“We should meet them at the door,” he said. “We might take a couple out in the corridor before they get in. It"s a defensible position.”

“Go, Anwyn.” Daegan pushed her toward the exit-only doorway to the upper level. “Go now.”

“Damn it.” She started in that direction, then flew back at them both, nipping at Daegan"s lips hard enough to draw blood. Then she drew Gideon into a similarly violent kiss. She clutched his shoulders as he clumsily tried not to spear her with the weapons. “If either of you dies, I won"t forgive you,” she threatened.

Tears were on her face as she turned, and they both felt her frustration, rage and fear for them. As she disappeared up the stairs, Gideon cleared his throat gruffly, but it was Daegan who spoke as he took one of the crossbows from him.

“It"s going to be close quarters once they get in the corridor, so speed will be less of a factor.

I want you watching my back, getting anyone who makes it by me. I know you can do that.” Daegan lifted his gaze, locked with Gideon"s. It was fucking embarrassing, but Gideon felt a flush cross his face, spread out through his chest, as if he were a Spartan soldier who"d just received praise from King Leonidas, right before they faced the 10,000 Persians.

A perfect parallel, since it was going to be the two of them against God knew how many vampires.

“Yeah,” Gideon said, managing to sound casual. “I can do that. Unless it looks like we"re done for. Then I"ll shove you in the middle of them and make a run for it.” Daegan"s sensual mouth curved in a feral smile, so devastating that Gideon"s groin and heart tightened at the same time, painfully. “You know the saying, vampire hunter. When two friends are running from an enemy, the one in the lead doesn"t have to run fast. Just faster than his friend. I think I have you on speed.”

They moved to the door, one on either side, watching the short corridor down which Xavier had brought them. “Not if I trip you,” Gideon retorted, but then there was no time for further talk.

The metal door at the bottom of the stairwell opened, and five vampires came through it, twenty feet of hallway between them and where they stood.

Here we go.

He and Daegan surged into the opening, shoulder to shoulder, and let the crossbows fly. The bolts took out the two in the lead, finding their heart targets dead center.

No time to celebrate, though. Despite vampire speed being hampered in narrow quarters, it still made crossbows effective for only the first shot of a full forward charge. Unless the sniper was hidden, which they weren"t. As soon as the shots were made, the other three came sailing over the bodies, like those fierce, fast monkeys they showed on documentaries. Only these were sleek gorillas, combat ready, weapons in hands. Daegan tossed his crossbow to Gideon and moved into the hall to meet them. As Gideon quickly reloaded, and flipped Daegan"s crossbow over to use the second arrow, Daegan"s blade came up and out, a silver thing of deadly beauty.

The cleanup crew upstairs had apparently requested some rough and brutal heavy-metal music to finish up the night. It pounded and ricocheted down the corridor, telling Gideon these guys had left the door open at the top of the stairwell, or more vampires were coming down.

Shit, shit, shit. There they were. Four more.

Thank God for a small corridor, and fuck, but it was a small corridor. They were moving too fast for him to get a shot past Daegan. So for a few seconds all he could do was watch. And in those few, heart-stopping blinks, he saw why Daegan Rei scared the Council shitless.

Gideon had a clear-eyed grasp of his own not-inconsiderable battle skills, and how they matched up to fighters better and worse than him. Yet there was nothing and no one he"d ever seen that could stand toe-to-toe with the fighting ability he was witnessing now. If he believed in warrior archangels, like Michael or Lucifer, he imagined this was the way they would fight.

Fighting seven to one, Daegan picked up the rhythm of the music, used it. There was no other focus for him but this moment, his body twisting and sliding in the perfect place, at the perfect moment, as artistic and graceful as a divinely choreographed dance. Gideon saw no enthusiasm for the bloodtaking, but Daegan was consumed by his own composition. His blade came down, cut across, as his knife went up for a block. He ducked under an enemy blade, swept right to avoid a shower of blood and spun in a kick that knocked one vampire into the wall. Clean through the wall. He took his head in the resulting cloud of rock dust.

It was awe inspiring, horrible and riveting, all at once. Gideon was seeing the Grim Reaper at work, his victory a calm certainty because it was divinely ordained.

Two more down in the first ten seconds. The second vamp fell with a gurgling noise. When one lunged past, Gideon was ready, firing the crossbow and taking him down before the vampire could get behind Daegan and attack his flank. In that last fatal moment, the speared vampire"s eyes found Gideon. An incredulous look crossed his face before his body crumpled.

He"d once told Anwyn that a hunter"s greatest danger was a vampire"s servant, because it was easy to forget about them in the focus on the vampire, the greater threat. He was now the servant who"d been unwisely forgotten. It was a different, somehow satisfying feeling. For that second, he forgot he was only Anwyn"s servant and not also Daegan"s, watching his back.

Daegan cut down two more with one sweep of his blade, sending an impressive fount of blood arcing across the stone walls, dousing one of the torches. As the two vamps collapsed, he came back up in the follow-through to jam his wooden eight-inch blade under the ribs and deep into the heart of the third. That was the last one. He finished the motion in a half-bent position that looked like a graceful bow to his vanquished enemies. Then he whirled with that same economy of motion. Pulling a cloth out of his coat, he slipped it over his samurai blade, taking away the blood.

Just like that. Done. Bodies littering the hall, and not a scratch on him, though Gideon saw a flash of weariness in Daegan"s face, probably because he needed yet more blood, the stubborn bastard.

“I"ve sent a thought to Anwyn, assuring her she has no reason to be angry at either one of us, as we are very much alive. You might do the same.”

Gideon nodded, shouldering his own weapons. He straightened in the doorway, turning back toward the cells. “Some passable fighting out there.”

“Some passable shooting.” Daegan slanted him a glance, then bent his head to fit his blade back into the coat.

“Yeah, when you cared to let somebody get by. Selfish—”

It was like getting hit in the face sometimes, the sense that something was going to happen right before it did. It had felt that way the day his parents had been hit by a lightning strike. For years he"d wondered why he"d been given a gift that, when it mattered the absolute most, did him no damn good.

Sarah screamed, the others too frightened or catatonic to warn their rescuers. The door that was only an exit, the one Anwyn had used, had opened, and two more vampires stood there. In those few seconds, they"d raised two crossbows and fired. Both at Daegan.

The vampire was moving forward, passing Gideon into the room. Looking down at his sword, tired from his blood loss, he hadn"t seen or sensed them.

Since Daegan was too big to stop his forward momentum in time, Gideon simply rammed his back, shoving him aside with everything he had.

The first wooden arrow took Gideon high in the shoulder, the second puncturing his chest, through the heart. It threw him back, so he hit the wall and then dropped to the floor. The metal tip was searing fire, the wooden shaft a tearing agony as it punched out through his back.

Mortal. Holy crap, he was dead. His heart stuttered in panic at the invasion. He"d gone down like a felled tree, just like Xavier had. He tried to scramble for a blade or any other weapon, something to lend additional help to Daegan. It was a warrior"s instinct only, or useless pride, because his body was jerking with the loss of motor control. He had no ability to defend himself, let alone anyone else.

Daegan had moved across the room, too fast to follow, a phantasm of light and shadow. If it had been a movie, Gideon thought there should have been more to it, a longer action sequence to justify the suspense, his dramatic fall, death hovering over him. But he"d barely hit the floor himself when two decapitated heads were rolling across it, the bodies hitting stone with a thud, just like Gideon"s. The girls who could were screaming, in an annoyingly high pitch.

“How many come here at night to rest?” Daegan demanded, his blade glistening with the blood. When Gideon blearily heard more hysterical crying, he wasn"t surprised by Daegan"s commanding roar, though it made him wince. He couldn"t breathe. His heart had to be a mangled mess. Fuck, this hurt. “How many?”

It was Sarah, bless her brave soul, who came up with a coherent answer at last. “It"s always fifteen,” she stammered. “Always.”

That was the right number. Should be all of them, but there was always the possibility of first- or second-marked servants who wouldn"t fall at their Masters" deaths. They really needed to get out of here.

Daegan was back over him. With a warrior"s brutal mercy, no advance warning and doing it quick, he broke the two arrows, pulled them free from either side and flung them away.

“Anwyn is leaving Debra outside. She"s coming back down. Hold on.”

“No . . . not safe yet. Got to get out of here. I"m dead.”

“She is insisting. She felt you fall.” Daegan passed a gentle hand over Gideon"s sweaty brow. “I am not in a position to stop her. The arrow would have killed me, vampire hunter, not you. The shaft was wooden. But since the tip was steel, you need her blood, if you are going to walk out of here on your own two feet. As I know you must to maintain your fearsome reputation.”

“Bite me. No cute jokes.”

“I have rarely been accused of cuteness.” Daegan pressed his hand against the wound. “I told Anwyn to have Debra contact Lord Brian, have him bring the Council here immediately.”

“Think . . . they"ll come?”