I slung back the rest of the bourbon in the glass. It sent fingers of fire through my veins, made me glow inside. The world looked a little softer, a little kinder, when I had the help of the almost ancient bottle from Father’s collection.

Mother had never touched the stuff, so the liquor had sat unopened at the bar for the sixty years since his death, and for years before that. Part of his collection. The rest, along with dozens of bottles of wine, sat in a closet off the kitchen. Another potential source of income should I need it.

I left the window and walked across the room, my bare feet not making a sound, down the hall and into the library. It was cold in there, but I had no intention of building a fire. I had never built one the same way humans did, anyway, and had no idea where to start. There was so much to learn.

Father’s desk still sat there, as always. He’d used the space as an office, and clan business had been settled there for as long as he was in charge. As a child, playing with my airplanes and my dog while he conducted meetings, I couldn’t have understood the meaning of some of the things he’d discussed.

Mass cleansing. Sending a message.

Always under the guise of keeping his family—both me and my brother and the family at large—safe from the unpredictable, violent, brutish blood suckers.

To me, they were just words. And he was just my father, who I’d all but idolized. Dominic did, too. He couldn’t have raised two more faithful devotees.

Now, I sat in my father’s chair for the first time as an adult. It had become worn over time, with indents in the stuffing from his considerable size. Roughly the same as mine. I slid into those indents easily, like I was the one who made them. Bridging the distance between us.

I shook my head at my poetic turn and blamed it on the bourbon. There were far more crucial topics in need of exploration. With a little liquid courage in my veins, it was easier to take stock of my situation as a whole.

My brother. What would his next move be? I imagined him sitting at Beekman Place, perhaps in his study or maybe in his bedroom. Alone, of course, because he was always alone and would be for the remainder of his short life. While we were similar in temperament, he never had my touch with women. Or men, if he preferred them. I had no idea, because we’d never discussed either. Too busy competing with each other to connect.

I did know he was generally alone and claimed to prefer it that way. After all, what were his choices? Sleeping with witches, who he detested, or with humans. Who he loathed.

And what was he doing? Plotting, of course. Always plotting. Planning his next move. He had to know I knew what he’d done in the hospital. And it was probably eating him up inside. So he’d excuse it away, make up a story where he was the hero. He’d ended her pain, he’d put her to rest. What a class act. I bared my teeth in a snarl at the thought of his hypocrisy and delusion.

There wouldn’t be a big funeral. But he would want to meet at her grave. I knew how his mind worked. And if he were going to do anything to silence me, he would do it there. It would appeal to his flair for drama, which he’d always possessed. Hence the explosion at the club. A grand gesture.

I would have to be ready for him. It was as simple as that. He’d use his powers, naturally. There had to be a way to beat him before he could turn them on me.

If not, I’d make sure to take him down with me. I wouldn’t leave him behind, not with Vanessa in the world. I didn’t trust him when it came to her. Our clan had a particular vehemence against witches that were not of our clan. Bloodlines, old enemies, that sort of thing. Things that did’t matter to me now.

And however powerful Vanessa might be, he was both powerful and clever, and he would take it as a personal insult that she’d so much as touched a member of his family. It chilled me to consider that I had once held similar beliefs.

Though I had never shared his complete disdain for humanity. How would I ever have gotten laid otherwise? I sniped at myself, but there was deep truth to the joke, just as with all jokes.

I was never one to be alone. Always surrounded by the rest of my clan, and by some of the most spectacular women in the world. The center of attention, the life of the party.

The death of so many others. Those memories would never be far behind. All the pain I had caused. The lives I had ruined. I didn’t think of them as lives back then, not lives like mine.

I imagined it was something close to the way a human would view an insect. If the fly wanted to avoid death by rolled-up newspaper, it should’ve stayed out of the house. A similar attitude to the one I once held. If the panhandler or the prostitute or the vampire wanted to keep their miserable lives intact, they should’ve escaped my notice. They would’ve saved themselves the agony of my warped sense of entitlement, and the glee I had taken in watching them suffer at my hand. Just thinking about it made me clench my once-deadly hands together until it hurt. If I were a praying man, I might never stop asking for mercy.

I almost shot out of my chair when the phone rang.

Even though it was well past three, I knew it would be her.

She’d be just as unable to sleep as I was, though she would never revisit memories like mine.

She was good. Not like me.

“Is everything all right?” I asked on answering.

“Aside from getting my ass chewed out by my mother for hours on end and not being able to call while my Nightwarden was watching me like a hawk?” she chuckled. “Oh, sure. Everything’s peachy.”

“I want to see you,” I murmured as yearning unfurled in my core. Just the sound of her voice, her intimate whispers into the phone in the middle of the night, was enough to stir me.

“I need to see you,” she said in a voice full of nervous excitement. “Should I come to you?”

“No, I’ll come to you. You’ll be safer at your penthouse.” I was already sliding into my shoes.

“All right. Hurry.” Her breathy plea turned, even as the nasty voice in the back of my mind replayed the scenes of horror I had brought to life.

The dancing, burning man whose face melted like wax. The screaming prostitute I’d dangled high up over the Hollywood sign, laughing as her shrieks for mercy disappeared into the empty air before letting her fall to her death. The vampires I had hunted the way a man hunts game in the forest, attacking them when they least expected, sometimes holding them captive in remote locations until they begged for the mercy of death rather than face another day of starvation. And that was when I would drag them into the sunlight—weak, unable to fight me off—and watch them writhe and wail as the sun’s rays blistered them on contact and eventually turned them into piles of ashes.

She wouldn’t want me to hurry if she knew I was capable of those things and so much more. But that didn’t stop me from getting in the first cab to come my way and hurrying to her. It didn’t stop me from going straight to her penthouse and pulling her into my arms the moment the door was open.

I looked around while I kicked the door shut behind us. “We’re alone,” she whispered, answering my silent questions. “He’ll be dazed for a while, but he won’t feel a thing. Or hear a thing, either.”

“You cast a spell on him?”

“I need to be with you.” She slid her hands under my jacket and pushed it over my shoulders, to the floor. I lifted her up until her legs could wrap around my hips, and she pointed down the hall to her bedroom.

I could close the door behind us and block out the rest of the world. I could turn my attention to her, focus on Vanessa and her pleasure, and mine.

I could pretend nothing else existed but us as I lowered her to the bed and she pulled me down with her.

We both could.