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The symphath’s eyes glowed red, his evil lineage shining in the night, and yet his youth and his panic evidently rendered him incapable of using his race’s most powerful weapon: Although Darius braced himself for a mental onslaught, an invasion of his cranium did not ensue from the sin-eater.

“Let her go,” Darius repeated, “and we shall not kill you.”

“I have mated with her! Do you hear me! Mated with her!”

As Tohrment leveled his gun right at the male, Darius was impressed by how calm he was. First time in the field, captive situation, symphath . . . and the boy was right in the midst without being consumed by the drama.

With deliberate composure, Darius continued trying to reason with their opponent, noting with vicious anger the way the female’s nightgown was stained. “If you release her—”

“There is nothing you can give me worth more than her!”

Tohrment’s low voice broke through the tension. “If you let her go, I won’t shoot you in the head.”

It was a good enough threat, Darius supposed. But of course, Tohrment wasn’t going to fire the weapon—too much risk to the female in the event his aim was off by even a fraction.

The symphath began walking back toward the barn, dragging the vampire with him. “I shall slice her open—”

“If she’s so precious to you,” Darius said, “how could you bear the loss?”

“Better she die with me than—”

Boom!

As the gun went off, Darius shouted and jumped forward, even though he couldn’t possibly catch Tohrment’s bullet with his hands.

“What have you done!” he hollered as the symphath and the female landed in a heap.

Racing over the grass and then falling to his knees, Darius prayed that she had not been hit. With his heart in his throat, he reached out to roll the male off of her. . . .

As the young symphath flopped over onto his back, he stared in blind fixation at the heavens, a perfectly round, black hole in the center of his forehead.

“Dearest Virgin Scribe . . .” Darius breathed. “What a shot.”

Tohrment knelt down. “I wouldn’t have pulled the trigger if I hadn’t been sure.”

They both leaned toward the female. She too was staring at the galaxy above, her pale eyes locked and unblinking.

Had her throat been cut after all?

Darius rifled through her frothy, once-white nightdress. There was blood on it, some of which had dried, some of which was fresh.

The tear that spilled forth from her eye twinkled silver in the moonlight.

“You are saved,” Darius said. “You are safe. Be not afraid. Be not of sorrow.”

As her pale stare shifted over to meet his own, her despair was as cold as a winter wind and just as isolating.

“We shall take you back from whence you came,” Darius vowed. “Your family shall—”

Her voice was nothing more than a croak out of her throat. “You should have shot me instead of him.”

FIFTY-FIVE

As the countdown hit “one,” Xhex took form in the farmhouse’s living room, thinking that the concerns of an ambush were right—except the slayers were the fuckers getting jumped. Facing off at the nearest lesser and falling into hand-to-hand with the guy, she knew she had to work fast.

You had the element of surprise only once in any given fight, and she and her crew were outnumbered four to one—in a sitch where no guns could be used. Bullets were accurate only if you had clean shots on static targets and there was none of that going down. Arms and legs and bodies were flying all around as the Brothers and John and Qhuinn did exactly what she was doing—picking a random inductee and going Bruce Lee on their ass.

Xhex had her dagger out in her left hand while she threw a right hook at the slayer in front of her. The cracking blow knocked the guy senseless, and as he slumped against the wall, she drew her arm back and aimed the tip of her blade right for the chest of—

With a slap, Butch caught her wrist. “Let me finish it.”

Positioning himself between them, he locked eyes on the slayer and put his mouth down close. On a slow, steady inhale, he began to draw the essence out of that body, a nasty cloud—like smog transferring from the lesser to Butch.

“Jesus