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Jackson grabbed onto the bars he had just rediscovered and shook them as hard as he could. “For fuck’s sake, Nick, you saw how you healed from a fucking gunshot wound. How much more proof do you need? Youarea vampire.”

Silence.

Furious, he slammed the heels of both hands against the cold, invisible iron. “Goddamnit, you stubborn bastard, you’re a vampire. We’ve had our share of differences about that, believe me, but right now I really,reallyneed you to beallvampire. We all do. Or—”

“Jackson,ta gueule.”

“—we’re going to die, you included, because there will be enough evil bloodsuckers coming for us at sundown to take you down, immortal or not.”

The chains clinked again. “Be quiet, you fool.”

Like hell he would. “You need to break the fucking chains, Dominique, and then break these bars. Your wrists will heal.” He had no idea if Dominique would be strong enough to do either, even at night. Mind over matter, though. It’s all they had left.

Silence as thick as the darkness.

“Well? What is it to be?” an unfamiliar voice queried, male, casual, and dispassionate. “Will you break your chains?”

An icy finger stirred Jackson’s innards. No, this could not be happening. It was nowhere near sundown. He straightened, his wide-open eyes staring straight ahead, seeing nothing. This couldnotbe a vampire. Not conscious. Not yet.

It was.

A light came on. After hours of complete darkness, the grimy fixture attached to the ceiling between the cells was blinding. The newcomer stood under the light, the pull chain still swaying. His features were cast in shadows, but Jackson made out a petite male dressed in simple black clothes with hands so pale they glowed.

Vampire.

Before sunset.

Holy shit, were they really that shielded from the sun’s effects inside all this rock? But that made no sense. If that were the case, Dominique would have woken up by now and tossed his breakfast all over the place.

Then what the fuck?

The vampire ignored the humans, and Jackson lapsed into the mental exercises he used to keep his emotions under control, especially his fear. It wouldn’t do for him to smell like a meal right now.

“All this effort I wasted trying to find you in the city, and here you are,” the vampire told Dominique with a grand gesture of both hands. “God smiles on me this day.”

His mouth hanging open, Dominique glanced at Jackson, who shook his head the tiniest bit. The less Dominique said, the better.

The other vampire—judging by the faint Spanish lilt, Jackson guessed it was none other than Esteban—retrieved a key from a shelf in the rock wall and used it to unlock Dominique’s cell.

“And to find you like this, awake with me, is a splendid surprise, indeed.” He stopped to study his prisoner, who stood with his arms spread high and wide by the chains, his shirt and vest caked in drying blood.

Dominique didn’t move. His gaze was riveted to this creature that he didn’t remember had tried to kill him twice before.

“You are not what you appear to be, Dominique Marchant, are you?”

“Apparently not,” he replied faintly.

“Are you one of mine? Did one of my distant young ones make you? Is that how you come by the gift of cheating the sun?”

Dominique frowned. “Gift?”

“Did they not tell you? This is the gift I pass on to some of my young ones. And some of them to theirs. The gift of consciousness when the rest of us sleep.”

A new worm of dread slithered into Jackson’s mind. The vampire that had killed his brother had also been awake when he shouldn’t have been. Lying in wait for them. Ambushing them.

Like this one was ambushing them.

His breath hitched.No…