She stopped short as he tried to lift himself up on one shoulder, gave a pained cry, and slammed back to the ground. There was nothing but the sound of him breathing heavily. She took a step closer, then another.

“Why are you hunting me?” she asked. “Just because I have the… the blood of one of the ancients? It shouldn’t matter. None of them will ever claim me. I’m nothing, no one. I don’t know any secrets, like you said.”

“Because,” Oren said, black blood leaking from one corner of his mouth, “every one of us is a living secret, Ariane. And you are a pathetic Grigori, but the ancient blood brightens your soul. You… you are perfect to stop the Rising… for another hundred…”

His words were interrupted by a spate of deep, painful coughing. When he stopped, his eyes were brighter but his breathing shallower. Oren seemed to be fading away while she watched. And she had so many questions…

“He stirs and hungers beneath the sand,” Oren rasped, his gaze going far off. “Go home before you destroy us all.”

Then, to Ariane’s horror, he burst into flames.

“No!” she shouted, rushing forward. The dagger fell to the ground, unnoticed, as she ran to Oren’s side, as she began to beat at the flames with her bare hands. She had wanted to get away—from him, from all of them. She’d wanted him to leave her alone. But the reality of Oren’s death shook her to the core, where something seemed to break.

As he burned to nothing but cinders and ash, Ariane staggered away and was wretchedly sick. She had killed one of her own.

The screams of barely remembered loved ones on a night soaked in blood echoed in her memory, mingling with Ariane’s broken cry beneath the same indifferent stars.

Chapter Thirteen

HE’D THOUGHT she would die.

Damien had thought that he would find Ariane’s battered and lifeless body on the ground or that he would see Oren carrying her limp form off to a delayed, but inevitable, death. Instead, he’d found her kneeling by the ashes of her attacker, improbably alive, but so grief-stricken that she’d been little more than a glassy-eyed wraith at first.

The relief he’d felt at the sight of her had nearly taken him to his knees.

It was the first instance of real terror he’d experienced in over a hundred years. That was why he hadn’t allowed himself to touch her, instead hanging back and waiting for her to collect herself.

“You should have let me handle it,” he’d finally said to her when she’d come to him, silent and haunted. “He doesn’t deserve your grief. He wouldn’t have gotten mine.”

Though he was serious, he’d hoped to provoke her. Something, anything to snap her out of her hollow-eyed misery. Instead, she’d just given a small shake of her head.

“I can fight my own battles,” was all she said as they’d walked toward the road.

Yes, she sure as hell could, Damien thought. Why it bothered him so much that she did was a question that was going to plague him.

Which it did as he sat ensconced in the comfort of Vlad Dracul’s private jet.

Damien and Vlad sat across from one another, each sipping a cocktail. Damien wasn’t a huge fan of vodka, but with luck it would steady his frayed nerves. Ariane had taken up residence on the small leather couch behind Vlad, where she stared out at the night. She’d washed up as best she could in the small bathroom, but her blood-spattered dress was an ugly reminder of what had come before.

“Are you sure you want us staying right there at your house?” Damien asked, still rankling a little at what he couldn’t help but perceive as Vlad’s particular brand of high-handed charity. “There are plenty of bolt-holes in Chicago I can take Ariane to where no one will bat an eye at either of us. And it would cause you less trouble.”

Vlad waved his hand. “If I didn’t want you with me, I wouldn’t have come looking for you.” There was a knowing glint in his eye. “You don’t need to get your back up, Damien. I’m not trying to babysit you. But what you’re doing… interests me.”

“Of course it does,” Damien muttered, swirling the vodka in his glass. “You’re interested in everything you shouldn’t be.”

“A problem we share,” Vlad replied with a faint smile, inclining his head in Ariane’s direction. She was paying no attention, but it annoyed Damien anyway. So he was attracted to her. So he’d allowed her to come along when he hated working with people. So he’d risked dismemberment by a huge winged vampire for her.

So bloody what?

He downed the vodka, put it on the small table with an angry little smack, and leveled a cool stare at Vlad.

“I’ll need the use of your library. A car. Any contacts you have who might be useful, particularly those who’ve had dealings with the Grigori. As I told you, this Oren wasn’t the only encounter we’ve had in the last couple of days. And I owe the one who’s still alive a garroting.”

“Mmm, the one who knows where Sammael is,” Vlad replied, frowning.

“And killed Thomas Manon. Drake’s mad as hell. Some people are saying the House of Shadows is responsible.” Damien shook his head. “Sloppy, pathetic work. He doesn’t want to own that. None of us do.”

Vlad chuckled, and Ariane’s voice, soft but perfectly clear, drifted from the couch.

“He’s protecting Sam.”

Both men turned to look at her. Ariane had pulled her gaze away from the window, and she looked exhausted, Damien noted. He started to tell her she’d be going to bed immediately after getting to Vlad’s, but then bit his tongue. She could do as she liked. It was no affair of his, as long as she wasn’t risking his life.

And yet he found himself studying the shadows that had appeared beneath her eyes, silently clucking over her like an old hen.

“Of course he is,” Damien said. “I told you this didn’t seem like an abduction. Manon knew something, or he thought he did and was poking around in places he shouldn’t have. That big bastard took care of the problem. And if you and I had looked a little closer, I would guess we would have found a file or two missing.” Damien rolled his shoulders, wishing the tension would go away. “Unfortunately, the question of why a Grigori ancient would go to ground and kill to stay there, along with what looked like another Grigori ancient who you say you’ve never even seen, remains to be answered.”

“It truly is a pity Mormo isn’t well,” Vlad murmured. “She can see things none of us can.”

Ariane looked as though she wanted to say more but seemed suddenly uncertain. He wasn’t surprised. It had been a hell of a night, and she didn’t know Dracul from Adam.

“Go ahead and ask him whatever you like, kitten. Vlad’s trustworthy enough. Mostly because he’d rather be locked in his library than interact with people he could betray you to.”

Vlad’s brow arched, and Damien gritted his teeth. It wasn’t the casual endearment, he was sure, so much as the gentle tone he’d used with her. To say it wasn’t a tone he used often would be a massive understatement. It seemed to work, though, as Ariane spoke.

“In your research… have you ever heard of something called the Rising?” she asked.

It was a question Damien didn’t quite understand, and Vlad looked to be in the same boat. He shook his head slowly, thoughtfully.

“No. I don’t believe so. But that doesn’t mean there’s no mention of it in some book or other I have. Why? Is this something the Grigori speak of?”

Ariane looked troubled. “No. Just something Oren mentioned. Before.” She closed her eyes for a moment, as though steeling herself against the memory, and then looked at them again.

“I’ll have a look in your library, too, if you don’t mind. Even if it turns out to be nothing.”

But she clearly didn’t think so, Damien thought, watching her relief as Vlad graciously invited her to make good use of whatever he owned that might help. He mulled the term over. Rising? It sounded like another mess waiting to happen. He would do some checking himself. On his own. While Ariane was firmly, and safely, ensconced in Vlad’s library. The mansion was as solid as a fortress, and just as well guarded.

He wasn’t cutting her out, he reasoned. But some things were better done solo. And if that had the added benefit of keeping the woman from the sort of bodily harm she seemed to attract like a magnet, well…

It was all for the better. She could get some rest. And he could get some air, some space… something.

At the pretty thought of Ariane poring over some dusty tome, warm and cozy in Vlad’s library, Damien found his mouth curving. The tension in his shoulders finally began to ease.

If I’d lived, I’d have wanted someone like her as my mistress, Damien thought, thinking of how empty he’d often found his town house in London after returning from a night at the gaming hells. I’d have tucked her away, given her everything, a bit of sunshine for when I most needed it…

More memories, Damien thought, shoving them away the instant he realized he’d lapsed into some stupid fantasy again. He’d had no mistress, only whores. His town house had been taken apart and sold by his disgruntled creditors once his father had announced Damien’s “death.”

There had been no bit of sunlight. And now there never would be. He had only moonlight, as silver as Ariane’s hair.

His plan to work solo the following night went off more smoothly than he could have hoped.

Though he had never been an early riser, Damien managed to be up right at sundown, dressed and groomed in record time and then quickly fed by a pretty mortal employee who was also in Vlad’s stable of willing blood donors. It only bothered him for a moment when he realized that he felt no interest in her beyond a meal, where under normal circumstances she was the sort he would have lured off into a corner and dallied with.

He was preoccupied, after all. But nothing could dampen his enthusiasm for the night, and all that he would accomplish now that he was free to do as he pleased. Ariane might be irritated at being cut out, but she wasn’t the one with the contract. And besides, once he discovered something truly useful, she’d be thrilled, impressed, and everything she ought to have been the first time she’d met him, instead of just barely escaping death.