“They’re that rare?”

“Yes. And I had never seen a pregnant woman,” she revealed shakily.

“Never?” he repeated, shocked.

“Pregnancy is so difficult for our women now that as soon as it is confirmed, the woman is taken to a special clinic run by the Sectas and resides there until she either miscarries or manages to deliver.”

Marcus couldn’t imagine it.

“I thought if there were even the most remote possibility that we could reach an agreement with your planet, it would be worth any risk. If nothing else, I believed the fact that we could protect you from the Gathendiens and prevent your species’ demise would ensure my presence would be welcomed. But I was wrong.”

Marcus took one of her hands, anger already rising within him in anticipation of what she would tell him next.

“I sent a signal to Earth, one I knew would be detected by the handful of your people who listened for such things. When I arrived, a meeting was arranged between myself and three of Earth’s representatives in an isolated location less likely to draw attention when my craft was uncloaked.”

“Did you come all this way alone?”

“No, I had a small crew with me, all of whom shared my hopes. They reluctantly agreed to remain on the ship while I made first contact.” She shook her head. “I thought my telepathy would ensure I wouldn’t be deceived. But, thanks to your Hollywood movies, the likelihood that I would possess such an ability had been taken into consideration.”

“What do you mean? By whom? Who agreed to meet you?”

“Seth still isn’t sure. He couldn’t tell whether the men who held me captive were military or mercenary. Darnell is the one who decrypted their files, and he suspects they were a secret branch of the government, so secret that even the president may not know about them.”

“Like in Independence Day?”

She nodded. “They chose three scientists—two men, one woman—to meet me, told them nothing of their vile intentions, so I read nothing but excitement, welcome, and curiosity in the emissaries’ minds.” She released a self-deprecating laugh. “The so-called primitive humans fooled me as easily as the advanced Gathendiens had the Lasarans. I thought the emissaries were taking me to parley with world leaders. So did they. Instead, as soon as we reached our destination, the emissaries were killed, I was captured, and, when my crew tried to withdraw at my command, my ship had to be destroyed, my friends with it.”

Murmuring her name, Marcus drew her into his arms.

“I spent the next six months in their lab, being dissected and tortured and experimented upon until Seth and David heard my silent cries and found me.”

Marcus didn’t think he had ever regretted anything as much as he did punching Seth in the face. If Seth and David hadn’t found Ami …

His arms tightened. He pressed his lips to her hair as her tears dampened his shoulder and vowed to sit down with the two eldest immortals as soon as they returned, find out if any of Ami’s torturers still lived, then hunt the bastards down and treat them to a little bit of their own handiwork. Each and every one of them would suffer a slow, agonizing death.

“Marcus,” she said, disrupting the violent scenarios unfolding in his head, “there’s something else.” She drew back and swiped the moisture from her cheeks. “The drug the vampire king used to sedate you and the others …”

He frowned at the change in subject. “Yes?”

“It’s the same drug the human scientists developed to incapacitate me.”

His blood turned to ice. “Are you sure?”

She nodded. “I recognized its scent on the darts, the feel of it when I was hit with one myself.”

Trepidation crawled through him. How had the vampire king gotten his hands on a drug a secret branch of the government had concocted to sedate an alien no one knew they had held in their possession?

Just who the hell were they up against?

Dennis prowled through the night toward Montrose Keegan’s secluded home.

The stupid egghead had chosen a good location in which to play Frankenstein. His single-story frame house hovered on the outskirts of the small town of Carrboro. Dense forest separated Keegan from his only neighbors—distant farms and pastureland—at least during the warmer months. Whoever had built the house decades ago had planted evergreens out front, which, allowed to grow unchecked and untrimmed, now formed a dense wall between the street and the house, blocking it from view.

The scent of humans filled those trees right now, alerting Dennis to the fact that he was being watched as he stalked up the long drive that was more dirt than gravel. Quite a few humans.

His stride never breaking, Dennis used his preternatural vision to pick out each and every man present. Their camouflage clothing and gear was military grade, not hunting grade. Though it blended well enough for them to elude the notice of humans, Dennis easily determined how many there were, where each was positioned, and what weapons they carried.

Foolish mortals, believing such gave them strength over him.

His fangs dropped as Dennis’s already foul mood descended deeper into a dark mire. He had had to discipline several of his men this evening. Fucking cowards. All had been trembling in their damned designer sneakers because so many of their fellow soldiers had failed to return from last night’s mission. Dennis had opted to use the three who had whispered of deserting as an example for the others, leaving quite a mess.

Anyone could be swayed and controlled by fear. His father had taught Dennis that with many a beating, then had learned the lesson himself after Dennis had been transformed and paid him a bloody visit.

An hour was all it had taken Dennis to whip his army, or what was left of it, back into shape. Those who hadn’t been stuck with cleaning up the gore now roved North Carolina and surrounding states, recruiting and replenishing their numbers.

But it still rankled. Subjects should never question their king.

A new wave of rage engulfed him.

First he’d been hit with the disrespect and incompetence of his soldiers, now this, whatever the hell this was. A bunch of human turds who thought they could lie in wait and spring some lame trap to catch whatever they thought he was. Had Montrose sold him out?

That little weasel wouldn’t dare. This was something else. Dennis just didn’t know what.

Two men in camouflage stood with automatic weapons in hand, one on either side of Montrose’s front door.

Putting on a burst of speed that he knew the humans would be unable to follow, Dennis raced up the drive and broke through the front door. As soon as he entered the dwelling, the scent of stale blood struck him.

“Montrose!” he roared, sensing Sarah’s absence, “you sorry sack of shit!”

By the time shouts erupted outside, he was down in the basement, taking in the blood streaked floor and walls of the laundry area. He continued into the lab. A man Dennis had never seen before sat at Keegan’s desk. An open laptop rested on it, connected to the video camera Dennis had set up and concealed in the trees that bordered the clearing last night.

“Who the hell are you?” Dennis barked.

“Sir?” a voice, high with anxiety, called as footsteps sounded above.

“Hold your position,” the man called back, regarding Dennis with an irritating lack of concern.

The footsteps ceased.

Infuriated by the man’s total disregard, Dennis took a step toward him and bared his fangs.

“I wouldn’t,” he said and raised the tranquilizer gun Dennis himself had used against the immortals.

Dennis laughed. “I could drain every drop of blood from your body and tear your ass apart before that drug kicked in,” he bluffed. The damned drug would drop him like a stone as soon as it was injected.

“Should you do so,” the man issued blandly, “my men have standing orders to wait for the drug to take effect, then castrate you. If what Montrose has told me is correct, you have a remarkable ability to heal wounds inflicted upon your person, but that ability does not extend as far as growing things back that have been removed.”

Dennis’s fury increased, leaving him shaking with the need to rend and tear and feed. “Who are you?”

“Your new employer. You will no longer be working for Montrose.”

Dennis would have laughed if he hadn’t been so pissed. “I never worked for Montrose. He worked for me.”

“Well, then, your situation has changed.”

Dennis grabbed the table nearest him and hurled it across the room. Paper, metal, and glass flew in all directions, shards twinkling like glitter in the lab’s overhead light. “Where is he?”

“Our friend is not doing too well, I’m afraid. A rather nasty stab wound landed him in the hospital.”

Dennis’s whole body shook with rage. “What about the woman?” His voice, low and guttural, did not sound like his own.

“The woman is why I’m here. And why you’re still alive … if you can call it that.”

The room went red. Dennis closed his eyes, a roar exploding from him.

When he opened them again, his chest heaved with deep gasping breaths, and the room around him looked as though a typhoon had hit it. Paper and shredded binders formed a jagged carpet that sparkled with pieces of broken glass. The gurney on which he had placed the human woman last night protruded from one wall, crumpled Sheetrock buckled around it. Metal lab tables formed twisted, garbled sculptures. The only bit of furniture in the room still intact was Montrose’s desk and the chair behind it.

Beside them, the arrogant prick stood, face pale, eyes wide, fingers curled tightly around the grip of the tranquilizer gun he wielded.

A strange weakness weighted Dennis’s arms and legs, making him sway.

Frowning, he looked down. A red dart protruded from his chest.

“Sir?” an anxious voice called again from upstairs.

“H-hold your position,” the prick called back, voice unsteady. “Shit. I thought Montrose was exaggerating when he said you were crazy.”