"It can be, yes. Not always, but it can be so, depending on the subject."

I flinched at his term, casting my mind back to the events of the evening. There had been a moment when Alec was nibbling my neck, and I thought he'd bitten me a smidgen too hard, but that had eased up almost immediately. "And the person you're biting doesn't know you're doing it?"

"That depends," he said, consulting his watch.

"On what?"

"On whether or not there is a shared sexual attraction."

Well, there had definitely been that last night. So perhaps the hickey wasn't so much a hickey as it was an indicator that Alec was more than he seemed. But if that was true, then he'd be no better than Kristoff.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I don't believe it. Alec is good. He's not evil, like you."

Kristoff turned his teal eyes on me, the look of scorn in them so strong it stung. "Your people kill mine ruthlessly, without prejudice, conducting the most obscene rituals they can think of, and you call me evil?"

I clawed at the seat belt, ripping it off as I jerked open the car door, desperate to escape the dangerous Kristoff.

He snarled something and leaped after me, slamming me up against the stone wall of the building. We were on the shaded side, the sun not having yet warmed the stone, but it was not for that reason that I shivered against the cold wall.

"The Brotherhood purifies people—" I started to say, grabbing at my memory of what Anniki had told me the evening before.

"Purifies." He spat the word out like it was poison, leaning close to me, so close I could feel the warmth of his body, but it was the rage and hatred in his eyes that left me paralyzed with fear. "Do you know how your precious reapers purified Angelica? They started with a crucifixion, draining almost all of her blood, leaving her racked with pain and almost unbearable hunger. After that, they called down their cleansing light. Do you know what that is, Zorya?"

I shook my head, tears blurring my vision.

"Complete immolation. They used to simply burn people at the stake, but now they use a form of electricity to burn her body from the inside out."

My stomach lurched, a horrible vision rising in my mind. I closed my eyes, tears burning paths down my cheeks.

"They didn't burn her to death then. That would have been too easy a death for her. Their last rite of purification was a beheading… slowly, taking several strokes, with the spinal cord severed last."

I shoved him away, racing to a small scrubby bush and falling to my knees, wanting to vomit, but my stomach was too revolted to do even that.

"They left her head with her body so I could see the expression on her face," he said from behind me. "They wanted me to know what torment she suffered before she died. Those are the people you represent, Pia. And you wonder that I hunt them."

"If that's true, I wouldn't blame you in the least," I started to say, but before I could finish he yanked me to my feet.

"If it is true?" His furious gaze searched my face. "You doubt me?"

"I don't know what to think," I wailed, too overwhelmed with confusion to try to sort things out. "I don't think you're lying, no. I know grief when I see it. But Anniki wasn't that sort of person. At least I don't think she was—she seemed compassionate, as if she really cared about people."

"People, but not Dark Ones."

I opened my mouth to dispute that statement, but didn't know what to say.

"It doesn't matter," he said, his expression going hard as he wrapped a hand around my arm and hauled me to the front of the building. "Believe what you want. I'm going to ensure that you, at least, will not allow the reapers to kill any more of my people."

"Oh dear god, you're going to kill me!" I screamed, panicking as he jerked open a wooden door and hauled me inside the building.

"If I wanted to do that, I'd have broken your neck last night. Be quiet, woman!" he yelled, startling me into silence, the last few echoes of my screeches fading away. "The priest here doesn't speak English, so it's no use begging him for help."

"Priest!" I squawked, clawing at his hand in an attempt to get free. My entire body was riddled with fear and the knowledge that I was about to be killed by a vampire. "For last rites?"

A small, wrinkled man shuffled forward out of the gloom, and I realized with a start that I was in a tiny church. For some reason, that scared me even more. What if the vampires had their own horrible cult, someplace to conduct their dark doings?

"What I am about to do is much, much worse than death," Kristoff said, pulling me so close I could see the tiny black lines that flared out from his pupils. Suddenly, he smiled, but it wasn't a nice smile, not nice at all. It was the sort of smile a panther would give a particularly juicy-looking rabbit just before it pounced. "We're going to be married, Zorya."

I thought my eyes were going to pop out of my head. "You're not going to kill me?"

His smile grew. "No."

I sagged with relief until his next words hit me.

"But you're going to wish you were dead before I'm done with you."

Chapter 6

"Sign."

"No. I'm not going to do it."

Kristoff's hand tightened around my throat. "Sign it or I will break your neck."

It wasn't easy to swallow with him half throttling me like that, but I finally managed it. "Look, I don't know why you want to marry me—"

"I'd as soon as marry a viper," he interrupted. "Alec agreed to do it, but since he conveniently disappeared last night when I went to arrange for the license, I am the sacrifice instead."

I bristled a little at the word "sacrifice."

"Well, I don't particularly like you, either! Alec is much, much nicer than you. He actually smiles."

"Sign the damned things so we can get out of here." Kristoff growled, indicating the two copies of marriage forms he'd produced.

I had discovered he'd spoken the truth about the elderly clergyman. Not only was he deaf to all pleas to save me, he performed what I had a horrible feeling was a marriage ceremony while I tried to reason with the insane man next to me. "This is ridiculous. This is 2008. You can't force someone to get married. There are laws."

"There are also bribes, and as I spent the night getting the correct documents and asking my old friend here to conduct the official ceremony, it will be completely legal and binding. As soon as you sign."

"But we're in Iceland! I'm not a citizen. Surely it can't be legal for noncitizens to be married without a ton of paperwork. And don't I have to be present to get a license? Surely I have to have been present!"

"There are ways to make it possible," he said grimly. "Sign the damned things."

"No," I said, folding my hands. "And you can't make me. Kill me if you want, but I'm not signing."

Kristoff snarled something rude that I chose to ignore, yanking a small blue object from his pocket.

"Hey! Where did you get that?" I tried to grab my passport back from him, but he held it out of reach, flipping through the pages until he came to the one with my signature.

"Your precious Alec gave it to me last night, when you were asleep," he said, snatching up the pen and thrusting it into my hand. Before I could throw it away he yanked me backward against his body, one hand clamping down on mine as he consulted the passport.

"Stop it!" I yelled, struggling as he forced my hand to write a scraggly version of my name. "This isn't legal! You can't do it!"

"It's done," he snapped, forcing me to sign the second form before releasing me. I jumped away and rubbed my abused hand.

"You don't have witnesses, Mr. Smarty-Pants," I pointed out. "You may have your buddy there falsely conduct the ceremony, and you may have a version of my signature, but there were no witnesses to the ceremony, and I'm sure that even in Iceland you have to have witnesses."