Rhage was losing his mind.

His ever-loving mind.

As he and Mary sat in the billiards room, the mansion was empty except for doggen: Wrath and Beth were taking a breather with L.W. down in Manhattan; Phury was up at Rehv’s Great Camp in the Adirondacks with the Chosen; V, Z, Tohr, and Butch were at the Audience House with Bitty and that uncle of hers along with Marissa—and Lassiter was riding sunshine shotgun on the little girl’s shoulder. Meanwhile, iAm, Trez, and Rehv were in town at shAdoWs and Sal’s, with Rehv helping the Shadows optimize their revenue. The other females were out on a girls’ night. And he hadn’t seen any of the young bucks since First Meal.

It was as if the community knew they needed some space to self-destruct.

Rhage checked his Rolie again. “How much longer can it take?”

“I don’t know. I mean, it could be hours.” Mary looked at her phone by tilting the screen. “Marissa said she’d shoot me an update when she was able to.”

“Goddamn it. I feel like I’m waiting to hear if I have cancer.”

“As somebody who’s gone through that one? Yup, it’s pretty close.”

“I just—”

“Shit!” Mary jumped up. “I forgot!”

“Forgot what?”

She put her hands up to her face. “The letter he wrote. I never gave it to Bitty. Oh, God, I don’t want Ruhn to think I’m obstructing anything!”

Justlikethat, she was out of the billiards room, her feet carrying her fast up the grand staircase. Moments later, she came back down breathing heavily, with the folded papers in her hand.

“What does it say?” Rhage asked. “I mean, he told us we could read it.”

It seemed like the closest they could get to what Bitty was experiencing with the guy.

“I really hope … well, there’s nothing to be done now.” Mary sat down and opened the pages. “I will apologize. It was an oversight … it’s all just been so emotional.”

As she read what had been written in pencil, she was silent for a while, her brows moving up and down as her eyes went back and forth.

“What’s in there?”

“Sorry. Ah, he works on the estate as a handyman, fixing fences and tending the lawns and buildings. He … takes care of the barn cats and the two security dogs. Lives by himself. Says … well, this is too bad.”

“What, that he molests farm animals?”

Mary shot him a look. “No, he seems apologetic he wasn’t schooled.” She went to the second page. “Oh … this is about Bitty’s mom.”

“What?” he prompted.

When she didn’t reply, he let her go and waited, drumming his fingers on his knee. Checking his fucking watch. Letting his leg bounce against the sofa.

Her eyes finally lifted. “It’s so sad. It’s … heartbreaking. He talks about all the things he used to do with Annalye when they were kids. Sounds like a pretty perfect upbringing on that estate. Their parents worked for the landowners—it’s been generations of the two families together. Everything changed, though, when Annalye met the male who was Bitty’s father. Ruhn’s respectful about it and doesn’t give many details. But he says he never stopped thinking about his sister and he tried to find her numerous times. He didn’t know for a while that they had even come up here to Caldwell.”

Rhage rubbed his face. “You know, this would be so much easier if I could hate him.”

“Would it …?” Mary murmured. “I’m not so sure.”

“He can’t take care of her like we can.”

Mary went to the last page. “Oh … my God …”

“What?” Okay, now he felt like going for his dagger. “What—”

“Look at this.”

She turned the final sheet to him. And “Oh, my God” was right. Covering the white paper, there were incredibly detailed and beautiful pen-and-ink drawings of a big house, and fields … a little cabin … a close-up of a dog … a cat napping all curled in a ball.

“He’s an artist,” Mary breathed.

As Rhage let his eyes travel over the pictures, he wanted to hate everything about the letter and the dumb-ass fucking drawings. He wanted to take a shit all over those pages, rip them to shreds—hell, nail them to a tree trunk and put bullets into them until there was nothing but shreds left.

Except he couldn’t.

Both his logic and his instincts were telling him that Ruhn was a good guy, a simple guy—which was not to say there was anything stupid happening with her uncle … just that there was an honest life of hard work being lived on his part. And yeah, the tragedy of that dead sister of his was only going to be eased if Ruhn could do right by his niece.

Mary’s phone went off with a bing! and the two of them both reached for it on the sofa cushion—

Mary won the race and didn’t waste time opening whatever it was up.

“It’s Marissa. They’re still talking, Ruhn and Bitty. She says that … Bitty was really shy in the beginning, but is now asking questions. They’re going to eat.”

Yeah, ’cuz First Meal had been a no-go, even for him.

“It’s going to be a long while,” Mary concluded. “And it should be.”

Rhage scrubbed his eyes. It was so weird. When Ruhn had turned up and turned out to be real, there had been a tearing in him, a ripping apart, a searing pain. And now, with each new piece of information, Rhage felt like Bitty was a ship going out to sea, disappearing first by feet and then by yards and soon by miles as she floated off, leaving him on the shore.

Now the emotions were settling into more of a pervasive sadness.

“Well, do you want to—”

His phone went off next, and as he looked at it, he frowned. “Fuck.”

“What is it?”

As Mary glanced over at him, he jumped up. “Shit. There’s an emergency downtown—listen, tell Marissa to call me when Bitty’s ready—I’ve got to go, but I can break free.”

Or at least he hoped he could.

“What is it?” Mary asked.

“Trainees trapped with slayers—and I want the brothers to stay with Bit and the uncle, she’s more important.”

“Be careful,” his shellan said.

“Always.” He bent down and kissed her. “You know it.”

He hated leaving his mate there all alone, her eyes wide and scared. But there was no time to waste. He went upstairs, geared up, and then popped a window, dematerializing to the location that Axe had sent the SOS out from.

He’d been looking for a distraction.

Saving three recruits wasn’t exactly what he’d been after, but he would take what he got.

Elise’s heart was thundering against her sternum, beating so hard, it was a wonder the muscle didn’t explode.

From behind Axe’s huge shoulders, she could see the three lessers approaching, their bodies moving with deadly-smooth strides, their expressions cold and flat, utterly emotionless.

They had guns.

The female trainee—Elise couldn’t remember her name, but she recognized her from the night she’d first met Axe—stepped into their paths with a gun up and a murderous expression on her face.

Elise couldn’t imagine being that calm or that aggresive in a situation like this.

“Stop where you are,” the female said. “Or I’ll shoot you.”

A fourth lesser, who seemed to come out of nowhere, just laughed. “Really, bitch. Do you actually know how to use that—”

Elise’s entire body jumped as there was a pop! and the slayer fell to the ground.

That female had put a bullet right between its eyes.

“Holy shit,” Elise breathed.

But that was the last time she had a chance to track anything. All at once, the drama went into overdrive—the three slayers rushed in, bullets flying everywhere and ricocheting around as she was spun to the left and shoved behind something big and metal.

Car? Dumpster?

No, it was a discarded meat locker the size of an SUV.

A split second later, Elise felt a lash on her shoulder, like someone had put a curling iron on her skin—but she couldn’t worry about it as Axe jumped in front of her again, and Peyton pressed into her from the side—

“He’s on top!” Peyton said.

What? she thought.

“Motherfucker!”

As Axe cursed, he angled his gun up to the heavens and pumped off more rounds—and then a body was falling on them, a body that leaked black blood and smelled like baby powder and spoiled milk.

“I’m out!” Axe said. And she took that to mean he had no more ammunition.

Someone cursed. More gunshots. Her ankle hurt now, too.

And then Peyton fell away. Just dropped off like a blanket falling from the side of a bed.

“Peyton!” she screamed as she turned.

Just as she was reaching out for him, that female soldier grabbed her by the back of her coat and hauled her to her feet.

“Can you shoot?”

Elise blinked, her vision going fuzzy. More bullets were whizzing by. God, where were the bullets coming from? And then she focused on the female. “You’re bleeding! Y-y-y-you’re—”

The slap came from the left and made a cracking impact on Elise’s face. But it was like throwing a window open in a smoke-filled kitchen. She was suddenly able to concentrate on the soldier.

“Do you know how to shoot?” she was asked again.

“P-p-point and pull the trigger,” Elise blurted.

“That’s right.”

Suddenly there was a heavy piece of metal in her palm. “Two hands. And only if you need to.”

And then Elise was picked up and thrown.

As she was airborne, her hair whipping her face, her body totally numb, she had the absurd thought, How the fuck was this happening right now? How the holy fuck was she—

Bam!

She landed on her ass, her body slamming back against something else—it was a Dumpster this time. She’d been thrown behind the bar’s Dumpster.

As she fought for her breath, her hands were shaking so badly they were a blur, but she was not going to drop the gun.

Looking out into the alley, she saw Axe going hand to hand with a slayer as the female stood over Peyton, who—oh, dear Lord—looked like he’d been hit in the head. So much blood—too much blood!

And the human police were coming—she could hear the sirens.

Except then the tide turned. From out of nowhere, the biggest vampire she had ever seen in her life materialized right in the middle of the alley. He was blond and dressed in black and he attacked like a demon, grabbing on to the slayer that Axe was trading punches with and pitching the enemy against the side of the building like it was a doll.

Axe moved on to the next, and so did what had to be a Brother.

More lessers showed up, having obviously been called, but between Axe and the Brother and that female trainee, heads were snapped, and black blood that stank flowed, and bodies lined the pavement—

Right as things were winding down, just before the cops arrived … something caught her eye.

A subtle flash.

That lesser who had been shot in the head, the one behind the meat locker where they had started out, was still moving, and it had raised its gun up, pointing the muzzle at the Brother.

“He’s going to shoot!” Elise screamed.

Everything went into a slow crawl, and Elise watched in horror as the Brother turned his upper body in her direction—which put him directly in line with the shooter.

And the lesser pulled its trigger, emptying bullets into that huge chest. Pop! Pop! Pop!

Someone screamed—probably her—as the blond-haired Brother threw up both of his hands and fell back onto the pavement. And still the slayer discharged its weapon.

Fuck this shit, Elise decided.

Without thinking, spurred by an aggression that was as uncharacteristic as it was manic, Elise jumped out from behind her cover, ran across the alley, and got as close as she could to the lesser.

Then she pointed … and fucking shot.

Blam! Blam! Blam!

Two hands, arms outstretched, eyes and body steady, she let the gun do the talking, black blood splattering back on her as she kept closing in and shooting and closing in and …

She didn’t know when to stop.

Wait, she couldn’t stop.

Even when the gun was no longer talking, when the clip or whatever you called it was empty, even when the slayer was so bullet-ridden it was a sieve, she stayed where she was, standing over it, that gun muzzle pointed at her target, her body trembling so badly her teeth were chattering, her knees knocking in their sockets, her breath sawing up and down her throat.

And her forefinger squeezing the trigger—

“Elise?” Axe said from a distance so far off she could barely hear him. “Elise … sweetheart … I’m right behind you.”

“Wh-wh-what—”

“I’m just going to take the gun, ’kay? Let me have the gun—no, don’t turn toward me. Stay where you are.”

His hands traveled gently down her arms and carefully released the weapon from her cramped fingers.

As soon as it was out of her grip, she turned to him and burst into tears. “I tried to save him, the Brother, I tried to—”

“We’ve got to go—”

Elise looked past his biceps at the dead body of the Brother: The blond-haired fighter was lying flat on his back, his arms out straight in a T formation, his heavy boots lolling to the sides.

“I was trying to save him, oh, God—”

“Elise, we need to go before the humans get here—”

Across the way, the female soldier picked Peyton up in her arms. “He’s not doing well. Where do we go—”

Human police cars screeched to a halt at the head of the block, humans swarming free of the vehicles and pointing down to where they were in the shadows.

“We can’t leave him—”

“Put down your weapons,” came out from a speaker system. “Put down your weapons now or we will shoot to kill—”

And then things got truly surreal. Like something out of a movie, the Brother’s torso rose up from the pavement. And he looked down his chest, cursed, and said something that sounded like, “I just had Fritz buy this fucking thing.”

Then he reached into what seemed to be his own flesh, picked out a bullet, and flicked it across the alley.

That was when he seemed to notice what was happening with the police cars.

“Fucking humans, not again.” He got to his feet and winced, but seemed otherwise fine. “You two, take the wounded and the female and go that way.” He pointed to the far end of the alley. “Manny should be coming—there he is.”

At that precise moment, a large, boxy vehicle pulled across the other end of the lane, where the humans were not.

“Go now!”

At the barking command, Axe grabbed her hand and started running. And the female with Peyton did the same, the four of them hightailing it down the slushy way to what turned out to be some kind of fancy van.

Just as its wide door slid open and she was about to jump in, Elise looked back. Flashes were flooding the sides of the buildings, and there were popping noises, but not from bullets being discharged.

The Brother was stabbing the slayers back to the Omega, she thought with awe. Holy crap, was she actually seeing this?

“Get in,” Axe said as he gave her a shove into a well-lit interior.

He followed and then dragged the door to a close.

“Hang on, folks!” somebody yelled from up front. “This ride is going to be bumpy—stay on the floor.”

There was a roar and a lurch, and then they were moving. And Elise collapsed back against Axe. How had … what had …

So fast. Her mind couldn’t comprehend how fast it had all gone down. It was like … one minute they were walking up to Peyton inside the cigar bar, and the next she was in an action movie, except it wasn’t a film set at all. It was real.

Looking across the way, Elise blinked away tears. The female fighter had Peyton in her lap, and had braced herself against a mounted table in the center of the space—this was an ambulance, Elise realized. A massive ambulance with all kinds of supplies tacked to its walls or packed in glass-fronted cabinets mounted on the sides.

“Is he alive?” Elise said.

The female didn’t look up. “Yeah. At the moment.”

There was so much blood. Oh, dearest Virgin Scribe … the blood …

But at least they seemed to be going even faster—hopefully to someone who could operate in here, Elise thought. And as they banged and crashed, things rattling all around them, Axe kept her from bowling-balling it, his powerful arms locked around her waist, one of his legs braced against the stand of that operating platform.

“How did he do that?” Elise mumbled. “How did the Brother … survive?”

“Bulletproof vest,” Axe said grimly. “He must have been wearing a bulletproof vest—and the damn thing saved his life.”