Mary Madonna Luce was the virgin Vishous had told him was coming for him—and she was more than enough to turn him into a God-fearing vampire.

On that note . . .

Rhage took off without waiting for the Go Now from his team. Rushing headlong across the field, he had both guns up in front of him and premium, high-test gas funneling into his leg muscles. And no, he didn’t have to hear the precise curses of frustration as he blew their cover and started the attack too soon.

He was used to the boys being pissed off at him.

And his demons were way harder to deal with than his brothers.

SAFE PLACE, MARY’S OFFICE

As Mary Madonna Luce hung up the phone, she kept her hand on the receiver’s smooth grip. Like a lot of the equipment and furnishings at Safe Place, the set was a decade old, a used AT&T leftover from some insurance company or maybe a real estate agent’s upgrade. Same with the desk. Her chair. Even the rug under her feet. At the vampire race’s only domestic violence shelter and resource for females and their children, every penny that came from the King’s generous coffers was spent on the people receiving support, treatment and rehabilitation.

Victims were allowed to come free of charge. And stay in the large, roomy house for however long they needed to.

Staffing, of course, was the largest expense . . . and with news like what had just come through that old phone, Mary was really fricking grateful for Marissa’s priorities.

“Fuck you, death,” she whispered. “Fuck you so goddamn hard.”

The squeak that her chair let out as she leaned back made her wince even though she was used to the complaint.

Looking up at the ceiling, she felt an overwhelming urge to take action, but the first rule of being a therapist was that you had to control your own emotions. Half-cocked and frantic did the patient no good, and contaminating an already stressful situation with drama that was self-infused on the part of the professional was utterly unacceptable.

If there had been time, she would have gone to one of the other social workers to get debriefed, re-centered and perma-composed. Given what was happening, though, all she could spare was a minute’s worth of Rhage’s patented deep breathing.

No, not the sexual kind.

More his yoga variety that had him inflating his lungs in three separate draws, holding the oxygen, and then releasing it all along with the tension in the muscles.

Or trying to release the tension.

Okay, this was getting her nowhere.

Mary rose to her feet and had to settle for two almost-theres in the composure department: one, she retucked her silk blouse and ran her fingers through her hair, which she was growing out; and two, she Halloween-masked her features, freezing everything into a semblance of concerned, warm, and not freaking out over her own past trauma.

When she stepped into the second-story hall, the scent of melting chocolate and baking sugar, butter and flour announced that Toll House Cookie Night was in full swing—and for an insane moment, she felt like popping open a bunch of windows and letting the cold October air scrub the smells out of the house.

The contrast between all that homey comfort and the hammer she was about to drop seemed disrespectful at best, one more part of the tragedy at worst.

Safe Place’s facilities had started out as a three-story, turn-of-the-twentieth-century roof-and-four-walls that had all the grace and distinction of a bread box. What it did have were bedrooms and bathrooms in abundance, a serviceable kitchen, and enough privacy so that the human world was never going to get tipped off that vampires were using the thing in their midst. And then came the expansion. After Tohr’s Wellsie died and he made a gift in her name to the facility, the Wellesandra Annex had been built by vampire craftsmen out back. Now, they had a community room, a second kitchen that was big enough for everyone to eat together in, and four more suites for additional females and their young.

Marissa ran the facility with a compassionate heart and a fantastic logistical head, and with seven counselors, including Mary, they were doing necessary, purposeful work.

That, yes, some times broke your heart in half.

The door to the attic made no sound as Mary opened it because she had WD-40’d the hinges herself a couple of nights before. The stairs, however, chattered the whole time as she ascended, the old wooden planks popping and squeaking even as she made sure her flats didn’t land too hard.

It was impossible not to feel like some kind of Grim Reaper.

On the landing above, the yellow light from the old-fashioned brass fixtures in the ceiling brought out the red tones of both the hundred-year-old unpainted wainscoting and the braided runner that led down the narrow hall. At the far end, there was an oval oculus, and peachy illumination from the exterior security light above it bled in and got sliced into quadrants by the divides of its panes.

Of the six suites, five doors were open.

She went to the one that was shut and knocked. When a soft “Hello?” came, she cracked the panels and leaned in.

The little girl sitting on one of the two twin beds was working the tangles out of a doll’s head with a brush that was missing a number of bristles. Her long brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and her loose dress was handmade of a blue material, well-worn, but with seams that had stayed strong. Her shoes were scuffed, yet tied carefully.

She seemed very small in what was not a very large space.

Abandoned not by choice.

“Bitty?” Mary said.

It was a moment before pale brown eyes lifted. “She’s not doing well, is she.”

Mary swallowed hard. “No, sweetheart. Your mahmen isn’t.”

“Is it time to go say good-bye to her?”

After a moment, Mary whispered, “Yes, I’m afraid it is.”

TWO

“Are you fucking kidding me!”

As Hollywood’s massive body and stupid frickin’ pea-brained head broke rank and took off toward the dorms, Vishous was of half a mind to run after the guy just so he could beat the living shit out of his brother. But nooooooooooo.

You couldn’t snatch and grab a bullet after the trigger had been pulled.

Even if you were trying to save the piece of fool lead from its grave.

V whistled into the night, but it wasn’t like the rest of the fighters weren’t also watching the bastard’s backside go bat-out-of-hell rogue.

Members of the Brotherhood and the other males exploded free from behind their covers of trees and outbuildings, falling into wing formation behind Rhage, guns up and daggers ready. Shouts from the enemy announced that the attack was noticed almost immediately, and everyone was only halfway to goal when lessers began streaming out of doorways, wasps from the hives.

Cluster-fuck much? Hollow pops! sounded as Rhage discharged his weapon all over the place, nailing slayers in the face, his big-bore bullets blowing out the backs of those skulls and dropping the undead into tangles of writhing arms and legs. Which was great—but couldn’t possibly last as the slayers sought to close off behind the guy, isolate him, and create a second front line against the rest of the brothers.

Thank you, Mr. Premature Charge and your early-work-release, independent-study project that bent over the plan they’d worked on for nights.

Total chaos took over, although unlike Rhage’s bolt, that was expected: Just as you could trust every hand-to-hand combat to eventually end up on the ground, you could guarantee that the best-planned attack would, after a while, spin into the land of goatfucks and goddamn-its. If you were lucky, that inevitability took some time to land on your head, and your enemy sustained crippling losses beforehand.