"He"s going to follow us?"

"It"s still rush hour so we"re not exactly going to be motoring, and a blind man could pick this van out in traffic." h.e.l.l, he might beat us to Tenth World.

"So how good a deal do you think this Bronson guy"s going to give me?" Kevin asked. Rather than hog-tying Kevin and ending up with a spitting-mad chemist, Mal had spent the drive planting the idea in his head that meeting Bronson was a good strategic move. He hadn"t used influence, but Kevin wasn"t exactly opposed to vampire charm. "He"s loaded, right? I read about all those new mines and stuff he sniffed out in Alaska. They say he"s got the Midas touch."

"His people, yeah." Vampires hunted their wealth in the winter, doing small digs through otherwise frozen land since that helped them to isolate the scents that signaled underground reserves of resources. I couldn"t see Bronson bundling up and snowshoeing across the tundra or climbing into one narrow, frozen hole after the other.

Mal stepped out of the alley and twirled his finger in a "start it up" motion. I waited until he"d taken a few steps into the waning light, then pulled away from the curb. He was fine. Ambient light didn"t kill.

"Copper and oil." Kevin scratched at his five o"clock shadow. "There"s got to be a s.h.i.t-ton of money in that."

"I guess." I didn"t like deceiving him. I"d worked for vampires because the money was good, same as him, and I"d seen and heard them hurting people. I"d always thought it was their fault, that those humans had sold themselves to the suckers. I didn"t believe that anymore. Vampires took what they wanted. If Bronson thought Kevin was valuable, the guy would never be free again. Not really. I couldn"t let him walk into that meeting with anything less than fully open eyes.

"What are his sweet spots? Does he do his own development? Is it all production or does he have refineries?"

"Kevin." I changed lanes. "I"m not taking you there for a job interview. There might be some opportunity, but only after he grills you about Abel."

"He"s got a lot of people he needs to keep in line, right?"

I glanced at him. He smirked and stretched out his legs. "So, yeah, he"ll ask me some questions. But when he figures out what I can do that human pharma companies can"t or won"t do, there"ll be plenty of opportunity for both of us. We"ll only need to work out the numbers."

"Listen..." I punched the accelerator to make a light, then counted to ten. "This guy isn"t like Abel. You were a sideshow for him. Whatever"s in front of Bronson will have his undivided attention, and believe me when I tell you it"s a different magnitude of attention."

"I"m a grown-up, you know?" He made a clicking noise then swallowed a couple of times. "I don"t need your help. You got yourself into trouble, but I"m not going to. I"ve been running my own business for a while now."

Yeah, a harmful business full of bogus s.h.i.t. Why the h.e.l.l was I even trying to give him advice?

"Fools and small f.u.c.king children," I muttered, tracking Malcolm with my senses. He"d found some kind of shortcut and was veering diagonally away from us, toward the turnoff for the resort. "Look, don"t think you"re going to walk in there, look this guy in the eye, and blow his mind with your spiel. He"s got his own agenda. His idea of fairness isn"t anywhere close to yours. And he doesn"t give a s.h.i.t if you"re an up-and-comer with a grade-A skill set. Got it?"

"I guess." He crossed his arms and looked out the window, twisting every once in a while, probably trying to spot Mal.

We stopped for gas and Kevin went in to use the bathroom.

"You drive like you were shot out of a drunk cannon," Malcolm said, strolling up behind me.

"Says someone moving like Pac-Man gone off the rails." He wasn"t even breathing hard, not that he was exerting on a physical basis. Vampire energy was a whole other thing. I took a deep breath, as if making up for his lack of respiration. "So, this is it, huh?"

"I"ll stay close. Abel may have someone watching the approach, trying to cut us off before we reach Tenth World. If so, I"ll lead them away." His gaze flicked to the van. "They won"t suspect that you"re in this thing until it"s too late. If anyone other than Chev"s staff intervenes, you keep going. And don"t you dare come back for me. Abel"s people can"t touch you once you reach the border."

"I love you," I said. I"d been listening, but details were small things and this was a major thing. A necessary thing.

He pulled me close. The hose to the gas pump jostled our knees as he kissed my neck, above where he"d bitten me. A thrill ran through me and I opened my mouth to suck in an unsteady breath. The air tasted of gasoline and him.

"Say that to me again when your heart"s not beating fit to burst." His mouth slid along my jaw before covering my own and I pulled him against me, both hands buried in the dense silk of his hair.

"We"re going to be fine," I said after he pulled away with a last lingering press of his lips.

"After tonight, we"ll be more than fine." His fingertips brushed against my cheek, and then he was gone.

"I got turkey jerky," Kevin announced, making me jump. "And yogurt."

I shook my head, irritated at the interruption and my own distraction.

"Is that what you normally eat or do you suck at gas station shopping?" I closed the gas cap.

"It"s healthy." Kevin wrenched open the door and I climbed into the driver"s seat.

"Health isn"t a consideration when you"re eating off a shelf that also contains antifreeze and glow-in-the-dark condoms. You need stuff that"s going to fortify you against the chemicals."

"Like what?"

"More chemicals. Buckle up."

The van stalled twice, lurching to a stop as we crossed the gas station parking lot.

"Wh-wh-where the h.e.l.l did you learn to drive?" he muttered.

"Logging roads." I got the beast started again, but it didn"t sound good. Thank goodness we had only a few miles to go. I stomped the accelerator and the seatbelt snapped tight.

"Hrrrk." Kevin clutched his bag of jerky to his chest when we bounced forward. "No need for finesse on logging roads, huh?"

Easing down on the accelerator, I popped the van into gear. The tires squealed as we whipped onto the road.

I winked at Kevin. "How"s that for finesse?"

"Poor."

"Everyone"s a critic."

We rolled along, the heavy traffic managing a surprisingly brisk pace. We were two turns and a long straight stretch from Tenth World when I felt the brush of an unfamiliar vampire. My hands tightened then relaxed on the wheel. It was probably a guest, on their way to or from the resort. That was to be expected.

A jerky stick appeared in my peripheral vision and I swung my head to snap at Kevin when movement in the side mirror caught my eyes. It was a mere flash, an SUV forcing a lane change two cars back, out of sync with the flow of traffic.

The vehicle was black, the windows deeply tinted. The back of my neck tingled when I heard it, the roar of the engine a half octave below anything else on the road. A vamp-proofed tank, all pimped out and doing its best to crawl up my a.s.s. My fingers twitched. The muscles of my core tightened, antic.i.p.ating the need to move.

I breathed in. I breathed out.

Then I slammed the accelerator down and cranked the wheel, bashing in the rear fender of an old Audi. We bounced halfway onto the sidewalk, metal sc.r.a.ping metal as I took out a road sign. My leg locked straight out and the van bounded forward and into an intersection as the lights changed. Horns honked and brakes squealed, but it wasn"t all because of me. The SUV was following, or trying. The smell of burning-rubber, oil, whatever-filled the air as we swung through the intersection.

"What the...what the..." Kevin stammered, his right hand locked white-knuckle on the armrest.

The back wheels skidded on the rough shoulder as I gained speed. All four tires. .h.i.t clean pavement and the van whipped back into place. The SUV moved in roaring spurts, caught in the snarl I"d left in my wake.

The van growled along, eating up the road, bluish smoke billowing out of the tailpipe. It couldn"t outrun that kind of pursuit, not on its best day, and today was definitely not its best day. But we had a head start and Tenth World was close. Kevin chattered and shrieked, but I could hardly hear him. Vampire power was popping east of us, hostile surges converging on the last position I"d tagged Mal. Adrenaline and something else surged through me, and I nearly dumped the van when I made the final turn.

The land around Tenth World still looked like the surface of the moon. Whorls of dust crisscrossed the straight road as if we were driving through the migration route of giant ghosts. The building loomed in the distance. The torches on the roof cast a faint glow into the navy sky. The feeders, and maybe some of the guests, would be up there, enjoying the heat-soaked stone and cooler water.

Forty-five seconds later, the fat headlights of the SUV lit up the mirror. It was going to be close but all we"d have to do was cross the borderline and we"d be safe. Chev"s power began to scratch at me, but it was a good thing. I leaned forward before stilling, hands locked around the steering wheel.

At first I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, making it look like the road was bouncing ahead of us. But no. Something was coming at us and coming fast. I sensed more than saw it, a long, low vehicle flying along the road. Lights off. Painted the color of the desert. A camouflage car. That"s what Mickey had said when I"d first woken up in Abel"s bas.e.m.e.nt. They"d driven us there in a camouflage limo. She"d thought it was ugly.

It was the ugliest d.a.m.n thing I"d ever seen. I growled in frustration when the van picked that moment to falter. The needles on the meters spun, redlining one second and falling limp the next. The headlights in the rearview grew brighter.

The SUV was herding us toward the limo. I slammed on the brakes, continuing to tap the accelerator to keep the engine running. The seat belt dug into my shoulder and Kevin"s hands. .h.i.t the dash as he swore. I held my breath as we slowed. The SUV slowed behind us, thinking we were surrendering because of that minor detail of having nowhere to go.

I cranked the wheel and floored it. The van"s response was sluggish. The headlights of the limo flared to life as we rolled off the side of the road, driving in suspended animation.

"When you can," I yelled over the crunch of rock beneath the wheels, "run toward the hotel."

"It"s still coming!" Kevin shouted.

The limo wasn"t slowing. I turned the wheel again, trying to reduce the angle of impact. My shoulders burned from the effort, as if I could alter our course through effort alone.

The car hit us, a monstrous fist that tore into the back of the van and plowed us nearly sideways through the dirt and scrub brush. The dust cloud and noise obscured everything and I had the sudden, irrational thought that it would push us right off the end of the world.

Instead it dumped us on our side. My window broke and was dragged away by the pa.s.sing ground. I wrapped my arm over my head to protect my face. The windshield cracked, adding a chorus of disharmonious whistling sounds to the chaos.

My spine was wedged against the seat, my leg locked straight on the brake. As if that would slow us. Kevin was silent when we stopped moving, his head flopped against his shoulder, his hands still gripping the armrests. My fingers were clumsy as clay as I clawed off my seat belt.

Crawling out of the seat, I landed on my hands and knees. Something was hissing, something else clicking, and the smell of antifreeze meeting hot engine parts made me gag. I picked my way through the dented cargo area, dropping to my stomach to squirm between pieces of jagged metal. Light flashed erratically through the open back doors and I aimed for them, clamping my teeth together around grunts of effort. There were vampires outside, but I was too amped to identify them. n.o.body all that powerful.

One of the back doors had been torn away. I pulled myself out into the dirt and was on my feet and running before I"d taken my first full breath. Even the air conspired against me, full of dry, choking particles. The border was so close I could feel the mad skitter of Chev"s energy.

But the vampires were fast and, worse, I recognized them. Emil reached for me and I darted to the side, gaining a couple of seconds and a matter of feet. He tackled me. He had the good grace not to land on me, but I crashed hard, dirt sc.r.a.ping one side of my face, all the air bursting from my lungs. I scrambled, shoving and kicking at him.

"Hold still," he snapped, wrenching my arms behind me. "I"m not going to kill you, but you"re not going to that blasted hotel."

"You shouldn"t tell lies," Sophie said as she walked up. She kicked dirt in my face when she stopped, her boots mere inches from my nose.

So he wasn"t going to kill me yet-or he wasn"t going to kill me, but someone else was. Emil pulled me to my feet and I considered whether he"d tear my arms off if I tried to run again, and then I froze.

Malcolm was coming, the distant feel of him like a taste that wouldn"t quite touch down on my tongue. But another vampire was much closer.

"Sydney." His voice still shredded me. Names had power, and mine on his tongue clicked all the tumblers on the lock of my mind. Shivers wracked my body, following the fault lines he"d created. A surge of power rolled out of him. Cold and sick-making, it crawled over me, seeking entrance.

I shuddered, but didn"t break. I didn"t turn to face him and fall to my knees the way he was wordlessly ordering me to. Clenching my left fist to hide the blood pearl forming there, I stared at the side of Sophie"s silk collar. She wasn"t wearing her glamorous face, which seemed odd since this was their big night. But then I felt it, a kind of syrupy sludginess in her energy. My eyes flew to hers and she met my gaze grimly. She"d been taking Radia, even after I"d told her what it would do. And she was scared. One more person that Abel would destroy in his quest for power. You couldn"t design a better a.s.shole.

"Richard," I said, turning to face him. "What, did you get thrown out of your own party?" My voice was as frosty as his greeting was forceful, and for once he was the one who wavered.

Chapter Twenty-Three.

"You"ve come back to me. Like a good little pet." He recovered quickly, and his anger almost covered his uncertainty. But it was too late. They knew that I"d changed.

Emil stiffened and Sophie"s lips twitched up, almost forming a smile. The sensation that signaled Malcolm ratcheted up, a cable pulled tight, and Abel finally heard his approach. He growled before he shot past me and the two collided with an unexpected sound, like a ma.s.sive hand slapping against water. A spray of rocks pelted us, thrown up by their collision off the side of the road.

I peeled the blood pearl away from my skin with my nails and shoved it into my pocket. With a party in full swing, everyone at Tenth World would be focused on what was going on inside. I wasn"t even sure Chev would notice us, outside of her borders. How long until someone realized Abel was gone, and would that person be sympathetic to Mal? He could endure a lot, but he"d fought his way here and the amount of blood he"d poured into Soraya had to have weakened him.

I couldn"t physically intervene, but I could do something.

"Kevin"s in the van," I said as I squinted into the darkness, flinching at the sounds of each strike and grunt. "If you still want him."

"Get the human," Emil said.

Sophie huffed and slinked off. People were crawling out of the limo, two humans that had fared worse than me. Either they were really well paid, or they"d been enthralled and sent out to intercept us.

Emil steered me toward the road. I resisted and his fingers dug in until he was dragging me. The ground trembled beneath my feet from the force of the fight, and the darkness was welcome. If I"d been able to see Mal, his fangs fully extended, tearing into Abel and being torn into, I wouldn"t have been able to think straight. My wits were the only thing I had going for me right now.

"Abel"s going to lose," I said. "You know that."

"He"s fine. Your boy"s the lightweight." Emil shoved me onto the pavement and I let myself drop just to get out of his hands. I laughed, forcing the sound out through the tension in my chest.

"You believe that? Seriously? Two decades working for Master Bronson and you think he"s a lightweight? Ask your fearless leader why he hates him so much. Ask him what Mal did in Anchorage, what he did to that old Russian family that everybody thought was so f.u.c.king tough. Bronson doesn"t keep losers around. That"s why your boy had to scheme for months to get his foot in the door."

"Shut up." Emil crossed his arms, his hands fisted against tense biceps.

"You know what, don"t worry about it. I"m sure that Chev will listen to your pet.i.tion after your guy"s dead. She"s charitable like that. Real flexible. I"m sure you"ve noticed."

Pushing to my feet, I brushed myself off and tried my very best to appear unconcerned, and like I wasn"t scoping the distance to the border. I couldn"t tell exactly where it was, but it felt close.

Sophie carried an inert Kevin toward us.

"This isn"t going well," she said, her brow puckering.

"It"s fine," Emil ground out. "He"s got it."

A vampire growled and metal shrieked as the side of the SUV that had pursued us crumpled. The human driver ran toward us, then darted back across the headlights as he tried to avoid the skirmishing vampires. Please be okay, Mal. Please.

I took two steps backward. Sophie dumped Kevin on the ground, where he promptly howled, rolled to his knees, and tried to run. She shoved him hard, jamming her heel into the small of his back to keep him down. I took another two steps. Definitely close.

"This is taking too long," Emil said, glancing back toward Tenth World. "Watch them." He peeled off his shirt, then took the time to fold it and set it on the pavement. I backed away as he jogged off. Any second now, Sophie was going to pounce on me.

"You were right about the hunger," she said, and I rocked to a stop. Her voice was eerily calm. Resigned. "I can feel what it"s doing to me, this drug. He forced it on me. A demonstration for the new master."

"You chose to follow him."

"We were falling apart. We needed someone stronger but no hive would have us. We knew that Richard Abel didn"t need to belong to a master to be strong. We didn"t know he would take strength from us." She twitched, then rolled her shoulders as if to ease discomfort. "We never should have joined him. He demands too much."

She didn"t turn around.

I ran, the fury of vampire power rending the air behind me, the feel of Mal"s effort and pain snagging at me like barbed hooks. Every nerve in my body rebelled at the idea of moving away from him, but I couldn"t help him, not from outside of the territory. He could handle whatever they dished out. He was stronger than they understood. I repeated that to myself with each step.