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Blood. There was blood in his kiss.

Cold and sharp, like a shard of ice steeped in starlight and time. It was just a drop, but it burned all the way down into her belly and from there out through her arms and legs into the tips of her fingers and toes.

His eyes snapped open. “Non.”

“Ohhh,” she moaned and broke into a broad, giggly smile. “Ouiiii.”

He had raked his tongue over a sharp canine and given her the blood in a kiss as he had almost done before, as he would do again some future night. Their joined mind had envisioned this, anticipated it, and so he had done it.

Her immune system was robust, and his blood wouldn’t harm her. But, oh, how it reacted with his fresh serum in her system! Every artery and vein warmed, becoming a web of light holding her suspended in the dark. She could feel every inch of her skin, every tiny hair on her body. Saw every nuance of darkness in the water, every fiber in the sails. Heard every squeak and groan in the hull, and…and… What the hell?

Dominique stared at her with his mouth hanging open, blood on his lips, the epitome of fascinated horror.

It was a sound, but not one she heard with her ears. Her whole body—or rather Dominique’s body—seemed to act like an antenna tuning into something that swelled out of the sea and the sky, from everywhere and nowhere at once. It was a warbling, high-pitched alien drone that felt desolate and eternal and juddered in her body with tangible force.

“You hear it,” he whispered.

She nodded. “What—?” But she already knew. This was the web, the psychic fabric of all the blood-drinkers in existence. From the moment Dominique had taken Kambyses’s place within it, he had sensed it like this, but Cassidy never had, not until now. Now that his blood bound them on a deeper level than his serum alone ever could.

He closed his eyes and dropped his forehead against hers. Do you also see what it means?

She did, and it left her reeling. The Strikers underestimated your numbers a bit, I think.

Oui. A bit.

Holding on to him, as though hanging over a precipice, she stared out at the psychic expanse and listened. This web of the collective blood-drinker unconscious, perhaps half a million strong, vibrated with the desperate energy of pain and eternal isolation. The wonder was not that Kambyses had yearned to end himself. It was that he had lasted so long.

Dominique curled his body around hers more tightly. The only reason he could face this was that, unlike his sire, he didn’t face it alone. Through her, he was anchored in the mortal world in ways Kambyses never was. What am I to do with this? It’s like trying to stir a world with a teaspoon. And I’m the only one who knows that it even exists.

Cassidy contemplated this world, the world of night. It seems to resonate with itself. Like a feedback loop.

Oui, exactement. I try to disrupt it, but no matter what I do, the loop is always stronger.

“Maybe…” The drone oscillated, becoming louder for a moment before settling down again, as though disturbed. “It’s not a world, Dominique.”

He plucked the thought from her mind. “A…swarm?”

She raised her brows. “It lives in each vampire’s heart.”

“The beast.”

“Yes. The beast. As a whole.” Formed in Kambyses’s image. “You can’t subdue the whole thing at once, because it wasn’t born all at once. You have to change it the way it grew.”

Revelation lit his face. “One blood-drinker at a time.”

Find one, she challenged silently. Find one right now. Just one.

He glanced at Serge, who didn’t even pretend not to be listening to the verbal portion of their conversation. The old pirate’s face shone in the moonlight. “The key,” he said, eyes flashing gold with giddy excitement. “The key is turning.”

“The prophecy?” Samantha said, breathless.

“Yes, yes, yes! Cassidy is the key and Dominique is the lock. At last! They have found a way to make it so!”

The key prodded the lock. Never mind him. You can hear them all. Try to hear only one.

Dominique stretched out on his back beside her, clasped one hand with hers, and closed his eyes. Then his awareness expanded exponentially. Cassidy’s sluggish human brain tried to keep up, but it was like riding a bolt of lightning through a flickering strobe effect of impressions.

The boat. The sea. The beach. People. Talking. Traffic. Horns. Accident. Restaurant. Party. Drugs. Plane. Police. Birth. Shouting. Gun. Laughter.