For twenty minutes they moved up the forestry track, his hand around Tony’s elbow both to hurry his pace and to keep him from the worst of the trail invisible to mortal eyes in the dark and the rain. The white bag pulled straight out from Tony’s outstretched arm, a bloodhound made of boot and belladonna. A step farther and the bag pulled so hard to the right Tony stumbled and would have fallen had Henry’s grip not kept him on his feet.

The track became two lines in the grass that led to a light just visible through the trees. Not an electric light, but not fire either. A lantern. Behind a window.

“Were build shelters,” Tony muttered, ducking under a sodden evergreen branch. “Or the pack could be squatting in a hunting cabin.”

“I hear nothing that says these are were.” But also nothing that said they weren’t. The rain continued to mask sound and scent but its tone and timbre changed as they drew closer to the building and a pair of large, black SUVs. The cabin, crudely built and listing to the left, did not match the cars.

Lips drawn back off his teeth, Henry plucked a bit of sodden fur from where it had been caught in one of the doors. “Dog. And the stink of old death I caught by the river lingers still.”

“It was wearing dog? Okay.” A moment while Tony assimilated that. “Still could be giants then. These things”—a nod toward the SUVs—“are fucking huge. Hang on.” Releasing one handle, Tony reached into the bag and used the ball of his thumb to smudge out the rune. With the boot now no more than a reminder that a child’s life hung in the balance, he wrapped the plastic tight and shoved it into his jacket pocket. “I’ll likely need both hands.”

The rune in his left hand throbbed with the beat of his heart.

As they stepped under the eaves of the roof and out of the pounding distraction of the rain, Henry felt something die. Not the child—he could hear her heartbeat now, too slow but steady, probably drugged—but an animal who had died terrified and in great pain. Growling deep in his throat, he looked in through the filthy window.

Half a dozen kerosene lanterns hung from the rafters of the single room. One lantern alone made shadows, mystery. Six together threw a light that was almost clinical.

There were two men, middle-aged and well-fed, standing at each end of a wooden table stained with blood. Henry saw nails and a hammer and didn’t need to see any more. Over the centuries he had seen enough torture to recognize it in the set of a torturer’s shoulders, in the glitter in the eye. Both these men were smiling, breathing heavily, and gazing down on their work with satisfaction.

He had seen their expressions on priests of the Inquisition.

They might have started by accident, inflicting pain on a hunting trophy wounded but not killed. Over time, they had come to need more reaction than an animal could provide, and to answer that need Julie Martin lay curled in the corner of an overstuffed sofa wearing one red rubber boot and one filthy pink sock. Her face was dirty but she seemed unharmed. From what he knew of men like these, Henry suspected the drugs that had kept her quiet had kept her safe. There was no point in inflicting pain on the unaware.

The raw pelts draped over the back of a chair had probably been worn when they took the girl. Perhaps as disguise. Perhaps as a way of working themselves up to the deed, reminding themselves of pleasures to come. Grace Alton had seen the evil. Had seen clearer than anyone had believed.

“They’re just men.” But not even Tony sounded surprised.

“There is no such thing as just men,” Henry growled, barely holding the Hunter in check. “Angels and demons both come of men. To say these two are just men is to deny that. Is to deny this. I want the girl safe first.”

“I’ve got her. Just open the door.”

Henry didn’t so much open the door as rip it off its hinges, rusted nails screaming as they were torn from the wood, the blood scent roiling out to engulf him.

He sensed rather than saw Tony hold out his scarred hand and call. A heartbeat later the young wizard staggered back under the weight of the child and grunted, “Go.”

Henry smiled.

And the two men at the table learned what terror meant.

Tony slid the boot onto Julia’s foot and lifted the sleeping child off the backseat of the car, settling her against his shoulder. As they drove back to Lytton, the drugs had begun to release their hold and, to keep her from waking, he’d sung her a lullaby from his laptop. It hadn’t seemed to matter that the words were in a language she’d never heard nor would probably hear again. She’d sighed, smiled, and slipped her thumb into her mouth. Now he wrapped them both in a Notice-me-not and carried her up the road to her parents’ house. Although it was just past two in the morning, all the lights were still on when he laid her gently on the mat and rang the bell.

Rolling the ball bearing between his thumb and forefinger, he walked back to the car, listening to the crying and the laughing and wishing he could bottle it. The sound of hearts mending and innocence saved: that would make the perfect present for Vicki.

“You think she’ll remember anything?”

With the Notice-me-not wrapped around the car, Henry drove back toward Vancouver at considerably more than the legal speed, racing the sunrise. “I hope not.”

“You think they’ll ever find the bodies?”

He shrugged, not caring. “I expect someone will stumble over them eventually.”

“You didn’t leave anything that would lead the cops back to you? I mean”—Tony slouched against the seat belt strap—“these were men.”

Henry turned just far enough that Tony could see the Hunter in his eyes. “Would you have preferred we left them to the law?”

“Hell, no.” He scraped a bit of mud off his damp jeans. “They hadn’t done anything to that kid yet but they were going to. It’s just, monsters are one thing, but those—”

“Were also monsters. Do you have to throw up again?”

It had been a reaction not to what Henry had done but to suddenly realizing just what they’d prevented. It had also been incredibly embarrassing, but the rain had washed the stink off his boots.

“No.”

“Good. It doesn’t matter if or when they find the bodies, Tony. There’s nothing that can link them back to us. To me.” His teeth were too white in the headlights of a passing transport and his eyes were too dark. “No one believes in vampires.”

Tony stared at the face of the Hunter unmasked and shuddered. “Dude, we’re doing a hundred and fifty-five k. Could you maybe watch the road?”

“All right, I still don’t understand how forty is any more important than one hundred and forty, but I think I’ve got Vicki’s birthday covered.” Henry pulled a jeweler’s box from his jacket pocket and opened it. “One pair half-carat diamond earrings.”

Tony stepped aside to let Henry into his apartment, peered down at the stones, and nodded. “Good choice. Diamonds are forever and so is she.”

“Now read the card.”

“Ah, you’ve included a newspaper clipping about the miraculous return of Julie Martin. Very smart. Almost makes up for the pink, sparkly roses on the front of this thing. Blah, blah, blah, as you approach the most wonderful years of your life, blah, blah, young as you ever were, blah, in your name a pair of evil men have been sent to hell where they belong.” Tony looked up and grinned. “Man, they really do make a card for every occasion.”

“I added the last bit.”

“No shit? Seriously, Henry, it’s perfect. You don’t have to wrap it, she doesn’t have to find space for it, and you can’t beat the sentiment.”

“You think she’ll like it?”

“Like it?” Tony snorted as he tossed the card onto his kitchen table. “I think she’ll want to collect the whole set. You should start thinking about what you’re going to do when she turns fifty.”