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The two protectors looked at each other, dumbstruck. By that time, Gideon and Parker had joined us.

“What can you possibly do?” Lawrence pushed.

“Bring Rupert out of the light, Selena. That’s an order.”

I turned to my partner. Gideon didn’t usually pull rank. He also didn’t usually look serious. He was technically the leader, though he seldom acted like it. He did today, a steady glare set on the pair until they finally complied.

I ignored all four protectors standing around me as best I could, laying the poor guy down on the floor.

First, I pressed my hand to his heart and stopped it. Each moment it pumped blood through his body spread the infection faster.

“Dude. Did you just kill him?”

I ignored whoever had spoken, focusing on the task at hand.

As a kid, my power was impossible to control. I just sucked in the energy around me indiscriminately, unable to choose a target, unable to stop. These days, I was ninety-nine percent in control. I didn’t let myself forget the one percent. But there was a chance Icoulddo this, and if I didn’t, Rupert was dead anyway.

Ignoring all the enticing, delicious strands of life, I focused on the violent, brutal energy straining to make its way through the guy’s body as fast as possible, infecting every possible cell. It felt extremely different from his actual vital pulse. It wasn’t what I wanted. It smelled like rotten eggs and petroleum. It would be so much sweeter to suck on his own life, like a budding flower, making it my own.

Pushing down those instincts, I took in the damn rot, letting it transfer to me.

“By the gods,” someone whispered, the darkness not receding, but flowing from Rupert’s mangled shoulder into my hand, coloring my nails first, then the tips of my fingers, my palm, wrist.

My own energy pulsed, fighting the foreign infection.

In the end, it wasn’t different to fighting off a flu. A vampire fiend, descendent of a descendent of someone human infected by a godly disease, had no chance against me.

It wouldn’t be pleasant. So much fornotthrowing up over the weekend. But I’d spend a couple of days with a headache, whereas the poor guy passed out on the floor would have died.

I restarted his heart and stood up.

“His shoulder needs tending,” I told his friends.

With the infection gone, his blood gushed out of the nasty bite. I wasn’t about to ruin my shirt on top of everything else.

Rupert’s partner, Lawrence, rushed to put pressure on the wound while Parker retrieved the healing kit.

“You saved him,” Towers said in surprise verging on shock. “You took the disease and just—ate it up. Did you know you could do that?”

Feeling a little worse for the wear, I stood nonetheless, brushing my sleeve. “No, Towers. I just risked my precious life for some guy I met twice.” Each word dripped with sarcasm.

The protector grumbled, “It would have been nice to know you could do that before getting into a den of vamps.”

“Right. So you could relax and all get chomped on,” Gideon joked, rolling his eyes.

The moment Towers was out of earshot, he hissed, “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you had that mojo up your sleeve?”

“Because,” I drawled, “you would have gotten bitten. For fun.”

“Well, yeah. Wouldn’t it be cool to know how it feels?”

“You’re going to die the moment I’m no longer your partner, aren’t you?”

Gideon laughed. “Nah. I’m careful if no one has my back.”

I could honestly not imagine his name ever associated with the word “careful” so I doubted it.

“Wouldn’t want to be in your shoes. Your report is going to suck ass,” he told me.