What she saw in the living room must have seemed like a war zone. Jeffrey’s body under a blanket. Provost feverish and sweating, drifting in and out. The rest of us huddled in on ourselves, wearing the haunted gazes of refugees.

After a long moment she said, “You’ve been busy.”

I stifled a laugh.

“What’s the situation?” she said.

Grant answered: “Cabe is still out there, watching the house. He’s probably trapped one of the doors and is keeping an eye on the other.”

“Have you thought about using this one as a bargaining chip?” She nodded at Provost.

“We were waiting for you,” Grant said.

“Ah. I can tell you what I’d prefer to do with him. I need to keep up my strength, after all.”

“What happened to using him as a bargaining chip?” Tina said.

“We’ll still have him for that,” she said, her voice too sweet. Sugarcoated poison.

None of us stopped her from kneeling beside Provost, raising his wrist to her mouth, and drinking. The injured man groaned, started to thrash, but she rested a hand on his forehead. He continued to moan in delirium, but his body calmed. After a few moments, she let him go.

“I’ve drunk from two of them,” she said, licking her lips dramatically. “I’d love to taste the third.”

Tina made a sound and looked away, while Conrad huddled even farther back on the sofa.

Anastasia stood and smoothed her clothing. “I’m sorry I missed the events that led to this. Kitty, you must have been spectacular. I confess, I wouldn’t have expected it from you. Did you intend to turn him?”

“I intended to kill him,” I said.

“Ah.” A frown turned her mouth. “He won’t make it. His kind rarely do. Give him access to a gun and he’ll kill himself.”

“Save me from having to do it,” I muttered, and everyone looked at me. I glared back, daring them to argue with me. I wasn’t much interested in being nice and moral anymore. We all had our breaking points.

Anastasia went to the window and studied the falling night outside. “This is a war of attrition. Messy. But if the numbers hold, we’re winning.”

“Small comfort,” I said.

“Kitty, please stop feeling sorry for yourself. I haven’t survived for eight hundred years to give up now.”

“I’m not feeling sorry for myself. I’m just tired. And that’s an understatement.” I was even too tired to pounce on that scrap of information. Eight hundred years. I didn’t care. Scratching my hair, I got up and tried to get my brain working. “I could try running for help again. Cabe can’t watch all of us. If we can set up some kind of distraction—”

The explosion of a shot fired, and the picture window in the living room shattered. Candles flickered, Tina screamed, all of us ducked—except for Anastasia, who leaned over to peer through the now-empty space.

“Well,” she said. “The move’s been made. The endgame begins.”

Chapter 22

We still had the handgun, but not much else in the way of weapons. Maybe he’d stand still long enough for us to throw tear gas at him. Nothing else would work at range, which left us with trying to lure him out. Because that had worked so well the last time. With a breeze coming in from outside now, I could smell danger, more guns, gunpowder. Cabe, the only unfamiliar scent on the air.

“He’s right outside,” I said. “He’s moving in.”

Something arced through the open window and cracked on the floor. A rock or something. Something metallic. Tina spotted it first, lunged for it, grabbed it—a grenade. She threw herself on that grenade, literally. I yelled at her—I couldn’t lose anyone else—

She cocked back and threw it back through the window. It exploded on the dirt clearing outside, a sound of thunder and a roiling orange fireball, debris scattering in all directions. Rock and gravel struck the house like bullets. We all ducked away from the destruction.

Another shot rang out—Cabe taking advantage of the confusion. Tina was standing right in front of the window, only seconds after she’d gotten rid of the grenade. As if Cabe had expected something like this, like the grenade had been just a distraction. The shot hit her torso. She fell. I screamed.

Grant was at her side before I could think to move. “She’s alive!” he called. Tina herself backed up his statement a moment later.

“Shit!” she groaned.

At that moment, I could have been easily persuaded to believe in the power of prayer. Please, God and whatever other powers are watching, get us through this.

“I need a distraction out front,” I said. I found the handgun on the kitchen counter. It had only four shots left; it would have to be enough.

Anastasia pulled Provost off the floor. “Get up, you. Time to be useful.” She slapped his face a couple of times, and he slowly came out of his daze. When he saw the vampire holding him up by his arm, her nails digging into his skin, he panicked. Jerking away from her, he thrashed, pounded with his fists, screamed. Anastasia’s grip never weakened.

She grabbed his chin and forced him to look at her. “I could finish you without even thinking of it. Just like I finished your friend Valenti. I guarantee you it won’t be an easy death.” She caught him in her gaze, and he calmed, hanging limply in her hands. His face went taut, despairing, but he stopped fighting her. He was trapped, hypnotized.

Part of me wanted to leap to his defense, and the feeling horrified me. That was my Wolf, sensing another, weaker wolf in danger—our wolf. There was an instinct to protect him. But this man was evil. I wouldn’t claim him. Couldn’t. Not this one, I told my whining Wolf and turned away.

Anastasia hauled Provost through the front door, shoving him in front of her as a shield.

Grant and I looked at each other. This was it.

“Go,” he said. “I’ll keep an eye on the front.”

I didn’t go out through the back door, in case it was trapped. But there was a window on the side of the house. I opened it and popped out the screen. Moved very, very carefully. Listening hard, smelling all around the edges for gunpowder, wooden stakes, silver arrows, anything that might be a weapon. The ground under the window looked fine. Here goes, then.

Quietly, I lowered myself out the window to the ground. When I didn’t blow up, I ran to the corner and edged along the porch until I could see Cabe.