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Nathaniel came to my side, and he had my gun. He held it out to me wordlessy, exactly the way I’d taught him, butt first, fingers well away from the trigger.

I gave him half the smile he deserved, because I was still keeping an eye on the bloody giant on the floor. I clicked the safety off before I holstered it. Call it a hunch, but when Primo rushed us, I wouldn’t want to waste that second. I’d need it.

But he didn’t rush us. No, Primo had a much more interesting idea in mind. There was something about being this hooked up to Jean-Claude that made me feel safer, and that sense of safety was a type of arrogance. Arrogance made me forget that a really old vampire can do more than just hurt you physically. Jean-Claude’s arrogance made me forget.

Primo didn’t move a muscle, but he thrust power at us, poured his rage like flinging a red hot bucket of boiling anger on us. There was no time to shield against it. No time to do anything but take it. Jean-Claude tried to let it wash over him, but I felt that awful rage trying to find a place to grow inside him. The Master of the City consumed by rage would be a very bad thing. But I understood anger, and I wasn’t Master of the City.

I took that anger, not to wash over me, but to drink, to swallow, to bathe in it. I drew his rage around me like a coat of fire, and I opened up a part of me that I kept hidden from everyone. I let Primo’s rage meet the great seething mass of my own rage. The rage I’d carried inside me since my mother’s death. The deep endless seas of my anger welcomed his anger embraced it, fed on it. I ate his rage and let him feel me do it.

I laughed, laughed while I stood there and burned with our twin furies. Laughed while I felt his anger falter and begin to pull back. Laughed while I let his anger mingle with mine. I already carried a bottomless pit of it, what was a few more buckets?

He stared up at me with sightless eyes, and then he did half of what I’d expected. He moved forward, but not in a mindless rush. He moved forward with a speed that was breathtaking, and I’d seen speed. He was blind, so he grabbed in the dark, and it was Nathaniel he grabbed. Nathaniel who was standing near us. I don’t know if that was who Primo was aiming at, or if he missed. He grabbed Nathaniel’s wrist and tried to yank him in against his body, but Nathaniel braced and would not go.

We were suddenly all moving. I was aware that the security guards were moving, but they’d be too late. My gun was almost free of its holster, but Primo had started forward as soon as he felt Nathaniel’s resistance. I was closest, and I moved faster than I planned. I wasn’t used to being more than human quick. I was reaching out for Nathaniel’s arm, but I got too close to the vampire’s face.

Primo sank fangs into my wrist, and I knew better than to try and jerk free. It would have torn my wrist open. I had my gun out as I screamed. Screamed as his mouth fed on me. Screamed as I put the gun to his head.

My finger had started that pull on the trigger, when Primo’s mind slammed into mine. It wasn’t his rage. It was his memories. Roman army, the murder that got him condemned, the arena where he could murder to his heart’s content, where he could slack that rage, or feed it. Death after death after death. And each one fed him in a way that nothing else did.

Then one dark night a noblewoman requested he come to her bed with the blood and sweat of his victory painted on his body. He went, and found so much more than he’d ever dreamt of. She offered him freedom and a new way to feed his rage. A new way to kill. He did not know her real name. She had simply said, “I am the Dragon, and you will serve me,” and he had.

Abruptly, the memories stopped. It staggered me, and I had a moment to fight not squeezing the trigger. A moment to point the gun skyward and try to relearn how to breathe and use my body at the same time.

Primo still had his mouth pressed to my wrist, but now there was healed flesh, and sight in his eyes. I knew with