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“She is on a yacht, the Apokryphos, which is somewhere offshore.”

“A yacht. Offshore,” Jackson repeated. That made sense, given what they already knew about Nick’s sire and his sea-going habits, but also complicated things exponentially.

“Oui. At some point, Apokryphos will return, or I will be contacted, but I don’t want to give him that much time with Cassidy. I need to get her free of him, but this vessel is as adept at hiding as her master. I have no way of locating them quickly on my own, and even if I did, I could only approach them at night.”

“Which means you’d be picking a fight you can’t win.”

Nick closed his eyes and hung his head in unspoken agreement. They ran his vamp DNA when they had him captive this summer—before Cassidy risked her life breaking him out. There was a good reason he was such a dominant youngling. His sire was no garden-variety bloodsucker.

Jackson scratched at his chin, trying to look more casual than he felt about having an actual conversation with a creature he was sworn to kill. Unbelievable that he considered agreeing to this. Besides the chance to charge to Cassidy’s rescue, the opportunity to take out an ancient one, along with all his spawn, only came along once every couple of centuries, if that. He couldn’t afford to ignore this.

If he wasn’t being played.

He tried not to smile as he touched the small St. Christopher medallions at his throat. He, too, knew how to play games.

“All right. You have my attention. Let’s talk.”

25

The Key and The Lock

The old fool had been right.

If Serge had hinted at even half of how this bizarre night would unfold, Dominique never would have started down this path. Asking Jackson Striker for help turned out to be the least of it.

Dominique was beyond incredulous when Jackson made a request of him as well—compel Avery. They found her, now dressed, in the suite’s sitting room, eavesdropping on her intended husband and wavering between confusion and terror. He eased her mind with a simple command to return to bed and remember nothing unusual.

He also suggested that she rethink her relationship with the Striker heir and consider a more docile mate.

After she had gone, he tried for an amicable expression. “You’re welcome?”

Jackson shook his head, his face coloring straight up to his hairline. He turned away and slipped into a pair of flip-flops by the door. “Let’s go, smartass.”

“Where are we going?”

“A place we can talk.”

Dominique glanced back at the balcony door through which he had entered, the only exit he knew for sure was safe. Following his nemesis deep into this vampire hunting clan’s fortress of a home, with little more than an hour to spare before dawn, seemed ludicrous. Had Serge mentioned this possibility, Dominique might have laughed outright.

But Serge would have been right. And Dominique wasn’t laughing.

Soundless, he moved across the Italian marble floors in Jackson’s wake, all his senses keyed to the quiet house, which didn’t feel as defenseless as he thought it should be. By the time they arrived at a staircase of polished oak, at the end of a narrow back hallway, his apprehensions morphed into an electric prickle of outright dread. These stairs, he knew, led to a hidden, window-less room on the third floor, guarded by an electronically sealed, steel-core door. This was the Striker Foundation’s inner sanctum, the core of a centuries-old operation dedicated to destroying immortals.

“You coming?” Jackson asked from halfway up the stairs.

“Why is this necessary?”

“You’ll see.”

“What I see is you behaving very much as you did when you trapped me in a plane,” Dominique countered dryly.

“The plane you trashed, yes. I’ve yet to hear the end of that. I won’t let you do that to this house, believe me.”

He cocked his head. Wasn’t going to let him? “Cassidy doesn’t have time for us to play these games.”

“So, what’re you doing standing there? Let’s go.” Jackson ascended several more steps.

“Why?”