“Curtis Jenkins,” she said, smiling pleasantly. “I’ve decided I want to fuck you after all.” She frowned. “Or wait, that’s not right. My English . . .” she added, shaking her head in dismay. “Let me think. Ah. No. I don’t want to fuck you. That’s rather repulsive. What I want is to fuck with you.”

Her smile disappeared and she slammed the human to his knees. Strangled noises filled his throat as he thrashed about, struggling to break the invisible bonds of her power. Sophia circled him slowly, amused by the way his head twisted as he tried to keep her in sight.

“Tell me, Jenkins, do you know where Lucien is?”

The human froze, clearly startled by her question. He stared at her in confusion.

Puzzled by his reaction, Sophia cocked her head quizzically. “Do you know who Lucien is?”

He shook his head frantically, eyes wide.

Sophia sighed. She didn’t know why she’d thought it would be that easy. Throwing away all pretense of humanity, she delved directly into the man’s mind, ripping it apart in search of the truth. His thoughts were a cesspool of hate and resentment and she felt sullied by the touch of them. Foremost in his mind was triumph over his gang’s recent attack on Raphael’s mate and Colin, too. He resented that Colin had been hired for the local law enforcement job, believing he was far more qualified, although what possessed him to think so was unclear.

But the brutal assault on Jeremy’s young mate was there, too, surrounded by a savage lust that sickened her soul. She destroyed that memory without hesitation, not caring what damage she caused. Reeling with disgust, she was debating whether she needed to waste anymore time on this piece of trash when a familiar face flashed briefly—there and gone. Sophia dug around, trying to call it back, but it was lost in a jumble of recent memories, most of them hardly worth remembering.

Frustration made her clumsy and she shoved the human’s mind away from her too quickly. The muscles in his body seized all at once and then released with an audible snap like the release of a spring. It sent him sprawling to the ground where he lay quivering as his brain recovered from her indelicate probing.

Sophia eyed him dispassionately. She lifted a hand to end it all, pausing when she heard familiar footsteps. She turned in time to see Colin emerge from the shadows under the trees. He was carrying some sort of shotgun in one hand, and as he drew closer she detected the distinct scent of gun powder on his clothing. She blinked, suddenly registering the fact that she’d heard gunfire a short time ago.

“Are you all right?” she asked, scanning him quickly.

Colin gave her a half smile. “Fine.” He leaned around her, eyeing Jenkins with bored disinterest. “What about this one?”

Some remnant of Jenkin’s brain recognized Colin’s voice, and he grunted, drawing her attention. He was on his back in the dirt, unmoving but for his eyes which were wide open and fixed on Colin. Sophia watched him curiously, wondering if perhaps he retained just enough animal brain to think his fellow human would save him.

“You need any help here, darlin’?” Colin asked her.

“No, I’ve got this one.”

“If you’re sure, then I’m gonna track down Jeremy. He was looking pretty green a while back.”

Sophia stood on tiptoes and pulled Colin’s head down for a quick kiss. He blinked, clearly startled, but his eyes sparked with pleasure nonetheless. “This won’t take long,” she assured him.

Colin nodded and walked past her, heading for the rear of the house. She watched him go, admiring the way he moved, that loose-hipped grace of a powerful male. She sighed with pleasure. And then turned back to Jenkins.

“Now where were we?”

* * * *

Colin was surprised at himself. He had no qualms at all about leaving Jenkins back there with Sophie, even though he knew there was only one possible outcome. It wasn’t a matter of whether the old boy would die, but how. And if Sophie wanted to do the honors, that was fine with him. Somewhere between the day he’d discovered Mariane ravaged nearly to death and the afternoon he’d raced Leighton’s bloody body back to her vampire lover in a desperate bid to save her life, he’d decided these people didn’t deserve to live. And he didn’t trust the courts to serve up justice when it came to vampires or the human women who loved them.

He heard a soft grunt and brought his shotgun up, his eyes searching the shadows behind the house as he advanced slowly. He’d seen Jeremy disappear back here sometime ago. The vamp wasn’t a soldier and it was entirely possible . . . He froze in mid-step, letting his foot drop slowly to the ground.

“Hey there, Jeremy,” he said carefully.

The vampire lifted his mouth from the neck of someone Colin no longer recognized, spitting out a gob of blood and flesh before treating Colin to a gruesome grin. “Hi, Colin,” he said cheerfully.

Colin stepped closer. The human was clearly dead, although his blood was still dripping, so it hadn’t happened all that long ago.

“You know this guy?” he asked, glancing at Jeremy.

“Well enough,” the vampire said darkly. “He was one of those who hurt my Mariane. I saw only glimpses of what happened that day, but his voice is one I recognized. I don’t know his name. Do you?”

Colin studied the mess that was the man’s face. He shook his head. “Nope.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jeremy said. “Sophia will destroy all the bodies before we leave here tonight anyway. Even I know that much about how things are done.”

Colin nodded. He’d overheard Sophie saying something about that to the others, although he didn’t have a clear picture yet of how it would come about.

“We should probably drag this one around front,” he said. “You need any help with that?”

Jeremy stood with that surprising speed and grace that all vampires seemed to possess. He grabbed the dead human’s arm and hefted him easily, tossing him over one shoulder in a fireman’s carry, as if he weighed nothing at all. He grinned at Colin’s look of surprise.

“Vampire, remember? Better get used to it if you don’t want Sophia to run you ragged.”

Colin watched the vampire march off with his burden like the eighth dwarf in a particularly gruesome fairy tale. And he had a feeling Sophia was going to run him ragged no matter what he did.

It was a while before they got everything cleaned up, but eventually Sophia was walking alongside him back to where they’d left the SUVs tucked into a narrow turnout on the main road. The bodies were gone, reduced to ash and scattered throughout the forest, so there wouldn’t be any suspicious piles of ash for some industrious crime tech to sift through. Not that it was likely they’d find anything if they did. Sophie’s power had produced a blaze that disintegrated flesh and bone more thoroughly than any regular flame could have done. The result had been something that more closely resembled the remains of a wood fire than any human cremation. It gave Colin pause to realize Sophie had that much power inside her, but it also made him a little proud.

He was quiet as they neared the SUVs, but he needed to know something and Sophie was the only one he could ask. “You saw what Jeremy did to that guy. I couldn’t even tell who it was when he finished.”

“Yes.”

“Is that . . . I mean, do you think that’s what Raphael did to Garry?”

She took his hand, pulling him to a stop so she could look into his face. “Your friend—”

“Not my friend,” he insisted, meeting her gaze evenly. “Not anymore.”

Sophia nodded slowly, acknowledging the distinction. “McWaters, then—he tried to murder Raphael’s mate. You saw what Jeremy did, what his need for revenge drove him to do. And Jeremy is—” She shook her head, as if searching for a comparison. “Jeremy is a child’s breath compared to the most destructive storm the world has ever seen, one that destroys everything in his path without regard. And that storm is Lord Raphael.”

She took his other hand, squeezing gently. “McWaters is almost certainly dead by now, and there is no benefit to be found in trying to envision things which are quite beyond most people’s imagination.”

“Fuck.” Colin looked away. “Mac wasn’t who I thought it he was. He turned out to be about as low as a man can get. But he was a good soldier, too. And once an honorable man. It’s hard. Feelings can’t change on a dime, you know?”

“I do. Sometimes people disappoint us, but that doesn’t change our memories of them.”

“Yeah.” He tightened his fingers on her hand and started walking again, looking up when they reached the road and Robbie called Sophie’s name.

He started toward them in the dark, holding out a cell phone. “Duncan,” he said and offered her his cell.

Sophie nodded her thanks and accepted the phone.

“This is Sophia.”

Her mouth tightened in irritation as she listened, but her voice remained all business. “Yes, of course,” she said. “The bodies were burned to ash and scattered at random, all blood trace eliminated. None of ours were injured.”

She listened a bit longer, then raised her head and asked Colin. “How long before we arrive at the compound?”

“This late at night, we can make time. Half hour probably, forty minutes at the most.”

She repeated the information and nodded in that automatic way people do on the phone. “Tomorrow night, then. I’ll be there.” She disconnected the phone and handed it back to Robbie with a murmured, “Thank you.”

She looked up at Colin and said quietly, “We’ll talk later.”

He nodded, taking her hand again and continuing toward the SUVs. He figured whatever it was they had planned for tomorrow night involved the still missing Lucien. The humans responsible for the murders might have been taken out, but Lucien had something to do with it, too, and he was still an unknown. Was he dead? Or was he pulling the strings from somewhere in hiding? Colin didn’t know. And it seemed no one else did either.