"Come again?"

Magnarelli hit him again, in the gut this time. The chair skidded backward but stayed upright, as Jack doubled over as much as the cuffs would allow, mouth agape.

"Reaper," the agent said. "And you can stop playing stupid with me, Jack. You know his name."

When he could form words again, Jack said, "I know his name. But I don't know where he is. I only agreed to your plan to get Topaz and Mirabella back. I never knew where Reaper was. You're wasting your time."

"We'll see about that."

The other two, who'd been lying flat out from Jack's attack, began stirring now. One of them got up, and Magnarelli said, "Grab your partner and go get the women. He'll talk faster if they're the ones suffering for his silence." He took note of Jack's stunned expression. "That's right. We still have them. You're not the only one who can pull off a con, Jack."

Jack had figured he could handle any torture this jerk could dish out. But if he were hurting Topaz, Jack knew he would talk in short order. He also knew Reaper would want him to.

"While they're gone," Magnarelli said, "we're going to see just how much pain you can take, Jack." He walked to a corner and picked up a bag.

"We can't cut you, or you'll bleed out, so maybe we can come up with some creative alternatives." From the bag, he took out a hammer, and a pair of pliers.

Jack closed his eyes. Surely the pain would knock him out sooner or later.

Or maybe it wouldn't.

Topaz woke with a scream ringing in her head, in her mind. Jack's scream. She sat up fast, her eyes opening wide as she swung her head, searching for him, ready to do serious harm to whoever might be hurting him. The reaction was instinctive and gut level.

But in an instant she realized his scream had been mental. Jack wasn't here. And in that same instant she understood just where here was. There were sheet-draped bodies on gurneys all around her. Their feet were exposed, and tags hung from their toes.

Solemn-faced, she slid her gaze to her own exposed feet and saw a tag attached to her own big toe, as well. With a growl of impatience, she leaned forward and yanked it off.

The morgue was unmanned, as far as she could tell, as she slid off the cold metal and onto the bare floor to begin peering under the other sheets in search of her mother. She was still wearing her clothes, though they were torn, stained with dirt and blood, and even some street tar. Whatever injuries she'd sustained from the fall had been healed by the miraculous power of the day sleep.

And that was little more than sheer luck-she could just have easily expired before the day sleep arrived to heal her. She could have bled out. She could have lain there a bit too long and been exposed to the rising sun. Anything could have happened.

She hoped her mother had been as lucky.

Finally she tugged back a sheet and saw her mother's face. It was unmarked. Her dress was tattered as h.e.l.l, though. She must have been badly injured, Topaz thought. Maybe too badly.

She touched her mother's face. "Are you alive?"

Her mother didn't respond. A little knot of fear formed in Topaz's stomach, but she quickly reminded herself how slow her mother was to wake. The way she took her time about it, waking only by degrees, as if surfacing from some deep ocean creva.s.se.

And then she heard Jack screaming again, and everything in her body jerked to attention. It tied her heart in knots. Yes, he'd lied to her, used her, broken her heart to mere bits, but none of that had made her stop loving him. Oh, it had made her want to stop, but it hadn't killed the feeling. She didn't think anything ever would. And she would be d.a.m.ned before she would allow some sorry son of a pig to hurt him.

"Mother!" She gripped her mother's shoulders, shaking her gently. "Mother, come on. Wake up, we have to hurry."

Mirabella moaned softly and began her routine, stretching her arms above her, arching her back in her catlike way.

Topaz removed the toe tag and begged, "Mom, wake up. We don't have time for stretching and yawning and basking. We have to move."

With a soft "mmmm," Bella stopped stretching and opened her eyes.

"Someone has Jack," Topaz told her. "He's being tortured. Right now, as we speak." To herself, she added, "I'll freaking kill them."

Those loving eyes went icy cold, and Mirabella swung her legs to the side, sitting up and then standing all in one fluid motion.

"Where?"

Topaz took her mother's hand, and the two of them moved through the dismal underworld, inhabited only by the dead, in search of an exit. When they found one, it led into a hallway, and after briefly searching that, Topaz found a sign marked Salida with an arrow that pointed up a flight of stairs.

They took the stairs at a run, not caring whether they might be seen. No one would stop them-they might try, but they wouldn't succeed. At the top there was a wide door with a push bar on the inside. Topaz hit it, and it swung open wide, revealing a parking lot, some shrubs.

She lunged through the doorway and let it close behind her, then stood for a moment, listening, sensing.

It didn't take long before the scream came again, but this time a coherent stream of thought came with it. If they hurt Topaz, I'll kill them. I'll kill them or die trying. I swear to G.o.d, I will.

She blinked and sent a look at her mother.

Mirabella nodded. "Yes, I heard it, too. I told you he loves you."

"Just because he doesn't want me hurt, that doesn't mean he loves me."

"He went after you. He's in those b.a.s.t.a.r.ds' hands because of it. He risked himself to save you."

"You don't know that." "Who else would be torturing him?"

Topaz shrugged and turned to face east. "He's this way."

"Then let's go."

They began to run, racing at top speed, until Topaz heard her mother's plea, delivered mentally. Stop, darling.

There was pain in that plea, a sensation of weakness flowing into Topaz as clearly as the words. It was so heartrending that she came to a halt immediately, and her mother did, too. As soon as she stopped moving, Bella sank to her knees, and fell forward, palms to the earth.

"Mother, what is it?" Topaz shouted, dropping to her knees beside her. But even as she asked the question, she knew. Her mother had been electrocuted, then taken a fall that would have killed a mortal ten times over. She was older than Topaz, and therefore more powerful, but also much more susceptible to the debilitating weakness brought on by pain and blood loss.

Furthermore, she'd given Topaz her own blood, then imbibed nothing to complete her own healing. The day sleep could heal, yes, and it had. But to restore Bella's strength, she needed blood. Topaz helped her into the concealing shelter of a grove of trees.

"I can't go on," Mirabella said softly. "I'll just rest here awhile. You have to continue on without me, Tanya."

Topaz stared down at her mother. "Those agents are still after us, I'm sure of it. I can't leave you alone."

"Send someone back for me. No doubt the others are on their way to help Jack, as well. Send one of them. Until then, I'll be fine."

"But, Mother-"

Her mother pressed a palm to Topaz's cheek. "Go, darling. I know you won't believe me, but this...this is worth anything.

Anything. This kind of love, the love you feel for him...it's once in a lifetime, Topaz. Believe me. I know. Go find him. Do it now."

Topaz nodded, knowing her mother was right. What she felt for Jack was once in a lifetime. She only wished what he felt for her was a fraction of that. Or that he felt anything real for her at all.

But she couldn't control his feelings any more than she could control her own. She loved him, good or bad. No matter how much and how deeply he hurt her, she loved him. And as lousy as he'd treated her, Topaz thought, there wasn't a person on this planet who was going to get away with hurting the man she loved.

"No way in h.e.l.l," she said aloud, and she pressed a kiss to her mother's cheek, then straightened away from her. As she strode forward, launching into a run once more, she held Jack's image in her mind, and her heart seemed to swell to bursting. She realized it didn't matter what he'd done to her. She loved him, flaws and all. She loved him, as cold and uncaring as he had been toward her. She loved him unconditionally. And it was all right if he didn't feel the same. She could live with that, because she was a strong, incredible woman. If they couldn't be together, so be it. She would manage to go on. But she would go on loving him.

Always.

What she wouldn't be able to live with, she knew, would be her own guilt if she allowed anything bad to happen to him.

"Well?" Magnarelli said, when his sidekicks returned. "Where are they?"

"I don't know, sir."

Underling number one, Jack thought. Interested, despite the intensity of his pain, he managed to lift his head. He tried to see the men, but his eyes were so swollen that only the merest slits remained open, and what he could make out through them was blurry and unfocused.

Three blobs, vaguely man-shaped. Movement now and then.

"What the h.e.l.l do you mean, you don't know?"

"The bedroom door was smashed to bits. The electric barriers had shorted themselves out. The living room window was open."

"And the guards posted outside saw nothing? Heard nothing?"

"They only heard the TV, they said."

Magnarelli swore, and Jack thought it looked as if he turned a small circle and pushed a hand through his hair. At least, his arm went up. He might also have been waving a fly away or knocking down a cobweb.

"That window's too high. Even a vampire couldn't survive a jump like that."

"They didn't." The second underling was speaking now. The first seemed to have used up all his courage in bringing bad news to his boss.

Magnarelli spun around fast.

"The doorman says two women jumped to their deaths just before dawn. They were p.r.o.nounced dead at the scene."

"And taken where?" Magnarelli asked in a monotone.

"I don't know. A morgue somewhere, I imagine."

Magnarelli gripped the underling by the front of his shirt and jerked him forward. "Find out, dammit. Get back there and find out where they were taken, and exactly what time, and whether they're still there now. Do you understand?"

"But...but..."

"Do it. Now."

He released the younger agent, who stumbled a few steps backward.

Jack let his head relax again, feigning unconsciousness, though he didn't have to fake it much. He would have been unconscious right now if not for that d.a.m.nable drug of Rhiannon's. h.e.l.l, he was like a walking corpse.

He started to laugh, because that was what he was anyway, right? Undead. A walking corpse.

"What the h.e.l.l are you laughing at?" Magnarelli asked. One of his rookies remained there with him. The other one had already scurried away to do his master's bidding.

"My girl," Jack said, though his mouth was swollen, lips puffy and split, and his voice sounded as if he were talking around a mouthful of marbles. "She outsmarted you."

"Not if she's dead on a slab in the morgue, she didn't," Magnarelli said. "And if that's the case, I'll be the one laughing. Believe me. I wouldn't be one bit sorry to see that pain-in-the-a.s.s b.i.t.c.h dead and buried."

Jack lunged forward, picking the chair up with him. Bent over, he charged the b.a.s.t.a.r.d, head plowing into his stomach before he knew what was coming. Magnarelli doubled over, then fell to the floor, and Jack spun around fast, so the legs of the chair would smash into his head.But the agent ducked, then gripped one of the chair legs and swung it, so that Jack hit the wall face-first, chair and all. His cheek was razed by rough-surfaced bricks. His already broken nose mashed against them. He sank to the floor, the rush of pain incapacitating him. But rather than pa.s.sing out, as he should have done, he just lay there, trembling in unbearable agony.

Reaper managed to wait until sundown, but just barely. He and Rhiannon were cranky and angry and impatient. He had the floor opened up before the others were even awake, and Briar, Crisa and Vixen were out of the compartment almost before Seth had stirred.

He opened the rear doors of the van, eager to get out, stretch his legs, move a bit and get a look at the hacienda where Jack was being tortured.

The others climbed out and surrounded him, Roxy and Ilyana coming around to the back, as well.

"What's the situation?" Seth asked.

Reaper pointed toward the sprawling white mansion. "Jack's being held in there by three agents. They've been torturing him for about two hours now."

Vixen turned her head quickly, her hand flying to her mouth. Crisa clutched Briar's arm tighter, while Briar swore under her breath.

"How the h.e.l.l did three mortals manage to get the best of him?" Briar asked. "Didn't the drug work? Was he asleep when they opened the bag?"

"They tranquilized him," Rhiannon said softly, her eyes cast downward.

"I thought you said no one knew what kind of reaction the two drugs would cause when they were combined?" Vixen asked.

"No one does," Rhiannon said. "Or rather, no one did. I imagine by now your Jack has a fairly decent idea."

"Well? What the h.e.l.l are we waiting for?" Briar demanded. "Let's go after him."

"Topaz is on her way. She's asked that we send someone back for her mother, who's apparently in a weakened state and needed to stay behind." Reaper looked at the group. "Roxy, I'd like you to take Crisa and Ilyana, and go back for her. Topaz says she needs sustenance. Badly."

Roxy nodded. "We'd need the van for that."

"I know. Unload the medical kit, a few pints of blood and most of the weapons before you leave. We'll need them. When you get back here with Mirabella, park somewhere safe, and we'll meet you there once this is over."

"There's a dirt road off this one, a mile back. I'll head up there a few miles and pull off into a secluded spot."

"We'll find you," Reaper promised. "Mean-while-"

Something rushed past him in a blur. He caught the essence of fury, of rage-and of Topaz.

"h.e.l.l, she's not waiting. Let's go. Now!" Reaper ordered.