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The front door stood open to the night. Dominique could be through it in a flash, and it still wouldn’t be fast enough. So he strode down the stairs with no misguided attempt at stealth. He hadn’t yet reached the bottom when Kambyses turned to face him. He steeled himself for wrath. What he got instead was…disappointment.

For two brief steps, he slowed, then resumed with a confidence he far from felt. He kicked one of the loose chains and a block of broken statue across the floor, purposely making noise. Rounding to the far side of Bijou’s body, he forced Kambyses to turn away from the door. “Her temper was bound to get her killed event—”

He stopped, stunned.

Bijou’s severed head lay pushed up against the stump of her neck in a still-growing pool of red. Still, she smiled. Dead. The trick that had saved Serge at Samantha’s hands wouldn’t work here. Too much time had passed. This death was final.

But Kambyses had tried. The old, selfish bastard had cared enough to try.

Kambyses’s casual tone made Dominique’s flesh squirm with dread. “I wonder, Nico. How many more will have to lose their lives before you acknowledge the truth?”

On the stairs, Jackson and his uncle did their best to transport Cassidy with quiet haste, though they were neither silent nor swift.

“You might have kept her on a tighter leash, if she meant that much to you.” Dominique spoke slowly, buying time with every syllable. The humans reached the bottom of the stairs, picked their way around the broken statue, and hustled for the open door. “Perhaps you should ask how many more you will sacrifice to get your way?”

Kambyses graced him with an acid-edged smile. “As many as it takes.”

The ancient vampire tilted his head to the side, maybe to indicate the men behind him, maybe in contemplation, maybe both. “Or perhaps I should ask how many you would ask of me?”

All of them. That’s how many Dominique would sacrifice to prevent Kambyses from getting his way. Or it had been. If Cassidy would need to receive the blood before this night was out, tethering her existence to the dark web Kambyses ruled, he would have no more treachery to fear from Dominique. Even now, with her teetering at the edge of death, Dominique knew he couldn’t risk his sire’s destruction, not as long as she might still need the blood to survive.

Dominique said none of this, but neither did he hide it from his face. Resignation shadowed Kambyses’s coarse features.

The mortals reached the door with their burden, but inexplicably slowed.

Kambyses looked at Serge, who trembled so hard the sound of his shirt rubbing against his skin hissed in the stillness. The old pirate whimpered and clutched his arms over his head.

Jackson’s face flushed with the effort to set one foot before the other, but the closer he got to the door, the more he seemed to battle against an unseen headwind. Garrett stood with fists balled, jaw clenched, and eyes blazing fury.

Hope died in Dominique’s heart like a candle in the storm. Kambyses bent the humans to his will with nothing but a passing thought. Should flames engulf the house, they couldn’t have escaped without his permission. That they had any fight left in them at all was by his whim alone. That and perhaps the vampire blood they had both ingested.

When Dominique turned back to his sire, he found him waiting.

“Shall we see to the evening’s true business now, Nico?”

38

Monsters

Kambyses held out his hand toward Jackson and Garrett, inviting them to approach. They did, unhurried, their faces stoic masks, though their eyes still contained clarity and reason, watchful for any opening. Dominique felt a pang of unexpected pity for them. Their fates as dispensable humans present at a siring was a foregone conclusion. Cassidy’s newborn beast would tear them apart. Their deaths would be her eternal burden to bear.

“Her time draws near, Nico. I would see her made this night. With or without you,” Kambyses added with a pointed look at Serge.

Serge stilled against the wall.

It took Dominique a moment longer to comprehend the warning and its implications. Serge still lived because, terrorized as the old pirate was, there was no question he would follow Kambyses’s every command—including giving Cassidy his blood if Dominique continued to refuse. Once linked to Serge’s unhinged reality, her mind would be as closed to Dominique as it had ever been, and her personality undoubtedly changed.

Perhaps Serge would be allowed to live for his cooperation. Perhaps not. Maybe Dominique would want to kill him to free Cassidy from his madness. Maybe she would want to free herself. As Serge would not be her serum sire, his fate would not dictate hers.

Only one thing was certain—Dominique would lose someone dear to him. And just how dear his mentor and only blood-drinker friend had become occurred to him only now.

Kambyses turned to the motionless, wrapped body draped in Jackson’s arms. “She is a creature of rare spirit. Worthy of our kind.” He stroked the tip of one finger over her brow. She stirred a little, but didn’t open her eyes. Kambyses tilted his head and grew pensive. “Much like the one you took from me tonight.”

Suddenly Jackson burst out, “Get your filthy hands off her!”

In the same instant, Garrett acted with near-superhuman speed. In a single motion, he pulled the pistol from the back of Jackson’s waistband, unlocked it, swung it up, and fired the instant the muzzle cleared his nephew’s shoulder.

The bullet popped Kambyses in the throat, exited the back of his neck, and zipped past Dominique’s shoulder. He felt it rip at his jacket, felt the ageless blood spray his face, smelled the smoky stench of it explode in the air.