Plus hello, that wound—

“What’s up, my man?”

He glanced across at Qhuinn. In the last couple of months, he’d taken to pairing himself with the brother, even though on paper they didn’t make a lot of sense. Tohr had come up in the Old School and was as disciplined as a soldier could be. Everything from the trim of his high and tight to the press of his muscle shirts, his daily workouts to his calorie intake, his fighting stances and his weaponry had to be perfect, and he was ever eagle-eyed for error like a pathologist looking for cancer cells.

Qhuinn? Gunmetal-gray piercings up one entire ear. Tattoos everywhere, a collection he was constantly adding to with V’s help. And the brother could take or leave workouts, liked boxes of Milk Duds and bags of Cheetos when he got peckish, and couldn’t give two shits about a proper haircut.

He’d colored his black hair deep purple two weeks ago.

In another seven days, it was liable to be hot pink.

But here was the thing. Qhuinn was now the happy father of a pair of twins and totally committed to his hellren, Blaylock. He was also a crackerjack fighter, utterly loyal to the King, and fiercely protective of the others in the Brotherhood.

So yeah, core values and all that stuff.

Plus he and Tohr both liked American Horror Story and Stranger Things. And actually, on his cheat days, Tohr had been known to sneak Cheetos.

Aware that a reply was in order, Tohr stopped and glanced around at the abandoned warehouses, the girded skeletons all that was left behind of Caldwell’s previous claim to fame as a vital port of call on the St. Lawrence waterway’s turn-of-the-century trade routes.

“I’ve just got a bad feeling about—” His phone went off with a vibration and he took it out. “Damn it. We need to head downtown.”

As he gave Qhuinn an address that was right in the middle of the financial district, the brother didn’t ask for any explanation—which was another thing Tohr liked about the guy. Qhuinn was prepared for anything at any time in any form.

Probably explained the hair thing.

The pair of them ghosted out and re-formed in an alley behind Citibank’s towering monument to capitalism.

Xcor, leader of the Band of Bastards, was standing next to his boy, Balthazar. The latter had been the one to text, as Xcor was just becoming literate. In front of them, in the dirty snow, were twin scorch marks that had yet to refreeze in the below-zero temperatures.

Tohr walked over to the burns and knelt down. The stench of lesser blood was so strong, his sinuses stung from it. “And you didn’t do these?”

He knew the answer before there was any reply: Vampire blood had also been spilled at the scene, and he knew whose it was.

“No,” Xcor replied. “We came upon them during our sweeps.”

“Goddamn it,” Tohr muttered as he looked around.

There was gunpowder in the air, too, so someone or someones had a gun. What the hell was Murhder doing out here, killing lessers without permission?

As he rose back up to his full height, a jackhammer sounded out at the next intersection down.

“And right next to humans. Just his style.”

Xcor frowned. “You know who did this, then?”

“You haven’t had the pleasure of his acquaintance yet. If you luck out, he’ll leave Caldwell before you have to shake his hand.”

“Do you want us to help find whoever this is?”

“No, you go back to monitoring your territory. Call me if you find anything else, though.”

He clapped palms with the two fighters and hung back as they took off. Then he looked toward the bright glow of the humans’ construction zone.

“So who is it?” Qhuinn asked.

“A blast from the past. Come on, we’ve got to find the idiot before he gets himself killed.”

Sarah took a break from looking at spreadsheets of data, stretching her neck and then standing up from the stool she’d been using. It had been a long while since she’d enjoyed the amnesia that came with getting deep into scientific study, her brain lit up with extrapolations and questions, her body left behind as she fell into an intellectual vortex.

Linking her hands over her head, she arched left. Leaned right.

All over the exam table in front of her, spread like the snow that covered everything else in New York State, were pages and pages of patient files. The species evidently had an issue with the storage of its blood, both for transfusion and for feeding purposes. Unless the stuff came directly from the vein, it was all but clinically worthless. So … if someone had an arterial wound and experienced a sharp drop in blood volume? Or if they were giving birth and had a uterine bleed? Unless someone of the species was standing handy with an available jugular, the patient was going to die. And the same was true for feeding, especially when it came to transitions. If you were trapped indoors because of sunlight, and no one could get to you when the change hit? You were dead.

It was a fascinating problem, and it related to John’s wound in a couple of different ways. For one, transfusions for vampires were trouble. The white blood cell count in the recipient inevitably exploded after blood was given intravenously. Every time. So there was something in transfused blood that turned it into a foreign body to be defended against, and she’d wondered initially if this wasn’t a solution for John: Give him some blood vein to vein and have his immune system ramp up all over his body. Unfortunately, any transfusion under those conditions was potentially fatal—so no-go there, given that she wasn’t sure it would help him.

The risk/reward equation just didn’t work.

But maybe there was another solution somewhere.

And the other way the studies were tied to John was on the feeding side. She assumed he was fully fed.

But maybe, she thought, we need to make him take his mate, Xhex’s, vein—

Sarah stopped. Looked around at the exam room. Stared down at the spreadsheets.

Amazing to think in just over twenty-four hours she’d gone from “they” to “we.”

On that note, she went over to the door and let herself out into the corridor.

Nate’s room just two doors down and she knocked before she entered. When she heard his voice, she leaned inside.

“Feel like some company?”

The boy—um, man—sat up higher in the bed. “Please.”

Sarah entered and brought a chair over with her. Sitting down, she crossed her legs and smiled. “You look great.”

“They said I’m free to go at nightfall tomorrow.” Nate frowned. “But I don’t have anywhere to go.”

Yeah, I get that, she thought.

“I’m sure you’ll find a …” She cleared her throat. “I wish I could help. But I’m on the other side of things.”

Funny how disappointing that was now.

“How did you know?” he asked. “That I was in there, I mean. You never said.”

“I work at BioMed. Well, worked. I’m very sure I’m out of a job by now.”

She had remote-accessed her home phone, and there weren’t any messages from HR or her supervisor. But she hadn’t showed up for work, and if that trend continued—given that there was still nothing about the BioMed raid on the news—she had to imagine someone would start trying to find her.

She hurried to fill the silence. “I want to assure you that I wasn’t involved in … I didn’t have anything to do with the experiments on you.”

“I know.” He fanned out his large hands as if still marveling at the changes he’d been through. “But how did you find me?”

“Did you know the people who worked on you? By name?” Sarah’s heart began to pound. “Did you know them?”

“They always had masks on and they tried not to speak around me. Sometimes they slipped up, but never about names.”

Sarah took a deep breath. “My fiancé worked in the department.” As Nate stiffened, she shook her head. “He’s dead. He died two years ago—actually, he was murdered. I’m not with someone who hurt you.”

Any longer, she thought to herself.

She thought about Gerry sitting at that computer of his, his back to her, all holed up in that home office. Keeping secrets, bad secrets.

“He was murdered?” Nate asked.

As Sarah nodded, her temples started to hum with pain and she winced, rubbing her head. “He was a diabetic. But I believe he was killed.”

“By who?”

“I don’t know who exactly. It’s a dirty business he was in, though. We didn’t know that when we started, of course.”

“Are you in danger?”

Yes. “No.” She forced a smile. “I’m perfectly fine.”

“They’re not going to let you stay, are they.”

“Here, you mean? I don’t think so. I’m going to help for as long as I can, but then I guess I have to go back where I belong.”

“You belong here.”

She thought of being with Murhder and found herself agreeing. But that was emotion talking, not reality.

“I wish that were true.” She patted Nate on the foot. “But enough about me. I just want you to know that I will be sure to say goodbye before I go, okay? And I will not leave until I’m satisfied that there’s a plan for your future that you’re comfortable with. You’re what’s important here. Not me.”

There was a long pause. And the boy—man, rather—shook his head gravely.

“No, you also matter. A lot.”

As tears came to her eyes, she ducked her head and blinked fast. That was what had been missing from her relationship with Gerry at the end, she realized: She had not mattered any longer to him, and since his death? She hadn’t mattered to anybody—including herself.

If you were loved, if you had people who cared about you, you could be by yourself and never feel alone. But if no one cared? You were isolated even in a crowd.

“Don’t cry,” Nate said in his now deep voice.

“I’m not,” she lied in a whisper.