“Ehric, Evale,” he gritted out. “Drop your kits.”

His cousins wasted no time in getting naked, their alacrity as much from their willingness to take orders from him as it was from their having not been with a female for some time.

Both of them were fully erect as he motioned them to come over.

“You,” he said, pointing to Ehric. “Here.”

He pointed to that slit, and his cousin was on it in an instant, mounting the female from behind, his hips driving in as Naasha groaned and arched her back.

And then all Assail had to do was nod and Evale got with the program, going around and muffling the female’s grunts and groans with his rather large anatomy.

“And now you?” somebody proposed to him.

As one of the females sidled up and put her hand on his shoulder, he recognized her as the blonde who had kept her stare on him all through dinner.

“Let us enjoy—”

He pointedly removed her touch. “Get in line for my cousins.”

Stepping away, he found a bench over by the bathrooms to sit on, and as he crossed his legs, he watched the show, the females disrobing and feeling one another up, bodies lying out on the platforms, heads and arms intertwining with legs and breasts.

“Do not tell me this is from some misplaced puritanism.”

At the dry words, he glanced up at Throe. The male was still fully clothed, but going by the length straining at the fly of his tuxedo pants, that was not going to last.

Assail bared his fangs in a smile. “I have never developed a taste for fast food. It’s rather common for my appetites regardless of how noble it wishes to appear.”

“That wasn’t the case last night.” Throe leaned down and smiled, likewise revealing his canines. “I believe you quite enjoyed your time in the parlor.”

“Tell me, is Xcor aware of your presence here?”

Throe eased back, calculation narrowing his eyes. “For a businessman, you seem curious about much that does not concern you.”

“It’s a simple question.”

In the background, someone came hard, and Assail glanced over. Ehric and Evale had shifted things around, the pair of them double-penetrating Naasha’s well-used sex, one underneath her on his back, the other mounting her on top. A female had joined in and the madam of the house was suckling on a set of voluptuous, pink-nippled breasts.

“Xcor and I have ended our association, shall we say.”

Assail refocused on the male. “Breaking up is sooo hard to do.”

“His interests and mine did not align any further. He shall not relent in his pursuit of the throne.”

“Indeed.” Assail carefully tracked the male’s features, searching for signs of tension. “And you are now here for how long?”

“I know not. And I care not. I have had an extended, brutal sojourn in the company of savages, and I crave the civilized in the manner of a starving male.”

“Mmmm,” Assail said.

Rising to his feet, he faced off with the other male—and reached forward to touch the precisely tied bow at Throe’s collar.

As the male’s eyes widened in surprise, Assail pushed that body back against the stone wall, holding him in place by the throat.

Then he leaned in chest-to-chest, extended his tongue, and drew it across Throe’s lower lip.

Assail laughed as he felt the shudder go through his prey and watched whilst some sort of inner dialogue played out on that handsome face—said conflict being of such note that Throe failed at keeping the reaction to himself.

“You taste like Scotch,” Assail murmured as he reached down and cupped that massive erection. “And you feel hungry.”

Throe began to pant, much in the manner of Naasha. But he was frozen in place as if he were shocked equally by Assail’s actions . . . and his reaction.

“Are you,” Assail growled as he hovered above Throe’s lips. “Are you hungry . . . for dessert?”

A strange sound came out of the male, half begging, half denial.

And then Throe punched at Assail’s shoulders, sending him careening backward onto one of the platforms.

Throe wiped his mouth off on his sleeve and stuck his finger in Assail’s direction. “I don’t go like that.”

Assail allowed his legs to flop to the sides, exposing the arousal behind his fine slacks. “Are you sure?”

Throe cursed and wheeled around for the door. He was gone the next moment, no doubt stomping off to his room, wherever that might be.

Assail sat up and straightened his jacket. That one was going to be fun to crack.

And mayhap in the process, he would learn exactly what Throe was doing here.

He knew in his gut that Wrath and Vishous were correct to be concerned with the glymera. Throe was up to something—and the divining of what, in addition to seducing the male out of his sexual comfort zone, was exactly the kind of distraction Assail was after.

This was going to be rather enjoyable.

THIRTY-TWO

As Bill Elliot parked his Lexus behind a non-descript seventies-era building, Jo opened the door on her side and got out slowly. Dilapidation was the name of the game, all kinds of rot and debris and broken things cluttering the flank of the classrooms, like acne on the face of a plain Jane teenager.

“We can walk around from here to the center part of campus.” Bill was busy rewrapping the scarf he’d taken off at I’ve Bean around his neck. “And you can show me where it happened.”

As she shut her door, she frowned. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing up like soldiers called to a reveille line, and she looked at the lines of darkened windows. But come on, as if all this talk of vampires wasn’t likely to send her adrenal glands into a spiral?

“You coming?”

“Oh, yup.” She headed over to him—and had an absurd wish that he was built more like the Rock instead of one of the boys from The Big Bang Theory. “So you said you were familiar with the school?”

“My mother went here.”

Small world, Jo thought. So did mine.

Their feet shuffled damp leaves out of the way, but did nothing for fallen limbs. Those they stepped over. And when they got to the end of the asphalt, there wasn’t any real difference between the amount of fallen stuff on the grass versus the parking lot.

“What year?” Jo asked as she put her hands into her coat pockets. “Did your mother graduate, that is.”

Shoot, they had no flashlights. Just their phones.

Then again, the moon overhead was bright, with nothing but the occasional cloud wisp to mark the dark, cold heavens.

“’Eighty.”

“When did the school close?”

“Sometime in the late nineties. I don’t know who owns all the land now, but it’s a helluva property. I mean, why hasn’t someone developed this?”

“Not economically feasible. For one thing, the zoning out here isn’t commercial, and second, some of these buildings have to be on the Historic Register, which would restrict their being retrofitted for reuse.”

Bill looked over at her. “I’ve forgotten—you work for a real estate company.”

“Two years next month.”

“Where did you say you went to school? Or did you?”

Williams College. English lit major with a minor in American history. Accepted into the Yale master’s program for English, but couldn’t foot the bill on her own.

“Nowhere important.” She glanced at him. “How did you know where to park?”

“I used to come here to think when I was at SUNY Caldie. My mom had told me about it, and one day I biked out and just went exploring. I haven’t been back in a very long time.”

They made it around the side of the building, and just as he’d described, the open area of the campus rolled out before them—which was, yup, still marked with crushed dead grass.

“Jesus . . .” Bill said. “What the hell?”

“Crop circles, Caldwell style, right?”

Bill proceeded ahead of her, and Jo went some distance farther—before she had to stop and look behind herself.