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  He snorted. “Why would I? They’re always wrong.”

  “Renfield is a fly-eating guy who calls vampires like you master, does whatever the master orders, and has this really freaky laugh as he betrays his own kind.”

  “Got it. You don’t see vassals very often in this day and age, and I’ve never met one who ate insects. Or laughed very much either, come to that. A deep glamour capable of turning a human into that much of a slave would cause a lot of brain damage.”

  Chloe’s eyes widened, and she instinctively backed away.

  He rolled his eyes, such a human gesture that she blinked at him in surprise. “You don’t have what it takes to be a Renfield,” he assured her. “Only someone weak can be glamoured so deeply, and even then it takes a very strong vampire to exert such long-term control.” He paused, his expression going still as if he’d thought of something he didn’t like. “You aren’t that weak-minded,” he finally finished. “And I promise I won’t feed from you, ever, without your permission.”

  Interesting. She couldn’t help but notice that Luca didn’t deny that he was powerful enough to do … whatever, but he did promise not to feed on her without permission—as if she’d ever go there. An even larger question was, could she believe him? Should she? Hell, what choice did she have? “One more question, and then I’m going to try to sleep.”

  He nodded.

  “Why hasn’t this Warrior been talking anymore since Sorin’s attack?”

  Luca shrugged. “Maybe he knows I’m here to guard you. Don’t worry; you’ll hear from him again.”

  “Him. So, this Warrior is a man.”

  “Most Warriors are men,” he said with simple logic. “But you’ve heard him; can’t you tell?”

  If only it were so simple. “I’ve seen a long blond braid and heard a genderless, husky whisper. That’s pretty much it.”

  “Hmm. The vast majority of Warriors are men, of course, but not all. The blond braid is interesting. Do you have Nordic ancestry, or Celtic?”

  “I can’t even tell you where my great-grandmother lived. My folks were never much into genealogy.”

  “Into it or not, the connection exists.”

  “Tell me about it,” Chloe muttered. She yawned, feeling exhaustion sweep over her even though just a little while ago she’d been thinking that she couldn’t possibly sleep. Pulling her feet up on the couch, she curled into herself. “I’m so tired,” she muttered.

  “Then sleep. You’re safe here, in your house.” Luca reached out and touched her hair; his touch was very gentle, so light she could barely feel it, and yet it seared through her body. Her emotions and senses were on edge, at the surface, so it wasn’t surprising that she felt that touch everywhere: in her toes, in her fingers, in the pit of her stomach.

  “Humans,” he said as he stroked her hair. “I’ll never understand you. Tonight you were willing to die in order to help your friend, even though I told you plainly that Sorin would kill you both.”

  “I couldn’t just stand there—”

  “You enjoy life so much, but you’d throw it all away in an instant. It’s never made any sense.”

  “I swear, you sound as if you’re talking about aliens, like you don’t have any clue what I felt when I saw Valerie standing there with Sorin all but tearing her throat out. You should remember; you were human once, too, weren’t you?”

  “No,” Luca said, his expression remote. “I was never human.”

  She dozed off with that disturbing little item in her brain, but started awake just a few minutes later, both oddly alert and disoriented at the same time. Luca was still sitting close beside her, stroking her hair, and when she’d dozed off she’d slumped against him. His arm was around her, and he had her settled comfortably against his chest.

  Chloe said the first thing that popped into her head. “I don’t sleep with dead guys.” Then she blushed hotly, because that had to be pretty close to the most awkward remark she’d made since she was three years old and announced to her Sunday school class that Daddy and Mommy wrestled naked. The other children hadn’t understood, of course, but her Sunday school teacher had burst out laughing and, of course, told her parents.

  Luca gave her an amused look. “Good. I’m not dead. Never have been.”

  “But—” Vampires were dead, weren’t they? Dead people who got infected with the vampire mojo and sort of came back to life?

  “I’m immortal. Think about it. If I were dead, would I need food? I’m warm, I have a heartbeat, my hair grows. But I won’t look any older than I do now. I don’t get diseases, and the food I need is human blood.”

  He was definitely warm, so warm she almost felt scorched sitting next to him. He breathed—in and out, in and out—and there was certainly life in those pale eyes of his. And in that body. And in his mouth …

  She forced her unruly thoughts back under control. It would be much too easy to seek comfort in sex, in the illusion of intimacy. She might fantasize about him naked, but the fantasy was far safer than reality.

  Best to change the subject. “What happens when a Warrior comes through?” The look he gave her told her that he knew exactly what she’d been thinking, but he accepted the change of subject. “They fight whatever war they’ve been called to fight,” he said simply. “Some of them live, and some of them die.”

  That couldn’t be right. Even as tired as she was, she knew that didn’t make sense. “He can be killed?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  There wasn’t any of course about it. “Then he’s not exactly an immortal warrior, is he?”

  Luca smiled, his gaze going distant as he looked at something she couldn’t see, something far in the past. Just how old was he? There was a lot of knowledge in those eyes, the kind that was gained by experience. “Immortal Warriors can die again in battle, but at death their spirits return to the other side, where they wait to be called again.”

  Chloe knew beyond a doubt that she wouldn’t care for fighting war after war after war, for all eternity. “Are they being punished?”

  “No,” Luca said softly. “They are being rewarded.”

  “Doesn’t seem like much of a reward to me.”

  “But you’ve never had to give your heart and soul, your very life, for what’s right.”

  Chloe closed her eyes, because she was tired and because she couldn’t bear to look at Luca a moment longer. He stirred her up inside, in ways she neither liked nor trusted. “So, they don’t like vampires?”

  “I suspect not, but the fact that we’re vampires isn’t central to their coming; it’s the threat posed. If they come, they come into the world to preserve the human race as we know it.”

  A shudder walked down Chloe’s spine. Logically, the vampires couldn’t be thinking about exterminating all humans, because if they did they’d lose their food source. But to enslave all humans … she could see them wanting that, and it couldn’t be allowed to happen. Was that why the Warriors were evidently so concerned?

  The voice whispered through the air, power and magic shimmering all around her. “Yes,” it said. “Yes.”

  CHAPTER

  THIRTEEN

  She’d punched him.

  Chloe Fallon, an insignificant human woman the top of whose head barely reached above his collarbone, had punched him. Even strong, feral vampires were nervous in his presence, he had powers that could devastate her both mentally and physically, but she hadn’t hesitated, she’d simply wound up and let him have it. Not only that, she’d done it knowing what he was, that he was a vampire, and as such could have killed her with a flick of his hand. Luca didn’t know whether to be insulted, enraged, or amused. In the end, he was none of those things, because simple lust crowded out everything else.

  He wanted her. She was funny—inadvertently, most of the time—and the scent of her was like a magnet, constantly pulling at him, dragging him closer. The taste he’d had of her was as potent to him as a good scotch was to humans. Above all that, though, what he