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“No!” Jackson put his arms around the man who was more of a father to him than his real father had ever been, but the best he could do was brace him, keep him from a hard landing on the glass floor. He touched the hilt, hesitated. The blade wasn’t near the heart, but it obviously pierced a lung. No telling what kind of damage removing it would do.

Garrett’s breathing labored, rattled, and bubbled as he collapsed all the way to the floor. “Wing it. Great idea…kid.”

Rage overwhelmed Jackson as suddenly as the fear had earlier. First his brother, now his uncle. Tomorrow, his parents? Samantha? No, never, not without a fight, no matter how hopeless. Roaring at the top of his lungs, he bolted to his feet and threw himself at Bijou.

Streaks of silver flashed through the haze of red before his eyes. She lowered the weapon, her expression amused, but didn’t otherwise move, not until he closed his hands around her neck. He squeezed with all his strength, knowing logically that this would accomplish nothing, yet feeling absurdly satisfied when her head popped off her shoulders anyway.

Her head.

In his hands.

Smiling.

The rest of her lay prone beneath him. Thick blood oozed from the stump of her neck. The aroma of wood shavings enveloped him.

“What—what the—?” Jackson dropped the head and willed himself to see the truth beyond this hallucination. He couldn’t. Nothing changed.

The bloody tip of a sword flicked Bijou’s head away. Still she smiled, frozen as the stone head she bumped up against. Grubby bare toes curled to avoid the lake of blood spreading across the white floor. Jackson looked up to find a sand-encrusted wild man grinning at him. The backup plan. Serge. That was Nick’s sword in his hand. Nick’s sword he had used to cut down Bijou an instant before she might well have stopped being amused and killed Jackson. The same instant he had distracted her with his irrational attack, giving Serge the opening he needed.

Jackson doubled over and heaved. His entire body shook with the adrenaline pounding through him, the realization of how close he had come to dying, how close Garrett still was.

Nick untangled himself from the last of the chains and sped to Serge’s side. He was blood-smeared and disheveled, but he moved without hesitation, recovered from his battle and from that unfortunate bullet.

Jackson turned to his uncle, who was anything but recovered. His breathing sounded like the drowned end of an air hose and his face had gone gray. His eyes rolled with wild panic.

“Is this how you do not interfere with almighty destiny?” Nick asked of Serge, holding out his hand for the sword.

The other vampire handed it over with grave reluctance, but there was a note of pride in his voice when he said, “My services were requested.”

“A minute sooner might have been nice,” Jackson said. He scanned the area for new threats, but the guards were all gone.

In a blur of speed, Nick wiped the short sword on the leather skirt adorning Bijou’s headless corpse.

Garrett coughed up more blood.

“He’s drowning,” Jackson said.

“Obviously,” Nick replied, and slammed the blade home into its scabbard.

“Can’t you do something for him? Or do I really need to call 911? He’s not going to make it.”

Garrett groaned and closed his hand on Jackson’s forearm in unmistakable warning. He’d return from the almost-dead and crawl out of here under his own power before he’d let a bloodsucker play doctor on him. Too bad.

Nick opened his mouth, but hesitated when he caught Jackson’s look. “He is not my priority.”

“He needs to be, blood-child.” Serge’s gaze emptied as he stared at Garrett in a way that gave Jackson an involuntary chill. “You will need him greatly.”

Nick spewed a volley of passionate French, followed by, “Then you see to it, old fool. I request it of you.”

Serge squeaked in surprise, but Nick was gone. Jackson only caught a dark blur at the top of the stairs because he knew to look for it there. The hand clamped around his arm turned into a steel vise. For a dying man, his uncle’s grip was impressive.

Serge knelt beside his patient, eyed the protruding dagger hilt, and cracked his knuckles. The patient tried to roll away. Jackson pinned Garrett to the ground by the shoulders and glared at Serge. “One wrong move and—”

“And nothing.”

Jackson shut up. What an idiotic thing to say. There was nothing he could do. For once, he had zero control. Or maybe control had always been an illusion. Or at least since the moment he let Nick out of that cage all those months ago. Right there was where the line between mortal enemy and ally began to blur, and his reality took on new shades of gray.

Serge shrugged. “Besides, I don’t know what the right moves are.”