Will you do what I've asked, Sydney, or should I break something else?

A flood of images pressed against my mind, and I scrambled for the remote, wanting to drown them out. The device snapped out of my hand, pulled by the short cord attaching it to the nightstand. s.h.i.t. I took a breath, fished it out from behind the nightstand, and turned on the TV. The appliances wouldn't last long around the vampires but I needed a distraction.

A blonde with a Southern accent cheerily listed today's high temperatures across the country as I lit four candles in gla.s.s jars. I'd found a few tucked in the back of a bottom shelf at the gas station. They were seasonal-apple pie, "Christmas Wreath" that smelled like pine cleanser, and pumpkin spice.

Kevin started yelling and I dropped a candle. The wick extinguished, right before the TV screen blanked out. I gripped the side of the dresser, taking deep breaths. More yelling, and my headache came back with a vengeance.

Will you do what I've asked, Sydney, or should I break something else?

I stumbled into the bathroom and turned on the faucet. The pipes clanked before heavily chlorinated water shot into the sink. I pulled off my hoodie and tossed it into the bedroom, then wet my hands and ran them over my face. I didn't want to be here. I should leave. They could handle things without me. I could go. They'd never have to know.

Malcolm filled the doorway, all wide shoulders and surging power. Running a towel over my face, I straightened.

"Hey," I ventured.

"We need someplace quieter," he said. "Thurston scoped out an unoccupied warehouse about a quarter mile away. It's surrounded by empty lots. We need to move."

I shook my head, confused. "The sun's up."

Soraya came through the door from the adjoining room. "We can cover ourselves for the short exposure. A regular vehicle will make it that far."

I headed for the door, rubbing my hands against my pockets. "I'll go call to let him know that we're moving."

"They won't be coming during the day," Malcolm said, his words p.r.i.c.kling against my mind. "That can wait. Or you can come back to flag them down."

Panic bubbled up and I started breathing shallowly. This wasn't the plan. If we moved, I was in trouble. If I didn't tell him, I was in trouble.

"I'll get a car." I reached for the blanket beneath the front door. Soraya's hand got there first, and she held it down. I met her gaze, dark and focused, and shrank back. "What's going on? I need to get out. Mal?"

His lip curled over elongating fangs. "The chemist said that Abel blooded you three times."

I looked back and forth between them. "I don't remember that. It was really scary-"

"Three times, Sydney." His harsh tone made me wince. "If he'd bitten you once after that, a single nick, it would have triggered the change."

My pulse kicked up, anger overriding the other feelings swamping my mind. "I guess that makes me lucky after all."

Soraya stared at me for a long, tense moment, then rose to face Malcolm. When he nodded, her eyes closed for a moment.

"What's going on?" I asked. This was wrong, this was so wrong. I couldn't handle anything else. I just couldn't.

"You can still feel him," Malcolm said gently. "Can't you?"

Pressure built in my mind. "I don't know."

"You've been so like yourself, but subdued. At first I thought it was because of what happened, that you would get better. But that's not it, is it?"

"Mal, I don't want to talk about this."

"When you broke his hold on your own, it gave us hope that you weren't under his control. But it was only a moment, a single instant where your anger was stronger than his orders."

"He didn't order me to do anything." They cannot know. You'll have to be subtle, Sydney. They cannot know you're doing this for me.

"The chemist says Abel didn't like your resistance, and he's not known for his kindness." Mal smiled tightly, his brows drawing together in a look I knew too well. Pity.

"I don't remember." I didn't want to.

"I pushed and pushed, did things and said things that would have p.i.s.sed you off a week ago. But nothing made you angry. Nothing made you react. Not until you got far enough away from him that his control weakened. But we're closer again and you're fading. You are fading. You're still bound to him. You're still doing what he instructed."

All the air left my lungs, the motel, the state of California. Abel's voice flooded my mind. Find that human and bring him to me. If you can't return him discreetly, then call this number and we will retrieve him. Give him to no one else. Ingratiate yourself with Malcolm Kelly. Do anything it takes to draw him closer. Make him confide in you. Where he is going, what he is doing for Bronson. Bring me his secrets. If you don't, you know what will happen. His hands wrapping around my forearm. The squeeze. The pressure. The break.

A strange, ghostly noise filled the room and I realized it was me. I bit off the sound and held myself tighter, fingers digging into the backs of my arms.

"It hurts," Malcolm murmured, moving closer. "Fighting him hurts?"

I nodded.

"I'm sorry, baby. This should never have happened to you. I should have broken his hold the second I got you back. I'm a coward, Syd. I wanted you to be all right so that I wouldn't have to do anything." He shook his head, pain and regret bright in his eyes. "I'm going to break his hold. I'll do...f.u.c.k. I'll do everything I can to ease you through it."

Relief surging, I opened my mouth to agree. But the words I wanted to speak didn't come. Instead, she reared up again, that disloyal wuss that lived inside my brain, obliterating my ability to think and locking my muscles. I wanted to tell him to do it, to break me free. Instead...

"Don't." I heard myself speaking, voice full of delicate fear even as I fought to regain control. Malcolm took a step forward and I backed away, hands rising to fend him off as he reached for me. "Don't do it. Please. It'll hurt. Please don't hurt me. Mal, please."

The look on his face, the sadness that weighted his entire body, shattered me. A savage sound rose out of my mouth in place of false words. I fought the compulsion, but pain rose to subdue me. Programmed pain. My arms, my ribs, my face. How many places had Abel broken me?

Powerless, I felt myself shoving at Malcolm. I sagged inside of my own mind as my traitorous body scrambled past him into the bathroom, clawing at the walls as it tried to escape. Reduced to a mindless beast as she-I-followed Abel's orders. I'd been programmed. And I knew it, but I still couldn't do anything about it.

"Mal, please don't." Sobbing. "You know it's me. It's not him. Can't you see? Please, don't hurt me." The taste of Richard Abel's blood filled my mouth, and my own blood welled to the surface when the curtain rod broke from the wall and raw metal sc.r.a.ped through my skin.

He caught me, carrying me into the bedroom even as I kicked and scratched at him. He turned me around, crossed my arms over my stomach, and held them there with one arm. He breathed hard against the back of my neck, and I felt him shake his head.

"Malcolm," Soraya said, turning off the water steaming up the room, "it has to be done."

"Please, Mal..." I screeched.

Abel's voice filled my mind, ricocheting through it. Blend in. Act as Sydney Kildare would act. Bring me the human. Bring me the secret behind Malcolm Kelly's place in Bronson's hive. Do anything you have to in order to avoid getting caught. Do this, or die in the attempt. So much power in that voice, not the skittering chill of ambient vampire energy but hard, undeniable command. My head dropped back against Malcolm's shoulder and tears streamed down my face.

Soraya's fists clenched at her sides. Her eyes were full of orange fire. "You shouldn't have to do this. I will."

Malcolm's arm tightened around me. Abel's power surged as strong as the first time he'd gotten into my head and turned me inside out. The second time had been worse, and that was when he'd started hurting me, burrowing deeper when the pain shattered my ability to resist. And by the third time...

"I hate you," I snarled, kicking off of the bed with both feet. Malcolm slammed into the wall. The overhead light flickered out. I threw my head back, striking his chin. Soraya stalked toward me.

"No," he growled through his fangs. "Leave us."

He swiveled, nearly knocking the wind out of me when he shoved me against the wall. His hand fisted in my hair. I dug my nails into a crack in the drywall and willed him to bite me even as I snarled at him.

"Breathe, just breathe," he murmured, influence lacing his tense words and seeping into me like nitrous oxide. "You're going to be fine, Sydney. If I could spare you the pain, I would." A wave of numbing euphoria swept over me and, with my first breath, I slumped in his arms. He tipped my head to the side. Hot breath ran over my skin. His hand rose, sliding over my throat before it covered my mouth.

He bit me.

I screamed, but his hand clamped down with bruising force, absorbing the noise. Pain shot through me. It was as if my nervous system was being torn out of my body by barbed-wire hands. The sensation changed abruptly, overrun by a rush of pleasure. My vision blanked out, and I saw nothing but white haze even though my eyes were open.

His fangs withdrew and slid a half inch higher, digging in only deep enough to hold me in place while he drank. Heat and hardness and sweet suction. I arched back.

Little by little, the gauzy apathy that had covered me, wrapped me tight since I recovered myself at Tenth World, lifted. Malcolm's arms loosened. His hand left my mouth and covered the one I had dug into the drywall.

His tongue stroked over tender skin and another wave of pleasure surged up and rolled through me. I'd thought I was tired, confused. I hadn't realized I had a malignant vampire squatting inside my mind like a f.u.c.king cancer. Energy, real human energy, filled my body as my thoughts cleared. My vision focused slowly and, as I took a long, shuddering breath, Malcolm's mouth left me. His forehead rested on the back of my neck, bowing my head forward, and his body was hard and heavy against mine.

I fixated on a strange noise, the tinkle of metal. The sound of filaments cracking and falling into the extinguished lightbulbs. The filtered brightness around the window and the light from the bathroom cast a warm, intimate glow. My breathing smoothed out and, even in that dingy, closed room, it felt like the first fresh air I'd tasted in days.

Malcolm's hand ran down my arm, then paused and tracked back up. It was bleeding. I looked down at my chest. Also bleeding where I'd been bitten, those nasty red pits in my flesh that had remained even though I'd been surrounded by vampire energy.

"These should heal better now," Malcolm said, his voice soft over an electric arc of anger.

In the right hands, bones are so easy to break. I winced, but it was just the echo of Abel's voice. Memory rather than programming. He'd patched up the work he'd done on me each time I angered him by swimming up from the depths of his enthrallment, but... We'll leave these for them to find. He'd covered the bites with his hands each time my bones reset or new gashes closed, ensuring I'd be wearing a visible excuse for any abnormal behavior. He hadn't kept the pain from me the way Malcolm had.

"Motherf.u.c.ker." I felt my neck, wincing when my fingers brushed the sticky edges, the exposed nerves of the bite. These ones were worth it. Abel hadn't only prevented me from healing. He'd kept me from thinking, from feeling. And he'd made me do things, in an insidious way that made the notions seem like mine, made them seem right.

"I didn't call Petr," I whispered. Other memories flooded back. Cold hours on the floor of the cell, hungry and thirsty. Staring at my own vapid reflection in the mirror as I scrubbed an ashen ring of blood away from my mouth. Abel talking, spewing a stream of words and will that replaced my own, piece by piece. Programming me. Making me an extension of him.

"I figured."

"He'll be coming for Kevin." The words came fast as I tried to fill the s.p.a.ce between us. "He's the manufacturer, but Abel promised delivery around the world. Chile was a test run, to disrupt Bronson's territory while he tried to find a new master. When they all rejected him, he decided to offer it to Bronson. He thinks Kevin can modify it, fix the worst of the side effects. He'll be coming for the chemist."

"He won't leave the resort until Bronson has accepted his pledge."

"So we have some time?" Even as hope reared up, I realized that wasn't the end of his thought.

"It will be happening today." His voice was soft and, underneath, so hard. "Sydney?"

I turned to face him, and my heart fluttered in a bad way as he backed away. A few inches. A foot. Five feet and he was halfway across the room. His face was smooth, not the human face that he wore for me but that of a beautiful vampire. It hid the bruises I'd made on his heart, but I could feel them.

"What are we going to do?" I asked. "He won't be coming alone."

"We made other arrangements. A security team has been dispatched."

"How do they know we're here?"

"A very nice lady on the second floor agreed to call Petr for me while you were out."

Because he'd known I was compromised. No wonder he didn't want to touch me. A wave of dizziness went through me and I staggered, grabbing on to the headboard of the bed.

He crossed the s.p.a.ce in an instant, one hand wrapping around my waist, the other gentle against my neck. His palm covered the tender patch of skin where his mouth had been, igniting a fire between my body and his. G.o.d, the sensations he'd unleashed on me when he'd bitten me.

My knees gave out and, rather than keeping me up, he eased to the floor with me.

"I feel..." I gulped air, my eyes wide and unfocused. "I feel..." Everything, all the things I hadn't been able to feel while Abel gripped me in the fist of his blood.

"Yes."

He held me, anchoring me with the gold ribbons inside his eyes, with the sensation of his power, that unseen touch, gliding over and through me. He shifted, pulling me until I curled up against him. His hands stroked down my back, sweeping out everything Abel had placed inside me until only anger remained, clean and fierce. I took a soft breath.

"I can't believe how f.u.c.ked up I was. I was aware, but not."

"He blooded you three times, Sydney." The muscles in his arms bunched as he pulled me closer. So much for thinking he didn't want to touch me. "I wasn't sure this would work, that it wouldn't overpower your mind completely."

"I'd rather have been a vegetable than a possession."

A heavy pause before he said, "I know."

"And you did it anyway. Thank you."

"I should have done it immediately," he said. "Sora told me, but I thought you were getting better."

"You didn't want to hurt me."

"I didn't, did I? Not too badly?"

"I've never been so happy to bleed."

"Christ." His bland expression blinked out, replaced by intense hunger. A hunger that I recognized. I thought of all the times he'd wanted to bite me before, every time he'd been inside me but pierced his own flesh instead of mine.

"Your influence was...potent." I licked my lips. "Is it...do you always feed sensations like that with your bite?"

"We have to stay calm when feeding directly, so we usually project calm. But that...that was a reflection of the way you affect me. It was the only thing I could think of that was strong enough to dull that pain."

I rose up to straddle him, then sank down slowly. His mouth was on mine before our bodies were in full contact, but his kiss was slow, tender-at odds with the hard length of him pressing against me. But he didn't push, and when I moved against him, he stopped me. Each touch was an exploration, as though we were together for the first time. He hadn't been this tentative, this leisurely, the first time. I smiled against his lips.

"Are you...laughing?" Mal asked, pulling back.

"No." But I couldn't stop grinning, even as I settled more firmly against him. "I'm thinking of when we met. When you demanded that I kiss you."

His eyes glinted. "It was a dare, playfully made. I honestly didn't expect you to do it."

"No? Then why say it?"

"Because I hoped you would." He shook his head, smoothing his thumbs along my cheeks. "If I hadn't, this never would have happened to you."

"Don't say that, like you regret us."

"Never," he said fiercely, "but I regret that I couldn't stop this."

"All the care in the world doesn't stop the bad s.h.i.t from happening," I said. "And even if it hadn't been then, we would have run into each other again and something would have happened. Didn't you feel it, between us, from the first moment?"

He kissed me again, a hard demand that ended with my arms around his neck and the singular thought that the clothing between our bodies was too much separation. That thought was stronger than the uncertainty over my scars, the fear whispering that maybe this wasn't real, either. I'd missed him. I wanted him, and he still wanted me.

"As much as I am loath to release you for any length of time," he said against my lips, "I need you to find the nearest phone that's still functional and make a new call."