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Inhaling deeply, he closed his eyes and held still. No sounds. No smells other than the beeswax-and-fresh-dirt combo that had been there all along.

Wherever that group had gone, it was not down here, goddamn it.

Retracing his steps, he returned to where the corridor branched into three directions, and looked down. Someone had just been by: A trail of dark blue dots stretched off in two directions, to the right and straight ahead, meaning someone had come from one of those compass points and gone toward the other.

Bending down, Lash dragged his forefinger through the viscous dribble and rubbed the substance with his thumb. Symphath blood. God knew he’d spilled enough of his female’s to know exactly what the shit was.

Lifting his hand to his nose, he inhaled. Not his female’s. Someone else’s. And it was unclear which way they’d been and where they were headed.

With nothing to go on, he was about to jog right when a bright red flare boiled out of the smallest of the three offshoots, the one that was in front of him. Jacking to his feet, he ran in that direction, following the trail of blood.

As the corridor eased into a turn and the glow intensified, he had no idea what the hell he was going to interrupt and didn’t care. His princess was here, and someone was going to tell him where the fuck to find the bitch.

A hidden hallway appeared with no warning, breaking from the corridor without a jamb or doorstop. From down at the end of it, the red light was brilliant enough to sting the eyes, and Lash headed for the source.

He walked into a whole lot of…What the fuck?

Crumpled at entrance of a chamber was the Brother Vishous, and beyond him was a tableau that made no sense at all:

The princess was standing in what he’d dressed her in the night before, her bustier and thigh-high stockings and stilettos looking ridiculous out of the context of the bedroom. Her blue-black hair was a shaggy mess, her hands were dripping blue blood, her wild, red eyes the source of the glow that had guided him. In front of her, captivating her, was something like a gigantic side of beef that was covered in what appeared to be a lottery-winning load of insects.

Shit, those things were everywhere.

And clustered around the airborne body was that scarred Brother Zsadist, Xhex the security dyke, and some female vampire with a lighter in one hand and an aerosol can in the other.

That bunch weren’t long for this world. Spiders and scorpions were on full advance, gunning for the trio who’d invaded their territory, and Lash had a brief, gory premonition of raw skeletons cleaned of meat.

But that wasn’t his concern.

He wanted his female.

Who had ideas of her own, evidently. The princess lifted her bloody hand, and in a flash, the crawling bastards that papered the walls and the ceiling and the floor retreated like floodwaters sucked up by the thirsty earth. In their wake, Rehvenge was revealed, his heavy, naked weight strung up by bolts set into his shoulders. It seemed like a miracle that his skin wasn’t pitted with a million bites, but it was almost as if he’d been preserved beneath that carpet of eight-legged and two-clawed monstrosities.

“He is mine,” the princess shouted at no one in particular. “And no one takes him but me.”

Lash’s upper lip curled back, his fangs elongating in a rush. She did not just say that. She so totally did not just say that.

That was his woman.

One look at her face, though, and he knew the truth. That sick fixation as she stared at Rehvenge had never shined back at Lash, no matter how intense the sex had been…. Nope, that single-minded obsession had never been trained on him. She’d just been marking time with him, waiting to get free—not because she didn’t want to be held against her will, but because she wanted to get back with Rehvenge.

“You fucking cunt,” he spat.

The princess wheeled around, her hair swinging in an arc. “How dare you address me like—”

Shots rang out in the stone room, one, two, three, four, loud as planks falling on the hard floor. The princess went rigid in shock as bullets