And hey, ho, what do you know, Murhder appeared to be first in that line.

“John,” the Brother said, “go back home. Now.”

Murhder frowned. “Excuse me?”

Tohr jabbed a finger at the center of Murhder’s chest. “Stay out of this. John, get the fuck out of here—”

“Don’t talk to him like that.” “That’s an order, John!”

“He’s not a young, you know. He’s a grown male who can do what the hell he wants—”

Tohr stepped up to Murhder, putting their faces nose to nose. “He is injured—and you are way fucking out of line bringing him into the field. You think it’s a fucking joke that the two of you are working outside of the system, taking risks you can’t handle and putting the rest of us in jeopardy, too?”

“Outside of the system? What system?” Murhder tilted his head to one side and raised his voice. “And we didn’t take any risks we couldn’t handle. We’re still standing and four lessers are back to the goddamn Omega. What the fuck is wrong with you? Back in the day, we didn’t need a system—”

Tohr punched at Murhder’s shoulders. “We don’t work without a coordinated plan anymore. And in case you haven’t noticed, we’re finally winning this war—without your help.”

Murhder punched the guy back. “You sanctimonious piece of shit—”

“How many weapons do you have between the two of you.”

When Murhder took a pause to try to answer that in the best way possible, the Brother said, “Cell phones? Either of you? Because I know that people have tried to reach him so I’m thinking he’s either ignoring his own shellan, or he left his phone at home. She’s worried about him, but here you are, leading him on a death mission out here alone—”

A loud, piercing whistle brought their heads around. And as John Matthew got their attention, the male stamped his foot in the snow. Then he nodded at Tohr and gestured with his thumb that he was leaving.

“At least one of you is making sense,” the Brother muttered. “Son, please get yourself back to the clinic. You shouldn’t be out here and you know it.”

John nodded. And then stuck his palm out to Murhder.

As Tohr cursed, Murhder clasped what was offered. “It was a good time. Thanks for reminding me how much I used to love this job.”

But instead of letting go, John tugged at him.

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Tohr said. “He’s not going back with you. As of right now, he is not allowed on Brotherhood property ever again.”

“What did the transition feel like?”

As soon as the question left Sarah’s mouth, she shook her head. “I’m sorry, Nate. That’s invasive—”

“No, it’s okay. It’s just … I don’t remember a lot of my transition, to be honest.” The boy looked down at his now-long legs. “I’d felt off for a while beforehand. I mean, I had this weird craving for chocolate and bacon? I could get one or the other at the lab, but not both at a time. They fed me well, but I couldn’t put requests in. And anyway, I couldn’t eat much.”

Sarah’s stomach clenched at the idea of him in that cage. Alone. Suffering.

The experiments. The tests.

“By the time we came here from that house?” he continued. “I felt hot all over. But it was in my inside. Like a fever. And I just got hotter and hotter, until these waves went through me. I felt like every part of my body was blowing apart, and my blood was racing …”

Abruptly, Sarah’s attention split. Half of her kept listening to Nate talk, so that she nodded in the right places and made murmurs of support. Another part of her, however, retreated to the data she’d been reviewing.

Including John Matthew’s blood tests. Which showed that he had a normal level of white blood cells for a vampire—

“—wound healed up just fine.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking herself. “What was that?”

“My wound is healed.” Nate pulled back some of the blankets on his leg. “I tripped and fell in the cage, and cut myself. They bandaged it—but it kind of didn’t do well. Now, it’s all okay, though.”

Sarah winced at the further reminder of his captivity. Then she leaned down and looked at the smooth, hairless expanse of a very powerful leg. On the outside of the calf, there was a faded line, jagged and rather long.

“And you said it healed?” Sarah glanced up. “After the change.”

“Yes, but from what the doctor said, that’s the way things are. Vampires who are fed properly have incredible healing powers.”

Sarah sat back. “So I’ve heard. And I’m really glad you’re okay.”

“Me, too. I guess.” Nate pulled the sheeting back over himself. “The doctor here said that the healing thing is to make up for no longer being able to see sunlight. Not that I ever had the chance to.”

“You were never let outdoors?”

“No.”

Sarah closed her eyes and tried to imagine what his life had been like. What it was going to be like as he went through another kind of transition, one of captivity to freedom.

“Nate, I am so sorry about everything you’ve been through.”

“It is what it is. The question is … what now?”

“I get that one. Trust me.”

They sat in silence for a while, and it was … well, she wouldn’t say that it was necessarily good that the two of them were both at a loss for what the rest of their lives was going to look like. But it was nice to not be alone.

Disliking the direction of her thoughts, she refocused on that leg, now hidden.

“Did you heal because of the feeding or because you got through the change,” she said to herself.

Nate shrugged and then smiled. “Maybe it was the transition itself. You know, wiping clean all blemishes. Starting fresh—”

Sarah sat up so fast, she nearly knocked the chair over. In a flicker of images, she thought of the way his body had grown during the change, and the kind of cellular storm that transformation had to represent … down at the molecular level.

“What?” he asked her.

When she didn’t reply, Nate sat up as well. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

As the scientist in her went forward a hundred miles, the human she prided herself on being stayed put.

No, she thought. It’s not right.

“What’s not right?” he asked.

Sarah shook her head. “Sorry. I just … you’ve been through enough.”

“Enough of what?”

“Ah, you know, experiments. Being poked and prodded and stuck with needles for the purposes of someone else.”

“What are you talking about?”

“It’s okay. It’s nothing—”

“Sarah,” he said in a tone of voice that suggested not only was he twenty, and not twelve, he was a lot older than even that. “What’s on your mind?”

I owe you,” Murhder said an hour later. “Big-time.”

As he and Xhex walked over to a stand of boulders on the side of a mountain, he paused and looked around. The snowy landscape was distorted, mhis making it hard to determine exactly where they were.

Vishous, he thought. Up to his old tricks.

But she’d been wrong about him not knowing where they were. He knew exactly the place: Darius’s mountaintop mansion. The Brotherhood must have finally moved into it, just as Darius had always wanted them to. Murhder could remember coming to the construction site back in the early 1900s and watching as the magnificent house had been erected, steam cranes setting I-beams, great walls laid stone by stone, the whole of it built by fine vampire craftsmen to commercial specifications.

So the manse could last centuries.

“No, you don’t owe me.” Xhex slipped in between the car-sized rocks. “But you are lucky we had a change of clothes in Trez’s office.”

And that shower, he thought as he squeezed himself into the shallow hideaway. As he’d come off the field of conflict, he’d been covered with all kinds of blood and the last thing he wanted was for Sarah to see him like that. Looking for exactly what he happened to find, he’d gone to Xhex’s club and ID’d a vampire among the security staff monitoring the entrance. The male had been good enough to get Xhex without asking a lot of questions.

She hadn’t asked for any details, either. Especially as he’d told her he’d been with her mate. It was obvious her feelings were hurt, but typical of the female, she hadn’t let any of that emotion through.

Leaning forward, she hit a hidden button and a small fake “rock” panel slid back to reveal a keypad. After she entered in a code, the lock was released and part of the entire cave wall opened.

But she didn’t step aside so he could go through. Instead, she leveled those gunmetal-gray eyes at him.

“Listen,” she said, “you need to get straight with the Brotherhood and take care of that human woman. She can’t stay here in our world, Murhder. Say your goodbyes, wipe her memories and then get her back where she belongs. Or they’re going to do that shit for you.”

“She’s going to help John.” As the female looked away sharply, he put his hand on her shoulder. “Xhex, she’s going to figure it out.”

Those hard eyes swung back to him. “I don’t want to be cruel here, I really don’t. But you don’t know that woman. You’re attracted to her so that sizzle of chemistry makes you think you’re on intimate terms, but you don’t have a clue about what she’s really like—and I refuse to put my faith in some human who incidentally worked for the company which has been torturing members of the species for over two decades.”

Anger curled in his gut. “So you’re just going to let John die?”

“Excuse me?” Xhex glared at him. “Not believing in a pipe dream does not equate to letting my hellren die. And fuck you for bringing that up.”