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“Just because we didn’t inherit your goddamn special fucking ‘gift,’ you ca—”

Dominique threw up his hand in a “Stop!” gesture.Enough.

Lyle snapped his mouth shut.

That rattle of chains from the cave grew louder.

“Well. There may be hope for him yet,” Esteban mocked. “You can make his case to Adilla. He might reconsider. As I’m sure you will reconsider his offer once you understand my lord’s generous terms.”

“His terms are of no concern to me beyond his willingness to submit.” Wary impatience nipped at the back of Dominique’s brain. Why were they tarrying here?

“Just the same, he has made you a gift.”

Merde!He could even smell Jackson now. Peeling off a tiny part of his attention, Dominique spun a small illusion. “A gift?”

The feral expression on Esteban’s face made the hairs on the back of Dominique’s neck rise in alarm. Moving like a rattlesnake coiling to strike, he turned back to the cavern. “A token of his esteem for you.”

The wall of guards stepped aside. Two more blood-drinker auras glowed behind them. One of these kept a firm hold on the other, who shuffled along in shackles and chains that clattered over the stone floor.

The smell of purest snow wafted off…her.

A sense of unreality crawled over Dominique’s body. “Non.”

It was too soon. It could not be. He had to force himself to look at her, this newly made youngling, to see the long blue skirt she wore, and the stained pinstripe blouse. The sensible shoes were gone, her white feet filthy and bony. Her black hair hung in a tangled mass, the widow’s peak a small dagger in the skeletal mask of her face. And the eyes…windows into a void that saw nothing, recognized nothing, craved nothing.

Nothing but blood.

The wind rose in a mighty gust and moaned through the cavern. Moaned as Dominique’s soul moaned. He was too late.

Geneviève.

“My lord Adilla has generously accepted your beloved sister into our ranks and granted her immortal life.”

There it was, the shape of the trap. Blackmail. Coercion. Adilla would not submit. But killing him would now also kill Geneviève.

Though he remained motionless, a tremor ran through Dominique’s bones. There was more. He sensed it in Esteban’s smug demeanor and heard it in the jangling weapons behind him. Something was closing in as surely as Jackson was skulking in the woods.

Wait, he told himself.Wait, he told all the minds he could touch.Wait.

“Have you nothing to say to this poor child?” Esteban asked with a casual gesture at Geneviève. She shook so hard her shackles rattled, seized by a need for something she did not yet comprehend.

“Adilla’s…esteem for me does not extend to feeding her?” The words felt flat on his tongue.Wait.

“Nonsense. Who better than her brother to introduce her to the sweet pleasures of the hunt?”

Hunt? Geneviève wouldn’t be doing any hunting for many nights yet. She would fall on and drain every mortal thing to cross her path. Left on her own, she would lay waste to the village within the hour and the campground soon thereafter.

Wait.

“You might as well,” Esteban said with a low, impatient growl when Dominique continued to stand in silence. “We have a little time before our guests arrive.”

Wait.

Guests?Dominique turned to the Spaniard, saw his mouth widen with a fanged grin, and both knew and feared what he would say.

“Your mother is on her way here to join us.” He chuckled. “And, of course, darling Cassidy.”

Dominique waited no more.