She closed her eyes and fought it, but the shakes continued, and the tears flowed freely.

"They really do feel things more than we do, don't they?" the third man said.

"Pretty thing, isn't she?" The one holding her bent his head close to her face. "It's okay, you'll be asleep in a minute. Just let it go.

Let it go, okay?"

"Yeah, why don't you read her a bedtime story and tuck her in, a.s.swipe? She's a vampire."

"Doesn't mean she doesn't have feelings."

"Get her the h.e.l.l out of here. Now."

Her captor nodded, and carried her through the door and into the hallway. "You're gonna be okay," he told her. "I promise."

"Never. I'll never be okay again," she managed to whisper. She saw his eyes when they met hers. Blue, and even compa.s.sionate.

And then they faded from her vision.

She was glad the tranquilizer finally kicked in and stole her consciousness away. She hoped, in that final moment, that she would never wake up again.

13.

Jack heard Topaz cry out to him, but it was vague, and weak, and then there was nothing.

"Which direction is that address?" he asked Reaper.

Reaper looked up from the map he had unfolded on the hood of the car, met Jack's eyes, and then scanned the horizon. He pointed east. "That way."

"That's where she is, then."

Reaper's brows rose.

"She called out to me just now, but it was very weak. I think they've been drugged. We have to get to her, Reaper. Now."

Headlights came trundling up the drive, and the canary-yellow van with the sunflowers on the sides and the customized plates bearing its name bounded closer. It stopped abruptly, and the three women jumped out of it. They were all armed, c.o.c.king their weapons as they came.

Jack thought briefly of Charlie's Angels. Only these were more like h.e.l.ls Angels. One ageless mortal who never wanted to be a vampire but was already, he suspected, more vampire than human in many ways, her fiery red curls halfway down her back, bouncing as she walked. One blond enigma, tall and stick-thin, with a pixie cut and a face that reminded him of a supermodel whose name he couldn't recall. And one dark demoness straight from the depths of h.e.l.l itself. Briar, with her black eyes, black hair and black heart.

She looked p.i.s.sed.

Jack would have smiled to himself about that if he hadn't been so sick with dread for Topaz.

"Any clues?" Briar asked.

"Just one. Follow us," Jack said.

Briar nodded, then hesitated. "Is there a key for the Mustang? It would be better to take all three cars, just in case."

"Seth keeps a spare under the floor mat, rear pa.s.senger side," Reaper told her. "Just pray he left it unlocked," he added, as he and Jack headed for the Porsche.

With a nod, Briar headed for the muscle car. "I'm driving alone," she called out to Roxy. "Bring the van."

The house where they ended up looked abandoned, decrepit. Its sagging roof had patches of rich green moss growing from its shingles. The wooden siding was unpainted, and had weathered to varying shades of gray in some places and near black in others.

Some of the old boards were broken or split. Others hung loosely. There were once-green shutters here and there. Some hung by only one hinge, and most had slats missing. The entry door's peeling paint had been white. Now it was all but nonexistent. The k.n.o.b, though, was out of place. It was shiny, not rusted or tarnished.

Jack shut off the Porsche's purring motor, got out and moved closer to the place. And then he sensed something that made his stomach clench and his throat tighten as panic swirled like a whirlwind in his soul. Death.

Reaper was out of the car, standing beside him, sensing it, too, and he clapped his hand firmly onto Jack's shoulder. "Steady."

"f.u.c.k steady." Jack sprinted toward the door, and without trying the k.n.o.b, he kicked it open. It smashed wide, and he lunged inside, his gaze swinging from left to right, his heart in his throat. "Topaz!"

No answer.

"What the h.e.l.l is this place?" someone muttered.

Vaguely, Jack acknowledged that Briar had spoken. She'd come inside, with Roxy and Ilyana on her heels. And he noted, too, that the inside of this place didn't come close to matching the outside. It was clean, in perfect repair and spotlessly white. There were a few pieces of furniture around, also in good shape. The place was immaculate but, he felt, rarely used. And that was all his mind managed to process as he made his way down a hall, flinging open the first door he came to and moving through it, as the women kept going to check out the other doors. His heart was in his throat as he scanned the room, terrified of seeing Topaz lying dead on the floor.

It was another spotless white room. It contained a series of gurneys with white sheets, IV poles. A stainless steel tray and some instruments lay on the tiled floor. And so did several bodies.

"Topaz!" Jack shouted, and leapt forward, but he didn't see her.

"This one's dead," Reaper muttered from the hall.

Jack turned to see him bending over a dead male vamp, one he'd barely registered as he'd pa.s.sed and certainly never met. His gaze returned to the room he was in and landed on another-and frighteningly familiar-form. "Vixen!" Jack crossed the room in a blur of speed and gently rolled Vixen's body over, leaning close, feeling for her life force, her essence. It was there, but weak.

Very weak.

Someone groaned from beyond one of the gurneys, and Seth dragged himself into sight, across the floor. He was trying to speak and failing, and still too weak to communicate mentally. But his eyes said it all as they stared from Vixen's lax, beautiful face to Jack's.

"She's alive," Jack a.s.sured him. "What in the name of G.o.d happened here, Seth?"

Reaper rushed into the room to bend over Seth. He gripped the fledgling under both arms and hauled him to his feet. As he did so, he spotted the tranq dart in Seth's arm, jerked it out and held it up. "They've been darted. Whoever did it must have given that poor b.a.s.t.a.r.d in the hall too much and killed him." He glanced at Jack. "How's Vixen?"

"I think she'll live." He stared at Seth, who was now on a gurney, sitting upright, barely, with Reaper supporting him and his head bowed forward. "Where is Topaz?" Jack demanded, even as he rose, picking Vixen up and then lowering her gently onto another gurney.

"They...took her."

"Who?" Jack left Vixen in the bed and went to Seth, vaguely noticing the women entering and spreading out through the room. He gripped the young vamp's shirtfront. "Who took her, Seth?"

Seth's head wobbled. "Men. Mortals."

"Reaper?" Briar called from the far end of the room, near a shattered window. As both men turned, they saw her standing there with a tiny, odd-looking female vampire in her arms. "This one's circling the drain."

The woman she carried had a b.l.o.o.d.y cut on her forearm and was clearly in danger of bleeding out.

"Put her down over there and deal with her," Reaper snapped, indicating the gurney next to him. Then he returned his full attention to Seth, shaking him. "Seth, you've got to give us more than that. Who the h.e.l.l took Topaz?"

"And where?" Jack demanded. "How many were there? Did they say anything, anything, that might be a clue?"

Seth's head had fallen forward again, his chin sagging nearly to his chest. Jack gripped his hair and lifted his face up, only to see that he was out cold.

"Jack...?"

The voice was quiet, soft, new to him. Jack turned to see the one Briar had brought over peering at him. Roxy was bending over her wounded arm, pinching the edges of the jagged cut together in an effort to stop the bleeding.

He moved closer. "I'm Jack."

"Crisa," she muttered weakly.

"Crisa? That's your name?"

She tried to nod, but it was more than she could manage, and she stopped. "There's...a message..." Her eyes closed.

"What? You have a message? For me?" He bent closer and gripped her shoulders. Briar's ice-cold hand closed on the back of his neck and jerked him away so hard he nearly lost his footing.

"Where's Ilyana with that first aid kit?" she snapped. "Here," Ilyana said, rushing into the room with the kit in her hand. "Right here." She joined Roxy at Crisa's side, opening the case and handing her items as Roxy asked for them. Silk thread and curved needles. Roxy was nothing if not prepared.

Jack moved forward to question the little oddball again, but Briar put a hand on his chest and leaned in herself. "Tell me, if you can, Crisa. What were you supposed to tell Jack?"

Crisa's eyelashes fluttered, and her eyes widened briefly as Roxy put in the first st.i.tch, and even Jack winced, knowing what kind of pain she was feeling.

Crisa grunted, then clenched her jaw and moved her lips. Even with his vampiric senses, Jack couldn't hear what she said. But Briar bent closer, her ear very close to the girl's mouth.

When she straightened again, she was holding a piece of paper she'd pulled from Crisa's clenched hand, and staring at Jack with mingled disgust and surprise in her eyes. "Jack, now we have something you want," she read aloud. "What do you suppose that could mean?"

He knew exactly what it meant. It meant that it was his fault Topaz had been abducted by dangerous men. And probably her mother, as well. It meant she probably knew by now that he'd been dealing with the CIA.

It meant she could die. Because of him.

"So help me, if you betrayed us, Jack," she went on in a low, steady voice, "I'll kill you myself."

Topaz came awake all at once, her head snapping up, body going taut and pulling against the handcuffs around her wrists, holding her arms behind the straight-backed chair in which she sat. It felt as if she'd nearly pulled her shoulders from their sockets.

She grunted in pain, closing her eyes briefly, then flashing them open again to try to a.s.sess the situation. She'd been kidnapped by vampires, then kidnapped from the kidnappers by a trio of death-wish-bearing mortals in the most boring cheap suits she'd ever seen. That much she knew.

She was in the bedroom of a hotel suite. She could tell by the predictable furniture and the fire escape plan tacked to the inside of the door. The windows were covered in black plastic. There were two beds, and someone lay in one of them, dead to the world, and covered in blankets and shadow, so the face was invisible to her. Vampire, she sensed, but one so drugged, so far from consciousness, that barely a vibe emanated from her. There were a television, desk and phone nearby. Through a doorway she could see a small sofa, and a pair of feet, shiny black shoes intact, resting on a gla.s.s-topped coffee table. She could hear newspaper pages being turned. And she could smell mortal blood.

She would be tasting it soon.

"Didn't they teach you in goon school that a vampire can snap handcuffs like toothpicks?" she called.

The feet on the table moved, landed on the floor, and then a man came into view. One of the three who'd attacked them, drugged them and taken her captive. He stepped into the open doorway and stared at her. He had a face like chiseled granite, hard, and gray with the beginnings of a beard. Not a deliberate growth, just the suggestion that he hadn't shaved in a while. He had brush- cut dark gray hair with silver highlights. There were bags under his eyes.

"Not for a while, you can't," he told her. "The tranq takes time to wear off."

She sent him a look that should have wilted him like lettuce in the desert, then focused her mind and called out-but not to Jack.

Never again would she call out to him. Not with her voice or her mind or, G.o.d forbid, her heart. Not in need, and never in pa.s.sion. He'd betrayed her, betrayed them all. Reaper. I've been abducted by what I think are CIA agents. I'm being held in a hotel suite, with one other vampire.

There was no reply. And the shouts of her mind felt m.u.f.fled, as if contained within the echoing walls of a hollow cave.

Reaper!

"I know what you're doing."

"I couldn't care less what you know."

The man shrugged. "You're wasting your energy. First of all, you're still under the influence of the tranq. But even if you weren't, we've taken...precautions."

She narrowed her eyes. "Like the ones Gregor took? The way he made that house of his impervious to mental communication with anyone beyond its walls?"

"Where do you think he learned it?"

"You know you're going to die for this, right?"

He shrugged, came in farther, pulled up another chair and turned it backwards in front of hers. Then he sat down, straddling it.

"Where's Reaper?" he asked.

"Oh, here we go again. Where are your hot poker and bucket of coals? Huh? Where are your sharpened blades?"

He frowned, studying her for a moment. Then his brows rose. "You think I'm going to torture you?"

"Gregor did. Where would I think he learned it?"

The man sighed, shaking his head. "Gregor is out of control. We'll deal with him. What he did wasn't sanctioned."

"And what about Jack? Was everything he did 'sanctioned'?"

"Jack's become more liability than a.s.set, I'm afraid."

"What the h.e.l.l is that supposed to mean?"

He met her eyes, shook his head. "It's not anything you need to know about. All you need to know is that you're not going to be harmed. All we want is Reaper. And now that we have the two of you, we have every expectation that Jack will hand him over."

"Me and...who? That half-insane fledgling? What makes you think Jack would cross the street for either one of us?"