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Garrett propped both hands on his hips. “In the meantime, you’ll be keeping watch, will you?”

“We can argue about it, if you like.” Dominique’s lips pulled back in a toothy grimace intended to stop a heart with fright. Garrett shook his head in disgust.

Jackson scooped Cassidy off the floor. “We don’t have time for a pissing contest. We need to get her help. Now.”

“Yeah, right. We all know how this is going to end, but here. You might need this.” Garrett lobbed the duct tape at Dominique, who speared it in mid-flight with the tip of the katana. Grabbing Monica by an arm, Garrett hauled her upright and slung her over his shoulder. “C’mon, Red. The humans are clearing out of this hellhole.” She made a series of strangled noises. “I don’t give a shit if you ever thank me for this. Really, I don’t.”

“I’ll let you know how it goes, Nick.” Renewed distrust hardened Jackson’s eyes before turning to the door.

“Jackson,” Dominique called, causing the man to stop and glance over one shoulder. “I made you a promise. I intend to keep it. You have until midnight to keep yours.”

The muscles in Jackson’s jaw twitched. He nodded once and left.

Dominique stood and listened to their retreating steps. He didn’t move until he heard doors slam and an engine start, rev, and race away. Only then did he allow himself to release some of the tension knotting his body. For now, there was nothing more he could do. He might still have to turn her before the night was through, but not now. Now he stood over his sire’s desecrated body, in a creeping lake of blood. There was a great deal of work to be done to clean up this house and remove all evidence of the supernatural.

Not just physical evidence would have to be erased. The security team would need their memories altered. He could hear them in the depths of the house, their frantic, uncertain whispers as they attempted to escape notice. After witnessing Bijou’s death, they feared for their lives, but their compulsion not to leave the property was stronger.

Serge had emerged from hiding, as had his nerve. The barefoot pirate vampire bent over the scattered limbs, poking at them, as if assuring himself that they truly wouldn’t move on their own. “Clever, blood-child. Very clever.”

Dominique let the duct tape slide off the katana and land on Kambyses’s chest. Putting the blades aside, he peeled off several strips and plastered them across Kambyses’s mouth before moving his foot off the neck. There was no reaction. No struggle. Only that hellish stare skewering him.

Dominique straightened. “No, I cannot end you,” he told the ancient beast, the source of them all. “But the hunters can. And if Cassidy survives the day, tomorrow night you belong to them.”

Serge approached the edge of the blood pool and peered down at the grisly scene. His head bobbled to the side. His eyes lost their focus. “Ah, blood-child,” he said, tone solemn as a preacher’s, “that is one promise you will not keep.”

39

O-Negative

Every minute ticking toward midnight was both a hope and a fear for Cassidy’s life. To distract himself, Dominique tackled the cleanup operation with vigor.

Most of the blood and chaos to be cleared was in the entry, so that is where he stayed, working around the cracks and bullet pockmarks with buckets of soap and a hose running from the yard through the front door. Serge, he tasked with disposing of Bijou’s body some place hidden where the sun would find it. After that, the pirate was put to work dealing with the humans—the security staff and Apokryphos’s crew—clearing their minds, replacing their memories.

Kambyses, they rolled up in a rug.

That rug, shoved against a far wall, stuck in his awareness like a barbed thorn. Dominique hadn’t replied to Serge’s presumably informed opinion of what he would or wouldn’t do with the contents, but dread about the possibilities loomed ever larger. There was no hope of Kambyses regaining his compulsive voice or becoming whole again on his own. His limbs sat in a trash bag on the other side of the room, beside the headless Aphrodite statue. Come dawn, their re-attaching to his body would be impossible.

Regardless, as long as he lived, Kambyses would have his mind—and the power to influence perceptions with his thoughts alone. This was a prospect Dominique remained on guard for as he rinsed and polished the glassy tiles and scrubbed at the walls, but there was no sense of strangeness, no evidence of Kambyses wielding his silent influence. Which left Dominique stewing over how he might break his promise to Jackson. The only way that would happen was if Cassidy became a blood-drinker before dawn.

He glared at the rug. If that happened, would he make that beast whole again? Or would he just leave Kambyses like this, stashed in a crypt somewhere, providing him with just enough blood to keep him going for—what?—decades? Centuries? Forever? As an eternal vegetable? What would that mean for the blood-drinkers of the world? Would they be free? Or just zombies?

Dominique cursed under his breath and pulled his phone from his pocket. Eleven-oh-four. Close enough. Done waiting, he called up Jackson’s number.

The hunter answered in two rings. “Nick.” No joy in that greeting. Only exhaustion.

Fear crawled up Dominique’s chest. He strangled it. “How is she?”

“Stable.”

“But?”

“But…I don’t know for how long.”

“Explain.”

Jackson hesitated. Dominique imagined him slumping forward in a waiting room chair somewhere, massaging the back of his no-doubt tight neck, choosing his quiet words with care. “She’s burning through the blood almost as fast as they can get it into her, and—”

“They’re running out of blood,” Dominique finished. He could feel his own blood drain from his face. “It is a rare type.”