No, no, she thought. You can’t do this. My father—

But he didn’t hesitate. He came right up to her and Peyton, leading with that firearm, finger on the trigger.

“Hey! Asshole!”

From out of the corner of her eye, she saw one of the recruits step forward and wave his arms.

It was her male—the male, that was. Craeg—

“Shoot me! Hey! Motherfucker! Shoot me instead.”

And so the Brother did.

Without turning his head away from her, Rhage’s arm swung to the side and he pulled the trigger, a bullet exploding out from the muzzle.

Paradise screamed and jerked against Peyton’s hold as chaos went hog-wild, shrill voices echoing around like the panicked clatter of a thousand flushed birds. “No! Oh, my God—no!”

“Shut up,” Peyton hissed as he kept her in place. “Just shut it.”

NFW. As Craeg fell over, she broke free and lunged in attack at the Brother. It was like a bug hitting the windshield of a car, but none of that mattered. She just couldn’t have anyone get hurt—especially not that male. Slapping, hitting, she clamped her hands on the muzzle and held on for dear life, trying to control the weapon. She failed. Before she knew what was happening, she was facedown on the damp concrete, and pinned at the back of the neck and small of the back. Turning her head, she looked frantically across the pool bottom to see if Craeg was still alive.

The male was down on her level, writhing while holding what looked to be his thigh. The only other female in the group crouched beside him, forced his hands away, inspected the wound. Then on a quick jerk, she pulled her shirt out of her waistband and ripped it off, exposing a muscled torso and a black sports bra. With a tear, she took the hem off all around the base, freeing a strip of cloth.

She tied a tourniquet on his upper thigh as if she had been trained.

“Let her go,” Peyton demanded from behind her. “Let her fucking go!”

“Or what,” came a distorted voice from speakers overhead—as if someone had spoken into a microphone with a synthesizer attachment.

That was when Peyton lost his mind. Craning to twist her head around, she caught the unbelievable sight of him in full aggression, fists flying at Rhage, feet kicking, his fangs bared in a snarl as he tried to get the Brother off of her. And then suddenly he wasn’t alone—the male who had displayed such athletic ability on the pommel horse joined in.

Pop! Pop!

Both of them were picked off with bullets by another Brother. And so were another two males who likewise tried to get involved. Meanwhile, people were climbing the walls, using the stainless-steel ladders to try to leave the pool—only to be electrocuted and fall back down.

A door opened.

From overhead that voice announced: “Anyone who wishes to leave may do so. No harm will come to you. This can all be over—right now. All you have to do is run for that door.”

At that moment, she was released, Rhage hopping off, stepping back.

She scrambled across to Peyton, rolling him over once again. “How bad? Where?”

“My arm—my fucking arm.”

Paradise yanked her shirt up and followed the example of the other female, tearing a section with one of her fangs, ripping a strip free, and trying to tie it just above the bleeding wound on his triceps.

She glared up at the Brothers. “Are you out of your fucking minds! This is school, not war! What the fuck!”

“You may leave now,” the voice from overhead droned on. “Just proceed to the stairs at the shallow end of the pool and let yourself out of this.”

A sudden sharp rage had her seeing white, and before she knew it she was up and at the line of Brothers. “Shoot me! Come on! Do it, you bunch of fucking cowards!”

She had no idea what the hell she was saying. What the hell she was doing. She had never seen so many guns before, much less deliberately put herself within point-blank range of such weapons—but she had snapped and discovered a surprising surge of power came with the unhinge.

Not that the Brothers seemed to care. They just stood there, unmoving and unreactive, as if they were content to wait until she ran out of gas.

So she turned on the trainees who were leaving. “Where are you going! You need to fight! This is wrong—”

Just like that, the door was closed and the unmistakable sound of a bar being clamped into place ricocheted around the space.

“You will now be required to complete First Night,” the overhead voice stated. “The final session begins in three … two …

“…one.”

And that was when the illumination went from incandescent to the purpley-blue of blacklight.

Also when the Brotherhood opened fire on all of them.

Chapter Ten

Rubber bullets hurt like a motherfucker.

As the first of a countless number of rounds hit Craeg in the pecs, he rolled away and offered his back instead of his more vulnerable front. Down below the waist, the one real bullet wound was like a firebrand in his skin—just as he’d predicted, though, the expert shot had done nothing but graze his flesh so that tourniquet was unnecessary. No time to take it off—he grabbed Novo’s hand and yanked her into a belly-flat on the pool’s bottom. Keeping their heads down, they crawled away from the barrage, heading up and over the hump that took them to the ten-foot end.

Glancing behind him, he found that the Brothers, who had realigned themselves to block the steps at the shallow part of the pool, had begun to walk forward like they were driving cattle into the chute of a slaughterhouse. Fucking hell—the metal ladders mounted up high on the pool walls by the diving board were juiced with electricity—and those warriors seemed to have an endless supply of the fucking dummy bullets. Even though the impacts were more like exaggerated bee stings through his clothes, with enough of them, his pain threshold was going to get triggered to a point that incapacitated him.

Wrenching around again, he measured how fast the Brothers were coming at them.

Fast enough so that he had maybe sixty seconds to figure this out.

“Dematerialize,” he said as much to himself as anyone else who would listen. “Only chance.”

Freezing his forward motion, he closed his eyes and started to breathe. The first vision he had was of that slender blond female attacking that impossibly large Brother with a gun.

To defend him after he’d been shot.

“Stop it,” he hissed.

Control. He needed to get control of his mind and his emotions, focus himself, and dematerialize up and out. Focus … focus …

Pain in his body: in his thigh, in the other impacts along his shoulders, his spine, his hip. His head was thumping. His ribs were tight. His elbow still throbbed from when he’d been nailed by the electricity on the scaffolding.

All around, people panicking, crying, cursing. Tripping. Falling.

And still those bullets, driving into him. Into all of them.

The harder he tried to ignore the fear and panic, the louder the chorus of discomfort and distraction became.

He needed a target image, a place to train his brain to.

From out of nowhere, he pictured that receptionist when he’d first seen her. She’d been sitting behind a neat little desk in a majestic sitting room. Everything had intimidated him—the silk wallpaper, the fancy rug, the clean smell … her.

But she hadn’t treated him like the scrub he was. She had looked up at him with eyes that had stopped his heart in his chest—and then she’d said her name.

Paradise.

Her voice had been so beautiful, he hadn’t even heard her properly. And then he’d blown things completely by not shaking the hand she’d offered. The trouble was, his brain had frozen because she was so …

His body dematerialized without him being aware of it. One moment, he was suffering and stuck in his corporeal form … the next he was flying out from the pool. With no destination in mind, he tumbled through the air as he had the first few times he’d tried the trick after his transition—and then he got hold of himself and projected his form into the far corner, against the wall.