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I badly wanted to see his face, but I kept my attention on the vamps in the trees. They hadn’t moved. The vampires already inside the lupanar were someone else’s problem. My job was keeping the others at a distance. I think Asher knew the division of labor. I just hoped Richard did.

“I don’t know how Jean-Claude runs his territory, but I know how I run mine. What you fail to appreciate, Miss Blake, is that nothing you can do to them will make them fear you more than they already fear me.”

“Death is the ultimate threat, Colin, and I don’t bluff.”

“Neither do I.”

I felt something move out through the trees. Power moving from Colin to those waiting figures. I started to turn the gun from the darkness to Colin, but Asher touched my arm. “He is mine. Watch the others.”

I slid the gun a fraction back to the still forms. “You get the Master of the City and I get all the rest. Sounds fair.”

Richard moved up beside me. “You don’t get all of them,” he said.

I wanted to ask if he would kill them. If he would use that preternatural strength to snap spines and tear their bodies apart with his bare hands as I had done with the machine gun. But I didn’t ask. How good Richard’s threat was was between him and his conscience. The only thing that bothered me about Richard’s conscience was that I couldn’t count on him for a single kill tonight. He’d hurt people and toss them around, but if he wouldn’t kill, that meant that he couldn’t account for any of them. There were over a hundred bad guys, vampires, and only eight of us. Sixteen if I could count Verne, but I didn’t know if I could count on him and his people. It would have been nice to be able to trust Richard at my back, but I didn’t.

The vampires out in the dark began to rot. Not all of them, but damn near half. I’d never seen so many. For a vampire to rot, it means that the vamp that made them was the same kind of creature. Which meant that Barnaby had made half of Colin’s people. No Master of the City would allow any subordinate to have such power. But the proof was staring me in the face with eye sockets gone to black dripping ruin.

“You have been very bold, Colin, to share your power with your second to this degree,” Asher said.

“Barnaby is my right hand, my second eye. Together we are a stronger master than either of us would be apart.”

“As are Jean-Claude and I,” Asher said.

“But Barnaby is a corruptor. He brings that to the dance,” Colin said. “What do you bring to Jean-Claude’s dance, Asher?” Fear breathed through the lupanar. I shivered as it prickled down my skin, tightened my chest, and tried to stop my breath in my throat.

“Night hag,” Damian spoke, his voice a hiss. He spit on the ground in the general direction of Colin, but he didn’t walk any closer.

“I smell your fear, Damian. I can taste it like rich, nutty ale on the back of my tongue,” Colin said. “Your master must have been a fine piece of work.”

Damian moved back a step, then stopped. “You ask why Asher is content to remain with Jean-Claude when he could go elsewhere and be his own master. Maybe he is tired as I am tired of the struggle. The in-fighting. The fucking politics. Jean-Claude ransomed me from my master. I am not a master vampire, nor will I ever be. I have no special powers. Yet, Jean-Claude bargained for me. I serve him not out of fear but out of gratitude.”

“You make Jean-Claude sound weak. The Council does not fear weaklings, yet they fear him,” Colin said.

“Compassion is not weakness,” Richard said. “Only those without compassion think otherwise.”

I glanced at him, but he was looking at the vampires, not me. The fact that I felt it was a personal remark to me was just me being overly sensitive.

“Compassion.” Colin shook his head. He threw back his head and laughed. It was sort of unnerving. I kept my attention on the outer darkness and the waiting vamps, but it was hard not to watch the laughing vampire. Hard not to ask what was so funny.

“Compassion,” Colin said again. “Now that is not a word I would have used for Jean-Claude. Has he fallen in love