“Yeah,” she gasped as he probed the wounds. She wiped her mouth with the back of her wrist. “I can usually take care of myself. But there were three of them. With guns.” She chuckled and more blood splattered. “They don’t allow guns in the pit.”

“Wise decision there.” Edmund ripped the strap of the sports bra from her, without jostling her body. “Are you averse to close physical contact with me? You are badly injured. I will need to—”

She coughed again and blood went everywhere. I could hear the fluid gurgling in her lungs. Edmund had been many things in his long life; one was a physician. He pulled a blade and sliced two of his fingers deeply enough that the blood wouldn’t clot over too quickly.

“I am most sorry,” he said. And he thrust his fingers into the wounds. She coughed and gagged and writhed, smearing the blood beneath her like some kind of artwork for a horror flick. Ed put his free hand on Ro’s head and said, “Be still. All is well.” His voice fell low, slow, the tone they use when they draw on their power to mesmerize. “All is well. Do you know how much the Master of the City approves of you?” he said in the same easy tone. “He sets you on guard duty, in the bowels of the building, an indication of how much he trusts you with his secrets and his body.” Ed looked up at us and mouthed, Medic!

I had seen Ed heal with his blood and his magic. He had brought me back from the brink of death. But I wasn’t human. Ro was dying. Fear sliced along my nerves and I raced back up the steps. Snagged two paramedics as they came in the outer door. “Downstairs. Elevator.” I didn’t mean to shove them and their gear and the stretcher into the elevator, but somehow that was what I did. They landed with a jumble and clatter of metal and hard plastic. I stabbed the button, trying to remember how to get to the sealed door once we got off the elevator and how many walls I’d have to punch out to get the stretcher through.

It took too long. Too long, too long, too long for the elevator to descend. I punched the button again. Maybe a dozen times. The elevator finally dropped gently down.

“Ma’am? What do we have?”

I turned to the paramedic and managed to take a breath. I saw my reflection in his eyes. My own wide and terrified. Face too pale for my usual golden-hued skin. I realized I had panicked. I never panicked. I— Oh. The storm. It was affecting me in lots of ways, more than I realized. I gathered my brain around me and forced my shoulders down, forced in a breath. I said, “Female, aged twenty-two to thirty-five. Two GSWs, left shoulder. Left lung penetration. Coughing blood. Possible hemothorax. A doctor is with her, but he has no equipment.” I looked at my hands. There was a splatter of blood on them from when Ro coughed. I had panicked. That was strange.

The elevator stopped. The doors eventually opened. I grabbed up the medical kit, which probably weighed a good forty pounds, and sprinted down the hallway. Then stopped and waited for the paramedics to get the stretcher sorted out. It took forever. And I understood then that I really liked Ro. She had moxie, was resourceful and practical. And tough as nails.

I had never bothered to make a friend of her and that bothered me.

We rounded the hallway and the paramedics went to work, taking direction from Edmund, who gave them everything about her from pulse and respirations to the fact that her lung had partially collapsed and most certainly she had a hemothorax. More detailed and better medical information than I had known.

I watched as the medical types got IV lines going, started plasma expanders, put pads under her knees to restore some blood pressure to keep her from going more shocky. She was paler than most vamps. Blood-drenched. I couldn’t stand here any longer. I needed to be doing something. I pulled a vamp-killer and the nine-mil, which I had safetied and holstered, all with a round in the chamber. Stupid. Unless I needed it in a hurry. Then maybe not. I felt as if I were waking up from a hazy dream. “Who’s in the room?” I asked Eli.

“Ro says a revenant and a human wearing red and black.”

“Okay. Let’s do this.”

Eli opened the door and took left; I took right. On the floor beside the cage against the far wall was a dead human who might have been wearing black and red. There was so much blood I couldn’t tell for sure. I didn’t have to check for a pulse. His throat was gone. A revenant wearing gray rags had his back to us, and he didn’t turn, too busy trying to get the cage gate open. The mesh was tightly braided and woven stainless steel, coated with silver, and it cut and burned through vamp skin like a blade through butter. The latch was the highest-quality steel and spelled. And the dead human hadn’t thought to bring lock cutters.

The door closed with a sharp sound and the rev whirled to us. There was life and light in his eyes. And blood and tissue and dog fangs at his mouth. But he telegraphed his move and I was already in a hard backswing. He dove for us. I took him down with the vamp-killer. His head bounced off the ceiling and landed on an empty cage. His body dropped. I knelt at it and studied the neck. The pink thread was pulsing with magic. I lowered my face and sniffed. There was the faintest trace of mixed vamp blood on him, the same mixture that was in the blood bottle. Which I had misplaced. Maybe in the limo. So much had happened in the last few hours, I was uncertain. Oh. Right. I’d last been holding it in the limo and had seen Eli take it. It was safe, wherever he had stored it.

I looked into the only occupied cage, into the face of the beautiful fanghead who had tried to kill me the first time she saw me. Her red hair was long and curly and as wild as she was, and she was dressed in jeans and a loose-woven, pale aqua sweater. Beneath the sweater, on her upper arm, gold gleamed. She was wearing a snake bracelet, one that danced with magic in a dozen shades of red, charcoal, and black. I had taken her jewelry away from her. It was all infused with magic and she was not allowed magic. Yet she wore magic tonight.

Outside, lightning struck close again. I felt it in my bones, an electric zapping that hurt. But it didn’t do anything to my magic because it never found me. Instead, the magic in the lightning, or perhaps only a tiny bit of it, as Adrianna didn’t burn to death on impact, found the bracelet. The gold lit up. The lights overhead flickered off and on several times. Adrianna gripped the mesh and leaned into it. Lightning swirled into the mesh, sparking and glinting, before vanishing. There was no stink of her flesh burning, no smoke. Adrianna opened her eyes, stared at me, and laughed.

The cages. They were brand-new. The mesh was a different design. The metal bright and clean and untouched by time and prolonged contact with vamp flesh and blood and air and water. Shiny. Either they weren’t really coated with silver, or Adrianna had gained a silver immunity, which would be very, very bad.

I pulled my cell and sent a text to Alex. Get someone in here to make sure the sub-four scion and prisoner cages aren’t wired into a power system, regular electric, security system, or somehow getting to the SOD. Make sure they are silver. Adrianna not burning to touch.

He sent back, K.

“I remember those,” Adrianna said. “I want one.”

I looked into Adrianna’s eyes. Pretty sane. Ish. Holy crap. Maybe the way to cure vamp insanity is a silver stake through the brain. “Eli, we need that bracelet.”

Adrianna slapped a hand over her upper arm, hiding the gleam of gold. “Mine.”

“Nope,” I said. “Mine.”

Edmund entered the room and looked around like a dapper decorator unimpressed with the décor. Until he spotted the rev head on the cage top. He showed teeth in predatory pleasure and said, “This is why I love working for you, my mistress. Never a dull millisecond.”

“I smell blood,” Adrianna said. She held her palm against the mesh, not burning. Not burning at all. “Give.”

“No,” I said. To Edmund, I added, “We need to get her bracelet off. Someone gave her more magical stuff.”

“Good,” Edmund said. “The hidden security camera should show us who and when.”

“You installed a hidden surveillance camera?”

“Technically your second installed it, but it was my idea.”

Eli snorted, and I got the feeling that Edmund’s contribution was more in the vamp’s head than in reality. “It isn’t tied into the system. I’ll pull the drive now and insert another. We can take it to Alex for review.” Eli went to a spot next to the door and peeled back a length of tape that was the same color as the wall. Behind the tape, Eli had cut into the wallboard and planted a small camera. He removed a tiny drive, inserted another, and closed the tape over it. Unless someone was looking for a small hole next to the door, it was invisible. “It’s in real time, so it will take a while.”