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“Nice. And you hacked my phone again and took down the security system?” A shrug. “Well, fuck me for ever trusting you then.” Still trusting him. Had no choice but to trust him. With the system down, Jackson had no way to defend himself.

Odd how that didn’t bother him nearly so much as the fact that he had ever believed this creature’s promises. That he had spent even one second giving this bloodsucker credit for anything that remotely resembled humanity. That he had—yes, damn it—started to care. He could see the burgeoning amusement now, the glint of interest in the eyes. A cat gearing up to pounce on its prey.

“I need to speak with you,” purred the cat.

Jackson glanced at the van. “You want me to end your sire? Is that it? Right here? Fine. Let’s do it.” He rubbed his trembling hands together. “Did you bring your swords? Should I get mine?”

“There is nothing to be done. I just need you to listen.” He held Jackson’s gaze for a long moment. “Kambyses is already dead.”

Jackson stared. “Then how are you still standing there?”

“Only his body is dead. His essence survives…in me.”

Jackson felt his mental fuses fry and pop. “I don’t…I don’t understand.”

Dominique came closer with breathtaking predatory grace. “I consumed all his blood, and with it…everything he was.” Another pause. “That was his ultimate plan for me. To be his heir. To take his place as the lord of us all.”

Jackson opened his mouth, but no words would come out. My God, he thought. My God.

“I have his gifts, too.” The tentative look said he wasn’t sure how he felt about this. “There is a learning curve.”

My God, Jackson thought again, the impulse to laugh out loud instantly at war with an urge to flee. He did neither. That was what he saw earlier: Dominique using new abilities to erase himself from the awareness of those who looked right at him. Like Kambyses had done. Maybe on purpose, maybe by accident. It was also what Jackson had felt, what compelled him to open the door. Dominique wanted him to—or maybe only thought about it.

That simple. That powerful.

A nuclear bomb of psychic power in a being who had only just mastered the equivalent of a slingshot.

Petrified calm settled on him, even as his heart stampeded through his chest. He tried to summon the protective smokescreen of anger, but there was not a wisp to be found. Fear oozed out of his every pore, and judging by Dominique’s flaring nostrils, the vampire didn’t miss it. Jackson’s life was over.

Yet Dominique regarded him with only mild curiosity. “Did you know such a thing was possible, hunter?”

Jackson shook his head a tiny bit, all the motion his tense neck muscles allowed.

“Neither did I.” Dominique sounded distracted—by the stink of fear, no doubt.

Jackson swallowed his rising gorge. “Don’t play games with me, Nick. You owe me that much. Whatever you came here for, get it over with.”

The vampire’s gaze sharpened. “No games. I returned your property. And you should know what I intend to do.”

“Meanwhile, I’m standing here marinating.” Jackson ground his teeth to keep them from clacking. “Do I need to piss myself, too, before you rip off my head?”

The bastard actually smirked. “Very good, cher. You are proving the very point you need to understand.”

Next thing he knew, a vice grip seized the back of his neck. A mere inch separated their faces, if that. Slamming his hands against those rock-hard shoulders was a foolish impulse, but he did it anyway.

Dominique’s words drowned in the panic storm screaming in Jackson’s head. His knees shook and his insides turned to water. He gasped, sucking in the vampire’s tang of winter ice…and mud. Wood, too. First thaw in the mountains, a whisper of spring.

“You have nothing to fear from me, mon ami. You have nothing to fear.” The soft, repeating murmurs finally penetrated. “Even when you are like this, you have nothing to fear from me. The hunger for fear belonged to Kambyses. Without him, it no longer exists.”

Jackson trembled. He was alive. Still alive. Might even stay that way? The red fog of terror thinned into a pink haze. “Let. Me. Go.”

Dominique did. Jackson jerked back and fell against the open door, his legs awkward like putty sticks. He wiped the back of a fist over his mouth, not daring to look away from the vampire, who now stood several paces away, hands back in his pockets. “Asshole. You couldn’t have just said so?”

“Would you have believed it? Or would you have taken it for a lie? Or a game? Because that is what you expect from my kind?”

No point in answering that. It was true. He willed his knees to lock and hold him as he pushed away from the door. Adrenaline still seethed in his system, but in anger now, not fear. “Terror doesn’t give you a hard-on anymore? Congrats. What about the rest of your sort?”

“I don’t know.”