.”

“They didn’t?”

“The castle was over a hundred miles from the sea or any of the big rivers. And Vikings don’t use crossbows.”

Sasha’s hand rested on her arm. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” She sighed.

“And your husband?”

“I killed him.”

Sasha shifted in the seat, to look at her directly.

“Does that appall you?” she asked, curiously.

“It should,” he admitted. “Yet it doesn’t. I can only wonder why it took you so long to do it.”

“I was only twenty-four—”

“You were married at fourteen?” Now he did sound shocked.

“It was the way of it, then. I was young enough and naïve enough to believe everyone when they assured me all my troubles were my own fault, that I had sinned in some way and God was punishing me. I prayed to God for forgiveness, every single morning. I asked for guidance, for him to show me how I might make amends. I tried so very hard to please my husband.”

Sasha muttered in Russian. A particularly crude curse, that only the Russian language could generate.

“The two days after Armand died, I locked myself in the chapel and refused to eat or drink or let anyone in. They thought I was paying penance. I was thinking, perhaps for the first time in my life. I was thinking for myself, trying to work it out. I knew my husband had arranged for Armand to be assassinated. There had been virtually no attempt to cover up the murder, or find the killer and that told me who was responsible. So I knelt at the altar and did not pray. I thought instead about how helpless I was. I was a Princess, wife to the lord of the land and of noble blood, yet because I was a woman, I was had no power of my own. I was at the mercy of any man with legal claim upon me. They could do with me whatever they wanted and no one would ever question them. There was no one I could appeal to who would listen. I also knew that if my life continued as it was, I would quite likely die very soon. It came down to that crux in the end. I either had to reach out and change things for myself, or I had to accept my lot and die an unsung death through miscarriage or beatings.”

Sasha shook his head.

“I took one more beating from him, in order to lull him into complacency and sleep. I sat over him for more than an hour, a knife in my hand, trying to bring myself to it. When he woke and saw what I held, he reared up and that was when I stabbed him in the heart.”

“Then he didn’t die in pain,” Sasha said regretfully.

“He died slowly and I stood at the side of the bed and watched him writhe,” Rory told him.

“Good.”

“Then I cut off my hair, stole a page’s clothes and ran away. That was when everything changed for me. I spent nearly a year pretending to be a grubby, barely literate boy and it opened my eyes up to the way the world treated men and women differently. I determined that from then on, I would make my own decisions and shape my life the way I wanted it to be. At the end of that year, I met Ariadne, my maker. Life changed again. I acquired true power over my life.”

She eased the Audi onto the off-ramp and into the downtown L.A. street. It was almost empty, just as the streets in San Francisco were most often empty at night.

“I’m glad you told me,” Sasha said quietly. “It’s hard to hear and would have been harder to live through, but it explains so much about you. Why have you never told Dante about Armand?”

“What makes you think I haven’t?”

“Because Dante left,” Sasha said flatly. “If he knew this about you, he would never give up hope. Ever.”

Rory swallowed. “You speak as if he…as if he has left me.”

“You said it yourself, Rory,” Sasha replied. “It isn’t my fault he ran away. There’s only one person with enough hold on him who could drive him to it.”

She could see the hotel ahead and suddenly wished they were still miles away from it. The only reason she did not turn the car around in the middle of Olympic Boulevard and head back to the house, was because she had promised Sasha she would fix this for him.

The last thing she wanted to do now was look Dante in the eye. If she did, she might see blank finality there and that was too terrifying to contemplate.

Chapter Twenty-Three

Rory stood in front of the hotel door, unable to raise her hand and tap on it.

“He’s not going to eat you,” Sasha said, just behind her.

“I know.”

“He’s in your life because he’s the last person to ever try to make you do anything.”

She drew in another breath. “I know that, too.”

“Want me to knock, for you?”

Rory shook her head. “I said I would get him back for you. I don’t break my promises.”

His hand rested on her shoulder briefly. Then he waited.

Rory contemplated the door. It was a poor wood. She could distinguish the grain beneath layers of indifferently applied lacquer.

She was here as a consequence of something she had done. Therefore, she must accept the outcome and live with it. To not do so would be the same as wailing like a five year old that it wasn’t fair.

Life wasn’t fair. Hadn’t she learned that at fourteen years of age?

So she raised her hand and knocked firmly.

There was an almost immediate response. She could hear footsteps on carpet, right through the pathetically thin door.

Dante opened it and just looked at them. His face was completely neutral, revealing nothing. “You’d better come in, then,” he said and walked back into the suite. He left the door open behind him.

Rory moved in behind him, barely taking in the big room, the bedroom beyond it and the elegant woodwork and furniture. Dante had always had expensive tastes. In the last few years, he had been able to indulge them.

“You’re angry,” she said. “To be more precise, you’re angry at me and you’re taking it out on Sasha.”

Dante turned to face her. Behind her, she heard the door to the suite closed with the heavy thud of the door lock falling into place.

“I’m not angry,” Dante said. “Certainly not at Sasha and not really with you, either.”

Sasha brushed past her. He sat on the arm of the nearest chair, crossed his arms and looked at her, too.

“It worked, then,” Dante said to him.

Sasha nodded. “You were right.”

Rory gasped. There was a high buzzing sound in her head. It was the sound of bewilderment and just beneath it, a swiftly building panic. “This was a bluff? One big elaborate hoax?”

“Not that elaborate,” Sasha said.

“You played me like a harp!” she cried. Anger was building swiftly. Oh, how he had fooled her! “I felt sorry for you.”

Sasha nodded. “I had to do that, to make you really see.”

“See what?” she demanded, her voice rising even higher.

“Me,” Dante said simply.

Her chest was rising and falling rapidly. She couldn’t control her heart. It worked frantically, trying to tear its way out of her chest. “You manipulated me.”

“No,” Dante said sharply.

“Yes, in a way, we did,” Sasha said just as quickly. “Only to give you back a power you’ve been blind to for years.”

Her anger checked. “Excuse me?”

“The power of choice,” Dante said. “You’ve cut yourself off from it for years, afraid to let yourself take what you really wanted. I don’t think you can even see what you really want, anymore.”

“You’re talking about you,” she said flatly. “Maybe I just realized I don’t want you anymore.”

“Then you admit you did want me, up until five seconds ago,” Dante replied.

She bit her lip. She had made a stupid rookie mistake. She knew better than to get herself caught in verbal traps like that. She had been handling million dollar negotiations for years. This is what happened when she let her anger direct her.

So she reined it in, trying to rake back control. “You know what, guys? Good joke. You fooled me. Ha ha. Now, I’m going back to the house. Enjoy your cozy evening…the décor is lovely.”

She turned back to the door.

“Dante isn’t Armand, Rory,” Sasha said.

Rory whirled, pain spearing her. “You dare speak of that! I told you in confidence! I trusted you.”

Dante frowned. “Armand?” he repeated.

“Later,” Sasha told him swiftly. He got to his feet. “You like plain speaking, Rory. Or at least you normally do. I grow weary of circumlocution myself. It is endemic in the intelligence world. Dante has learned to appreciate the direct approach, too. You taught him that. So let’s cut the bullshit.”

Rory swallowed. Why was she suddenly afraid? She had control here. She could walk out any time she pleased. Neither of them would try to stop her. Neither of them could stop her, anyway.

Sasha moved toward her. Only, he didn’t stop in front of her. He walked slowly around her, making her want to turn to follow him. He was the threat here, she realized. He knew too much about her. Her moment of weakness in the car, when she had wanted to explain herself in order to make amends, was now coming back around to slap her.

Live with consequences of your own making, she reminded herself. She had wanted the power to control her life. She had been fighting for that power since the night she leaned over the odious man she had been married to with a knife in her hand and yearned for the courage to take it. Well, she had the power now. If her decisions went wrong, she had to live with them.

So she lifted her chin and kept still, despite knowing what Sasha was going to say now.

“You like to control anything around you, because once upon a time, you lived at the whim of others,” Sasha said. “You indulge yourself because that is one of the perks of keeping that control. But Dante…he was different. You knew he was almost from the start. You knew he could upset everything, because you believe that falling in love means giving up that control.”

“It does mean that,” Rory said stiffly. She was facing Dante and he was watching her closely, which made the words even harder to speak. “Even now when women are supposed to enjoy equality, they rarely do. They earn less, are shuffled off into less prestigious roles and are rarely taken seriously. Relationships are almost never true partnerships. The woman always ends up giving up far more than the man.”

“Does she?” Dante said. “Really?”

“How would you know one way or the other?” Rory demanded. “You’ve never had a relationship in your life that was more than an inch deep!”

“Because I had you!” Dante roared back. “God, Rory, you’re so blind!”

“She’s doing it deliberately,” Sasha said, coming into her view on the other side. “She’s afraid,” he added. “The last time she truly loved someone, they were killed because of it.”

He’d said it. He’d spoken the words.

Rory drew in a shaky breath.

Sasha moved around behind Dante and stopped next to his shoulder. Over it, Rory could see Sasha’s steady gaze. “Rory couldn’t bring herself to let you go, either. The contract clause. The practical jokes. Friendship. A mutual love of competition and excellence. She clung to you the only way she could let herself, while fearing to ask for more.”

Dante’s gaze was steady. Relentless. “You could have asked for anything, Rory,” he said gently. “I would have moved mountains to give it to you. Complete freedom if you wanted it. You could have fucked every player on every team, if that’s what it took to let you feel as if you were still in control. All I wanted was you. Whatever you could share of yourself.”

Sadness touched her. “I gave you as much as I could. It was much, much more than anyone else got.”

Dante sighed. “And now it’s too late.”

A chill enveloped her. “Too late?”

“The whole point of me leaving tonight was to scare you into seeing what you might lose if you kept denying the truth,” Dante said, “only, I learned something about myself, when I drove away. Even though it was a dummy run, it felt real enough to scare me.”

He looked at Sasha. “I don’t know how we work this out,” he said quietly. “I just know I’m not giving you up. Not without a fight.”

Sasha’s smile was slow and warm.

Dante looked back at Rory. “So now things are more complicated than either of us ever thought they would be.”

“Are they?” Sasha asked. He moved back to the armchair and sat on the arm once more. “Plain speaking,” he reminded them both. “Rory, you won’t let yourself have a relationship that involves real love because you think it will trap you into a life not of your choosing. Dante wants you, but won’t ever push the matter because he knows it will drive you farther away. Now, he wants me, too. And I…” He cleared his throat. “I have no objections at all, which astonishes me. I think there was less bluff in my role tonight than I thought. I have always wanted you, Rory. You’ve known that from the start. That’s why you disliked me so much. You knew it and it scared you a little bit, too. Because you knew I wouldn’t let you dismiss me as others might.”

Rory could feel her heart slowing. Now it was all out. The ugly truth revealed. None of them could take it back.

“You have a point?” Dante asked Sasha curiously.

“I do. We keep tripping over assumptions. They’re bloody great rocks in the way. Rory keeps making assumptions about how a relationship should be. You keep assuming you can’t make any demands, or you’ll lose her. I assumed that once Rory beckoned you, I would be forgotten.” He licked his lips. “Let’s stop doing that.”

“Stop assuming?” Dante said.

“Why can’t we make our own rules?” Sasha asked reasonably.

Rory considered him, something stirring deep inside her. She didn’t know what it was, only for the first time since she had left the house with Sasha beside her, she felt something other than bleak misery. “You mean, I get to say how I want things to be?”

“Dante does, too. We figure it out to suit ourselves. Then we see where this goes.”

Rory stared at him. “Where it goes?”

Sasha crossed his arms. Only now did she recognize it as a defensive shift. “We’ve moved beyond just sex. Beyond the simple moment you thought it would be this morning.”

“We haven’t even properly kissed yet!” she protested.

“You know I’m right, all the same,” Sasha told her, with maddening calm.

“And look, you’re trying to push me into a corner already!”

“Am I?” Sasha asked. “Or is that just your own fear doing it to you?”

Dante came toward her. “Tell me what you felt in that first moment, when Sasha told you I had gone.”

Rory glanced at Sasha. He looked steadily back. “I….” She shook her head, annoyed at her own prevarication. “I was….” She frowned. “I don’t know,” she said honestly.

“Finally,” Sasha said, sounding relieved.

“You’ve spent so long avoiding even thinking about this, that it is almost an autonomic response now,” Dante told her. He was standing close to her. Beyond his heavy shoulder, she could see Sasha, too.

“Think, Rory,” Dante urged her. “You’re so clear headed about your work and game theory. You can see every play on the field, even before it happens. Analyze your own mind for once. What did you feel, when you thought I had gone?”

“I felt terror,” she said, finally remembering that split second moment. “Sasha said it in a way that made me think you had really gone. I almost panicked.”

“Almost, but not quite,” he said. “What stopped the fear?”

Rory dropped her gaze from his as she realized the terrible truth. She wasn’t sure she could say it. It felt like the worst betrayal in the world.

“Tell me,” Dante said. “Remember, we make our own rules. You only get what you want if you say what that is.”

She nodded. She still couldn’t look him in the eye. “I was afraid, yet a part of me…there was a voice that said…even as bad as it might be, if I really had lost you, at least Sasha was still there….”

The awfulness of it made her want to sink into the carpet.

Dante lifted her chin. His touch made her skin sizzle. He was smiling.

“You knew!” she gasped.

He nodded. “Belittling him. Stranding him in the middle of the pool. Remind you of anyone, Rory?”

“You,” she breathed.

Sasha came up next to Dante. “Is that why you and I…?” he began.

“I only figured this all out tonight,” Dante told him. “Pretending to leave gave me the distance I needed to see clearly. You and I…that was different.”

Rory gripped his wrist, where he was still stoking her cheek. “I want you to kiss me,” she said. “Both of you.” It was very clear in her mind. Her rules, her way. Even when it came to love.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Sasha nudged Dante with his elbow. “You heard the lady.”

There was a brooding look in Dante’s black eyes that Rory didn’t recognize. He reached out slowly, as if he was moving through water. His big hand curled around her arm and drew her closer, which was barely a step, yet it brought her up against him.

Rory shivered. She had always admired Dante’s strength and his physique. Now they were hers to enjoy and it was as if she was seeing them for the first time. She rested her hands on his broad chest. “You’re bothered by something,” she whispered.

He shook his head. “Fatalistic. I’ve wanted this to happen for so long and now it is, I’m wondering what the price will be.”

“Does it matter?” she asked.

His smile was small as he brought his arm around her, locking her in against him. “Right now, nothing beyond this room even exists.” He kissed her. His lips were hot and firm against her and she sighed into his mouth. It really did feel as though they had been lovers for a very long time. Everything was so right and natural between them.

His tongue pressed inside her mouth, stroking her lips. She could feel him growing even warmer against her.

Then Sasha drew her from him, pulling her into his arms. Rory wound her arm around his neck, marveling at the pure beauty of his eyes. Sasha looked down at her, a small frown marring his smooth forehead.

She touched the ridge, soothing it away. “Worry later,” she murmured.

“Very well.” He brought his lips against hers. He seemed to throw himself into the kiss, as if he had followed her suggestion to the letter and was now concentrating one hundred percent on her.

Just like Dante, Sasha seemed to grow warmer against her. He was not as big as Dante, although there was a wiry strength in him that was very male. If she had been human, Sasha would have been much stronger than her.

That gave her a little shiver of pleasure. She pressed harder against him, trying to absorb everything about him. The angles. The muscles. The hard ridge of his cock.

Dante’s hands settled on her waist. His fingers slipped underneath the fluttering hem of the silk tank top she was wearing, to brush up against her flesh. It made her muscles quiver and sent a squirt of pleasure through her. She was still kissing Sasha, although her attention was divided as she wondered what Dante would do next. She wanted him to slide his hands up higher, to take her breasts and play with them.

Dante’s mouth pressed against her neck from behind. His tongue slid over her flesh.

Rory pulled her mouth from Sasha’s, gasping.

Sasha took advantage of her inattention. He dipped his head and pressed his lips against the nape of her neck, opposite Dante. Then he nibbled and licked his way over to the Centre of her chest, just above the silk top, while Dante was stroking her with his tongue, all around her neck and ear, while his hands inched higher in infinitesimally small increments, bringing the hem of the top with them.

Then he trailed back down to the strap of the top and eased it over her shoulder. It fell to hang against her arm and the light brush of silk on her arm was another tiny stimulus adding to the input.

Rory rolled her head back, her eyes closing, as the two men kissed and stroked her upper body with their fingers and mouths…and undressed her. For Sasha felt the rise of the bottom of her shirt and eased the front of it up to match, slowly exposing her torso.

Between them, they eased the silk over her head. She didn’t see where it went. She didn’t care.

She was naked from the waist up, standing between the only two men in the world who seemed to know how to keep her off-balance, her thoughts scattered, just by looking at her. They were not looking at her now. What they were doing instead was far more disconcerting in a purely pleasurable way.

The tips of her breasts were heated, hard nubs, aching to be touched. Dante’s big hands were just beneath them, teasing simply by being so close to them, while Sasha’s tongue did wicked things just above.

She ached for her breasts to be touched. Teased.

Then Dante did lift his hands and cup the swell of each breast with his palms and it was so good, so very good, that Rory groaned, as her clit pulsed in agreement.

Yet he didn’t touch her nipples and that was what she really wanted.

“Sasha,” he said quietly.

Sasha made a sound that might have been a growl or a groan. He sucked the tip of her breast into his mouth, his teeth closing around it and Rory threw out her hands, gripping his shoulders for support, as her eyes snapped shut and her breath hitched.

The thrill from his touch was like a shock, searing her nerve ends and making her clit and pussy ache with the need for attention.

As Sasha plied his mouth to her breast, Dante’s hand shifted and his fingers caught the other nipple between them and stroked.

Rory trembled. Why had she denied herself this pleasure until now? Sex had grown stale and mechanical, even with the most inventive of lovers. They never failed to pay her attention, yet she had always felt unsatisfied.

This was different. This was something she had never experienced before. Sasha and Dante had barely touched her and she still felt more powerfully aroused than she had ever felt in her life. What would it be like when they were joined? What would her climax be like, if she already felt this much pleasure from simple caresses?

Sasha was tugging at the button on her trousers. Even that little motion sent a little fizz of excitement through her.

The zipper slid down and the silk palazzo pants dropped to the ground, with nothing to hold them up.

Sasha abandoned her breast and bent to lift the trousers away, raising each of her feet in turn. His fingers on her ankles tickled her flesh, sending a little ripple up her limbs. The thick locks of his hair were brushing her upper thighs, too, adding to the swiftly building pleasure.

Dante shifted his hands so that both were playing with her nipples, as he made a sound low in the back of his throat.

Sasha slid his hands up her legs, up to her thighs, where his fingers spread, as if he was tasting her flesh with them. His thumbs stroked the delicate flesh of her inner thighs, while his gaze settled on her panties. Her pussy pulsed in response.

Dante dropped his hand down to her belly, resting it there. His fingertips were almost touching the lace edge of her panties and her stomach muscles quivered under his hand.

Sasha glanced up at him. “Let me watch,” he murmured. His voice with thick with lust.

Dante eased his fingers beneath the lace, lifted the fabric and pushed deeper, avoiding contact with her skin, until they curved over the mound of her pussy and held it.

Rory gasped. It was twice more powerful, having Sasha watch while Dante did such wonderful things to her.

Then Dante pressed the tips of his fingers into the deeper folds of her pussy, into the slickness of her arousal and pulled back, sliding through her channel, drawing moisture and heat, too, up through her folds, to push against her frantically pulsing clit.

Her hips jerked as her clit squeezed and released a shower of electric excitement. Rory moaned.

Sasha gripped the edges of her panties in either side of Dante’s buried hand and yanked them down her hips. They were removed, although Rory barely noticed. She was naked now except for her shoes. Dante’s hand against her pussy kept her attention focused on wondering what he would do next. She longed for him to drive his fingers back into her, only this time deeper and harder.

He was moving his hand in a lazy little motion that nudged the side of his fingers against her clit, making it leap and throb.

“Let me see,” Sasha breathed.

Dante took his hand away and Sasha gripped her thighs, staring at her. His eyes were hooded. He used his grip on her thighs to ease them open, making Rory take a step sideways with one foot. She was spread open. Sasha’s view would be completely unobstructed.

“Good idea,” Dante breathed, his voice thick and distorted, too. “Then I can do this.” His fingers pressed between her ass cheeks and slid down and beneath her, leaving a trail of fire.

He pushed his fingers into her just as she had been hoping for a few moments ago, thrusting them deep and hard.

Rory began to shake again, this time as her climax was born and built with a relentlessness that told her it would be unlike any other climax she had ever experienced.

Dante kept up his thrusting, the rough, uneven shape of his knuckles stroking the inside of her pussy.

Sasha leaned forward and sucked her mound into his mouth. His tongue pushed roughly between the pillows of flesh and up against her frantically throbbing clit. He teased it with his tongue, stroking it with devastating expertise.

Rory gripped his shoulders. She would have fallen, otherwise. She couldn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t breathe. The climax built, stealing her thoughts. She couldn’t stop it and she didn’t want to.

She orgasmed and it felt as though thunder erupted inside her, while the lightning zapped her nerves and snapped taut every tendon in her body. It rampaged through her.

She screamed, unable to stop herself.

When she could open her eyes once more, Sasha was standing, watching her pleasure. Only Dante was holding her up and he removed his fingers from inside her and turned her around to face him.

His expression was heated. “Hold her steady for a moment,” he told Sasha.

Sasha gripped her waist as Dante tugged his shirt up and over his head. He dropped it onto the sofa behind him. His muscles bunched and flexed as he moved.

Then he dropped his hands to his jeans and swiftly unbuckled the big belt and tore the zipper down.

He stripped the rest of his clothes with an impatient shove, bending to rid himself of the last of them.

When he straightened, Rory drew in another unsteady breath. She had seen him naked before. It had always been casual, accidental moments, that had passed by unremarked because they were friends who trusted each other completely and for whom such things didn’t matter.

Except now they did.

Rory let herself study him, taking in the satiny skin and his engorged cock, thick with pumping veins and a head that was flared almost painfully hard. The powerful thighs beneath.

All the better to thrust deep and hard with.

Dante curled his hand around his cock, almost as if he would pump himself to climax right there. Rory caught her breath again.

“I could come, just looking at you,” he said, his voice low.

“That would be a waste.” She could barely form the worlds.

“So, instead….” He gripped her waist once more and lifted her.

It was an athletic move, one that only a very strong man could make. He raised her up, lifting his head to watching her face. “Put your legs around me,” he commanded.

She wrapped her legs around him and it opened her up, exposing flesh and organs.

Dante lowered her down again and this time, his cock pushed up against the very slippery cleft. He found her pussy unerringly and for a moment he paused, looking at her.

Rory knew what he was thinking. All the years when this pleasure could have been theirs and she had denied it. Now, the pleasure was different, because Sasha was part of it.

Dante penetrated her, spreading her tissues, opening her up and filling her. It was a deeply satisfying sensation and her clit throbbed as if it was in agreement. She put her arms around his neck, holding herself up, even though there was no need. Dante was more than strong enough.

Sasha pressed against her from behind and she shivered, because it was the touch of bare flesh against her ass and back. His lips trailed over the flesh where Dante had been kissing her, at the base of her neck. He rolled and teased her nipples and her hips thrust forward as her clit stirred, her pleasure building once more.

“Kiss me,” Sasha breathed.

Rory turned her head. Sasha leaned over her shoulder and touched her lips with his.

“Me, too,” Dante said.

Rory kissed him, too, then gasped, straightening up, as Sasha’s fingers pressed between her rear cheeks, up against the opening, rimming the sensitive muscle and making everything clench in response.

Dante hissed. “You’re squeezing me.”

“Sasha’s fault,” she breathed.

“All my fault,” Sasha agreed. He sounded pleased about it. His fingers were pushing deeper, opening her up. Preparing her. There was a foreign slickness to his touch that told her he was using lubricant to ease the way.

Rory liked anal sex. She liked all sex, any way, although anal sex was a particular favorite. Now, though, with Dante already inside her, the promise and anticipation was almost overwhelming. She moaned and rested her head against Dante’s shoulder. “I’m going to die.”

“Too late,” he whispered.

“Again,” she amended.

“Let me help you with that,” Sasha said. He was breathing hard. He gripped her waist, his hands meshing with Dante’s. His cock pressed against her, seeking entry.

Rory let herself relax and felt the muscle open up. Sasha eased inside, a bit at a time and she relaxed even more. He knew what he was doing. Even though she healed instantly, it was unpleasant if a man didn’t know how to approach such matters.

Yet Sasha seemed to be able to read her body. His entry was smooth, as simple as if it was her pussy he was pushing into.

Rory gasped at the sensations having both of them in her produced. She had never indulged in threesomes before, because with three egos together it was that much easier to lose control. Control wasn’t an issue now and she was secretly pleased it was Dante and Sasha who introduced her to this very satisfying arrangement.

“Don’t move for a moment,” she begged and closed her eyes, siphoning every dollop of pleasure from the moment.

“Not possible,” Dante breathed. His hips shifted and his cock pulsed inside her, causing Rory to clamp down.

That made Sasha suck in a quick breath. “I am already far too close…” he muttered. He withdrew and pushed back into her.

“God, I can feel you,” Dante said, with a groan. He thrust, almost helplessly.

The two of them were rocking in and out of her as they held her between them. Rory gasped as the uneven, desperate thrusts slammed her into an unexpected climax. It showered over her, giving her no chance to brace herself or anticipate it. It encompassed her whole body, making her shudder with the power of it.

Light flared, fading her vision.

She was tossing on a stormy sea of pure pleasure, a helpless vessel.

Dante’s agonized thrusts and groans restored her senses. Sasha was almost panting as his hips worked against her. They were pumping into her in shortened strokes. Then they came together, both of them leaning in, holding her between them, their bodies fiery with heat and passion.

* * * * *

When they had untangled themselves, Sasha found he was still reaching for both of them. A hand, a stroke, a kiss. He couldn’t leave them alone.

When Rory suggested they all shower together, Sasha was relieved. That would extend this moment for a while longer.

The shower was one of the big walk-in ones, which gave them room to cling together under the spray of hot water from two shower heads.

The hot water felt good. The kisses were better. Even though Sasha had a beautiful woman and an equally beautiful man in his arms and would normally have found that stimulus enough to push one or the other against the tiles and have his way with them, he was less interested in doing that now, than he was in seeking Rory’s mouth, or Dante’s.

What was wrong with him? He had tucked away the little kernel of worry when Rory had said he should. Now it bloomed again, even stronger than before.

Dante wanted him. Rory wanted him. Why was this even a concern? He had never been a monk. Dalliances in any city he found himself in were common. The cold war was far enough in the past that being Russian was now an exotic thing. A sexy thing. So partners were easy to come by. This was just another moment.

Wasn’t it?

He had come here to help with the war and to get away from the heat in Moscow. Eventually, things would settle down there and a friend or a colleague he trusted would phone and tell him it was safe to go home once more.

Sasha had always assumed he would return, sooner or later. Yet he had spoken the truth out there in the main room, when he had said that perhaps he had not been faking his dismay about Dante’s departure.

He hadn’t lied to either Rory or Dante once, not in all the days since he had met them. How unusual. He lied for a living and found masks convenient for deflecting people away from learning too much about him.

Rory had speared him with her disdain the moment they met, which had never given him a chance to let a mask slide into place. Instead, he had scrambled to defend himself.

Now he couldn’t stop kissing them. Either of them.

He was going back to Russia. Not today or tomorrow, but soon. That was a fact. It was the pattern of his life. He had counted on that to disentangle himself more than once before.

So why was he so full of dismay at the idea, now? He was fond of them. They were unique people and if he was the catalyst that had brought them together, then he was happy to serve that role. They deserved each other.

This will end, he told himself. I will have to go home, eventually.

Rory’s blue eyes were half closed as she pulled her full, pouting lips away from Dante and sought his.

Sasha kissed her willingly, his body tightening as he ran his hands over her wet curves, the flare of her hips and her softness, so different from Dante’s iron-hard body.

I am not in too deep. Not yet, he told himself, as Dante coaxed Sasha to let Rory go and turn to him.

As Dante kissed him, Sasha remembered an English phrase, something for which there was no equivalent in Russian. He thrust the thought away hastily.

He was not whistling in the dark. He was not in too deep. He was fine. He was going to return to his life and everything would be as it should.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Francesca slid into the room without disturbing anyone. She didn’t like to disrupt the work they did here, because even though she did not understand all of it, she did know it was important. Dominic had explained some of it to her in his English-accented Spanish. Every day he was becoming more and more westernized.

The big office room was busy, with people peering at computers. There was some sort of classical music playing, down low. She thought it might be Mozart and wondered if Dominic had put it on and left it running when he had gone up to bed.

There were only vampires and the strange man they call an Elah, whose name was Koca. His odd-shaped head drew attention in the room. He was also the reason she was here. She went up to him and held out the big glass. “Water at room temperature, filtered twice. That is right, isn’t it?”

Koca sized up the glass, then took it. “Thank you,” he said. “That is right. You are very considerate.” He drank half the glass and sighed.

“And that really substitutes for sleep?” Rory asked.

“If I can put my feet in soil and drink water, then I can go without sleep for two or more days, yes.” Koca moved his mouth in a strange way. “This is a household that never sleeps. I must match that.”

“There are many sleepers,” Francesca said.

Koca looked at her. So did Rory.

“It is four o’clock,” she said. The attention was making her feel awkward. “There are six humans sleeping right now, so they can hunt tonight. The only human in the house who is awake right now is Kate, who is in the conservatory, caring for Lini.” Francesca liked Lini.

Koca moved to put the glass on the desk nearest to him and Francesca jumped a little when she realized that Azarel was in the room. He had been standing behind Koca. He was staring at the screen that Nial was working on. It looked as though he had not noticed her arrival or anything she had said.

Relieved, Francesca waved toward the glass. “Well…anyway….”

“Nial, you should see this,” Roman said sharply, making everyone look at him, even Francesca.

Nial pushed a hand through his hair, got up and moved to stand behind Roman’s shoulder and look at his screen. Then he frowned.

“Link?” Rory called, for she was sitting at a computer that was facing Roman’s.

Francesca saw a live link appear at the bottom corner of Rory’s screen. The rest of the screen was numbers and columns of text and that was all.

Rory clicked on the link and a news site popped up. There was a picture of mountains that reminded Francesca of Chile. The page was in English, which Francesca could still barely comprehend as a written language. She didn’t try to read even the headlines. They were large and black.

Azarel moved to look at Nial’s screen. Francesca wondered if he could read English. He seemed to have arrived here with basic skills like that already built-in, for which she envied him.

Koca moved around behind Rory so he could see her screen. He didn’t seem to have any trouble reading it. His gaze moved from one side of the screen to the other. “Oh dear…” he said, his voice soft.

“What is wrong?” Francesca asked quickly.

Azarel looked up. “In the Andes, a whole valley of Ĉiela were found. All dead.”

Sadness touched her. “Is that all of them now?” she asked.

Nial looked at Azarel.

“There were few of them left,” Azarel said. “I cannot tell in this human form if there are any more.”

“They’re dying, the ones that are left,” Rory said softly. “They will be no opposition for the Summanus.”

“Certainly not hiding up at the top of mountains,” Nial said dryly. “Rory, how close are you to having that model finished?”

“A day, perhaps,” Rory said. Francesca liked the way her voice didn’t rise. She wasn’t upset by Nial’s short tone. Francesca also like the way she was dressed, today. The dress was a soft knit material. It had big sleeves that narrowed down to tight ones at the wrist. The top of the dress seemed loose, only once it reached her thighs, it hugged them. It stopped quite a few inches short of her knees.

She was also wearing high heels, as she very nearly always did, whenever she was not hunting. Francesca also liked what she wore when she was hunting. If Dominic had headed out into the night in shiny black leather and boots, she would have accused him of being melodramatic. On Rory, though, the leather and studs and heavy boots did not seem ridiculous. They suited Rory and they matched the heavy sword on her hip, too.

There was not much about Rory’s clothes and accessories that Francesca didn’t like. She would never in a million years even contemplate wearing such outrageous clothing herself, although she did like them on Rory. They suited her personality, from the little Francesca knew of it.

Rory crossed her legs, a calm look on her face, waiting for Nial to react to her estimate of how long the model would take to complete—whatever the model was.

Nial stood up. “You’ve been working on it for a week.” His voice was harsh.

“Any system that includes human behavior as an element is automatically highly complex. I’ve worked with quantum system models that were simpler than what you’ve asked me to build here. You should consider yourself lucky I will finish it when I do.”

Everyone else remained perfectly still and silent. They were all looking at Nial. Francesca didn’t know why they would be watching him so carefully, but her heart thudded heavily, anyway. It was as if she was sucking up the tension in the room.

Only Rory looked calm as she stared at him.

Nial shook his head. “Every day we fool around here, is another night the Summanus can cut down our numbers.”

Everyone was silent again, only this time, Francesca knew why. There had been three hunters killed last night.

Nial blew out his breath. “Tomorrow, then,” he said and walked out of the room

Everyone relaxed.

Roman blew out his breath. “Someone needs to pop his cork before the whole damn bottle goes up.”

Rory turned back to her computer screen. “Then I should warn you that I won’t be giving him good news when I have finished the model.”

Azarel and Koca were listening intently.

Roman winced. “How bad?”

“That is why I need a day. I don’t know yet how bad it is. I can only say it does not look good.” She spun on the chair and crossed her legs again, showing lots of thigh. Francesca wondered how she could do that and not be self-conscious about it. Rory didn’t seem to even notice.

The vampire woman looked up at Koca. “If I could ask you more questions about your nature and your culture, that would help complete my model in more significant detail.”

Koca bent his head forward. He did that a lot, instead of saying yes, Francesca realized. “I would be pleased to help,” he told her.

Rory smiled. She had a beautiful smile. It made her eyes glow. “Longevity. Fecundity. Population rates.”

“Attrition?” Koca suggested.

“Then you understand these concepts. Good,” Rory told him. “Would you like to sit down?”

“Now?” Koca asked. His voice was flat. It always sounded flat. Francesca thought he was surprised by Rory’s request, though.

“Before you start filleting him,” Roman said, “let me finish up first. We were interrupted.” He moved back to the computer he had been sitting behind when Francesca first came into the room and Koca moved back around the table to stand next to him.

Francesca went up to Azarel, who was still reading the screen showing the news clip about the Ĉiela. He seemed sad. She dared to let her hand rest on his arm for a moment. She could feel the play of muscles and tendons beneath her hand, right through the cotton of his shirt. “Are you going to go hunting, after all?” she asked him, keeping her voice down.

He looked at her and she had no trouble reading his surprise. “How did you know that?”

“It was a guess,” she assured him. “If you’re going out tonight, you should go and sleep now.”

“I’m fine,” he said stiffly, staring at the screen.

“Now, you are fine,” she replied. “Later, when it is important that you’re alert, you won’t be.”

He didn’t react.

“Azarel,” she said and shook his arm.

He blinked and stirred and looked at her.

“Sleep,” she said as firmly as she dared.

He drew in a deep breath. “Yes,” he agreed softly.

“I’ll wake you at eight, when everyone else gets up.” She stepped back, out of his way, giving him room to move past her. After a moment, he did.

Francesca looked up. Roman and Koca were both watching her. She didn’t know what Koca’s expression meant. Roman’s interest was wiped from his face and he looked back at his screen.

Francesca’s cheeks heated. She told herself she had done nothing wrong.

The only person in the room who seemed to be completely disinterested was Rory. She was back to working on the model.

Francesca stepped out from behind the bank of desks and moved to the door. It meant sidling past Rory’s chair and once more, Francesca was reminded of her elegant clothes.

She hesitated. Then she gathered her courage. “I just wanted to say how much I like your shoes.”

Rory looked up at her. For a moment Francesca wondered if she was even really seeing her properly. Her gaze seemed to be focused right through her. Then Rory blinked and did look at her. “Thank you,” she said.

“You must get a lot of compliments from men for your dress, too.”

“Millions, most likely,” Roman said under his breath.

Rory glanced at Roman, then back to Francesca. “I do, although that isn’t why I wear the dress.”

“You don’t?” She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

“I wear the dress because I like it. It makes me feel good to wear something this beautiful. It pleases me.” She turned out one foot. “My shoes please me, too. So does my lingerie.”

Francesca blushed, her whole face glowing with the heat.

Roman grinned. “It just happens to please men as well.”

Francesca looked at him. “I thought you…I thought….” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Azarel seemed to shed a woman of her clothes at the first available moment, sometimes before the door to the pool house was even properly closed, which was how she knew his preference.

Koca was watching her with clear interest now, too.

“What did you think? That we like all women naked at all times?” Roman asked.

Her embarrassment was complete. She couldn’t possibly be more humiliated. So Francesca shrugged. “Don’t you?”

Roman nodded toward Rory. “Ask her. She knows.”

Rory was smiling. “Men like women naked,” she said gently. “They appreciate them clothed, too. They enjoy women all ways, at all times, but when a woman is wearing clothes, they can imagine what it would be like to take them off. If they see a hint of what lies beneath—a bra strap, bare flesh, a hint of a curve, they are instantly intrigued.”

Francesca glanced at Roman for confirmation. He smiled and one brow lifted, in an “I told you so” way.

“Although men are intrigued far too easily,” Rory added dismissively. “A stiff breeze will do it.”

“If it lifts a hem, it surely does,” Roman agreed.

“Which proves my point,” Rory finished. “Why dress to attract a man? They are beckoned, anyway. I dress to please myself first.”

“Maybe they are beckoned by someone like you,” Francesca said. “Me, they don’t see.”

Rory considered her, her eyes narrowing. “The right man will see you, Francesca. I guarantee it.”

No, he doesn’t. Only, Francesca wouldn’t say that aloud. Not ever.

Instead, she went back to the kitchen to make tea for Kate, before Kate returned to her table in the front room, to work on her movie with Garrett and Patrick, while the rest of the house slept on.

* * * * *

Dante always woke first, so when Sasha woke and found the bed empty, he wasn’t worried. The water was running in the attached bathroom, which told him where Dante was. It was dark outside. Another night had begun.

Sasha purposely didn’t think about the fact that a week had passed since Rory had capitulated. They had fallen into a routine that was comfortable, which should have scared the crap out of him. Routines were dangerous out in the field and an anathema to a man like him. They represented domesticity. Commitment to a way of life.

The water shut off and the door to the shower stall slid open.

Better to think about Dante’s hard body and what it could do to him. Or Rory’s endless curves and what they did to him. Or the way she fit between them almost perfectly.

Better to think of anything other than how much he liked this simple little life they had fallen into with no effort at all.

When the bathroom door opened, Sasha sat up. Dante came out, his skin damp and his black hair wet. He was naked. He glanced at Sasha and opened the top drawer in the bureau. Somewhere in the last week, that drawer had become Dante’s, just as the middle drawer was Sasha’s. Rory used the bottom two drawers.

Dante kept his back to Sasha as he dug through the drawer.

“Something wrong?” Sasha asked, trying to ignore the images Dante’s high, hard backside prompted.

Dante shook his head. “Nothing.”

Yet he still didn’t look at him.

Sasha kicked the covers aside and got to his feet. He came around the end of the bed. “Even in Russia, ‘nothing’ means ‘I am pissed’.”

Dante sighed and slammed the drawer shut. “Fine. It’s you, okay? You’re a freaking slob!”

Sasha stared at him, bewildered. “What?”

“Look at this.” Dante yanked out the second drawer and pointed at the jumble of clothes. “Nothing folded. No order. I don’t know how you find anything in here.”

Sasha shrugged. “It all goes back into the suitcase in the end.”

“And you left the bathroom a mess. You used my razor again. And look. Look at that.” Dante pointed at the cover on the bed.

Sasha turned to look. The cover lay on the carpet, where he had tossed it.

“Sane people leave the covers on the bed. You just stride through life, discarding everything once you’ve used it.”

Sasha ignored the heavy beat of his heart. This was serious. This wasn’t a hissy fit over toothbrushes at all. He narrowed his eyes, considering Dante. “I didn’t turn into an objectionable slob in the last four hours. So why is it now a problem?”

Dante’s gaze flickered away from him. “It’s always been a problem.”

“Only now you’re objecting.” Sasha crossed his arms.

“I should get dressed,” Dante muttered, turning back to the bureau.

Sasha got his arms uncrossed and reached for Dante’s arm. As soon as his fingers met his flesh, though, Dante rounded on him. “Don’t touch me!”

Sasha fell back, holding up his hands. He considered Dante, trying to find a clue that would tell him what this was really about. Angry people always gave themselves away. That was why he had learned to control his own temper, which could be legendary if he let it lose.

“You’re a fucking freak, you know that?” Dante demanded. “I’m pissed and yelling at you and you’re just looking at me with those eyes of yours!”

“You want me to yell back?”

“I want you just as pissed, yes!”

“Why?”

“Don’t be fucking stupid! You know how people tick. You know what normal is. We argue, you get pissed and walk out of here. It’s what non-freaks do!”

Sasha’s heart gave a little jump. “You want me to walk out of here?”

Dante whirled back to face the bureau. He put both hands on the front edge of it and lean against them, hanging his head. “No, of course not,” he said heavily.

There was the clue. He had given himself away and Dante didn’t even know it himself. “Why would you want me to walk away?” Sasha asked softly.

“I told you, I don’t want that!” Dante cried, standing up.

“Something in you does,” Sasha said slowly. “You picked a trivial fight, using the only thing you could think of to do it, something that hasn’t bothered you up until now, because you don’t know the real reason why you want me out of here. You’re responding to instinct.”

Dante shook his head, his wet hair shaking off droplets. “I’m responding to your lack of discipline.”

“I have more than enough discipline where it counts,” Sasha assured him grimly. Why would Dante want him out of the way? Rory.

Ahh….

Sasha drew in a breath, drawing it past the restriction in his throat. “You want Rory to yourself, now you have her at last.”

Dante actually grew pale. His throat worked.

Sasha shook his head, even though Dante had not spoken. “You’ve loved her for years and waited all that time. Me…I’m the interloper. I’d be a fool if I didn’t recognize that for myself. You like me, but you love her.”

Dante buried his face in his hands. He was trembling. “God, you’re right. I didn’t…I don’t want you to go. I really don’t.”

“It’s an older instinct that’s driving you, that’s all,” Sasha told him. “Here’s the thing, Dante.” He gripped his wrists and pulled his hands away and peered into his eyes. “I’m pretty sure that if you’re still working on old instincts then so is Rory. Neither of you can let down your guard and that means that you still need me.”

Dante’s throat worked. His eyes were filled with pain. “I need you anyway,” he said softly. “Fuck instincts.”

“Rory’s instincts, Dante. Has it occurred to you that you couldn’t have her if I wasn’t here, too?”

He didn’t think it was possible for Dante to grow even more pale, yet he did. He looked almost sick. “No,” he whispered.

Denial.

Sasha gave him a small smile. “I make you safe, for her. Rory probably hasn’t thought it through consciously, although she’s a master at recognizing patterns and systems and buried in the back of her mind is the knowledge that I will be leaving, eventually, which will end this, whatever this is.” He grimaced. “I’m her get out of jail free card.”

Dante flinched, his shoulders shifting with the violence of it. “You’re leaving.”

Sasha sighed. “Not yet.”

“But soon? Someday? You’re not planning on sticking around, are you?” Dante’s tone was bitter. “When you go, so does she.”

Something shifted in Sasha’s belly, making him feel almost dizzy. His heart was working far too hard and that wasn’t helping. He clenched his fists, fighting it and fighting the need to go for the easy lie. It would be simple enough to say he wasn’t leaving, to give Dante what he wanted to hear. He lied all the time. He could say it with a straight face and he could make Dante believe him.

The words wouldn’t come.

Sasha sighed. “I don’t know what will happen,” he said weakly. Honestly.

Dante grew still. “You don’t know,” he repeated, almost breathlessly.

Sasha threw out his hand. “No, I don’t know! You think I don’t understand where I fit into this? As soon as Rory realizes she can have you without me in the picture, when she understands that it’s safe to love you, she will kick me back to Russia. I’m not a fool.” Now he was the one to sound bitter. “You’ve already tried to do it. It was just premature. Later on, you’ll try again. Next time, you’ll succeed.”

Dante slapped the bureau. “No. You’re wrong. It would be like cutting off this hand just so I can take with the other.”

“You’ll do it. It’s Rory you really love.”

Dante took Sasha’s face in his hands. “I need you, too.”

“For a while longer, yes, you do.” Sasha gripped his wrists. “It won’t last. I don’t know how long it will take. I won’t stay here and wait for that to happen. You should know that.”

“You don’t know what will happen. You just said that,” Dante said. His voice was hoarse.

“Not for sure, but I know it’s coming,” Sasha said bleakly.

Dante rested his head against Sasha’s. “Pessimistic Russian. How can I talk you out of this?”

Sasha couldn’t speak that truth. It wasn’t his beliefs Dante was fighting. It was love, the most powerful emotion in the universe. Sasha had seen its power more than once. He had used it coldly and deliberately, to seduce informants and get them to sell out their country for the sake of it.

It was an overwhelming force that Sasha knew he couldn’t defeat.

So instead of giving Dante the truth, Sasha deflected him. “You could try fucking me out of it, I suppose.” He kissed him before Dante could see through the clumsy misdirection. He could speak the truth with his mouth and his body and that would pacify Dante.

For now. Now was all he had, though. For now, it would have to do.

Chapter Twenty-Six

“The thing you have to understand about Sasha is that he’s the most disciplined man I’ve ever known,” Marcus said softly. “That’s when he’s working.”

Dante nodded. “He said that, himself.”

One of the doors to the conservatory opened and both of them looked around guiltily. Francesca stepped through and shut the door behind her.

For the first time that year, the temperatures had fallen below sizzling, which was why the doors were closed. It was late September and everyone was inside, complaining about the coolness, which was why the two of them had gravitated without discussion to where no one else would be, which was the table next to the swimming pool.

There were leaves floating on the top of the pool, giving it a forlorn look.

Dante studied Francesca, trying to figure out what was different about her. Then he realized she wasn’t wearing the simple skirt and blouse she was nearly always in. The dress she was wearing was something only women understood how to put on. It wrapped around Francesca’s middle, showing off a surprisingly small waist, generous hips and high, small breasts.

Even her shoes were something other than the flat, workmanlike black leather she had been wearing. They weren’t as high as some of the shoes Rory preferred, although they weren’t flat, either. They were slender and neat and feminine.

“Wow,” Dante breathed, low enough that Francesca wouldn’t hear him as she made her way around the edge of the pool. She was heading toward the pool house. Of course.

“Very interesting,” Marcus agreed. “I wonder if Dominic has seen his sister today?”

Dante grinned. “We’d have heard it, if he had.”

Marcus frowned. “Where was I?”

“Sasha’s legendary discipline, which neither Rory nor I have yet to notice.”

Marcus smiled. “Funny you should put it like that. Because he is.”

“Disciplined?”

“The spy world is a funny business. We all work covertly. We don’t leave lingering impressions. We work best when we can slip in and out quietly, our influence undetected. Yet among field agents, everyone knows about everyone else. We know reputations and code names and histories, even if we don’t know what the agent’s face looks like. I had heard stories about The Russian years before I met Sasha and I’d known him for two years before I knew he was the one called The Russian.”

Dante sat back, floored. “You’re saying he really is legendary?”

Marcus nodded. “He’s that good,” he said softly. “I’m no slouch, but he puts me to shame. He can get in and out of countries like we open and close doors. He can talk anyone into anything.” Marcus’ mouth twitched up slightly. “You’ve probably experienced that for yourself.”

“I don’t think he lies to me at all,” Dante said. “I know he won’t lie to Rory. He just refuses to. He’ll step sideways. I’ve even seen him distract her right off the subject by…well….”

“Yeah, I get the idea,” Marcus said heavily. “He doesn’t lie to you at all? Really?”

“I don’t think so. It wasn’t until you said it just now that I realized he doesn’t because it’s normal behavior for anyone else. I guess the intelligence business breeds liars, doesn’t it?”

“Or attracts them,” Marcus said with a grimace. He was still staring at Dante. “He doesn’t lie at all….” he said softly, then shook his head. “Why don’t you get to the question that made you pull me out here?”

Dante could feel his caution rising. “I still don’t know if this is a good idea, talking to you. You two are close—”

“We were going to be brothers-in-law,” Marcus said. “Long story. Go on.”

Dante sighed. “Is it true that once you’re a spy, you’re stuck with it?”

Marcus sat back. “It’s not a profession for those who want to retire and live a long healthy life. It’s one of the toughest things you can do, mentally, especially if you’re under cover. It takes a toll. Despite all that, some people thrive and Sasha is one of them. He has unique mental strength. However, if he suddenly decided to take up bee keeping on the Sussex Downs, I think most people would try to abide by his wishes. The trouble is what he’s carrying up here.” Marcus tapped his temple. “We know stuff. Mostly stuff that other countries don’t like us knowing. It’s all officially secret, only it’s there in our noggins and sometimes, people want to dig that out. So they come calling, years after retirement.” Marcus shrugged. “I’m technically out, but I’m really not because I have access to information the FBI finds useful. So I still get a call every now and again.”

“They’re running you, now?”

“I guess, yeah.” Marcus shrugged. “I’m not giving you the answers you want. I can tell by your long face.”

“I suppose because I’m not asking the question directly. I feel guilty enough about even talking to you behind his back.”

“So ask the direct question, get it over with and go back to him,” Marcus suggested.

Dante nodded. “Is there any way to make Sasha want to stay with us?”

Marcus blew out a gusty breath. “There’s the crux, huh?”

“You say spies don’t leave the business and I don’t think he really wants to, even if he did want to stay here. He seems to think we don’t want him and that’s not part of this, anyway,” he added hastily as Marcus opened his mouth. “If Sasha asked, I’d go to Russia. Rory can’t, though. The GRU would dump her in one of their interview rooms and keep her there as soon as she stepped across the border.”

“Which Sasha knows as well as you do,” Marcus finished. He grimaced. “You’ve got a real dilemma there, don’t you?”

“You have no idea,” Dante assured him, thinking of the argument he’d had with Sasha only last night. Everything Sasha had said was still thrumming in his chest. It was what had driven him to seek out Marcus and talk to him.

Yet all that had done was underline Sasha’s worth and twist Dante’s growing fear another notch or two. “I don’t know what to do,” Dante said heavily.

“Not that I want to get in the middle of you three,” Marcus said, “but it seems to me that this is one of those times when all you can do is let everything play out.”

“Suck it up, in other words,” Dante said dryly.

“Wait and watch,” Marcus said gently. “Things change around here. All the time. I’m sure you’ve noticed. Change is the only constant. If you wait and watch, when the answer arrives, you’ll be ready.”

Dante grimaced.

“I know. Easier said than done,” Marcus agreed. “I’d be putting my fist through a wall if I was in your place.”

“Is that what happened with you and Rick and Ilaria?” Dante asked curiously and somewhat cautiously. Marcus and Ilaria looked almost normal these days, yet there was a remote air about both of them that told everyone to leave them alone, especially about Rick.

Marcus’ jaw flexed. “Exact opposite,” he said finally. “We both wanted her, we both wanted each other. We thought she was dead, though.”

Dante flinched.

Marcus leaned forward. “Death is change, too,” he said softly. “Enjoy what you have while you’ve got it, Dante. These days, nothing is guaranteed, not even vampire lives.”

* * * * *

Sasha sat on the bottom of the stairs, because there were no chairs or seats left in the big room. They were all taken. He looked around the crowded room. It look as though every humanoid individual on the property, including Koca and Patrick’s private security force, plus all the children living under Patrick’s roof, were assembled. Azarel was sitting on the piano stool, which had been brought from around the piano to sit closer to where everyone else was sitting.

The hunter coordinator they called Lucas Ford was also there, with a small group of humans who were most likely part of the units he coordinated.

Dante came over to where Sasha was sitting. He lowered himself down onto the step beside him and put his hand on Sasha’s thigh and squeezed. “Hey.”

Sasha nodded. “Zdravstvuyte.”

“Do you have any idea what this is about?”

“Not for sure. We might be about to find out why Rory has been so quiet the last day or two.”

“I could stand knowing that.”

“Me, too.”

“Here we go,” Dante added as Nial got to his feet.

Nial moved around in front of the baby grand, which gave everyone a clear view of him. “In a house that runs on pillow talk, rumors are endemic. So I’m going to break direct orders and tell you what I told the cross coordination committee on Tuesday. Actually, I’m not the one who is going to tell you. Rory?”

He went back to his seat.

Dante glanced at Sasha. They both watched Rory get to her feet. She was wearing a dress that was dark purple velvet that made her eyes pop. Sasha wondered what the velvet would feel like with her body beneath it.

Rory stood where Nial had been standing. She had no notes, although with a vampire’s enhanced memory, she wouldn’t need them.

“Two weeks ago, Nial asked me to develop a theoretical future projection of the current war, using as many valid criteria as possible. In other words, a best guess at the outcome of the war given our current situation. I’ve done many similar projects in the past, although never for something on the scale of a global war against a non-human aggressor.” She paused.

“Wow, I think I’m in love,” Dante said. “I just love geek speak. Don’t you?”

“I like smart women,” Sasha said quietly, keeping his eyes on Rory. There was something she was building up to. Something that wasn’t good news. She had all the body language of someone braced for the impact.

“Normally, a project like this uses a lot of regression analysis and other game theory tools to build a model and project it forward. I was doing that, until I had a discussion with Koca. I was trying to learn about the Elah population, how fast they generate and therefore, how many Elah there would be in the future. As they are now a formal ally, this was a natural step to take. Koca was very helpful. He put me in touch with senior Elah who could give me much more information about Elah numbers and population growth and also numbers for all their enemies, which they had studied closely in the years before they were entombed in the Blood Stone.” She paused, looking around the room. For a moment, her gaze settled on Sasha and Dante.

“The Elah population growth numbers for the Summanus turned this project from an analysis exercise into a simple numbers extrapolation.” She gave a tight smile. “Well, simple, in comparison,” she added, which caused a little twitter of laughter to wash over the room.

Here it comes, Sasha thought.

“The Summanus grow from fresh hatchlings to full functioning adults within a single calendar year,” she said. “They are lethal within six months.”

“Six months!” Dante breathed. “No wonder there never seems to be an end to them!”

“Shh,” Sasha said. Rory hadn’t reached the worst of it yet. Her shoulders were still tight and square.

“Given the current numbers of Summanus, which we estimated based on sightings and reports over the last two years, combined with their rate of breeding, I have estimated that the Summanus are too great in number. It doesn’t matter what we do now, we could not kill them all. As they do not consider themselves to be at war, the idea of surrender and peace is not a concept they understand, so that is not an avenue we can pursue, either.”

Silence. Everyone was staring at her now. There was not a single side conversation happening anywhere in the room.

Marcus cleared his throat. “Are you saying we can’t win?”

Rory’s face was like ivory and just as still. “There was no way to know it at the time, but we should have wiped out the hatchling nests before they hatched, last year.”

“We did it this year,” someone said.

Rory nodded. “Even if we do it every year from now on, it still would not be enough. The one year when the full hatchling compliment was allowed to mature put the Summanus numbers above the point of no return. No matter what we do to them, they will survive. Eventually, their superior numbers will diminish ours until humans, vampires and our allies, including the Elah, reach our own point of no return and we wither to nothing.”

Not only was everyone silent, it seemed that no one moved as they stared at Rory, taking it in. Absorbing the truth.

Sasha gripped the newel post, his fingers digging in. He didn’t for a moment wonder if Rory might have made a mistake. He respected her abilities. He had lived with her silence since she had learned this terrible fact.

Yet to be given such a grim prediction, when all seemed right in the world, was hard to take. It was like a perfectly healthy man with no symptoms, not even a hang nail, being told he was going to die soon from an untreatable cancer. It was hard to accept.

It was easier to face defeat when the enemy was pounding on the door, with no ammunition, serious wounds and with no escape hatch. Then, it was obvious the end was near. There was no time to try to negotiate a way out of it, to live with false hope for a while, before understanding it was truly over.

Dante sighed. “Well…fuck.”

Blythe stood up. “Can we appeal to the Serene Ones? They could stop them.”

“Azarel,” Nial said shortly.

Azarel got to his feet. “I am not the Serene Ones, not in this guise. I was one, though, so I know what the answer would be if you were to ask them to intervene.”

Again, the breathless silence.

Azarel shook his head. “It is hubris that led to the unlocking of the Blood Stone. Put another way, you brought this upon yourselves. It is not up to the Serene Ones to save you now. This is what they will think. It is what they will tell you if you ask.”

Dante propelled himself to his feet. “And what do you say?”

Azarel blinked. He was a slender man and his limpid brown eyes made him seem weak. Sasha suspected that was an illusion. If he was not in human form, he would be an omnipotent immortal. Human flesh stripped those powers away, just not the habits of thought they would develop.

Yet Azarel did not make a pronouncement or condemn them as he predicted the others would. Instead, he said quietly, with an uncertain note in his voice: “I don’t know.”

Something like a sigh passed across the room. Sasha wasn’t sure if that meant everyone approved or disapproved of what he had said. Or perhaps they were as surprised as he was.

Azarel sat down on his piano stool.

Sasha tugged on Dante’s hand, pulling him down next to him once more.

Rory was still standing. Nial got to his feet and it seemed to Sasha that he was moving slowly, as if he was exhausted. Perhaps he was. Not physically, of course, yet this had been a long, hard war for Nial. He had been fighting it years before humans had even become aware of the war in their midst.

Nial stood for a moment next to Rory. “That’s all, everyone. You’re free to talk about this among yourselves. It just doesn’t move beyond anyone in this room. If you want access to Rory’s data, I’m sure she would be willing to share it, although I would ask her to explain it to you. Ask nicely, though.”

The tiny joke got zero reaction.

Nial simply walked away, moving around the edges of the group, heading for the front office. His head was down. As he passed Sasha and Dante on the stairs, Sasha could see his face more clearly. He looked as though he was beyond exhaustion.

Faint alarm touched Sasha. Nial was the lynchpin. He juggled the many varied forces arrayed against the Summanus, including world’s military. If he was not functioning, for whatever reason….

Then Sasha mentally kicked himself. What was he thinking? The war was already lost. All that remained was to play it out. Nial was free to go sun himself on a tropical island until the Summanus found him there, for all the difference their puny efforts apparently made.

Dante bumped his shoulder against Sasha’s. “I know Rory is brilliant and infallible and perfection on stilettos—”

“You aren’t trying to say she’s wrong, are you?” Sasha asked.

“God, no! And it has nothing to with her taking my balls off with her teeth if she heard me say it. Rory wouldn’t make a mistake like that. She wouldn’t lay it out flat, with no argument, if she had any doubts at all. She would soften it. Leave us something to hope for.”

“You don’t want to believe it, anyway.”

“Nope. And I’m not going to. Not until the fuckers have my head in one hand and my shoulder in the other. Even then I’m going to try head-butting my way out of it. It’s not over until it’s over, Sasha.” Dante looked at him with his dark eyes, unblinking. “Right?”

Sasha got to his feet. Most of the room had cleared already, he noticed. “I looked at Nial’s face just then and was thinking that he was a man without hope and that I refuse to go that way. I won’t just give up.” He held out his hand.

“Where are we going?’ Dante asked as Sasha hauled him to his feet.

“Just in case the world stops turning tomorrow morning, I’m going to grab Rory and take you and her upstairs and make you both scream my name. Then, after a vodka or two, I’m going to do it all over again.”

“That’s a plan,” Dante said approvingly.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Sebastian straightened up from his slouch against the wall, when Winter appeared, moving down the corridor at a fast pace. She shook her head. “I don’t think he even registered I was in the room,” she said.

Sebastian kissed her. “If I can do it, you have to remember it’s nothing you lack that made you fail. He’s just a stubborn bastard.”

Winter sighed. “If you can pull it off, then my relief will be so great, I won’t care that I couldn’t.” She pushed him back in the direction she had come from. “Go on. He won’t even notice that you arrived straight after I left.”

Sebastian looked at her, startled. “That bad, huh?”

He moved down the corridor, steeling himself for what came next. He pushed the office door open, trying to make it look as if he was acting normally, as if he was opening it as he had a thousand times before, only now he couldn’t remember how he did that.

Dominic was sitting behind his usual computer. He looked up when Sebastian entered. His gaze flickered toward Nial and back to Sebastian. Then he got to his feet and stretched, picked up his coffee cup and peered into it with a grimace. He headed for the door, as if he was simply going for fresh coffee and unlike Sebastian, he made it seem perfectly normal. He nodded infinitesimally as he passed Sebastian and closed the door behind him.

That left Sebastian in the office with Nial.

Nial was sitting behind one of the other computers, typing and focusing on the screen. He hadn’t reacted to Sebastian’s arrival at all. Sebastian wondered if he was even aware that Dominic had left.

For a man who had barely touched a computer right up until a couple of years ago, Nial was a very fast learner. He hadn’t taught himself coding, although he was a power user, more than comfortable with programs and applications, hacking them to make them work the way he wanted them to.

Sebastian didn’t wonder what he was doing now. It would be simple email. Nial would be hounding his contacts for more information, for data, for answers no one could give him. The replies would all be versions of “nothing new to report.”

“Nial.” He would start with the natural approach.

As expected, Nial didn’t look up.

Sebastian leaned over the back of the slim monitor, so that his head was only a foot or so away from Nial’s. He raised his voice. “Nial!”

Nial looked up briefly, then returned his attention to the monitor.

Sebastian’s heart gave a little squeeze. The look in Nial’s eye had been the one he used with strangers. Cool. Reserved.

He moved around the end of the table the computer was sitting on and over to Nial’s side. He rested his hand on Nial’s shoulder. “Hey.”

“I’m busy.”

It was a response of sorts. The two short words were curt to the point of rudeness, though.

Sebastian ignored the tightness building in his chest. Getting upset or angry would be counterproductive. It would also be playing into his hand. Nial was trying to make him stalk off with his temper stirred, because that would leave Nial alone as he wanted to be.

Instead, Sebastian squeezed and shook his shoulder, to pull his attention away from the screen. The screen showed that Nial was writing an email. The headings had scrolled up above the top of the screen, so he couldn’t see who he was sending it to. A snippet of the text caught his attention.

…something. A fact, a triviality, married up to another, that will make a difference…

It provoked Sebastian into speaking. “You’re groping for answers that don’t exist, Nial.”

That got Nial’s attention. He pushed back in the chair and turned it so he was looking up at Sebastian. “Rory’s prognosis is not concrete. Just because the numbers say one thing doesn’t mean it has to happen that way.”

“If you really believe that, then why didn’t you tell everyone the same thing when you gave them Rory’s report, the other day?”

Nial’s gaze flickered away. Back to the screen. “If Rick were here, he’d find the connection, the thing that will make a difference.”

“Only he isn’t and wishing he were isn’t going to help. God, Nial, a year ago you would never have let yourself wallow like this.”

Nial was staring at the screen again, as if his thoughts had returned back to the email and he was busy composing the next sentence.

Sebastian gripped his shoulders and turned him on the chair, so his back was to the monitor. He bent and kissed him, using everything he had to yank Nial’s attention out of the deep, useless channel it was stuck in.

It had been…Lord, how long had it been since they’d had sex? Even kissed? Nial had been holding everything inside him for far too long, trying to contain everything, to control it, including his affection.

When Nial pressed his hands against Sebastian’s chest and shoved him back, it was a genuine shock. Sebastian had been caught up in the kiss, forgetting for a moment why he was kissing him. Instead, he had become a little drunk on the simple pleasure of kissing Nial, even though it had lasted for only a few seconds.

The rejection stung. Then Sebastian remembered why he was here and cast the hurt aside. He straightened up, looking at Nial, who was staring at him with suspicion-filled eyes. “You have to let go, Nial. At least for a while. You need to relax.”

“I need to be left alone,” he replied.

“We’ve let you do that for too long. You’re not a machine. Even vampires have to disengage occasionally. How long is it since you fed?”

“I’m fine,” Nial said shortly.

“Winter says it has been nearly two weeks, which is about four days longer than even you can stretch them, when you’re thinking properly and taking care of yourself. You should be deep into blood lust by now.”

“Well, I’m not.” Nial tried to turn back to the computer. Sebastian got his knee in the way of the arm of the chair, so he couldn’t spin it.

Nial looked down at his knee. “Move it.”

“No.”

Nial’s gaze met his. “I love you, Sebastian, but if you don’t move your leg, I’ll move it for you and I don’t want to do that. You wouldn’t like it.”

Coldness walked invisible fingers up his spine, making Sebastian shudder. He had never tested himself against Nial and never wanted to. He knew too well exactly how strong Nial was. Yet he had to blast open Nial’s defense shield. If it took a physical confrontation to do it, he was the only person who could afford to try. Winter wasn’t strong enough. That was why she was waiting out there and Sebastian was standing here with his heart galloping in fear.

“You need to rest,” Sebastian said doggedly. “Either you do it voluntarily, or I will have to make you.”

Nial didn’t bother protesting that he was a vampire and didn’t need rest. Instead, he shifted mental gears. “You’re wasting my time. Stop this and leave me be.”

Sebastian’s gut clenched. “No.” He braced himself.

Nial gave no warning. No hint that he was about to move. He surged from the chair with a flex of muscles, moving almost faster than Sebastian could track. Sebastian was pushed off his feet, his balance toppling. He slammed up against the back of the door, with Nial’s forearm pressed up against his throat, his hand pinning Sebastian’s shoulder to the wood. Nial peered into his eyes from a few inches away. It was the same expressionless stranger staring at him.

Sebastian’s heart creaked, delayed reaction setting in. He was trembling. This was Nial. It just didn’t seem like him.

Sebastian stirred, shifting under his weight, testing Nial’s balance for weakness. In four hundred years, he had learned a thing or two and this didn’t require finesse or expertise.

He snaked his arms up under Nial’s and wrapped them around his back, gripping his own wrists for added strength. “Winter!” he yelled.

The other door to the office opened instantly.

Nial’s eyes widened in surprise. He reared back, pulling himself away, which was exactly what Sebastian had expected him to do. Sebastian clung to him grimly, his grip just barely holding.

Nial’s movement pulled Sebastian’s bodyweight forward. He would have overbalanced and fallen if Nial had not been there. Instead, he toppled against Nial. As his weight fell forward, Sebastian hooked his foot around Nial’s ankle and yanked.

They went down in a tangle of arms and legs, falling heavily because Nial was on his back and couldn’t break his fall and Sebastian refused to let go. They sprawled on the carpet, just in front of Winter, who hopped back out of the way. Her face was white, her eyes wide.

“Now,” Sebastian told her breathlessly, as Nial struggled and kicked underneath him.

Winter crouched and rested her hand on Nial’s forehead. Nial growled and it was an inhuman sound. The animal was rising, fighting to prevent this happening to him.

Winter closed her eyes, while Sebastian concentrated on the challenging task of keeping Nial contained while she worked.

Nial’s teeth descended. He hissed. There was a feral look in his eyes and Sebastian wondered if Nial even knew who they were at that moment. He was straining to reach Winter, to cast off her hand. It was like trying to hold down a rabid dog.

His heart thudding unhappily, Sebastian held on.

Abruptly, Nial grew still. Something like a sigh escaped from him and his eyes closed.

Sebastian looked down at his peaceful face, not willing to let him go yet. Nial was too old, too canny. He could be faking it.

“Is he…?” Sebastian whispered.

“It’s not sleeping. Not the way I sleep, or even the way you sleep. It’s more like I knocked him cold,” Winter said. She got to her feet. “I temporarily numbed both his human and vampire systems. When he returns to consciousness in a few hours, we’ll see if the rest helped or not.”

Sebastian looked down at Nial once more. “Is it safe to let him go?”

“He isn’t pretending,” Winter assured him.

Sebastian eased his arms out from underneath Nial, then got to his feet, watching him just in case.

Footsteps sounded on the tiles in the passage outside. Garrett hurried in, with Patrick on his heels. They halted just inside the door, looking down at Nial’s still form on the floor.

“Jesus and Mother Mary,” Garrett breathed. “That sound was Nial?”

“It came from him,” Sebastian said, breathing hard. “I don’t think it was Nial making it, though.”

Patrick shook his head. “We can’t leave him there.” He touched Garrett’s shoulder. “We should carry him upstairs.”

“No, the sofa out in the main room,” Winter said shortly. “I want to keep an eye on him.”

The two men lifted Nial up between them. Sebastian’s heart squeezed again as he watched Nial’s head flop uselessly between them. Guilt stirred in Sebastian’s chest.

As Patrick and Garrett carried Nial out of the office, Winter came over to Sebastian and put her arms around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder. She was shaking.

He held her. He knew exactly how she felt.

* * * * *

Even Rory seemed to feel the need to defy her own prediction. Sasha had coaxed her to bed as promised, which Dante thoroughly approved of and had taken full advantage of. It still blew his mind that it was Rory in his arms, moaning her pleasure. It was Rory he slid into, while Sasha made her writhe and groan with his hands and lips. She was actually hot around him, squeezing him, making him drive deeper and harder.

Yet, when he fell back onto the bed afterward, his body tingling and his cock throbbing with the after effects of his powerful climax, it was Sasha who met his gaze. Rory lay between them and Sasha tucked his hand over her waist in an almost possessive movement, while he looked at Dante. There was warmth in his gaze. Quiet happiness.

Sasha would return home. The truth of that hit Dante with the impact of a heavy-weight fullback taking him off his feet. He really would leave, probably sooner rather than later, now that Rory’s projections painted such a dire future for humanity. He would want to return to his masters, to tell them the facts, so his friends and loved ones could prepare, too.

Except he would be leaving loved ones behind.

That was the molten core of the truth and Dante breathed it in, absorbing it.

He loved Sasha. It was different from the way he loved Rory, for he had loved her for a very long time and that love was a settled, permanent, cast iron thing. This, though, the emotion searing his guts right now, was new. Hot. Undeniable.

Dante reached across Rory and curled his fingers around the back of Sasha’s neck. “Hey,” he murmured.

Sasha’s gaze met his again. “Hello.”

He was going home.

Dante just barely kept the truth behind his teeth. The need to speak it aloud, to make it a real thing and give it weight, was almost overwhelming, yet he held it back, unspoken. One day soon, Sasha would go home and every corpuscle in Dante’s body wanted to protest, only he would not complicate Sasha’s life any more than he had already.

So he kissed him, instead.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Blythe coaxed Francesca to stop long enough to sit down and eat lunch with her and Dominic. To get away from the pall that had descended upon the house, Blythe made both of them sit with her at the table next to the pool, even though the temperature was in the sixties and there were leaves all over the pool’s surface and littering the bottom of it, too.

Blythe shivered inside her sweater and ate her hot carbonada soup with relish. “This is really good,” she told Francesca.

Francesca glanced fondly at Dominic. “It was Dominic’s favorite, when he was still living in Chile.”

“Still is,” Dominic said gruffly. He took another spoonful and spoke around it, “No one makes it as you do. Even me and I’ve watched you make it hundreds of times.”

Francesca only looked like a plain woman until she smiled, Blythe realized. She had tightly cork-screwed hair that hung in thick black locks down to her shoulders and her nose was the same as Dominic’s. So were her eyes, yet when she smiled, her eyes opened up and grew warmer, while her smile glowed. It was as if the real Francesca was showing, when she smiled.

Blythe’s gaze dropped to the scars on Francesca’s forearms, faded pale white against her olive skin. Some of them were almost perfect little circles. Francesca had her reasons for hiding her true self away.

Dominic was busy eating, although Blythe was looking right at Francesca when Azarel opened the door of the pool house and stepped out. Francesca’s gaze shifted to him and stayed there. The light in her eyes grew even more softer. Gentler.

Blythe coughed over her mouthful of soup as the truth hit her. Francesca was in love with Azarel.

Her gaze followed the Serene One as he walked around the pool, heading for the conservatory doors and the main house. Not only did her love seem to shine from her eyes, but there was yearning there, too.

Blythe glanced at Dominic quickly, hoping he was still too busy eating to have noticed.

His spoon was halfway to his mouth. Soup was dripping back into the bowl as the spoon tilted, forgotten. He was sitting at just the right angle to line up the direction of Francesca’s gaze at Azarel as he walked into the conservatory.

Blythe reached for Dominic’s wrist, where his other hand was resting on the table and squeezed warningly. She didn’t have to speak. She just had to get his attention, so he would automatically reach into her mind to hear what she was saying.

Just as he would be reaching into Francesca’s right now.

Blythe sighed. It was too late to stop this.

Dominic dropped the spoon back into the bowl of soup with a wet plopping sound. Some of the hot soup landed on the back of his hand. He didn’t seem to notice. “Are you crazy?” he demanded of his sister. “You let yourself fall in love with that…that thing?”

Francesca jumped and looked back her brother. Her expression was neutral and closed once more. Her face flushed a deep red. Fire snapped in her eyes. She said something in rapid, slang-filled Spanish, too fast for Blythe to understand, although she caught enough of it to realize that Francesca was quite rightly telling him to go to hell, except the directions she was giving him were anatomically impossible and painful. Only in Spanish could being told to sit on a prickly pear and twist sound so insulting.

Dominic’s face darkened and his hand closed into a fist, making the soup droplet roll off the back of it. “He’s not even human,” he ground out.

“Neither is Patrick.” Francesca was calm.

“Patrick and Blythe would not ever let me down,” Dominic growled. “Azarel hasn’t even figured out what loyalty means. He’s more interested in the starlets Patrick brings home for him.”

Francesca was eerily calm. She nodded. “That is why you will say nothing to him, brother. No macho demands to know his intentions.”

“I have a right to determine if he can take care of you properly,” Dominic growled.

Blythe tried to catch Francesca’s eye, to warn her not to say what she just knew she would say next. It was exactly what Blythe might have said in the same circumstances. Only, Francesca had closed down just as Dominic had. This was bare knuckle in-fighting of a style only siblings could use against each other.

Francesca looked her brother in the eye with a bravado she never used with anyone else. “You lost any such right when you high-tailed out of Santiago, dear brother. You left me with Jose and you knew what was happening.”

Blythe held her teeth together. Instead, she shouted with her mind. Don’t respond! You’ll regret it if you do!

Dominic heard her. His shoulders squared themselves out. He picked up his spoon as if he was going to start eating again.

Then he shook his head and put the spoon back down. “I had no choice about leaving Chile,” he said flatly.

Blythe sighed.

“We all make choices all the time,” Francesca said, her voice just as even.

Dominic shook his head.

Don’t say it! Blythe sent the plea out toward him.

Dominic put both hands flat on the table and she knew he had chosen to ignore her.

“Stay away from Azarel,” he told Francesca.

“Or what?”

“I won’t do anything to him,” Dominic began. “I—”

“You couldn’t if even you wanted to. You really have no idea about him at all, do you?”

Dominic scowled. “He’s human. That means I could cream him into Sunday if I wanted to.”

Blythe propped her elbow on the table and rubbed her temple.

“You couldn’t touch him,” Francesca said, certainty making her voice firm.

“I won’t have reason to, because you won’t go near him.”

Francesca got to her feet, her thighs ramming against the table and making soup slosh onto the glass top. Her Spanish sounded like a torrent of molten anger. She finished by shoving the steel-framed chair back under the table. The feet scraped across the brickwork with a squeal. “Fuck you, Dominic,” Francesca finished.

Dominic’s hands were tightly fisted. For once, he did not respond. He breathed heavily, staring at the soup-stained tabletop.

Francesca nodded, like his silence was answer enough. She turned and headed back into the house.

Blythe leaned back in her chair. “For heaven’s sake, Dominic!

The look he sent her was full of pain. “She is my little sister. I have a responsibility—”

“You do not,” Blythe shot back. “It’s not your job to choose who she gets to spend her life with, or who she falls in love with. It’s not your job to make decisions for her at all! She’s a grown woman, fully capable of making decisions of her own.”

There was a deep furrow between Dominic’s brows. “You don’t understand—”

“If you’re about to tell me I don’t understand how it works in Chile, then don’t bother. We’re not in Chile. You’re not that guy anymore. Francesca just told you that and you didn’t listen. She’s not the woman she was in Chile, either. She’s creating a new life for herself here.”

“I’m still her brother,” Dominic said.

Blythe sighed at his stubbornness. “You were the one who argued the most that Simone should get to choose whether she dated Kiati or not. How is that any different from Francesca getting to choose?”

Dominic hesitated.

“Simone is blood to you, just as much as Francesca is,” Blythe warned him, “so don’t use that argument. You’re the one who helps the girls with their homework. You’re the one they talk to about problems at school. And you insisted I stay out of Simone’s decision.”

Dominic slumped. He blew out his breath. “Fuck,” he muttered, staring at the table.

Blythe patted his hand. “It’s all that,” she told him. “And it’s their lives. They get to mess them up any way they want.”

* * * * *

Ilaria was sitting on the long window seat that curved around the top of the stairs. From that position, she could look out over the landscaped estate and down through the stairwell to the big room below. It was a great tactical post—it covered many angles at once.

Marcus wasn’t surprised to find her there. Ilaria had a tendency to seek out high elevations with good lines of sight.

She was staring out the window at something in the far distance. The sun was hitting the horizon, just visible beneath low clouds.

Marcus sat down next to her and picked up her hand.

“You can’t sleep?” she asked him.

“I slept a bit. Something on my mind woke me up.” That and the shouting outside, which sounded as if it was coming from the pool, which was all the way on the other side of the house. It wasn’t the shouting that had made him get up and find Ilaria, though.

“I could help you sleep,” she offered. “You won’t be any good for hunting tonight if you don’t.”

“I know. I’ll head back in a minute.” He stroked the back of her hand. “I think I finally figured it out.”

Ilaria didn’t ask him what he was talking about. It was the subject that lived in their minds, never properly going away. Instead, she just looked at him.

Marcus sighed. “I don’t know if I fell in love with you or Rick first. It doesn’t really matter, except that I’ve always felt as though Rick was there because you were. Which was perfect, as far as I was concerned. Then he…went.”

Ilaria’s jaw clenched.

“I found out that Rick is much more than just the bonus prize to me. It cut the legs out from under me and I’ve spent weeks wondering how I’m supposed to live without him.”

Her eyes were glittering and his heart squeezed. He was hurting her. So he hurried on quickly. “Thing is, Ilaria, if I was to lose you, too, then I wouldn’t want to live. You are the only thing keeping me going. I love you and even though there’s this gaping black hole in my life, you balance that out.”

Ilaria pressed her hand against his cheek. Her flesh was cool, her hand tiny, so different from Rick’s long fingers and strong grip. “I wanted to make them pay. All of them. Anyone. I wanted to hurt them, so that you would stop hurting. I thought if I could do that, then maybe I would stop hurting, too. It didn’t work.”

Marcus shook his head. “Only time makes it go away.” He gripped her hand. “I think, when we’re ready, we should stop thinking of ourselves as a threesome with one missing. We should be a couple, instead.”

Ilaria swallowed. “That’s what you want?”

Marcus blinked. His eyes were aching and his throat was tight. “More than anything, that’s what I want. I just don’t know how.”

“Neither do I.” Her gaze was steady. “I would like to try, though.”

Relief speared him. He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand quickly. “I’m so glad to hear you say that.”

Ilaria put her arms around his neck and hoisted herself onto his lap. She pressed her face into his neck.

Marcus held her tightly, feeling as if it was for the first time how small she was and how neatly she fit against him, even though in his mind she was always a towering presence, her inner strength making her a giant.

He would move mountains to keep her in his life. He would kill for her. Die for her, just as Rick had died for him. Marcus would make Rick’s death count. He would make it mean something.

Ilaria nuzzled his neck, the touch of her mouth making his nerves twitch. “I should help you sleep,” she murmured.

“No, don’t move,” he begged.

Ilaria wriggled off his lap and picked up his hand. Her face was grave, while her eyes glowed. “You’ll want to sleep, once I’m done with you.”

Marcus let her pull him along the corridor, back toward their room. His reluctance was pure pretense.

* * * * *

When Nial woke, Winter was stretching out the kinks that came from sleeping on the sofa. It was an uncomfortable place to sleep, although she wasn’t going to leave Nial alone, to come back to consciousness and wonder what had happened. Vampires weren’t used to waking.

Nial sat up abruptly. There was no transition period of sleepy blinking and stirring. One moment he was motionless. Then, he sat up and opened his eyes, looking around for threats, trying to instantaneously orient himself.

Winter sat next to him. “How do you feel?”

Nial swung his feet to the floor. He straightened his back, stretching it. Then he held out his hand. “How do I feel?”

Winter took his hand, her heart soaring. The offer to let her look inside him told her that Nial was himself again. He had not let her touch him for days, to hide the turmoil and uneasiness that had been driving him.

Now she could dip inside and see the peculiar stuffy deadness that was a characteristic of vampire physiology. There was life there of a sort and she was deeply relieved to touch the spark with her senses. She leaned against Nial, weak with gratitude. “You’re you again.”

He held up his hand, examining it. “I feel light. As though there’s nothing inside. I remember that from when I was human.”

Winter’s gaze was drawn to the door as Azarel hurried into the room. She sat up, moving away from Nial. It wasn’t that Nial didn’t like public demonstrations of affection, although he was reserved if anyone was near enough to see. It was Azarel’s expression. He looked perplexed.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

Azarel frowned, the furrow marring his perfect forehead. “Have you seen Francesca? She didn’t come to the pool house this morning as she normally does.”

Winter cast back through the last twelve hours. “I remember seeing her last night. She and Dominic were going for a walk outside. Just on the estate, inside the perimeter,” she added hastily as Nial gave small sound in reaction. “No one felt like hunting last night, so Patrick cancelled it. I fell asleep here around ten.” She didn’t add that the hunt had been cancelled because everyone was upset about Nial’s enforced rest and the reasons for it.

Nial got to his feet. “Have you asked Dominic?” he said to Azarel.

“I was just coming to find him,” Azarel said. He glanced up at the big curve of the stairs. “Ah…”

Winter looked. Both Patrick and Blythe were hurrying down the stairs in almost silent unison. Blythe was human, yet she still could move as silently as vampires. Her face was taut, her mouth a firm, flat line.

Nial faced them. “Dominic isn’t with you?” It was barely a question.

“Did you see him last night?” Patrick demanded of Azarel.

The Serene One shook his head.

“They headed out past the barn,” Winter said.

Everyone looked at her.

“I saw them go,” she added. “Together.”

“What time was that?” Blythe asked.

“Around nine thirty. Dominic looked upset. I didn’t talk to them.”

“He was upset,” Blythe said quietly, her gaze shifting to Patrick. “He wouldn’t leave…his problem alone.”

The shift in phrasing was awkward. Winter wondered what Blythe was not saying.

Azarel turned and headed for the door.

“Where are you going?” Nial demanded.

“To look for them,” Azarel said sharply.

“Wait. I’ll come with you,” Patrick said. He rested his hand on Blythe’s shoulder.

She nodded, as if Patrick had spoken to her. “I’ll take the west side of the property.”

“Take it where?” Roman asked, from behind Winter.

Winter glanced over her shoulder at him. He had his arm around Kate’s waist. The blonde woman looked exhausted and Winter realized that she had worked the night through. Roman must have pulled her away from the editing table just now, for they had come from the front of the house, not down the stairs from where their bedroom suite was located.

“Did you hear anything last night?” Nial asked Kate.

“I was too busy concentrating,” Kate admitted. “Why?”

“Dominic is missing,” Patrick said, his voice even.

“So is Francesca,” Azarel added.

“We were just about to go and look for them,” Winter said.

“Start inside the boundaries,” Nial added. “It’s still barely dawn. The Summanus might still be abroad.”

“I’ll help,” Roman said. “Kate is going to bed, though.”

“I need to prepare breakfast for Lini,” Kate protested.

“Garrett can do that,” Roman told her. “No arguments,” he added.

Her shoulders slumped and she nodded.

Roman looked at Nial. “What do you want me to do?”

Nial frowned, his gaze growing distant as his mind worked, setting out directions and strategies. The consummate leader was back on the job.

Winter sighed silently. The world was not going to leave Nial alone at all. Everyone needed him too much.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

The search for Dominic and Francesca started inside the guarded and patrolled boundaries of Patrick’s huge Beverley Hills property, with almost every adult in the house turning out to help quarter the acres systematically.

It was because there were so many of them raking over the land in tight formation, only a few feet apart, that Francesca’s necklace was found.

Azarel clutched the sea shell in his hand, his knuckles white. His eyes were haunted. “They took her?” he asked Nial, his tone beseeching. He wanted answers.

Nial had no answers to give him. “We’ll figure out what happened.”

Azarel shook his fist. “The closure is wrenched open. They tore it from her neck!”

Winter touched his arm, trying to comfort him. “She might have pulled it from her neck herself. This could be a good thing.”

Through the touch of her fingers against his forearm, Winter received a snapshot of Azarel’s internal misery. He was hurting, far more than he was showing.

He wrenched his arm from her grip. “We have to find her.”

Patrick and Blythe’s faces were just as strained as Azarel’s, yet they said nothing. Blythe looked at Nial. “We have to look farther afield,” she said quietly. “It doesn’t matter whether she left the necklace herself or it was dropped. Either way, it means something has happened to them.”

Nial let out a breath. “Pairs, then. Along the boundary. We’re looking for any sign of Summanus close by.”

Winter pulled out her cellphone. “I’ll tell everyone else.”

The search continued along the outer rim of the boundaries, which meant they were trespassing upon adjoining properties. No one came to protest or demand to know what they were doing.

Seventy five minutes later, Roman texted everyone at once.

Summanus were here. North west corner.

Patrick’s response was bleak.

That’s where the trail into the hills starts.

Winter and Nial hurried to the corner that Roman had indicated. The others had reached him before them and were gathered around the ground, bent over to examine it. They parted as Nial arrived, to give him access, all of them looking at him expectantly.

The silent acknowledgement of his leadership made Winter’s gut tighten. She glanced at Sebastian, who had paired up with Roman. Sebastian didn’t look any happier than she felt.

Nial bent to look at the tracks and markings on the ground. It hadn’t rained recently although the night had been damp enough to moisten the top layer of dirt. The tracks of the big back feet of the Summanus were perfectly clear.

“Three of them at least,” Nial said.

“Five,” Marcus said shortly, bending over to look at the ground a few feet away. “Two stayed back. At least three went over the fence.”

Blythe sighed.

“We have to follow the trail,” Patrick said.

“We will,” Nial assured him. “You and Blythe need to go back to the house, though. You’ve got kids to take care of and they’ll be awake soon.”

Patrick looked as if he wanted to protest.

“Marcus is good at tracking,” Winter pointed out. “So is Nial. We’ll find them.”

Patrick’s shoulders relaxed and he picked up Blythe’s hand. “Very well.” He tugged her away, toward the house.

Blythe leaned into him as they walked and he tucked her up against him.

Winter’s chest ached at the sight.

The next three hours were bleak and fruitless. The Summanus trail petered out at the top of the hill, two miles away. No amount of casting about farther down the hill bore any results, for the tree canopy that carpeted that undeveloped side of the hill had stopped the damp from reaching the soil. The dirt was bare and unrevealing.

Azarel stood with his hands fisted, Francesca’s chain still tangled in his fingers, glaring at the ground and the bushes around them. “If only I was not in this body. I would destroy them all!”

Winter glanced at Nial. Steadily, over the last three hours, he had grown silent. He had withdrawn into himself. Now, he made no response to Azarel’s declaration.

“You can’t destroy them,” Winter told Azarel.

He held up his hands, the fingers spread, the chain stretched between them. “Not like this, I cannot.”

“Even if you were not in the human body you have now, you could not,” Winter told him.

“Why not?” His mouth was white with fury.

“Because they are just being themselves,” Winter said tiredly. No one was stepping in to help her explain it. They were going to let her do it all by herself. Even Nial was silent. “This is what the Summanus do,” she added. “This is their function. You would commit genocide because they were obeying their nature?”

Azarel’s jaw worked. He curled his hands into fists again, the tendons on his wrists straining.

“This is not natural,” Nial said. “They’ve never shown this sort of creativity before.”

“It’s proactive,” Rory said, her tone one of agreement. She looked just as thoughtful as Nial.

“It doesn’t matter what it is!” Azarel cried. “They took Francesca! How are we to get her back?”

“It’s not just Francesca they took,” Winter reminded him.

“Someone has to tell Patrick and Blythe,” Roman said softly.

“I will,” Nial said shortly. His eyes were glittering with the same terrifying focus they had held only yesterday. He turned and strode back toward the house, leaving everyone to follow him as best they could.

Winter had to jog to catch up with him. “Nial.”

He glanced at her. It was a response. That was something.

“Break the news gently, okay?”

“You are accusing me of insensitivity?” Nial demanded. “You, Winter? I thought you knew me better than that.”

“Right now, I don’t know you at all,” she said honestly.

His jaw flexed. He kept his gaze straight ahead. “Clearly, you do not.”

It hurt. But then, he had intended it to.

Winter dropped back, letting him drive her away. Oh, how she yearned for this war to end, in one way or another. She just wanted it over. She wanted Nial and Sebastian back in her life, properly and completely.

* * * * *

Ilaria reached for Marcus’ arm, pulling him aside, out of the way of the others as they moved through the bushes toward the big house.

“I must go,” she said urgently.

“You need to feed?” Marcus asked, his eyes narrowing as he studied her. “You do look strained,” he added.

“I should have left to hunt two hours ago. I didn’t want everyone to have to search without me.”

Marcus cupped her cheek. “I’ll come with you.”

“You?” she said blankly.

“Why not? Rick used to hunt with you.”

“You’ll…you can’t keep up,” she said weakly, her thoughts scrambled by more than the building need to feed, which blanketed the internal keening she always felt when Rick’s name was mentioned.

“Not in a million years could I do that,” Marcus agreed. “I can follow you, though. I’m good at tracking and you’re clumsy right now. You’ll leave a trail a baby could spot. Go on.” He gave her a little push toward the trees.

Despite her hunger and the chaotic thoughts it created, Ilaria’s heart lifted with a simple joy. “I love you.”

“You’ll eat me if you don’t go and hunt now.”

She turned and ran, her hunger giving her speed. So did her happiness.

* * * * *

By the time night fell, far more than the adults in the big house had turned out to search for Dominic and Francesca, which Rory found interesting.

Patrick reached out to Lucas Ford for help, which galvanized every northern hunting unit, while Nial contacted the cross-coordination committee, which stirred up national troop units and local authorities, including the police, who tended to turn into quasi-hunters after nightfall, anyway.

In the months that Rory had been studying the Summanus, she had never once seen them work together the way humans and their allies could. Even Koca had called up Elah reinforcements to help comb the hills and the city fringes, using a perfectly normal cellphone to do it.

If anything could win the war for them, it would be this ability to cooperate and work together. The numbers just weren’t on their side, though.

Rory suppressed the grim statistics. She had spent far too long staring at them, hoping she had made a mistake, so she knew them far too well and their bleakness rubbed her soul raw if she let them.

Instead, she considered the search they were conducting. Dante was on her right, powering through the thick undergrowth in an almost perfect straight line. Sasha was on her left. His path was not quite as straight, yet he was dogged and didn’t fall behind.

The return of the night meant that the Summanus would be abroad. If the Summanus really had taken the pair they were searching for, then that was something she would need to consider. She had not allowed for the possibility that the Summanus would demonstrate a capacity for planning and strategy. Nothing they had done until this day said they were driven by anything other than relentless hunger.

It was another uncomfortable thought that she pushed aside impatiently.

Her preoccupation with strategies and counter moves distracted her, so it was Sasha who first gave out the alarm.

“Ahead! Three meters!”

Far, far too close. Rory pulled out her long knife and pushed through the disguising bushes directly in front of her.

“Rory, no!” Dante cried. She heard his heavy steps as he leapt to help her. Sasha was crashing through the bushes with human clumsiness, too.

The bushes parted, letting her through and Rory lunged into the space beyond them. There were three Summanus there, huddled with their heads together. A conference. It was rare for three of them to be together at all. They hunted solo and sometimes in pairs, yet never in greater numbers. She had settled on the theory that two was the maximum they would allow to move together because more would startle their prey and make them fatter targets.

Now here was three of them, not hunting. Instead, they were talking in their psychic way.

Dante and Sasha arrived at the same moment and they fell upon the trio with hoarse exhalations and grunts of effort, their blades swinging as they jumped up to slice at the vulnerable thorax area. Even Sasha had compromised and now used a knife instead of his gun.

The Summanus fell silently. They were always silent.

That left the three of them standing over the bodies, all of them breathing hard.

“Is there anything else around us?” Dante asked her.

Rory stretched out her hearing, to the finest and furthest point of detection. “There’s nothing moving around here but humans.” The vampires and Elah moved almost silently, yet even the sounds they did let through were distinctively human-style gaits.

Sasha lowered his blade and let out a soft curse in Russian. “Were they the ones that took Dominic and Francesca, or were they just looking for food as usual?”

“They were talking,” Rory said, cleaning her knife off and putting it away.

“Talking,” Dante said flatly, staring at the bodies. He looked up at the two of them. “Have you ever heard of them stopping and talking? Ever?”

Rory shook her head.

Sasha looked down at his feet, a troubled expression in his eyes. “They’re learning. They’re sharing what they learn.”

Dante rested his hand on Sasha’s shoulder. There was a look in his eyes that Rory had never seen before. There was a warmth there. Heat, really.

Sasha looked up at him and the corners of his mouth lifted in a small smile. “That just makes it more interesting.”

Rory almost gasped aloud her shock. Dante loved Sasha. It was plain on his face and in his eyes. Every line of his body spoke of it. He might not know it himself, yet, but it was true. Dante had found someone to love. Finally.

And she didn’t mind.

Rory had always known that one day Dante would move on. It was inevitable and it was only fair. She could not give him what he wanted, so he would naturally look elsewhere for the kind of love he needed. It was a pattern she had seen repeated over and over. Each time it happened, her heart hardened just a little bit more and she grew more determined to never be beholden to another man. Not ever.

Dante was in love and it wasn’t her he loved and she didn’t mind because…because….

She whirled away. It was impossible. She couldn’t love both of them. She wasn’t human anymore and hadn’t been for a long time. The best sex she had ever experienced in her long life wasn’t enough to turn her head the way a simple human woman’s might have been. Two men were twice the trouble one man would be.

Rory strode down the hill, angling across the face of it, aiming in the direction of Patrick’s house. All the hunting tonight was centered on the house and the two missing humans so they were within walking distance.

“Rory!” Sasha called, from behind.

Rory didn’t look back. They were simple humans, she reminded herself. They were beneath her attention. Playthings. That was all. Besides, they would never catch her.

She kept up the superhuman pace until the roof of the big house, with its planes and angles, came into view, looking ghostly in the weak moonlight. She maintained her speed as she strode across the acreage, into the house itself and upstairs to the bedroom that was nominally hers, that in practice no longer could be called hers. Their belongings and possessions were scattered everywhere.

She could smell them and the scent brought back the memory of being held between them, while their mouths and hands wandered and teased…. The memory was so sharp and clear, her body pounded with the sudden pressure of intense longing.

More than annoyed with herself, she yanked the big duffel bag out of the back of the closet and put it on the bed. Still moving faster than she should, she yanked open the two bottom drawers of the bureau and dumped the lingerie and shirts into the duffel bag in tangled bundles.

She told herself she should fold everything. The wrinkles and snarls would make unpacking impossible, later.

Instead, she sat on the bed next to the open duffel bag, her heart working far harder than it needed to. Fear was a runaway train in her mind yet each time she reached out toward the duffel bag, her hand would fall back into her lap.

“Coward!” she railed at herself. “It’s just sex!”

When Dante and Sasha reached the house and she heard their heavy treads on the stairs, the duffel bag was back in the closet and the clothing in the drawers. She let them seduce her, ignoring the intense pleasure just having them in the room with her gave her.

It was just sex. Good sex. That’s all it was.

Chapter Thirty

For three days, no one in the big house seemed to speak. It was as if an artificial layer of suppression lay over all of them.

Azarel locked himself away in the pool house, refusing food and any attempt to communicate with him. When Rory did see him, she was floored by the haggard shell of a man he had become. His face was drawn and his eyes haunted with a peculiar type of guilt that Rory thought she could understand.

Blythe’s twin daughters went to school with red eyes and Blythe looked as though she had aged ten years. Patrick couldn’t change, although Rory didn’t hear his well-trained voice ringing through the public rooms anymore. At night, he drove his hunting teams to work harder, longer and faster.

Even Rory could feel her energy sapping and was forced to feed early to compensate. She stayed silent while others muttered about Patrick’s relentless hounding, because the distraction was just what she needed. Being forced to focus upon the hunt meant she could safely ignore the thoughts plaguing her.

On the third night after Dominic and Francesca disappeared, Francesca staggered up the roadway toward the gate house, sending up an alarm among the guards and the paparazzi, for she was bloodied and exhausted.

The guards escorted her to the house and Winter was called for. Winter locked herself in Francesca’s room for an hour, while everyone gathered silently in the hall to wait. Blythe stood with her hand in Patrick’s. Neither of them spoke. They could barely tear their gaze away from the closed door.

Rory found herself moving toward them, speaking words she had never thought she would utter. “Are your children fed? Can I get them something?”

Blythe stirred. “They’re doing homework. We haven’t told them.”

“Not yet,” Patrick said, his voice strained.

“But thank you,” Blythe finished softly.

Rory nodded and moved back to where she had been standing. Her legs felt clumsy and stiff. Her mind was chaotic. What on earth had possessed her to say such a thing?

Then the door opened, relieving her from the need to analyze her own thoughts. Her mind was a stranger to her, lately. It was better to not think about such things at all.

Winter emerged and closed the door, preventing Azarel from ramming it open. “She’s sleeping,” Winter told him.

“I must—”

“Let her sleep and recover. She will be much better in the morning and you can talk to her then.”

Rory moved toward him, ready to physically force him back if he insisted upon entry.

Azarel dropped his chin. “I cannot stand this ache in me!” He whispered it, yet the corridor was almost completely silent so everyone heard him.

Garrett stirred and moved over to his side. He took his arm. “That ache is what tells you you’re human. Come on. You’ll be able to sleep now and the morning will get here that much faster.”

Azarel let him lead him down the corridor to the stairs. Garrett glanced at Nial as he passed by. Nial nodded.

In the strange way that such things happened, empathy for Azarel had swung around the dial. No one had cared for his excesses and unfeeling sampling of the human experience. Now, almost overnight, they felt sorry for him. Rory wondered if the Summanus had enough intelligence to learn that about humans. They would use it if they did.

Winter beckoned Nial toward the stairs. She wouldn’t speak outside Francesca’s door and risk waking her. So everyone went down to the main room in a long train, the silence holding, still. It was a strained silence, filled with expectation.

Winter lowered herself onto one of the ottomans with tired slowness and sighed, while everyone assembled around her. Some sat. Most stood in tight couples and threes, waiting. Sebastian went into the kitchen.

Rory stood at the back of one of the sofas. Dante and Sasha also took up separate positions around the back of the seating. For the last twenty-four hours, they had left her almost completely alone. Her mood had communicated itself to them.

The knowledge didn’t improve her mood at all.

Nial sat on the edge of the sofa directly in front of Winter, his hands gripped together between his knees and waited.

Winter looked at Blythe and Patrick, though. “I’m sorry. She didn’t see Dominic at all. They held her in the dark. She didn’t hear him, either. She tried calling, although if he was there, he wasn’t able to answer.”

Blythe dropped her head, her shoulders falling. Patrick pulled her into his arms and held her. His face was strained. “It was the Summanus?”

“Yes.” Winter shook her head. “They didn’t talk, of course. There were no demands. They kept her in a dark room with a locked door, until they came and pulled her out. She was blind-folded and carried. Sometime later, she was dumped on concrete. She found herself on the outskirts of Inceville and had to walk here because she had nothing on her, not even ID.”

Sebastian pushed a coffee mug into Winter’s hands and she gripped it tightly.

“There’s something else,” Nial said, studying her.

Rory nodded in agreement. Everything about Winter said she had more to say.

Winter nodded. “They tried to feed her. Raw meat of some kind. Apples, too, which she did eat.”

“They don’t understand cooking,” Roman murmured.

Nial shook his head. “That’s beside the point. They were actively working to keep her alive.”

“The Summanus would not have heard of the Geneva Convention for the treatment of prisoners of war,” Rory said. “Even if they had, it would be meaningless to them.”

Nial glanced at her. “That just leaves leverage.”

Blythe gave a choking sound. Everyone else looked unhappy, too.

“Leverage in exchange for what?” Patrick said.

“Mom! Patrick!” It was Jake’s voice, from beyond the top of the stairs.

Rory could hear his footsteps. He was running.

“I think we might be about to find out,” Nial murmured, turning as everyone else was, to look at the stairs.

Jake rattled down the stairs two at a time, one hand clenching the bannister, the other waving a tablet. His face was peaked, his eyes wide. He was looking only at Patrick and Blythe. Then he noticed everyone else watching him and came to a halt.

“It’s alright,” Blythe told him. “Show us.”

Jake looked down at the tablet and tapped it, then held it up so that everyone could see the video running on it. The sound was soft for the little tablet didn’t have the power to fill the huge room with sound. The images said everything, though.

The dateline indicated the video was only an hour old. At the top of the screen were the giant fan blades of wind turbines, long rows of them. Many of the tall structures were canting to one side, their strength failing.

Leaping up from the base of all of them were bright red flames, intense and ferocious.

“That’s the wind farm next to the California aqueduct,” Patrick said.

“The fire is very red,” Kate said softly.

“Pyrrhus,” Sasha breathed.

Marcus whirled to face Nial. “You made more of it?” His tone was one of horror.

Nial twisted to look at Rory. “Check your supply,” he said shortly. “Now.”

Rory moved before she made the decision to. Her body propelled her toward the kitchen and the yard door beyond it. She was running by the time she reached the conservatory and she could hear heavy footsteps behind her that, from their rhythm and weight, she could tell were Dante’s.

It couldn’t be Pyrrhus. She had checked the stash the night after Dominic and Francesca had been taken. It had been untouched.

When she reached the garden shed laboratory, her heart squeezed. The door stood slightly ajar, showing a black inch of shadow between it and the frame. Rory threw the door open and turned on the light.

The security cabinet in the far corner was still standing, but only just. It was a mangled piece of metal. The Summanus had not bothered trying to open the lock. They had busted the doors off their hinges, tearing open the cabinet like a sardine can. The shelves inside were all empty.

Marcus shouldered his way past her, to stop in the middle of the floor, looking at the cabinet. Then he turned on his heels. “How much?” he demanded.

Rory swallowed. Her throat was remarkably dry. “Thirty five liters.”

Marcus’ face drained of color. He licked his lips and tried to speak. Then he strode out of the lab, hurrying. Just outside, she heard the unmistakable sounds of vomiting and Ilaria’s soft voice, filled with concern.

Nial stepped into the room and studied the wreckage. “No one heard anything.”

“They would have waited until we went hunting. Possibly last night, before they let Francesca go.”

“They let her go because they had what they wanted,” Sasha said from his spot by the door.

“And the guards didn’t notice?” Roman’s tone was withering. He was standing just outside, where the light fell on him.

“They’re used to keeping the paparazzi out.” It was Patrick’s voice, from even farther away. “Even we did not anticipate such a smart move from the Summanus.”

Marcus staggered toward the door and leaned with one hand against the frame. “Thirty-five liters,” he said weakly. “That’s enough to take out half the city. And I invented it.”

Nial shook his head. “This is not your fault, Marcus. I insisted upon having the safeguard. If anyone is to blame for this, it is me. If there is any price to pay for this, my vanity will pay it. I thought I could stay in control of the Pyrrhus. I was wrong.”

Sebastian squeezed his shoulder. “We were all wrong about the Summanus and what they are capable of.”

“We were wrong about one other thing, too.” Nial looked around the lab, then through the door. “Where is Azarel? Someone bring him to me.” His voice was as cold as the depths of the ocean.

* * * * *

While Kimball and Efraim were sent to round up Azarel, who had silently disappeared, Nial ordered everyone back to the main room. “We don’t stand here and discuss this out in the open,” he insisted. “They’ve learned how to understand human speech and no one knows how good their hearing is.”

“How do you know that?” Winter said sharply. “That they can understand us, I mean?”

“Because they made a deal with Azarel,” Nial replied, his tone still chilling, promising a bleak future for Azarel when he was found.

The sky lit up over the top of the hill behind Patrick’s house, the light leaping, playing across everyone where they stood on the grass in front of the garden shed. It was bright enough to make everyone turn to look and it glowed red.

Then the sound reached them, a low rumble that shook the buildings around them.

“Oh my God…” Marcus breathed.

Patrick ran. “We might be able to see it properly from the top of the house!” he cried. He moved fast.

Rory took off after him. Her heart had slipped loose and was beating independently. She couldn’t guess what this second explosion meant, although she had an uneasy feeling that none of them would like the answer.

She matched Patrick’s pace as he climbed the curving stairs, ran the length of the corridor to the back of the house and opened a door onto another stairwell, that climbed upward in two steep flights. He took the stairs three at a time, his long legs pumping.

Rory had to take them two at a time. She pushed herself to a better speed so she wasn’t left behind. She could hear others behind her, trying to keep up.

There was a heavy metal external door at the top of the stairs and Patrick hit it with his shoulder, as his fingers wrenched the lock around. The door slammed open and he pushed out onto the roof, turning to face to the east, where the sky was glowing.

Rory pushed the wavering door back open and stepped out onto a widow’s walk. Patrick was gripping the railing, staring into the night.

She turned to look. The red flames were visible from here, leaping to impossible heights and she pushed her hand against her chest, which was squeezing tighter. “What is it that burns?” she asked Patrick. “I don’t know this city.”

Nial stepped out onto the walk and Dante was right behind him, which was an impressive speed for a human. Dante was breathing hard. Nial wasn’t breathing at all.

Patrick looked at him. “It’s the Colorado River aqueduct.”

Nial turned his chin to look at Rory. “Pyrrhus burns in water?”

“Yes.” Her voice emerged thick and hoarse. “It burns so hot it evaporates the water around it.”

“There was an aqueduct next to the windfarm they just blew up,” Dante said, between breaths.

Others were emerging onto the walk, now, lining the edges and staring at the disaster.

Nial looked at Patrick. “You said it was the California aqueduct, next to the windfarm?”

Patrick nodded.

“They were going for the aqueduct, not the farm,” Dante said.

Nial looked down at the ground. His eyes closed. “They’re going for the water.”

Rory swallowed. “They don’t use water, while humans have to have it. Humans die without it. If they cut off the water supply….”

Patrick shook his head. “They almost have. They’ve just taken out two of the three aqueducts that supply all of the greater Los Angeles area.”

Nial lifted his head sharply. “Where is the last one?” he demanded, his voice sharp.

Patrick pointed, farther north-east. “It starts up there. The L.A. Aqueduct.”

* * * * *

Sebastian found a map of the Los Angeles Aqueduct system and Roman divided it up into chunks and assigned a section to pairs. “No one moves around alone,” he said. “No one should move on foot, either. There is over a hundred miles of aqueduct in the second section and nearly all of it is outside the city. You scan from your vehicles and you go fast.”

Rory took her section from him and Roman glanced at Dante and Sasha. “The humans should be left out of this,” he said quietly.

Rory smiled. “Tell them that.”

Dante and Sasha glared at Roman, daring him to repeat it.

Roman shook his head. “Then stay together, the three of you. If they really are going to destroy the aqueduct, then they’ll be mean to anyone trying to stop them.”

“I don’t think there’s any doubt that’s what they’re doing,” Dante said calmly. “Rory?”

“It’s extremely likely,” she admitted.

Roman shoved the marked map into her arms. “No dawdling,” he said and moved on to the next pair.

“My car is fastest,” Dante said.

“If I drive,” Rory pointed out.

Dante winced. “Just this once,” he conceded.

“I call shotgun,” Sasha said quickly.

“Done,” Rory replied.

“Fuck, now I’m in the back seat?” Dante cried. “I’m the biggest of the three of us!”

“You’ll act as a weight on the back wheels,” Rory told him serenely. “It’ll give me better traction.”

“I’ll get the weapons,” Sasha said.

“I’ll get the ammunition,” Dante said, sounding grumpy.

“I’ll get the ammunition,” Rory told him. “You get the car keys.”

* * * * *

Their section of the aqueduct was close to the Sylmar head of the second section, so with Sasha navigating with his phone, Rory directed the Viper onto the Sierra highway and let it leap forward, the engine growling. She didn’t worry about speed limits or the police. It was two in the morning and no police interceptor would be able to catch them, anyway. Not if she was driving. Her reactions were faster than Dante could ever manage, excellent driver though he was.

Dante complained about the cramped quarters in the back, until the aqueduct came into view. Then he started scanning the ghostly gray length of gigantic pipe, looking for anything that was out of place, or even moving.

“The highway doesn’t parallel the whole aqueduct,” Sasha said quietly, his face lit by the glow of the phone’s screen.

“Not a problem,” Rory said, as the highway curved away from the long pipe. She steered the viper off the shoulder and down onto the rocky ground, heading for the inspection vehicle track that ran along the fence line.

“Yes, it’s a problem!” Dante cried. “This thing only has eight inches of clearance off the ground!” He swore as the car bounced and the chassis scraped over a rock.

Rory concentrated on steering around the biggest stones, hoping they wouldn’t wrench a wheel off, or bend the axle. Then she would be forced to leave the two men behind and run the length of the aqueduct, instead. Even though Dante and Sasha were slower and weaker, she didn’t want to do that.

She didn’t want to be alone.

Her heart had been thudding heavily since she had spotted the open door on the garden shed. Later, she would have to figure out how she would live with her role in this. For now, she would work to fix it.

Once the car reached the rough track next to the chain link fence, the way grew smoother, although the Viper still bounced and wiggled its way over every single little rut. Rory kept her eyes on the way ahead.

“Oh, what I would give for a four wheel drive right now,” Dante said from the back.

“We’d lose speed,” Rory said shortly. “Watch the aqueduct,” she added.

“Why? How fast are we going? The fence is just a blur, I can’t judge,” Dante said.

“You don’t want to know,” Sasha said, his voice toneless.

For long minutes, they stayed silent while the car bucked and shook.

Rory saw something ahead, not yet picked out by the headlights. She turned off the lights and tried to keep one eye on the track in front of the car, while also looking ahead.

“Jesus!” Dante breathed. “I can’t see a fucking thing.”

“Rory can,” Sasha assured him.

“There’s something ahead,” she said. “Up there, where the open water starts.”

The wide, open aqueduct section started a quarter mile ahead. White water rolled, frothed and streamed down the steep hill sections. In the inadequate moonlight, the water seemed to glow.

Where the enclosed pipe section began, there was a small building attached to the side.

“Is that…? Yes, it’s Nial’s Acura,” Sasha said.

Rory spotted the low, dark shadow of the car off to the side of the building. That made the building bigger than she had first thought. It also made the aqueduct larger than she had supposed, although she had not been able to look at it properly since careening off the highway.

“He got here before us?” Dante breathed.

“He got to use highway for most of the time,” Rory pointed out. “I got stuck with a goat track.”

Dante snorted laughter from the back seat. She could hear the strain in his voice.

She eased the Viper to a stop next to the Audi and turned the engine off and opened the door. Sasha thrust her knife and scabbard into her hand and got out, too. Rory flipped the driver’s seat forward so Dante could clamber out. He shoved the rifle toward her and used both elbows to squeeze out.

Rory looked around. Now they were stopped, she could hear a low hum from the building. It was a deeper rumble beneath the endless swish and hurry of running water. There was a sign riveted to the door of the low building that had “L.A.D.W.P” at the top and lots of warnings about electricity and other dangers beneath.

Dante cocked the Glock and put it back in the holster under his arm, then loosened the knife on his belt, while Sasha checked his load.

“They’re inside,” Dante said, looking around.

“Let’s look around, first,” Rory said. Instinct told her to be cautious, to quarter the area first. There was something about this she didn’t like, that was making her more uneasy than just the idea that the health of millions of Angelinos depended on what happened in the next few minutes.

“You’re the boss, boss,” Dante said easily.

Cautiously, she approached the building, the scabbard in her left hand, which would let her draw it quickly. The small hairs on the back of her neck, which had laid inert for centuries, were trying to stand up and were prickling painfully.

The door with the warnings signs on it was in the middle of the short side. She passed it and eased up to the other corner of the building. Then she peeked around the edge.

Nothing. The ground was empty of everything except stones. She stepped around, moving slowly, every muscle and sinew braced to let her jump back if she needed to.

Still nothing.

She walked down the length of the long side, which lay in shadows, for the moon was shining from the southwest and was almost set for the night. She stepped slowly and noticed the low rumble was increasing the closer to the end she drew. If this was a pumping station, or a measuring station, or some sort of monitoring point, there would be all sorts of equipment inside, all of it requiring power to run. Either the power lines were buried or the building had its own generator, which might explain the muted roar.

There was a small square inset in the wall, at about head-height. As Rory drew near, her hair was pulled forward by a sucking wind.

She stepped back, startled, looking at the square, then moved closer again. The same thing happened and she looked at it, considering.

“What is it?” Sasha asked her, speaking in a near-whisper. “I can’t see shit in this light.”

“A vent of some sort. It’s taking air in, though.”

“Climate control?” Dante suggested.

“That sounds reasonable,” Sasha said. “Heaven knows, the heat in this city in mid-summer is god-awful. It would be even worse inside a sealed room with all that equipment running.”

“Sealed,” Rory breathed. “Air in, only.” She swallowed, her fear leaping. She still couldn’t fully understand why she felt fearful, which made it worse. Hurrying now, she moved back around to where the door was set and tested the handle. It opened without resistance. She stepped back and let the door swing open on its own.

Inside was a black shadow. Even she couldn’t adjust her vision fast enough to compensate.

“Rory.” Sebastian’s voice. “Get in and shut the door.”

She beckoned Sasha and Dante inside and stepped in and shut the door behind them. Then she blinked until she could see properly. “There are no lights?” she asked.

“The fire took them out,” Winter said. She stood with her hand laid flat against another door, only twelve feet beyond the outer door, with her head down while she “listened” in her special way.

“I didn’t know you could see inside inanimate objects,” Sasha told her.

“I can’t. I’m feeling for heat. The fire is on the other side of the door.”

“So is the rest of the Pyrrhus,” Sebastian said. He sounded unhappy.

“We got here just as the fire broke out,” Nial said. “There were raw wires everywhere inside. They shorted the power to start the fire.”

“The fire will set off the Pyrrhus,” Rory said.

“Not if the fire goes out first,” Winter said. “It’s a sealed room. As soon as the oxygen burns up, the fire will extinguish.”

“Shit,” Dante breathed as Rory drew in a sharp breath. Now she understood what her fear and her prickling intuition had been trying to tell her.

“What?” Sebastian said.

“There’s a vent,” Rory said. “On the other side of the building. It’s pulling in air. Pulling in oxygen. The fire will burn until the Pyrrhus ignites.”

The silence was loud with unspoken thoughts.

Nial’s eyes narrowed. “We have to shut that vent.”

“You can’t go in there,” Sebastian said quickly. “There’s Pyrrhus all over the floor! You won’t get to the end before you drop into it.”

“I’m a vampire,” Nial said coldly. “I heal instantly.”

“You can’t go in,” Winter told him. “You’re needed out here. But I can go.”

Rory could find nothing to say. Her horror was almost total.

“No!” Sebastian cried, rounding on Winter.

“I can heal, too, Bastian,” Winter told him. She had a hand on the heavy sliding mechanism now. “I can get to the vent and shut it down. Then the fire goes out and everyone is safe.” She pushed down on the slider, working it open.

Sebastian lunged for her. Nial leapt toward her, too. Neither of them properly reached her. As soon as their hands made contact with her arm, their bodies were thrown violently away.

“Sorry,” Winter told them gently as they sprawled against the wall. She looked at Rory. Her eyes were very large. “Don’t let anyone open this door once I’m inside. If it opens again it will let in oxygen and this won’t work. The door must stay sealed.”

Rory nodded, even though the acknowledgement was the hardest thing she had ever done.

“You can’t let her go in there,” Dante breathed in her ear. “She’ll die.”

Rory shook her head. She had already computed the odds of success, almost as soon as Winter had said she was the only one who could survive in there. “Maybe not,” Rory told Dante. “She’s the only one who can try. If no one tries, we all die and so does most of the city.”

Winter nodded at her.

Rory gave her a small, stiff smile.

Winter took a breath, a big one that lifted her shoulders. Then she pushed the door open.

Roaring, crackling fire sounded. Black, thick smoke billowed out, making the air acrid. Rory’s eyes stung and she blinked, even though she had no tears to clear them with.

When she could see again, the door was closed.

Sasha opened the outer door, swinging it like a giant fan, sucking out the greasy smoke.

Nial recovered from Winter’s defensive attack first. He scrambled to his feet and lunged for the door once more. Rory barely got there first. Her hands smacked against his chest and she shoved as hard as she could. It just barely held him back.

“She’ll die,” Nial said, his voice low. Hoarse.

“Maybe,” Rory replied as evenly as she could. She felt sick, yet there was still one small window of hope. “If you open this door, she’ll die for no reason. She can save everyone, Nial. Give her the chance to try.”

Dante’s arms came around Nial’s body, holding him in a bear hug from behind. Nial struggled, although Dante was incredibly strong for a human and held on.

Sebastian slid past the struggling pair, trying to get to the door. Rory tackled him full-back style. Her shoulder rammed into his middle and took him off his feet. He landed hard and she pinned him down with her knees as he lay dazed.

Sasha was helping Dante now and both of them were holding Nial down as he struggled like a beached fish. Until suddenly, with a choked sob, Nial grew still. He rolled his head to one side to look at Sebastian.

“You’ve killed both of them,” he whispered and closed his eyes.

Chapter Thirty-One

Nial didn’t speak after that. He didn’t move. He wasn’t unconscious, yet he wasn’t properly conscious, either.

Rory asked Dante and Sasha to walk him out to the Acura and put him in the back seat. She carried Sebastian out and propped him next to Nial.

Then she braced herself for the work ahead. “Call Garret and Roman,” she told Sasha. “Patrick, too. They will keep their heads and we’re going to need help with this.” She didn’t consider asking Marcus or Ilaria. They had suffered enough and this would tax everyone’s nerves.

Sasha wiped his eyes with the back of his hand, smearing soot over his cheeks. He pulled out his phone.

Dante had his back to the room. His shoulders were shaking.

Rory rested her hand against the back of his shoulder and he stiffened. “Don’t ask me to go in there,” he said, his voice muffled. “I’d follow you to the ends of the earth, but this…I can’t do it. I can’t face what we just did to her.”

“Winter knew what she was doing,” Rory said, as calmly as she could. “She played the only end game that could give us a win.”

“It’s not a game when people die,” he said woodenly. He glanced at her over his shoulder. His cheeks were as damp as Sasha’s.

For a moment, Rory envied them the surcease of tears. She had cried enough, though, when she was human. It made up for all the times she had not had the luxury of tears.

“Dante, I need you,” she said gently. “You and Sasha, both. Nial is not functioning properly. The others will be lost without him. We have to think for everyone for a while.”

“What can we do?” Sasha asked. He had come over to her side and he put the phone away. The soot on his cheeks had clear tracks where his tears had washed it away. He sounded very tired.

“There’s a nylon tarp in the trunk of the Viper. I will use it to wrap up…for Winter.”

Dante straightened and turned to face them. He sniffed hard. “I’ll get it.”

She nodded. “Thank you. I’m going carry the remaining Pyrrhus out to this room. When the others get here, they will need to distribute the bottles among all the cars. All except the Viper.”

“Why not the Viper?” Sasha asked.

“It’s too low to the ground,” Dante said. “Bumps,” he added.

Sasha’s lips parted. “Right,” he said uneasily. “I wish we’d never made the stuff,” he added, his voice low.

“It is what it is,” Rory told him. “Something may yet come out of this.”

“What good could possibly emerge from this?” Dante asked, his tone bleak.

“I’m not sure yet,” Rory replied. “I just know I won’t let Winter’s death be meaningless. Not if I can help it.” She heard the sound of distant engines. “There’s the first of them, coming now. Go and get the tarp.”

She pushed open the door to the inner engine room. This time she felt no reluctance. She had spoken truly, without fully realizing until she had said it that she really would not let Winter’s death go to waste. Winter could not have survived the smoke and the corrosion of the Pyrrhus, although she had known that before she went into the room. Rory felt a fierce pride for the woman’s heroism. She would make it mean something. She would ram Winter’s death down the gullets of every Summanus out there if she had to. They would pay for this.

So it was easy to push the door wide and chock it open with the brick sitting just inside the door. Black smoke belched out at the motion of the door, but there was no more crackling of fire. The smoke had simply had nowhere to go until Rory opened the door. She let it dissipate.

Dante thrust the tarp at her and she took it and stepped inside, picking out her footing carefully, glad of the rubber soled boots she was wearing. They weren’t proof against the Pyrrhus pooled on the floor, although the soles were thick enough that they wouldn’t be eaten away before she was done. She could strip them off once she was out of the room.

So she picked places where the Pyrrhus was thinnest and moved into the room. The deeper pools were where the floor was already being eaten through, forming craters. Soon the whole building would be destabilized and would collapse, but not before they removed the danger of Pyrrhus in portions large enough to generate a massive explosion.

Movement from the corner of her eye made her look around. Both Dante and Sasha were carefully following in her footsteps.

“I thought you couldn’t come in here?” she asked softly.

“You need help. You can’t do it by yourself,” Sasha replied.

“I want to help get her home,” Dante added.

Rory’s heart swelled. “Together then,” she said.

* * * * *

The grim work was finished swiftly, once Roman, Garrett and Patrick arrived. They took the news heavily, yet understood the need to stay calm and hold it together. The Pyrrhus was moved out of the building, into the waiting cars.

Then Rory refused all help to deal with Winter. She lay her body on the tarp and folded it over her with gentle care.

Then she lifted her fingers to her damp cheeks and wiped away the pink moisture and looked at her damp fingertips. So. There were still tears inside her, after all.

“This doesn’t end here,” she told Winter. “I’ll win this for you and for Nial and Sebastian. For all of us.”

Then she carried her out.

* * * * *

“Now what?” Dante asked, his voice low in deference to the silence of the house and Nial’s still figure. Nial was standing, looking out the window. Rory doubted he was seeing anything. He hadn’t moved from the window in over four hours.

Sebastian was in bed. He hadn’t emerged since Dante and Sasha had put him there, when they had returned from Sylmar.

As Rory had predicted, with Nial unable to function, everyone was looking for leadership. For decisions. She had to step in for a while.

“You said you had something in mind,” Sasha said.

“I do,” Rory said. “I just can’t do it by myself. I need specific help and it doesn’t seem fair to ask any more of anyone, tonight. I was going to wait.”

“This is a war. Waiting is a luxury for times of peace,” Nial said from the window. He still didn’t move.

Rory drew in a breath, riding out her shock. “Are you sure, Nial?”

He turned to look at her. The expression in his eyes was bleak. “Will your plan win the war?”

“It might.”

“Odds?”

“About even.” She winced.

“That’s better than the odds you gave humans three weeks ago,” he pointed out. “What changed?”

“Winter sacrificed herself.”

Nial froze.

“I won’t waste what she did,” Rory added softly. “If her death can bring about victory, I think she would be happy with that.”

Nial breathed in. He let it out. “She would,” he said slowly. He moved toward the seating area, walking with a stiff gait, as though his muscles had seized up. His face was drawn. Looking at it, Rory had no trouble accepting that he was over fifteen hundred years old. It showed.

“Call everyone together,” Nial said heavily. “Then make your play.”

Chapter Thirty-Two

Burbank Peak, Santa Monica Mountains.

The flat bowl in the Centre of the foothills was almost completely filled with people. Rory took in the numbers and felt a touch of awe. She had merely asked Roman how one went about calling the Serene Ones. He had said nothing of gathering hundreds together to do it.

Rather, he had been brusque and pessimistic. “Azarel has pointed out over and over that it was humans and vampires who opened the Blood Stone in the first place, so all this trouble with the Summanus is our own fault and we have to live with it. He’s right, too. Stamping your foot and whining about it being unfair won’t move them.”

“Oh, I have something better than whining in mind,” Rory told him.

Roman shrugged. “It’s your funeral. They don’t like having their time wasted and tend to demonstrate that preference physically.” He had gone away to arrange her call.

The entire household, including the children and all the guards except for a skeleton crew left to protect the house, had travelled in a phalanx of cars up to the natural arena in the Santa Monica mountains, barely two hours after Rory had spoken to Roman.

There had already been people waiting. Those who lived closer by had arrived first, in response to frantic text messages sent out over the hunter networks and were sitting, lying and pacing, waiting for their arrival. More came after them, filing into the bowl like moving shadows. The moon set while they were waiting for the last of them. Conversations, most of them low and sleepy, filled the cool late night air.

Rory could feel the sun approaching the horizon, her oldest instincts speaking silently. She glanced at Roman. He nodded and went back to where Nial and Sebastian stood together, their shoulders touching. Neither of them was speaking. Shock still gripped them.

Roman touched Nial’s shoulder.

Nial stepped into the clear space in the middle of the arena and looked upward. “Serene Ones!” His voice was strained. He paused and cleared his throat. “Serene Ones! Hear us! We demand to speak to you. An injustice has been done that demands correcting!”

The arena fell silent as he spoke. Everyone turned to face him. Rory saw Kate shift Lini in her arms, resettling her head. The child was deeply asleep. Blythe’s three teenagers were standing in front of Blythe and Patrick. Efraim and Kimball were farther away, disassociated from Nial’s people. They were still feeling their guilt and shame. Everyone was here, though.

The one face she had not spotted among the crowd was Azarel, which supported her theory.

“Call again,” she told Nial in an undertone. “If we keep knocking, they will have to answer just to rid themselves of us.”

“Serene Ones! Hear us! Speak to us!” Nial called. “We demand justice!”

“Justice is an artificial construct designed to placate the aggrieved.” The voice was feminine and beautifully modulated. “As you say yourselves, life is not fair.”

Rory turned to look in the direction of the voice. There was a woman standing within the cleared space. Rory should have seen her arrive, because she had been looking directly at the clearing. Yet she had to turn her head to locate her. Serene One tricks?

The brunette woman looked perfectly human, while her skin held a glow and a perfection that said she was not human. So did the way her feet didn’t quite touch the ground. She looked at Nial enquiringly.

Nial inclined his head in a shortened bow. “Thank you for speaking with us.”

“You humans, with your demands and your concepts, have provided us amusement, lately. We will listen.”

Nial lifted his hand up toward Rory. “One among us would speak on behalf of all of us. This is Rory Rafferty.”

The woman looked at her. “Rory Rafferty is known to us.”

Rory shivered. Would her past be held against her now? Yet there was no point in hesitating or second guessing. They were committed now. “If you know who I am, then you know what I am good at. My expertise.”

“Your skill with games and chance is understood. Your work with particles is adequate. Go on.”

Rory blinked. She had called the leading edge of quantum physics merely adequate. How much did they know about the universe that humans did not? Perhaps a lot more. Arthur C. Clarke had once said that any sufficiently advanced civilization would appear magical to primitives. Perhaps humans were the primitives here.

Rory marshalled her arguments, ignoring the doubt gnawing at her middle. “Nearly a year ago, you sent one of you among us, to learn what it is to be human not merely by observation, but by experience.”

The Serene One inclined her head. “The representative you called Azarel is not among you.”

“Because he’s hiding from us,” Roman growled.

“We can amend that,” the woman said.

This time, Rory saw the materialization. Perhaps because Azarel was inside a human body, his appearance was clumsy and slow. He was unshaved, his eyes red and bleary. His hair was tangled and his shirt rumpled. He was barefoot.

When he saw where he was, he sank to his knees and hung his head.

The Serene One studied him curiously. “This one has failed to report his activities to us for some time. I can see there might be a reason for that.”

Rory moved so that she was standing in the clear space. It was getting crowded now, with five of them there. Her movement drew the Serene One’s gaze, as Rory had intended.

“Azarel was supposed to learn about being human so that your kind would understand the impact of the breaking of the Blood Stone, to better decide what to do about the Summanus and the Elah.”

“The Ĉiela were also within the void,” the Serene One pointed out.

Void. Rory wondered if the Blood Stone had merely been a portal to another dimension and that was where the three races had been shoved when they had been removed from the world.

“The Ĉiela are all but gone from this world, now,” Rory replied. “You have seen their demise just as we have. The Elah are allies. They have learned the lesson you are trying to understand. They are willing to work with humans, instead of fighting them for limited resources. Their enfolding into human affairs has enhanced both species.”

“Rory Rafferty speaks truly on this,” Koca added, from just behind Nial.

“That just leaves the Summanus,” Rory finished. “Which is why we are here.”

“We cannot adjust the course of human affairs,” the Serene One replied.

“Except that you have already interfered with human affairs, to our detriment,” Rory shot back.

The woman blinked. “That is not possible.”

“No? Then you need to speak with Azarel. With any of us.” Rory threw her hand out, pointing at the bent man on the ground. “He bargained with the Summanus. He traded a most deadly weapon in exchange for someone dear to him.”

The Serene One looked doubtful. Rory wondered how long it had been since the Serene Ones had been anything other than completely sure of themselves.

“You speak of love,” the woman said slowly, looking at Azarel. “Is this true? You love a human?”

Azarel put his face in his hands. “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “I wanted her back.”

The Serene One hesitated. Then her shoulders shifted in the slightest of shrugs. “Such is the course of affairs in war. This is a war of your own design. We still see no reason to interfere.”

“Except that Azarel cheated!” Rory cried.

Roman drew in a sharp breath. Even Nial lifted his head to stare at Rory with an expression that might have been horror. She could almost hear his thoughts.

This is your play?

This was her play. From everything she had heard about the Serene Ones and their ways, she judged that this would work. It had to work. It was the only way humans, Elah and vampires would survive.

Her heart thudded unevenly as Rory waited for the Serene One to respond.

The woman’s eyes narrowed. “We understand that what Azarel has done is considered unfair by humans. He betrayed most of you to preserve just one of you, when the preferred action is to work for the greater good. Yet, these things happen in your wars. Look to your world history. Look to your own history, Rory Rafferty. Life has not been fair to you, either. You have never complained about that until now.”

“I am not complaining about injustice and unfairness, Serene One,” Rory said calmly. “Indeed, I can understand why Azarel has acted the way he did, even if I cannot condone what he has done. That is not my point.”

The Serene One tilted her head. “Make your point.”

Rory inclined her head. “As quickly as I can. Everything that has happened in this war against the Summanus has happened because one of the most ancient ones you left upon the Earth to guard humans did not guard them at all. He unleashed the Blood Stone. That could be considered a breaking of rules, only you chose to call it hubris, punished the individual and let events continue to play out as they will. Very well. Humans accepted that decision and tried to deal with the consequences of the opening of the Blood Stone as well as they could. They have accepted vampires among them and are now learning to embrace Elah, too.” She pointed to Kate and Lini and to Koca.

The woman didn’t look away from Rory.

Rory understood that she could not stretch the Serene One’s patience much longer. “Azarel has spent a year learning about humans. Being human, to the full depth and richness that implies. He has even learned to love a human. He could have been the perfect medium to enhance your own understanding, except that he chose to change the course of natural affairs to suit him and him alone.”

“By bargaining with the Summanus?” the woman asked, demonstrating that she was following Rory’s chain of reasoning.

“Yes.”

“Yet you have already acknowledged that this is a natural outcome, one that must be borne.”

“Only it was not natural in the slightest,” Rory insisted. “The Summanus do not speak language as humans, Elah or vampires understand it. Not even a type of language that we might learn to use to communicate with them. They share thoughts, directly and collectively. There was only one human who might have eventually learned how to speak to the Summanus. He was lost to us as a direct result of Azarel’s interference.”

“We are aware of Dominic Castellano,” the Serene One said.

Rory shook her head. The Serene One still hadn’t understood. “Let me put it this way,” she said quickly. “In order to speak to the Summanus in any way at all, Azarel had to put aside his human stature and use the abilities of a Serene One. As soon as he did that, he moved himself outside the natural order of affairs. Everything that has happened since then is a direct result of his interference as a Serene One. The deaths, the explosions and the very near loss of a whole city. People died to save this city who would not have died if events had been allowed to proceed naturally.”

Sebastian sighed. It was a heavy sound, full of grief.

Everyone standing around them stirred. There were whispers. Shuffled feet. Rory’s argument had resonated with them.

Azarel kept his head down.

The Serene One looked at him again. “Is this true, Azarel? You…cheated?”

Rory fought not to show any of the hope that had welled up inside her. The Serene One had separated herself from Azarel by using his individual name. She had spoken of cheating. She had listened and understood the implications.

Azarel lifted his head. “I wanted Francesca back.”

The Serene One’s face worked. Rory saw horror there. Disgust.

“Don’t hurt him! Don’t!” Francesca struggled to move through the crowd, pushing and shoving her way into the clearing. She stumbled and threw out her hands, but not to save herself. She was protecting Azarel. Francesca put herself between him and the Serene One and spread her arms. “Leave him alone.”

“Francesca, no.” Azarel got hastily to his feet. “They don’t care about you. They’ll kill you to reach me.”

The woman tilted her head again, studying Francesca. “She knows that,” she said slowly. Wonderingly.

Francesca backed up, until she bumped up against Azarel. She lifted her chin, returning the stare.

The woman looked at Rory. “Events have happened that should not have happened. They would not have happened if we had stayed removed and let life take its course.”

“That was my point,” Rory replied. “When you created the Blood Stone, ten thousand years ago, you gave humans a chance to thrive. You have seen for yourself the results of that opportunity. Humans indulge in petty wars, it is true. Yet they are capable of great achievements and great love.”

“Yes,” the woman said, her voice mellow with agreement.

“Now, humans face extinction. The Summanus will win, because their numbers are so great. All that humans have achieved will vanish.”

The Serene One looked at Azarel. His arm was around Francesca, protecting her. “You are lost to us,” she said shortly. “You have broken the primary principals of the Serene Ones.”

Azarel inclined his head. “As those principals make no allowance for love, I find the loss of no great burden to me.”

“You will become completely the human you have learned to be. You may live to regret that.” The woman looked back at Rory. “Let it not be said that we are incapable of learning, even from lesser creatures such as yourselves. To demonstrate that learning, we offer something we have never offered before.”

“And that would be?” Rory asked.

“An apology.”

As everyone in the arena stirred in reaction, the woman smiled. “We would prefer humans continue to provide novelty and change. We will remove the stains of our mismanagement and ourselves, too. You will not reach us again. To allow that would be to invite another error and that cannot be tolerated.”

She inclined her head as her flesh, then her whole body, glowed and shone. The brilliance increased until Rory had to throw up her arm to protect her eyes.

Then the light disappeared.

Rory blinked, trying to regain her sight as quickly as possible.

“Dominic!” Francesca cried.

Suddenly the arena was filled with cries and shouts and babbling laughter and joy.

Rory lowered her arm.

Dominic was squashed between Patrick and Blythe and their three children, who were all trying to touch him, while Francesca stood watching, with tears in her eyes.

Rory sucked in her breath and turned to where Nial had been standing. Winter was there, her face hidden against his shoulder, while Sebastian tried to pull her out of Nial’s arms and into his own. Then he gave up and hugged both of them.

All over the arena, people were holding returned loved ones.

Rory turned to find Marcus and Ilaria, holding her breath.

There was as tall, dark-haired man with them now. Ilaria had jumped into his arms and had her legs wrapped around his middle as she peppered him with kisses, while Marcus waited his turn, his hand on Rick’s arm, his eyes glittering with tears.

Dante slid his arm through Rory’s. “You did it,” he murmured. He was smiling.

Sasha turned to look at them. “This will be happening everywhere, yes? All over the world?”

“Yes, I think so,” Rory replied. “They said they were going to remove the stain of their mismanagement. I think that means they’ve reverted everything to the way it was before the Blood Stone was opened.”

“Except the Elah are still here,” Sasha said, pointing to where Koca stood talking quietly to Kate, Garrett and Roman.

“The Serene Ones are more human than they think,” Rory said slowly.

“How so?” Dante asked.

“They kept all the interesting bits and got rid of the rest.”

“Nial! Nathanial!” The cry went up from the edge of the arena, picked up by a dozen voices.

A path cleared for them and Nial kept Winter under his arm as he walked the path. Rory followed, Dante and Sasha keeping pace with her.

At the very edge of the natural arena, there was a shelf of rock carved into the hillside. Sitting on the shelf was a large, oblong stone, with very square and even sides, so perfectly formed that it looked as though the stone had been manufactured, not carved from rock.

The top of the stone was covered in carved writing that Rory didn’t recognize. The stone itself was smoking. Heat baked her middle when she drew near, so she stepped back away from it, her heart squeezing again.

“Another Blood Stone,” Winter whispered. Everyone heard her, though, because the arena had fallen unnaturally silent.

“With just the Summanus in it,” Kate said. “Perhaps it should have been that way all along.” She hugged the child in her arms.

Nial reached out and held his hand over the stone. “This time, we won’t repeat mistakes, either. This time, we get to be smarter.”

Chapter Thirty-Three

An armada of ships escorted the nearly empty container ship, renamed the WS Victory in honor of the role it was playing, on the journey from California to the western edge of the North Pacific Ocean. It carried only one piece of cargo.

Once the world had celebrated victory, more sober consideration for the future had set in. Following the suggestions of Nial and other senior vampires, the new Blood Stone was encased in three foot thick reinforced concrete and the concrete wrapped with titanium. The titanium was sealed against corrosion with a thick layer of porcelain. Baked into the porcelain were warnings against breaking the stone, written in nearly every language of man, including mathematics.

The heavy container was then hoisted onto the cargo ship, which set sail for the Marianas Trench, accompanied by twenty nine cruise ships and freighters, carrying spectators, world authorities, journalists and film crews and anyone who could beg a berth.

Nial and those he included in his extended family had been given berths upon the Victory itself. When the Victory arrived over the deepest part of the world’s oceans and the accompanying ships hovered nearby, everyone gathered on the long empty deck of the Victory, to watch as the Blood Stone was winched up into the air. The crane swiveled to bring it over the side of the ship.

As had been agreed, no words were spoken. No speeches were made. Politics had been put aside and for this one moment, the world watched with a single uniting hope in their hearts that the Summanus would never again terrorize humans.

The Blood Stone was lowered until it was almost completely immersed beneath the waves. Then the crane let go and it sank out of sight.

Rory bent over the railing, trying to trace the white shape as it dropped deeper and deeper.

“The trench is nearly seven miles deep here, did you know?” Dante asked, leaning against the railing so his arm brushed hers.

“And the pressure is a thousand times more than it is here at the surface. I don’t think anyone in even my lifetime will figure out a way to get the Stone back.”

“You’ve been doing your homework.”

“Geek, remember?” she said lightly.

They fell silent, contemplating the choppy water. The waves were huge, yet the crew of the Victory had seemed to think it was a calm day. The stone could no longer been seen. It was just water.

“Well, it’s done,” Dante said quietly.

Rory nodded. She was suddenly afraid to move. To look at Dante. To even blink.

Dante turned and put his back against the railing and crossed his arms. She didn’t have to see to know he was looking at her. Her heart shifted. The ache that had sat in the middle of her chest for the last two weeks turned molten and swelled, making everything hurt.

“Figure he’s watching this?” Dante said softly.

Rory closed her eyes. Dante didn’t even need to say Sasha’s name. He knew they were both thinking of him.

“Of course he’s watching.” She fought to keep her voice normal. Neutral. “Everyone is.”

“Rory…”

She stood up with a jerk. “Don’t,” she begged.

Dante’s eyes were steady. The dark irises hid everything from her. “You’ve put off talking about it for weeks,” he said patiently.

“Rory! Dante!” Winter hurried over to them, smiling. “Isn’t this such a great day?” She hugged both of them without asking, squeezing hard. “There’s a party in the mess hall. Everyone is invited.”

“We’ll be there,” Rory told her. “In just a minute.”

Winter’s smile slipped a little as her gaze moved between them. “Well…when you’re ready.” She smiled and headed for the door that lead into the human sections of the ship, her red hair bright and burnished in the sunlight.

“We should go,” Rory said.

Dante caught her arm. She looked down at his fingers and he let it go.

“You can’t keep running away from this,” he said quietly.

“I’m not. I just…” She pressed her lips together. “I haven’t had time to think, Dante. To adjust.”

“Adjust to what? I’ve always been here for you. Always.”

Rory shook her head. “You know what I mean.”

“The only thing that has changed is the sex and you like sex. So that’s not it.” His eyes weren’t hiding anything now. “I’ve always loved you. That hasn’t changed. That just leaves you.”

Rory shook her head. “I miss Sasha. Okay?”

“I miss him too. Only, we’re not joined at the hip. Just because Sasha went back home, it doesn’t mean you can’t have me.”

“Maybe I don’t want you without him.”

Dante flinched. “You’re doing it again. You’re trying to drive me away.” He stood up and dropped his arms. “Sometimes I wish I could time travel. I would go back to that fucking duke you married and wring his neck the year before his balls descended. Twelve hundred years and you’re still afraid to take what you want.”

“He was a prince,” Rory said.

“Whatever.”

“I’m not afraid to take what I want. What scares me is what I have to give up if I do.”

“You should be terrified about what you’ll lose if you don’t.” His voice was low, harsh with control. He stepped around her and strode away.

Rory watched him go, her heart doing unhappy little flips and squeezes. She felt sick. It was impossible for her to actually be nauseous, yet she felt as though she could vomit with only a little more pressure.

She whirled and clutched the railing, letting the stiff wind that never seemed to cease bathe her face.

“Hey, Rory.”

Rory made her face shift back to pleasant neutrality and looked over her shoulder.

Kate was standing a few paces away. Farther behind her, Garret and Roman were waiting. Lini was holding Garrett’s hand.

“Kate,” Rory acknowledged stiffly.

“Are you coming to the party?”

“In a while.”

Kate leaned on the rail next to her. “I was surprised when Sasha went back to Russia.”

Rory sighed. “Kate, really, I know you mean well, but right now is probably the worst time to talk about this.”

“There never is a good time, for you.” Kate gave her a small smile. “You’ll push happiness away with both hands and all your strength because you’re afraid of it.”

“I didn’t push Sasha away.”

“He didn’t have reason to stay. You could have changed his mind and you know that. You just chose not to.”

Rory kept her eyes on the waves and the sunlight glittering on them.

“Dante and Sasha are perfect for you,” Kate said lightly. Gently. “Dante is all deep emotions and Sasha is fire and passion. You’re the thinker. Science is your religion. You all balance each other.”

Rory didn’t want to listen. She didn’t want to talk. Doing either would open up the can of worms. It would force her to figure this out. Yet Kate was making sense. “All three of us balance, while just two shifts the balance and makes it unworkable.”

“Something like that,” Kate said. “I was thinking that you and I are the same. We’re rowing our own boat in industries that don’t appreciate women rowing at all. They’d rather we sit at the stern and look pretty.”

Rory looked at her, startled. “So how do you justify being at the beck and call of two men? Garret and Roman are both strong. They’re leaders. Fighters. They’re old, too. They were human when women were chattel, when men were the only ones with any freedom.”

“That’s why they won’t ever fall into the mistake of thinking of me as theirs.” Kate grinned. “I won’t let them.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Because you’re too afraid to let yourself understand,” Kate said. She looked over her shoulder to where Roman and Garrett were talking together, apparently content to wait until she was ready to go. Kate’s smile warmed. “Commitment is a positive decision, Rory. It’s not selling out. The right men enhance your life. They don’t contain it.”

“I can’t make that demand of them. Love me, but let me live my life?” Rory shook her head. “They would never consider it.”

“Weak men would be threatened by such a demand. Dante and Sasha are not weak.” Kate smiled. “Don’t tell Dante, but I was one of his biggest fans when he was still playing. When he moved to the 49ers, I gave up on the Rams and traded over, too.”

Rory couldn’t help her smile. “He loves your movies.”

“Come to the party, Rory. Come and celebrate.”

“I will,” Rory promised, as Kate went back to the men she loved.

* * * * *

“The problem with these ‘istoric buildings is in the valuation, you see,” the little gray insurance man explained to Rick. “It’s a bit dodgy trying to pin down ‘istoric value because even the experts can’t agree.” He pushed at charred timber with his highly polished shoe and ash flew up into the air at the movement.

Rick looked over the blackened ruins of what had been a five hundred year old cottage. “As I didn’t have an evaluation made of the house, I fail to see how that factors in at all,” he said, fighting for politeness.

“There, that’s the sticking point,” the insurance man said. “We can’t replace the ‘ouse if we don’t know the true value.”

“You can’t rebuild history, anyway,” Rick pointed out. He scowled at the wreckage.

“We just want to do right by you,” the gray man said. “You being a fallen ‘ero and all.”

Rick sighed.

“Friends of yours?” the gray man asked.

A Vauxhall rental car was pulling up in the cramped parking space next to Rick’s car and the insurance man’s compact sedan. Marcus and Ilaria got out. Neither of them were smiling and neither moved away from the car.

Rick sighed again. “Yes, they’re friends,” he said.

“Then I’ll be on me way. I’m thinking the local ‘istorical society might be an ‘elp. I’m going to ring them.”

“Thanks,” Ricks said heavily. He walked the man back to his car and stood and watched him back out with slow caution, then the little car purred back down the lane toward the village.

Rick went over to the Vauxhall.

Marcus came forward. A slow, cautious step. “I get it,” he said. “We fussed too much and drove you crazy.”

“You did.”

“Only, you have to understand,” Ilaria said, speaking over the bonnet of the car. “You died.”

Rick lifted his hand and let it drop, at a loss for an answer. He remembered dying. He remembered the Summanus. Everyone did. The Serene Ones had put the world back in order, while not tampering with their memories. The Serene Ones could have just wound back the clock and reset everything that way, although that would have been a worse crime than their unintended meddling, in his estimation. “I’m back,” he said at last. “Everyone is.”

“Perhaps you did the right thing, running off to England. It gave us both time to adjust to that,” Marcus said.

“To everything,” Ilaria added.

Rick grimaced. “The insurance man just called me a fallen hero.”

Marcus laughed. “What offends you most about that? That you’re in the ‘fallen’ category, or that they know who you are, now?”

“Both,” Rick said flatly.

“I can’t freelance anymore,” Ilaria said. “Everyone knows who I am, too.”

“I’m sorry about that,” Rick said honestly.

“And I’m out of the spy business for real, this time. A well-known spy is an oxymoron.” Marcus shrugged.

“What are you going to do?” Rick asked. The tension in his chest was easing. This back and forth banter, the intimacy…it was a reminder of the best times. Perhaps they really had got over their shock and insane paranoia that he might disappear again if they didn’t watch him or touch him every second that passed.

Ilaria smiled. “The Italian military want me to train their snipers. Civilian advisor.”

Marcus snorted. “The Swedes are offering twice as much.”

“Take both,” Rick suggested. “Sweden in summer, Italy in winter. I have no objection to sunning myself on a beach in Naples.”

Both of them froze, staring at him.

Rick held out his arms. “Come here.”

Ilaria gave a little soft exclamation and threw herself into his arms. Marcus wrapped himself around both of them and kissed him. Hard.

When Rick could draw breath, he stroked Marcus’ neck and resettled Ilaria against him so all of her was in contact. “I was thinking, Marcus. How would you feel about going back to the laboratory?”

Marcus paled. “I’d rather cut off both hands and eat through a straw.”

“I’ll fund your work,” Rick told him. “So long as you follow my paradigms. I want to find a defense against Pyrrhus and other chemical weapons. All of them, every evil thing man has ever invented inside a test tube. Work for me, Marcus. Work for peace.”

Marcus let out a breath. He nodded. “Pay back,” he murmured. “That, I can do. Happily.”

* * * * *

Kate put both hands on the small of her back and stretched hard as she walked from the dining room to the big living room. There, she halted, astonished.

Roman lifted his finger to his lips. He was slouched in one of the armchairs, his feet on one of the ottomans. Lini was lying against him, deeply asleep.

Garrett got up from the sofa and came toward her. “She wouldn’t settle,” he explained.

“It’s full moon. Elah don’t sleep well when the moon is full,” Kate murmured. “I’m more astonished that it’s Roman she’s sleeping on. I thought she wouldn’t sleep for anyone but me.”

Garrett drew her over to the armchair. Kate bent over and resisted the temptation to caress Lini’s pale cheek, in case it woke her. Instead, she watched her breathing.

“Roman and I were talking,” Garrett said, speaking softly. “I think I can make a legal adoption go through.”

“You want to adopt Lini?” Delight filled her.

“Both of us, Kate,” Roman said, just as softly.

Kate sank down onto the ottoman next to his feet. “Really?”

“Really.” Roman grimaced. “I’ve spent my life flaking out on people.” His gaze flickered toward Garrett, who stared back, his eyes warm. “It’s time I made up for that,” he finished.

Garrett nodded. “That works for me. I’ll suck it up and live off the two of you until I get my fortune back.”

“Wouldn’t you rather just make another one?” Kate asked curiously. “Then you could be yourself, with no apologies.”

Garrett’s lips parted. Then he closed his mouth with a snap. “There was a reason I fell in love with you. I just remembered it.”

“My steel trap mind?”

“You know me.”

Kate nodded. “I do. Both of you.”

“Feels good,” Roman said.

“Very good,” Kate agreed. “Except…there’s just one thing.”

They looked at her expectantly.

“I want my friggin’ house back! Those dining chairs are killing my back and we’ve pushed Patrick’s hospitality and patience to the edge of the crevasse. Lini needs a room of her own and I want to build a production studio….” Kate trailed off. “Why are you both looking like that?”

Garrett picked up the tablet sitting on the arm of the sofa and handed it to her.

She turned it on. Blueprints spread out across the screen. Bedroom suites, a big kitchen, an even bigger attached editing studio, viewing room and a meeting room.

“I was an architect, once,” Garrett said.

“It’s marvelous,” she breathed. “How on earth are we going to pay for it?”

“We’ll figure it out,” Garrett said. “All of us.”

* * * * *

There were only six people in the big living room. No one was speaking.

Dominic sat at the piano, Blythe next to him, listening as he played Beethoven’s Für Elise, with flourishes of his own.

In the middle of the room, Jake was sprawled on the rug with a book in front of him, while the twins were at either end of the sofa, homework on their knees.

Patrick looked up from the script he was memorizing, to glance around the room. Since everyone had moved out of the house into their own accommodations, he had become reacquainted with solitude and silence, although this musical quiet was something he could easily become addicted to.

Francesca came into the room from the kitchen. Patrick was astonished at the change in her. She had looked like a used, middle-aged woman when she had first arrived from Chile. Now she looked much younger. The skirts and shirts had gone. She was wearing jeans which showed off trim hips and a top that clung softly to her curves. Her curly hair swung freely around her shoulders.

Dominic stopped playing. “You’re all dressed up, Francesca.”

“Hardly.” She rolled her eyes. “I have a date.”

“With Azarel?”

“Of course.” She rolled her eyes again.

Dominic opened his mouth and Blythe pushed it closed with her fingers under his chin. “Shut up,” she said firmly.

Patrick put the script to one side. “How’s his study going?” He was curious, for he had paid Azarel’s tuition for a degree in psychology.

“He has a three point nine GPA,” Francesca said proudly. “The professors like his outsider perspective in discussions, too.”

“I bet they do,” Dominic said darkly.

Blythe glared at him.

“Oh, there is a young man at the door. I meant to say.” Francesca’s eyes twinkled. “He asked to see Simone.”

Simone bounced to her feet, her file tumbling to the floor. “Kiati!” She hurried toward the kitchen.

“Hey, sweetie,” Dominic said.

Simone looked at him.

“Think of Rory. Think of your mother. Don’t let him be mean to you. Not even once.”

Blythe bumped his shoulder. “If he is mean,” she told Simone, “you tell me about it. I’ll beat him into next week.”

“Mom!”

“Or me,” Dominic added.

“Or me,” Patrick said.

Simone rolled her eyes. “Great. That’s just what I need. Two super famous dads breathing down his neck, making him nervous.”

“That’s the plan,” Dominic said happily.

She stuck her tongue out at him and went into the kitchen. Francesca followed her.

Blythe sighed.

“She’ll be fine,” Patrick told her. “She’s her mother’s daughter.”

Blythe nodded. “I know. It’s just hard to watch them go through all the crap.”

“That’s life,” Dominic said. He let his fingers drift over the keys, which gave out a musical arc. When Patrick did that, the keys jangled. “It hands out crap and it hands out joy. You have to get through the crap first. That’s how you know you deserve the joy.” He kissed Blythe while Eloise made retching noises. Jake just grinned.

After a moment Dominic played again.

Patrick picked up the script again.

He’d waded through his own mountain of crap to get to this moment. He still didn’t feel as though he really deserved the joy, but he’d take it with both hands and hang onto it for dear life.

Yeah, he could get very used to this.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Herr William Aust opened the door to reveal a small office with a tiny desk. The desk took up most of the space and Rory could see she would have to navigate around the corners of it carefully. “Your office,” he announced.

Rory peeped in over his shoulder. “Thank you.”

“It is not NASA here, you understand. We do not have the budget, the luxuries.”

“It’s wonderful,” Rory told him truthfully. “Even if it were half the size, it would still be wonderful.”

Herr Aust raised a brow at her. “I confess I still do not fully understand why you are here, Doctor Rafferty. All of us here would trade places with you in an instant. To work for America’s NASA holds such esteem.”

“But this is CERN, Herr Aust,” she pointed out.

“Indeed,” he said gravely. “We have a large collider.”

“I’ve heard,” Rory said, just as solemnly.

Herr Aust shook his head. “I would accuse you of being a crazy American, yet I believe you were born in the Holy Roman Empire?”

“Just across the border from Geneva, in fact,” Rory told him.

“Ah, then you are returning to your roots?”

“In a way. I have spent too much time living in my head, Herr Aust. Then, for a while, I had to live moment to moment. Really live it, with both hands and every muscle. Going back to a big desk and a whiteboard with equations…it no longer appeals. I want to get my hands dirty once more. Experiments, proving theories, not just dreaming them up. Actually advancing science. That seems like a worthy pursuit, these days. When the offer came from you, it was as if you had read my mind and were offering the solution.” She shrugged.

“Ah, yes. About that offer.” Herr Aust looked awkward. He rubbed the back of his neck.

A chill touched her. “What about it?”

“We were looking around Europe for a recruit. Your name was put forward by a friend of mine. He said you would jump at the chance and I did not believe him. He was right.”

“What is the name of your friend, Herr Aust?”

Aust gave her small smile. “Marlen Mikhailov.”

“Sasha,” Rory breathed.

“I hope, I do hope my confession does not in any way mar your time with us, Doctor Rafferty,” he said anxiously.

Rory stared at him. Stared through him. “It should,” she said slowly. “Yet, it doesn’t. Not a bit.” She refocused on Aust’s face and held out her hand. “Thank you for the welcome tour, Herr Aust. However, I have suddenly remembered an appointment I must keep.”

Aust looked puzzled. “You have only just got here.”

“I will report in tomorrow as planned,” Rory assured him, hurrying down the narrow corridor. “Don’t worry about showing me out. I remember the way!” she said over her shoulder.

* * * * *

The drive to Prévessin-Moëns in the BMW she had bought when she had arrived a week ago didn’t take long. The little house she was renting until she was more settled was tucked away in a quiet chemin, with a high box hedge all around the old building. There was an ancient yew tree taking up nearly every spare inch in the front garden, with tiny table and chair underneath it where she planned to spend a lot of time reading.

Previous owners had hacked into the boxwood hedge some time in the past and laid down gravel, to make a driveway and hard stand for a car, for there was no room on the street. Rory parked the car and turned it off, her hands moving automatically. All her attention was on the table under the yew.

Sasha sat on the solitary chair, waiting for her.

Rory got out of the car and moved over the lawn toward him.

Sasha got to his feet. “I tried to stay away.”

“I know. So did I.”

His shoulders lifted as he pulled in a sharp breath. “Don’t say that unless you mean it, Rory.”

“I do.” She reached for him.

Sasha was faster. He pulled her against him and held her, letting her feel the heat and solidness of him. The reality of him. He kissed her and Rory melted against him. She had missed his kisses. She had missed him and had kept the knowledge locked up tight, hidden away from her consciousness. Now she realized how much his absence had been gnawing at her.

With a sigh, she rested her head against his shoulder. “There is only one thing that could make this more perfect than it already is,” she whispered.

“Rory.”

She whirled, true shock slithering through her with cold fingers.

Dante was standing on the front door step. The door stood open. He had been inside.

Rory pushed her hand against her chest as her heart creaked and strained.

“I thought that if I came bearing gifts…” Sasha said softly and pushed her toward him.

Rory wasn’t conscious of crossing the lawn. She didn’t notice anything except Dante’s face. The warmth in his eyes.

Then, the heat of his arms and his lips. His kiss was just as sweet, just as potent as Sasha’s. Rory was shaking when he let her loose once more.

“I locked this door,” she said breathlessly. It was the only half-way reasonable thing she could think to say.

“Spy, remember?” Sasha said, from just behind them. “Well…former spy. Apparently, one can leave the business if one becomes notoriously famous enough.”

“You’re out?” she breathed.

“I am a Hero of the Russian Federation and also unemployed.” Sasha shrugged.

Rory held her hand out to him. “Stay with me.” She looked up at Dante. She couldn’t move her arm from around his neck. It felt welded there. “Both of you.”

Dante looked down into her eyes. “You’re sure, Rory?”

“Not even close to sure,” she said. “I don’t know how this works. I don’t even know if it can work. I’m…you have to know I can’t change who I am. Not even for you, the two men I love most in this world.”

Sasha pressed against them both. “We don’t want you to change. Not an inch of you.”

“I think I finally understand that now. I figured it out when Herr Aust told me you had put my name forward for the job on the Collider.” Rory smiled at Sasha. “That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? To send a message. To let me be myself.”

“I hoped you might see it. If you didn’t, I knew you would be tickled pink to work with CERN, anyway.” Sasha brushed her hair out of her eyes.

“Then he comes and hauls me out of San Francisco with two weeks’ notice,” Dante complained, as his hands ran over her back and her hips and settled on her ass, to stroke and tease.

“Two weeks? It took you two weeks to pack a suitcase?”

“It took me two weeks to sell everything.”

Rory drew in a startled breath. “No. Not your beautiful apartment!”

Dante nodded soberly. “I was forced to sell it under market value. I lost a shitload and I don’t give a damn. Not anymore.” His arms tightened. “Sasha convinced me. All or nothing. That’s why we’re here.”

“You rolled the dice.”

“Well, we weighted them and shaved the edges, first,” Sasha said.

“With the job offer of the century,” Rory breathed. “You’re both here to stay? With me?”

Dante pursed his lips. “We might have to talk to the Swiss immigration people about work visas and so forth, but yeah. All or nothing.”

Sasha kissed him, taking his time with it. Then he kissed Rory with equal thoroughness. “Knock, knock,” he whispered.

Dante laughed. Rory could feel it rumble through his chest.

“Who’s there?” she breathed.

“Juno,” Dante said.

“Juno who?”

“Juno I love you, right?” Dante and Sasha said together.

Rory rolled her eyes. “Great. I fall in love at last and get a comedy duo for my efforts.”

Dante picked her up. “Calumny! Sasha, we need to show her the error of her ways.”

Sasha shut the door behind them as Dante carried her into the house.

* * * * *

There was a dusting of snow on the sidewalk, while not a speck of it showed underneath the awning protecting the big glass doors of the apartment building.

The doorman, Frederick, hurried out, wearing his big overcoat with the brass buttons, babbling greetings and talking a mile a minute as Sebastian hauled their luggage out of the trunk of the cab and Nial paid the driver.

Winter breathed in the cold, damp air. “Ah…New York,” she whispered.

Frederick bounced back inside to get a luggage trolley and call the elevator for them, his face very red and his grin almost splitting it in two. He promised to bring the luggage up for them, then herded them into the elevator and punched the button for the penthouse.

None of them spoke until the elevator door opened and they walked out into the middle of the living room. Through the night-dark glass of the floor to ceiling windows, the lights of Manhattan twinkled.

Winter dropped her bag on the floor, staring at the view.

Nial stopped where he was, breathed deeply and closed his eyes. “Home,” he whispered.

Sebastian turned to look at him. “I thought you said that home was a dangerous illusion that could always be taken from you?”

Nial pulled him closer, then tugged on Winter’s arm with his other hand, bringing them up against him. He held them there and gave them both a small shake. “This. This is home and nothing can take it away. Not even death. I won’t let it.”

Sebastian kissed him shortly. “My empty stomach might. I don’t respond well to hunger, remember?”

Winter touched his shoulder. “Wait. What happens tomorrow?”

“I don’t care,” Sebastian said shortly.

“No. I mean it. We’ve saved the world. We actually saved the world. Now what?”

Nial smiled. “Now, we get to enjoy it. Finally.”

More Vampire Menage Urban Fantasy Romance
by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Blood Ascendant is the final book in the Blood Stone series.

In the meantime, have you read the Blood Drops titles? These are short stories featuring the characters and situations in the Blood Stone series, and they start with:

Southampton Swindle: A Vampire MM Urban Fantasy Romance

By reader and reviewer request, the story of Nathanial and Sebastian and how they met.

Liars are in need of good allies.

Southampton, 1786: Since being tossed from his ancestral family home at thirteen, and falling in with a swindler, Sebastian has been fighting to preserve life and limb any way he can. While ingratiating himself with Lady Wandsworth and her thousands of pounds, Sebastian meets another roguish charmer, Nathanial, and at his side, the pretty but deadly Anne. Sebastian’s world is abruptly changed as he is introduced to imagination-defying ideas and is snared in an international swindle involving the Queen of France’s diamond necklace.

Sebastian is drawn to Nathanial and his worldly, experienced ways, until Anne reveals the truth about him and the necklace….

WARNING: This short MM Romance contains two hot, sexy alpha heroes, frequent, explicit and frank sex scenes and sexual language.
It includes heart-stopping sexual scenes between the aforementioned sexy heroes, ménage scenes, and anal sex. Don't proceed beyond this point if hot love scenes offend you.
No vampires were harmed in the making of this novel.
___

This is a Blood Drops book. Blood Drops are short and novella length stories featuring the characters and situations in the Blood Stone series. Droplet sized morsels for your reading pleasure.

The Blood Stone series:
Blood Stone 1: Blood Knot (#1 Amazon Best Seller, Fantasy Romance)
Blood Drops 1.1: Southampton Swindle*
Blood Drops 1.2: Broken Promise*
Blood Drops 1.3: Vale*
Blood Drops 1.5: Amor Meus*
Blood Stone 2: Blood Stone
Blood Stone 3: Blood Unleashed
Blood Stone 3.5: Blood Drive – Blood Stone Boxed Set 1
Blood Stone 4: Blood Revealed (Upcoming)

These are continuing characters and storylines. Reading the series in order is strongly recommended.

Now available in print: The first three Blood Drops stories are now available in one print collection, Amor Meus.
___

It’s a fun read, very set in the 1700′s and is a sort of period “who dunnit” novel. As always Tracy pulls out stops so we can’t quite work out who’s done what, just when I thought I knew what and who was to blame things changed. Of course as its how the two men met there’s some hot, sexy love scenes too….A great fill-in book, wrapped up in a diverting story.—Jeannie Zelos Book Reviews.

This little read was a fun way to fill in the gaps of Nathanial and Sebastian’s story. While I don’t usually like historical paranormal romance, I will always make exceptions for this author. I love this series and would eagerly gobble up even more from this world. I can’t wait to see what else the author has lined up!—Carrie Reads A Lot

This is a short historical tale featuring likeable rogues, double-crossing, a jewel theft, a bit of intrigue, a scheming hussy, a bit of MFM sex and a bit more MM sex, that seemingly introduces a couple that goes on to feature in the Blood Stones series. It’s well-written and a decent coffee-break read and frankly I don’t know how the author managed to fit in so much to make it an interesting read without turning it into ‘too many cooks’.—Netgalley

Buy Southampton Swindle now: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HQP03UE

About the Author

Tracy Cooper-Posey is an Amazon #1 Best Selling Author. She writes romantic suspense, paranormal, urban fantasy, futuristic and science fiction romances. She has published over 70 novels since 1999, been nominated for five CAPAs including Favourite Author, and won the Emma Darcy Award.

She turned to indie publishing in 2011. Her indie titles have been nominated four times for Book Of The Year and Byzantine Heartbreak was a 2012 winner. Faring Soul won a SFR Galaxy Award in 2016 for “Most Intriguing Philosophical/Social Science Questions in Galaxybuilding” She has been a national magazine editor and for a decade she taught romance writing at MacEwan University.

She is addicted to Irish Breakfast tea and chocolate, sometimes taken together. In her spare time she enjoys history, Sherlock Holmes, science fiction and ignoring her treadmill. An Australian Canadian, she lives in Edmonton, Canada with her husband, a former professional wrestler, where she moved in 1996 after meeting him on-line.

Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

For reviews, excerpts, and more about each title, visit Tracy’s site and click on the cover you are interested in: http://tracycooperposey.com/books-by-thumbnail/

* = Free!

Blood Knot Series

(Urban Fantasy Paranormal Series)

Blood Knot*

Southampton Swindle

Broken Promise

Vale

Amor Meus

Blood Stone

Blood Unleashed

Blood Drive

Blood Revealed

Blood Ascendant

Beloved Bloody Time Series

(Paranormal Futuristic Time Travel)

Bannockburn Binding*

Wait

Byzantine Heartbreak

Viennese Agreement

Romani Armada

Spartan Resistance

Kiss Across Time Series

(Paranormal Time Travel)

Kiss Across Time*

Kiss Across Swords

Time Kissed Moments I

Kiss Across Chains

Kiss Across Deserts

Kiss Across Kingdoms

The Kine Prophecies

(Epic Norse Fantasy Romance)

The Branded Rose Prophecy

The Stonebrood Saga

(Gargoyle Paranormal Series)

Carson’s Night*

Beauty’s Beasts

Harvest of Holidays

Unbearable

Sabrina’s Clan

Destiny’s Trinities

(Urban Fantasy Romance Series)

Beth’s Acceptance*

Mia’s Return

Sera’s Gift

The First Trinity (Anth.)

Cora’s Secret

Zoe’s Blockade

Octavia’s War

The Second Trinity (Anth.)

Terra’s Victory

Interspace Origins

(Science Fiction Romance Series)

Faring Soul

Varkan Rise

Cat and Company

Short Paranormals

Solstice Surrender

Eva’s Last Dance

The Vistaria Affair

(Romantic Suspense)

Red Leopard*

Black Heart

Blue Knight

White Dawn

Go-get-‘em Women

(Short Romantic Suspense Series)

The Royal Talisman

Delly’s Last Night

Vivian’s Return

Ningaloo Nights

Jewells of Tomorrow

(Historical Romantic Suspense)

Diana By The Moon

Heart of Vengeance

Scandalous Sirens

(Historical Romance Series)

Forbidden*

Dangerous Beauty

Perilous Princess

Romantic Thrillers Series

Fatal Wild Child

Dead Again

Dead Double

Terror Stash

Thrilling Affair

The Endurance

(Science Fiction Romance Series)

5,001

Greyson’s Doom

Yesterday’s Legacy

Promissory Note

Xenogenesis

Contemporary Romances

Lucifer’s Lover

An Inconvenient Lover

The Sherlock Holmes Series

(Romantic Suspense/Mystery)

Chronicles of the Lost Years

The Case of the Reluctant Agent

Copyright Information

This is an original publication of Tracy Cooper-Posey

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

Copyright © 2016 by Tracy Cooper-Posey
Text design by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Cover design by Dar Albert
http://WickedSmartDesigns.com

Edited by Mr. Intensity, Mark Posey

All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

FIRST EDITION: November 2016

Cooper-Posey, Tracy
Blood Ascendant/Tracy Cooper-Posey—1st Ed.

Romance—Fiction
Paranormal – Fiction

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Title Page

About Blood Ascendant

Praise for The Blood Stone Series.

Who’s Who and What’s What

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Chapter Thirty-Four

More Vampire Menage Urban Fantasy Romance by Tracy Cooper-Posey

About the Author

Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Copyright Information