Stephan leaned closer. “They’re al over the map.”

“Right. You’d expect to see an outward spread from one point, but it looks like there were four, as if they were deliberately spaced to speed the rate and area of infection. We know Sentinels raided a nest outside of Seattle, and you can see that’s one of the first known cases.”

Elijah shook his head, knowing where this was going. “Adrian’s clean on this.”

“You sure?”

“Yes. Doesn’t mean a Sentinel isn’t responsible, but Adrian is in the clear.”

“Shit.” Vash began to pace, briefly distracting him with her graceful and agile stride. “And the Sentinels won’t act without his orders, so that leaves us with what? Demons? A lycan?”

“Don’t rule out the Sentinels.”

Stil ing, she looked at him. “Why not?”

“A woman was taken from Angels’ Point while under Sentinel guard.”

“Then they al owed it to happen.”

“Not to this woman. Adrian would kick off Armageddon first.”

“Would he? Hmm…” She spun on her stiletto heel and left the cavern.

Elijah was right behind her, fol owing in her cherry-scented wake. He was damn near dizzy by the time he reached the surface, his chest expanding on a deep breath that cleansed his lust-addled brain. He watched Vash pul an iPhone out from under a crimson bra strap and hit a speed-dial button. A moment later, the vampire leader appeared on her screen via a video feed.

“Vashti.” Syre greeted his second-in-command with warm familiarity. “Are you wel ?”

Elijah interjected. “You didn’t care about that when you sent her to me alone and unarmed.”

“Let me see him,” Syre said, prompting Vash to angle the screen in Elijah’s direction. “Ah. The lycan Alpha. You’re precisely what I expected.”

“I expected you to be smarter.” Elijah crossed his arms.

“You’d be an idiot to harm my lieutenant. I would hunt you down and spread your hide in front of my fireplace as a rug.”

“My hide is worth the same as hers?” He glanced at Vash, irritated that he gave a shit about the respect—or lack of—that she was shown by her commander.

“If you’d been able to take her down, yes. She’s a damned fine warrior, armed or not.”

Vash flipped the phone back around to face her. “How did you get your hands on Lindsay?”

The hair on Elijah’s arms and nape rose with his sudden fury. He’d pinned the vampress to a tree by the throat before she knew what’d hit her.

Vash found herself flattened into the coarse bark of a tree trunk by over six feet and two hundred twenty pounds of bristling, growling lycan. Her fury over being caught unawares was exacerbated by her prickling dislike of Elijah’s proprietary feelings toward Lindsay Gibson.

“What?” she taunted, catching the wrists of his hands presently wrapped around her neck. His heavily muscled thigh was shoved between hers and his lean hips pressed against her pelvis in a way that set her heart racing. “Got a hard-on for Adrian’s woman?”

“Where is she?”

Her smile was mocking. “Why do you care?”

“Lindsay saved my life.”

“I knew I hated that bitch for a reason.”

“She’s with Adrian.”

Elijah’s head turned toward the iPhone on the ground and Syre’s steely-eyed visage. “Is she unharmed?”

“If she’s stil alive, she’s healthier than she’s ever been.”

A chil slid down Elijah’s spine. He looked at Vashti, whose eyes were bright with chal enge. While a mortal would have lost consciousness by now from lack of air, the vampress was merely flushed, which made her even more beautiful. “What did you do to her?”

“What she wanted done,” Syre answered. “Release my second, Alpha, before I decide you’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

“Not yet.” Maybe not ever, if his growing suspicions were realized. His gut knotted as the fear deepened.

Vash smiled. “How did you get her, Syre?”

“She was brought to me by members of the Anaheim cabal.”

Elijah growled. “There’s a vampire nest in Southern California?”

“We prefer to cal them cabals or covens,” she corrected, “depending on the size.” She turned her gaze to Syre. “Did they tel you how they got her out of Angels’ Point?”

It was no secret that Angels’ Point, Adrian’s compound in Anaheim Hil s, was a fortress. Set high above the city, it was guarded by Sentinels and lycans—before the revolt—as wel as the finest electronic surveil ance mil ions could buy.

“No.” The turning wheels in Syre’s mind were evident in his contemplative tone. “I assumed they’d acquired her somewhere between her work and the Point.”

“We need to talk to them. They have a winged contact they’re not sharing.”

“I’l see to it. And I’ve sent the Alpha’s blood sample from the scene of Nikki’s abduction out to be analyzed for anticoagulants, as you requested.

I’l let you know the results when I have them.” There was a pause. “Are you al right there, Vashti?”

The circle of her fingers released Elijah’s wrists, freeing her hands to slide up his arms like a lover. Teasing him. Goading him. “Of course.”

“Check in regularly, so I can be certain.”

“Yes, Syre.”

Yes, Syre. Elijah was determined to hear her cede to him as thoroughly…while she was beneath him, taking hard, deep thrusts of his aching cock. That he could want her and want to kil her at the same time was fucking with his head. Rachel’s pain was a vice around his chest…Lindsay had lost her mother to Vashti’s viciousness…yet stil he craved the vampress with a ferocity that shook him.

She squeezed his shoulders with a vampire’s strength, which just happened to be the exact pressure he most enjoyed. Her hands ran down either side of his spine, kneading, before reaching his ass and palming it. Her tongue peeped out and slid over her ful lower lip. “You can’t have Lindsay, you know. She’s brain-dead over Adrian. Gave up her life for him.”

He fought the seductive lure she was trying to wrap him with. “What—exactly—did you do to her, Vashti?”

“You’ve been a Sentinel dog for years. Bet you’ve never seen Adrian look twice at a woman. Why her? What’s special about her?”

“Get to your point.”

“She’s—wel , she was—Syre’s daughter.”

Elijah froze, his fingers going slack with shock. “Impossible.”

None of the vampires could procreate—soul ess creatures couldn’t create a being with a soul. But…Lindsay had shown anomalous traits almost from the beginning.

“She was born with another soul inside her. The reincarnated soul of Syre’s naphil daughter, created before he fel .”

“What did you do, Vashti?” he repeated.

“What had to be done for one soul to overcome the other.”

Rage burned through his blood like fire, tightening his hands around her throat. In that moment, he was a breath away from separating her head from her neck.

“Did you Change her?” he snarled, fighting off the shift rippling just beneath his skin. “Did you kil her spirit? Is Lindsay gone?”

For the first time, fear shadowed her eyes and whitened her lips. As his claws extended and pierced through her pale skin, blood slid over the upper curve of her breasts in crimson tendrils. “She’s stil Lindsay. Shadoe’s soul was lost when Syre finished the Change. And he wasn’t lying— Lindsay wanted it.”

“Bul shit. She hated vampires because of you. Because you kil ed her mother. She would never become one wil ingly.”

A frown marred the space between Vash’s brows. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Two decades back. A pretty little blond five-year-old and her mother, having a nice picnic in the park…until a pack of vamps decided to have a snack.”

“No.” The confusion cleared. Her gaze bored into his. “Not my style. And if you don’t believe me, you can ask her. She must’ve figured it out when she gnawed these holes in my neck and dug into my blood memories. She had me down and pinned with a sharp piece of wood nearby; she could’ve vanquished me, but she let me go.”

Needing definitive answers, he pushed away from her plush, pliant body. He derided himself for wanting to believe her. “I need to know she’s okay. Make it happen.”

“You’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

He staked her to the tree with a fierce glance. “Now, Vashti.”

Cursing under her breath, she retrieved her phone from the ground and riffled through her contacts. A moment later, ringing came over the phone, fol owed by the clipped greeting of a receptionist at Mitchel Aeronautics. “Adrian Mitchel , please. Tel him Vashti is cal ing.”

Elijah’s arms crossed as he waited, his mind spinning from the fact that the vampires had once had Lindsay in their clutches and had let her go back to Adrian, effectively forfeiting the Sentinel leader’s only weakness. Why?

“Vash.” Adrian’s richly sonorous voice flowed through the phone’s speaker, sans video.

“How’s the new love of your life, Adrian?” Vash’s mouth curved bitterly. “Did she make it?”

“She’s exceptional y wel . How’s your neck?”

“Stil holding my head and body together.”

“You continue to have vicious rogues in your numbers, Vashti.” Despite the harshness of his words, the Sentinel leader’s tone remained as even and smooth as always. “We’l be hunting them.”

Al of the Sentinels displayed that steely control and neutrality of emotion, but Elijah had heard Adrian speaking with Lindsay and he knew the angel’s stil waters ran deep.

She snorted. “Not everyone in your ranks is toeing the line either, I hear.”

“You’l stay away from Lindsay. She’s no longer any concern of yours or Syre’s.”

Vash looked at Elijah. “She’s a vampire, Adrian. That makes her one of us.”

“She’s my mate; that makes her mine. Forgetting that wil see your neck no longer serving its purpose.”

“I love it when you talk dirty,” she purred. “Give my regards to Lindsay.” She ended the cal , then redialed. The video activated and Syre’s face appeared. “Lindsay’s okay. And Adrian threatened me over her, so he’s stil protecting her. She’s in loving hands, Samyaza.”

Elijah stepped closer, his gaze riveted to the vampire leader’s haunted eyes. A long moment later, Syre swal owed and a deep exhale escaped him. “Todah, Vashti.”

“You’re welcome.” Her face and voice softened. “I should have checked sooner. I’m sorry I didn’t think of it.”

Silent understanding passed between the two vampires. The instinctive exchange bespoke of a long relationship and deep compassion. Elijah was contemplating his own changing perceptions about Vashti—most especial y his absorption of her as a person who had a soft heart beneath the hard exterior—when she ended the cal and faced him.

She arched a brow. “Feel better?”

“Enough for now.” He wouldn’t feel total y settled until he spoke with Lindsay himself, but at least he knew she was with Adrian, who would die for her. His friend was safe for now.

“Less inclined to kil me now?”

He bared his teeth in a smile.

She shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

CHAPTER 4

As Vash opened the rear hatch of her Jeep, she felt Elijah’s stare move down her back.

Something had shifted between them a moment ago. She’d felt it, even if she couldn’t define it.

“What are you doing?” His rough, rumbling voice at her shoulder prompted a deep, cleansing breath, and she closed her eyes.

The hardest transition from Watcher to Fal en hadn’t been the loss of her wings; it had been the surge of emotion that shattered her previously inviolate equanimity. Since Charron, the only blessing she’d received was the numbness of al -encompassing fury. That a lycan—one of the very creatures who’d made her what she was today—should be the one to break through her shel and rattle her was the most heinous irony.

“These are surveil ance cameras.” She pul ed out one of the long rods that had a camera on top of it. “You’l want to get some of your men to place them around the perimeter in widening circles. Then station a team on the surface to monitor the feed.”

Stepping back, she let him see that the rear seat had been laid flat, expanding the cargo area to hold dozens of cameras.

“Jumping in with both feet,” he said, glancing at her with those bril iantly verdant eyes.

She set the tip of the camera pod on the ground and leaned her weight into it. Syre didn’t want the lycans to know just how much they were needed, but there’d been too many skeletons popping out of closets already. Considering who they both were—hunters of the highest caliber for their respective factions—there would certainly be more transgressions they’d hate each other for. Neither of them could afford to hold back from this point forward, just as they couldn’t delve too deeply into their pasts. Theirs was a merger of necessity. Regardless of the things they’d done previously, they needed each other now. Digging up secrets would only make the going more difficult; it couldn’t change the route.

Vash met his gaze. “What choice do we have?”

“Right.” But the line of his mouth softened.

“These are just a temporary precaution. We’l start moving your people out of here in the morning. I know you’l want to be near rural areas, but we need a command center with easy transportation access. I’ve got specs on some properties that meld the two needs. Money isn’t a concern.”