Jordan had wormed her way to the front of the crowd. She grinned and gave me two thumbs up.

The vampire moaned and Nikolas took a step forward. “We need to get her secured again before she comes to. How the hell did she escape in the first place?”

Geoffrey came forward. “She picked the lock on the shackles. I don’t know how she did it. Most vampires can’t handle silver that long.”

“Desperation will make you do a lot of things you couldn’t do before,” I said. If she hadn’t been a blood-sucking monster, I might have been impressed by her survival instinct.

Geoffrey and one of the other warriors came forward. “Good job, Sara. We’ll take her now.”

The vampire woke up as I was handing her off to Geoffrey. She stared at the two warriors reaching for her then looked up at me. Terror filled her eyes, and she snarled and began to twist in my grasp. I zapped her again and she went limp.

“That’s some trick,” Geoffrey said.

“You should see me pull a rabbit from a hat.”

He smiled as he and the other warrior took the vampire by the arms. “We’ll make sure this one doesn’t get loose again. Not sure if she’s worth keeping, though.”

“Why?”

“Some vampires break. Most don’t. After a while you can tell the ones that will.”

“Then why waste your time with her?” Jordan asked.

“Because they can’t take the chance of not getting information out of her,” Nikolas said as the two warriors started to drag the vampire from the kitchen.

“Wait.” An idea came to me, one that Nikolas was not going to like. “Maybe I can get something out of her.”

Geoffrey stopped and looked back at me. “How?”

Nikolas shook his head. “No.”

“Nikolas, you said they need information. And it’s not like she can hurt me.”

He laid his hands on my shoulders, his eyes troubled. “You don’t have the stomach for torture, and that’s what it will take.”

“Maybe not.” I bit my lip because I knew how he was going to react to my next sentence. “I could connect with the demon.”

Anger flashed in his eyes. “Absolutely not. Do I need to remind you what happened the last time you did that?”

“No, but I’m a lot stronger than I was that time, and I know what to expect now.”

“No.”

I placed my hands on his chest. “I know you’re worried, but I’ve come so far since that thing with Nate. I’ve spent months working with Aine and Eldeorin, and I know what I can do.”

“What are they talking about?” Jackson asked. No one answered him.

Nikolas stared at me for a long moment. Then he let out a pained sigh and lowered his forehead to mine. “Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I promise.”

“I mean it, Sara,” he growled softly. He pulled back so I could see the worry in his eyes. “If I have to sit by a hospital bed for another two days, I really will lock you up.”

I gave him a reassuring smile. “That won’t happen. Trust me.”

He released my shoulders. “What do we need to do?”

“Just lay her here on the floor, and I’ll do the rest.”

Geoffrey and the other warrior looked surprised when Nikolas asked them to put the vampire on the kitchen floor, but they did it without question. After my display on the lawn tonight, they all knew I was different, and they looked curious to see what I was going to do next.

“I need some room to do this. Can you all move to the living room?”

Once the kitchen was empty except for me and the vampire, I knelt beside her prone body and laid my hands on her chest. I didn’t even have to call my power forth. It rushed to my hands as soon as it sensed a demon close by, and I had to hold it back to keep from killing the vampire outright.

The vampire’s eyes opened and her mouth twisted in a scream as I pushed my power slowly into her chest. My aim was to make contact with the vamhir demon, not kill it like I had done with Nate. It didn’t take me long to find the gelatinous membrane surrounding the heart, and I touched it to let it know I was there. The demon trembled and shrank away from me, but there was nowhere it could go.

I remembered every detail of my experience with Nate as if it had happened yesterday. Drawing on that knowledge, I let my power envelop the demon and called on the same force I had tapped into the first time I’d done this. The demon convulsed, and I could feel its scream inside my skull.

No! screeched an alien voice that was not my own.

You want it to stop? Tell me how you knew about this house.

It fell silent for a long moment and I began to think I’d imagined the voice. I gave the demon another jab.

Hurts! it howled.

It’s going to get a lot worse. I poked it again to make my point.

Stop!

Not until you tell me what I want to know. How did you find us?

Silence.

I zapped it again. The demon screamed and a shudder went through it. Stop.

Answer my question. I felt no empathy for this creature, and I was willing to keep this up as long as I had to.

The demon finally realized that, too. Followed hunters.

You followed us from where?

Not you. Followed hunters from casino.

When?

Days.

How many days ago? I asked.

Two.

Two days ago? That meant they had been planning this attack all along, and they’d had no idea the rest of us would be here. Geoffrey was not going to be happy to learn that his team had been followed right back to their safe house.