"Humans outlawed our blood and the Morsus died out. Very few of us remain who would recognize that flavor. It is in the Radia samples that were confiscated in Santiago. It is what is subduing the hunger. The serum is a delivery system."

And Kevin had drawn half a pint from me.

"The first time you stepped foot in one of my homes," Bronson said, "you were injured. Your left eye was blackened."

It wasn't hard to think back to the first night I'd been sent to the Master's home. It had been something of a defining moment. "s...o...b..arding and speed don't mix. I wiped out."

"Lucille presented you to me. You were new, and while you weren't stupid, you weren't as nervous as I expected. I seem to inspire a certain reaction."

"Is it quaking in boots? Because I recall quaking." He'd glanced at me while Lucille had patted me down. I'd been wearing pine cleaner and cooking grease, and it had made her sneeze. She said she hadn't sneezed in ten years. That memory made me grin, and Bronson smiled as well, his expression softening.

"I tried to reinvent the experiment, but never succeeded. Your taste took me back hundreds of years, to the one and only time I tasted a Morsus."

I was out of my seat in an instant.

"You didn't! You didn't bite me. I'd know. I'd know that. I'd remember it!" And Malcolm would know. He'd seen me bare, touched every centimeter of my skin. I'd been unmarked...until a few nights ago.

"I do not need to bite in order to feed. Your injury conveniently brought your blood closer to the surface. Sit. I do not like you over there." He gave me a sidelong glance, this one accompanied by a flare of irritation. I dropped back into the chair.

"And after that, I was a.s.signed your runner," I ground out. I'd been delivering miscellanies, five or six stops a night, for peanuts. But his regular runner had mainlined a cash bonus and was in the hospital detoxing so I'd been sent instead. We were rotating, one runner a night, until Reg came back or big bad Bronson, the master vampire of Alaska, chose someone else. Until that night. The next day, I was permanently a.s.signed. "What did you want with me?"

"Then? Nothing. Simply to observe, to see what you could or would do. The Morsus I met was there voluntarily. There was affection between the two of them. You worked with my kind but never offered yourself to me, and eventually I realized that you didn't know what you were." He actually sounded surprised. How often was someone that old surprised?

"How would I know? I didn't know what I was or that there was a name for it."

"There are others like you. Vampire blood is back on the market, if you hadn't noticed." He didn't sound happy about that. "There are more, and the old stories have resurfaced. It is lucky, perhaps, that our blood is so difficult to stabilize."

"Maybe Kevin's a student of history."

"Kevin?"

"The chemist."

"What is his surname?"

"I don't know."

"He's at Goya now, a regular employee?"

"I don't know. Why don't you ask Abel?"

"Abel." He tilted his head, as though physically shifting things around to form a connection.

My eyebrows rose. "Because Kevin is working for him. Because he was at that house, drawing my blood and playing mad scientist in the attic."

Energy coursed through the room, a cold gust that set my skin tingling. I raised my arms to ward it off. As quickly as it had risen, it fell away. The guards arrived in a blur, looking from Bronson to the mess on the hearth to me. Yeah, so not my fault, boys. Bronson paced, his arms bent and fingers spread in front of him.

"Other than you, he brought no humans with him," Bronson said as he turned back to me. "You will find him. Find him and bring him to me. Do it quietly, so that Abel hears nothing of it."

"I thought you were making Abel one of yours?" A high-pitched tone rang in my left ear and I shook my head to clear it. The way my body was crumbling, you'd think I was hours away from dentures and a walker.

"That is his desire. I am only considering." His eyes flicked to me, nearly white again. The guards shifted uneasily. "What he attempted with you does not recommend him."

What Bronson thought had happened was another story altogether. He hadn't said anything about what would happen to a Morsus if someone tried to blood-bind her. "I'm not a bounty hunter."

"You have incentive, which is better than anything I can purchase."

Wasn't that the truth? Kevin had a mercenary mind-set. He'd do about anything for money. Like use my blood for something that would end up killing innocent people.

"Fine," I muttered. There had to be a catch, but I didn't care. "But if I'm not successful, I don't want to be punished. And I don't want anything happening to Malcolm."

"Those are not the terms of our deal." He turned away from me, and a flare of intuition gave me courage.

"But this is a new bargain, so I'll need something new in exchange."

Bronson stilled, and I held my breath. I'd never had much, if any, leverage with vampires. But d.a.m.n if it didn't look like I held some cards. I couldn't ask for too little or he'd be insulted. Too much and he might throw me out and go after Mal just to mess with me.

"If I bring Kevin in, I want you to cut Malcolm's service time. He has two years left. I want it reduced to half that."

"This is what you ask for?" His face was blandly smooth. "Of anything you could have? Of all I could do for you?"

I could ask for something for myself, but since he couldn't undo the past few days, nothing sprang to mind. Nothing but this. There were a lot of things I couldn't do for Malcolm. A lot of things I couldn't erase, either. I straightened my spine. "Yes."

"You choose this for him." He nodded slowly, as if making a series of decisions. "Very well. Call in Petr."

At first I thought he was talking to me, but then one of the guards left. I shifted my weight from one foot to the other for the thirty endless seconds it took the human to arrive.

"Calculate Kelly's remaining debt," Bronson said, returning to his seat. "Our Sydney has made a bargain. When she fulfills her side of it, his service will be reduced to half. Provided she does so by midnight tomorrow."

"What does that mean?" I asked.

Petr looked up from scowling at the mess in front of my chair. "That you have roughly thirty-six hours to do whatever it is you've proposed. I take it this bargain should be kept silent?" Bronson nodded, his eyes flashing when he looked at me.

"I won't tell a soul," I said.

Less than two days to hunt down an a.s.shole? I could do that. I just had to put together a crack hunting squad and hope they were a thousand times better than I was because I had no idea where to start.

Chapter Seventeen.

Judging by Malcolm's appearance, a day and a half might not have been enough time for him to match a pair of socks. But I was glad he was a mess. If I'd run into him when he was in perfect order, I might not have been able to make myself talk to him. He shouldn't have left me to wake up alone. He should have been there. My return should have been more important to him.

He was slouched at a table deep in the ruby section of the card room, his cheek nestled in his palm, his eyes closed to mere slits. Niall MacInness sprawled beside him, spinning two coins through the fingers of his left hand. One of Niall's girls was asleep in his lap. Another was curled up in the chair beside Mal.

There were three other vampires at the table, and a dealer so stoic he could have been undead himself. One of the suckers was chatting away as he clinked his chips. The other two looked peeved. That probably had something to do with the ma.s.sive winnings piled in front of the sloppy drunks. I headed straight for him, ignoring the way the vampires watched me. By now they'd all either seen or heard of my arrival under Abel's thumb and I wanted them to know in no uncertain terms that I wasn't what those moments had reduced me to.

My hair was a gelled faux hawk and my eyes were smeared with navy liner. I wore cargo pants and a loose black hoodie over a T-shirt and scuffed boots. High fashion hadn't disguised or guaranteed me respect, so it was back to comfort.

MacInness spotted me first, blinking blearily as I approached with Thurston drudging along in my wake. He'd refused to leave my side once I'd returned to the room. The Irish vampire thumped his hand on the table. Mal squinted at him through the one eye he managed to open.

"Wake up! Your human's come looking for you."

"I'm awake." That single eye wandered over to me and winked before the second joined it.

"This is where you've been all day?" I asked, glancing around. This was more important than me?

"It is." His attempt to enunciate merely made his slur sound sleepy. He pushed himself to his feet and gestured to his chair. "Would you like to sit?"

"I'm fine. Are you seriously drunk?"

"It's a temporary condition, I a.s.sure you. You should join us." He turned to the vampires seated across the table, knocking over a bottle and fumbling the catch. "Kim, Antonelli, I feel that I must warn you. This one, she's got a bit of gamble in her." He wagged his finger at me in a way that had my lips souring.

"I'm not here for cards. Can we talk?"

"Malcolm Kelly," MacInness said in a commanding tone, "get yourself straightened out for your lady. Charity!"

The girl on the other side of Malcolm uncoiled and yawned. She wore a silky aquamarine scarf around her neck. "I'm Chast.i.ty."

"You are nothing of the sort. Kelly requires an infusion."

"I have everything I need," Mal protested, leaning heavily on the table as he sorted through a collection of mostly empty bottles, trying to find a full one. The sight of it-the sound of the gla.s.s banging together and thunking on the table-made my stomach tighten. My father was a drunk and I'd fallen for a few men well on their way to becoming the same. Mal sipped-quality over quant.i.ty and all that-and before now I hadn't realized what that had meant to me.

Chast.i.ty wobbled toward him on strappy stilettos. She tripped and, when he tried to catch her, he did little more than slow her fall to the floor. From her knees, both hands gripping his arms, she giggled up at him.

It should have bothered me. h.e.l.l, it did bother me, but distantly. Just like my fear had been rolled flat. This didn't matter. I wanted to get my hands on Kevin. Everything else could wait, even this person that I'd thought was different. Maybe he'd intended to change, until it became clear that I was no longer worth it. Pressing a hand to my throat, I turned to Thurston.

"What do you think?"

The hotel feeders had lots of information about which clubs openly welcomed vampires to mingle with humans. Kevin had described a club like that. He and Sophie's designer had shared stories about it. Other than Tenth World and two others on reservations, there weren't any in Arizona. And the others were even more highly regulated. A human peddling drugs would have been thrown out.

However, there were several in Los Angeles. A few of the feeders had come from there, and said they were crazy lax. And Abel had been through LA. Unless there was a local underground club so secret that the vampires didn't know about it, LA sounded like a good bet.

Thurston eyed Malcolm, then shrugged. Yeah, I didn't have the feeling he'd be real useful, either.

I turned back to Malcolm, whose eyes had already been on me. Chast.i.ty was now sprawled across his lap. His hand rested high on her bare thigh. He caught hers as she raised it toward his face. The girl sighed audibly, but he never looked away from me. It was as if he was challenging me. Like I was the one doing something wrong.

The other vampires whispered together as they watched us, their eyes gleaming, wet teeth glinting. They'd seen me at my worst, and while I could tell myself that it wasn't anything I should be ashamed of-that most people would never have survived, let alone recovered-the memory still made my cheeks burn and cold churn in my stomach. And this was Malcolm's response. No attempt to shield or help me. It was all about appearances on this floor, and he was sending signals loud and clear. I didn't warrant consideration anymore. I'd have been furious if it mattered.

"So." I forced a smile, but all I felt was a wispy sort of sadness. "I've got to take care of something. I'll be back later."

His expression tightened for a moment, sleepiness giving way to sharp tension. Foxfire light rolled through his eyes and his power landed on me like a shock, all clinging heat.

"Stop that," I murmured.

"Syd."

"Thurston's going with me." Not that it mattered, since my threats were here, sharing the same air that I was breathing. My throat constricted abruptly and my nostrils flared. "You're busy, so I'll see you later."

When he set the girl on her feet and stepped forward, I held up a hand to ward him off. He grabbed my wrist and pulled. His other hand closed around my nape, tipping my head back. His arm bowed me against him, and then he kissed me, sweeping into my mouth and stealing my breath. There was nothing soft in the action. He was taking, not sharing. That and the sharp taste of alcohol had me pulling away.

I pushed at him, actually managing to separate us by a few inches. His eyes had gone dark. I expected, hoped-despite his behavior-that he'd apologize. That he'd say he was sorry and that he was coming with me. Instead, his head jerked to the side as he rolled his shoulders.

"Take Soraya," he said.

"I'll think about it." I had no intention. If he was being cold, she'd be frigid. I aimed for the nearest door. I'd been worried about what he might think of me after what had happened. Well, that question had been answered.

We were almost out of the room when a sharp pain shot through my middle. I stopped midstride, sucking in a breath. Thurston stepped to my side, bristling with energy. But it wouldn't have mattered if Master Bronson himself had been there throwing power. I wouldn't have felt him through the sudden sweet longing that swam through my veins.

Richard Abel appeared, wearing a pale blue shirt rolled up nearly to the elbow. Emil and Sophie followed him, both looking pinched. Richard, on the other hand, was blank. No expression. No pause. Barely a spark in his eyes. But there was something in his face, an invitation written just for me. I could go back. I could go back and he would take care of everything. He would treat me the way I deserved to be treated.

"Sydney," he said, drawing out my name. I stared at his mouth, holding my breath in antic.i.p.ation of him saying it again. My throat heated, burning raw. I wouldn't have to think, wouldn't have to suffer through not knowing. Nothing would be my fault if I let him take the wheel.

But what would be the point of going on, if I were to do that? Light rose behind his eyes, savage and so bright I could barely see. Pain filled me, and only Thurston standing at my side-so close he brushed against me-kept me from keeling over.

It was like Abel's presence had energized a live wire running through my entire body. Nothing about it was welcome, not the way it hurt, and definitely not the way it made me want to go to him. It was taking every ounce of willpower I possessed not to get on my knees and crawl to him.

I had broken loose, gotten myself free, and now all I wanted was to go back. And, of course, Malcolm was seeing this, seeing the proof that I was reduced, that I was worthless.

I managed to shift my gaze a few degrees away. The mirrors in the hall behind Richard wobbled as I ground my teeth together so tightly that I began to tremble. I was myself again, so why the h.e.l.l did he still have this effect on me?

"Christ Almighty," Malcolm slurred behind us, power flaring as he approached, sc.r.a.ping over my sensitive skin and almost making me cry out. "What are you still doing here, Abel? Hasn't Bronson pardoned you and sent you on your way yet?"

The vampire's attention moved away from me and I managed a shuddering breath.

"It isn't a pardon I seek," Abel snapped before smiling blandly and raising a finger. "I have others to think of. An entire hive that has entrusted me with their welfare. It's not a responsibility I take lightly."

"Obligation is a sucker's game." Mal wove to a halt between me and Abel. "And how are you two? Waiting is the hardest part, isn't it, Emil? And Sophie, it's wonderful to see you. I see you're wearing your dowdy face. Or...wait. Is that the real you? A thousand pardons. You're majestic."

Thurston touched my elbow, urging me into the hallway. But that required me to walk past Abel. I looked down at my leg afraid that, if I raised it, I'd end up going in a very wrong direction.

"You're a tosspot, Kelly," Abel snarled. He sidestepped and planted himself in my peripheral vision, and when he spoke again his tone was light. "I don't know how Sydney tolerates you. She deserves better." And he could give it. He didn't have to say it; I could feel the sentiment pouring out of him. He could be everything to me.

I bit the inside of my cheek until my eyes stung and I tasted blood.

Mal crossed his arms. "I imagine that Master Bronson could offer her more-just a smidge-than a homeless hireling like yourself."

Abel shut down, closing the flow of power between us. I b.u.mped against Thurston before locking my knees.

"Let us talk later," Abel offered, his tone sharp enough to cut. "You and I alone. We have much to sort out."

"I'll be around." Mal waved absently. "The card room or the lounge. Send a messenger." He pushed us forward with his shoulder. We went, Thurston jittery with nervous energy and me barely able to put one foot in front of the other. Malcolm was a large, solid presence beside me, blocking out Abel, even if I didn't want him there.