"WHERE IS SHE?" Kincaid demanded, leaping from the carriage almost before it had finished moving. Gemma and Charlie had made a mad dash for the guild, but he and Malloryn were using Malloryn's tracking device.

"Give me a moment," the duke replied tersely. Malloryn had insisted when they first started working with him that a tracking beacon be implanted beneath their skin at the back of their hairlines. It was some sort of gadget the Nighthawks had come up with. The compass hand spun, heading directly to the south. "There."

They both looked to the south.

Some sort of crowd gathered, hovering around the crossroads ahead of him. A chill ran down Kincaid's spine. They were too late. He just knew it.

Slamming past people, he shoved through the crowd. A carriage was smashed against a wall, the under-carriage snapped in two with the force of the impact, flames licking around the boiler.

"What happened?" Kincaid demanded, and a young girl beside him babbled about a runaway carriage, and a woman on top who'd steered it into the wall.

"What did she look like?" He grabbed her by the shoulders, and only refrained from shaking her when she began babbling in fear.

"I don't know! A lady. Dressed in green—"

"Pale green?" That was what Ava had been wearing when she left the house that morning.

The girl nodded in fright.

"Where is she now?"

"I didn't see what happened to her," the girl blurted.

"Leave her be," the duke commanded, turning this way and that through the crowd. "She's not here. She went this way." Malloryn started running.

Why would she leave the scene of the crime? Kincaid sprinted after the duke, his coattails flapping. "It's unlike her to leave injured people behind."

"Agreed." The duke paused in the next intersection. The arrow spun. "This way."

Left. Down a smaller street, then across another. "You think she's been taken?"

"Possibly," Malloryn called, sliding to a panting halt as he stared up at a small house across the street from them. "Unless she was injured and the craving virus overtook her. Then she might have sought privacy, away from any potential victims."

That made sense too.

Malloryn's head tilted sharply. His face paled. "I can hear her. She's in there." Kincaid shoved past him, and the duke caught him at the gate to a small Georgian townhouse.

"Have you got your pistol?" he demanded.

"Do I need it?" Kincaid replied.

"I don't know." Malloryn pushed on ahead of him, snapping the tracking device shut. "But I can hear Ava screaming. Be ready for anything."

* * *

The oddest thoughts kept running through Ava's head as she tried to still her panic. CV levels: 23 percent. And seven minutes of paralysis... possibly more. Seven and a half? Ava groggily forced herself to count. Curse her confounded desire to not drink blood. If she had, then perhaps her CV levels would be higher, and she might have begun to pull out of this already.

As it was, 23 percent CV levels meant at least eight minutes’ worth of paralysis via hemlock, she deduced, as the stranger used his shoulder to push through a door into a small house, and what was clearly a kitchen. Every blue blood reacted to hemlock differently, depending upon how far gone they were with the craving and what their CV levels were.

A teakettle hissed on the stove, and sirens wailed in the distance. Ava was nothing but a passenger, a witness in her own body, unable to control a single thing about her destiny. The last time she'd felt like this was when Hague kidnapped her.

"Bloody thing," the dhampir muttered, wincing at the kettle's high-pitched whistle, and then looking up as the stairs creaked beneath the weight of someone.

Don't come down, Ava wanted to scream, but nothing was working, least of all her throat muscles. She could barely even breathe.

"Aye, aye," a woman's voice called down the stairs, "I'll put the bloody cat out, you old fool. It's the least—"

The woman's voice cut off. Ava couldn't see what happened, but she heard the gasp.

"Here now! What are you doing in here? What have you done to that poor girl—"

The dhampir smoothly drew his pistol and it retorted with a sharp bark.

No! A choked noise came from Ava's throat. His body had turned just enough for her to see the little old lady go down like a puppet with its strings cut, tumbling down the last three steps, and Ava's fingers twitched.

"Shit," the dhampir muttered, slinging Ava into a chair and propping her there, before he crossed to the corpse and scraped a hand over his mouth. "Shit, shit, shit."

"Geraldine?" a man's voice called from upstairs. "What happened? I thought I heard a bump? Did that blasted cat trip you up?"

Nine minutes.

She was starting to come round. She could feel her feet at least. Ava flopped and wiggled, throwing her body to the side as much as possible. The chair tipped on two legs... then went over with a bang, sending her sprawling onto the floor where she hit her head and split her lip.

She ignored the pain. Please, please let the old man have heard me....

The dhampir took the stairs two at a time, his pistol held against his thigh. No. No! An almost moan came from her lips.

"Here now—"

Three gunshot retorts echoed and Ava gasped hopelessly as something heavy hit the floor above.

She had to get out of here.

The dhampir seemed unlike the Zero they'd all spoken of last month. "Zero moved almost faster than I could see," Kincaid had muttered when Ava fixed up his nose.

"Took down Byrnes, and he's good," Ingrid had added.

This fellow seemed young and inexperienced. Maybe he was freshly made? A new agent of the faceless enemy that worked against them. Maybe she could use that.

A cat hissed somewhere in the house, and more gunfire echoed. There was a furious animal snarl, and then a curse. Something smashed. The cat hissed again.

Come on. Ava swallowed, trying to make her fingers move again. The paralysis finally seemed to be wearing off, and there was a rush of heat through her veins as if the craving virus fought off the hemlock within her. She could smell blood. Geraldine's. The sudden surge of interest from the darker side of her locked on it, and Ava instinctively quashed it down, before realizing the craving could help her. In a heightened state of bloodlust, a blue blood was stronger, faster, even more deadly.

Possibly able to quell the hemlock in her veins faster.

Ava swallowed, thinking of blood. The thought left her both queasy and interested. Not helping. Damn it. Her natural reticence to drinking blood worked against her.

Think of... what? Was there anything about the bloodletting experience that excited her?

Kincaid. Her face flushed with heat, but now wasn't the time for missish delicacy. She'd been trying to forget the moment they'd shared in the gardens of a pleasure house a month ago. Now she forced the memory to mind. His hands on her upper arms, squeezing gently. His coat around her shoulders. The scent of him, all mechanical oil, cigars, bay rum, and something... something uniquely him. The scent of his skin, his sweat, his tooth cream, his arousal.... The way the vein in his throat suddenly seemed to pulse, as if it were calling out to her.

Heat flooded through her. Arousal. Yes. The color began draining from the room, which was precisely what she wanted.

Another crash echoed above. Her abductor was clearly wasting time looking for the cat.

She let her imagination roam, picturing what might have happened if she wasn't a lady, and if Kincaid wasn't disgusted by the bloodletting process. She could almost taste his skin beneath her lips, and what it would feel like to trace her tongue over the vein there....

"He-pp." Ava licked the blood from her lips to wake the predator within her. Her tongue seemed heavy but she was once more in command of it, and it was getting easier to blink. Easier to twitch her fingers and toes. She was nearly there.

He must have heard the noise.

Footsteps paused above her, then turned unerringly toward the stairs. The cat kept making that horrible yowling sound in its throat, but the dhampir ignored it. His heels thundered on the staircase, and Ava forced herself to move, to crawl.

"Where do you think you're going, Miss McLaren?"

Too late.

Frustration tore through her. She was so close to burning the poison out of her blood, and her inner predator was definitely sitting just beneath the surface. The dhampir knelt in front of her and hauled her upright, taking in the jerky movement of her hand, and Ava's gaze locked on his throat. "I'm an idiot," he muttered, slinging her back into the chair, and then looking around, patting at his pockets.

No more hemlock, she guessed.

His eyes lit on a tea towel, which he tore into strips and used to bind her arms to the chair.

"That's better," he muttered.

Poor Geraldine stared sightlessly at the wall, a black-red flower of blood blooming in the middle of her forehead. Ava's vision kept coming in and out of color.

"Shit," her abductor swore again. "Ghost is not going to appreciate this mess." He seemed to realize the water cart sirens outside were still wailing, and looked at her. "All right, let's do this." Reaching inside his waistcoat, he produced a small leather satchel and unrolled it on the kitchen counter.

Ava flinched back as far as she could.

"What... do you... want with me?" Or at least that's what she tried to say. Everything tingled. "What are you... doing?"

"I'm only obeying orders." The dhampir plunged a syringe into a wax-sealed vial, drawing up some sort of pale green liquid inside. "Relax, Miss McLaren. This won't hurt too much and then it will all be over."

No. No.

She twitched, forcing weak limbs to obey her.

The last time she'd been a prisoner of a man she'd been powerless too. And he'd hurt her, destroyed her life. Ava's vision dipped through shades of gray, the color bleaching from the world around her as some inner rage she'd never recognized rose like a snarling animal.

She'd felt the craving take her over before, when she'd smelled blood in the early days of her infection, or when emotion overtook her.

But this time she embraced it.

Feeling flooded along her limbs, along with the surge of blood. The killer looked at her, as if he'd sensed something different, and his lips thinned. "That's enough of that."

Stabbing the syringe into her neck, he pumped her full of a cold substance that burned through her veins.

Ava screamed, a gargle of sound that scraped her throat raw. A flash fire of arctic cold filled her body, flooding her vision with red. She could smell blood. Taste it in her mouth. Something cool slid down her cheek. Ava touched it, finding a tear of glistening black, that would probably be a bluish red if her vision was normal, and the irony bit her. She hadn't been able to shed a single tear since her infection, only this single bead of blood....

There was a coldness in her chest that made her lungs ache, but her clockwork heart ticked on, pumping blood through her system. It hurt. So much. But this was not the worst she'd ever endured. Pain was an old friend. Hague had hurt her worse than this dhampir could ever dream. Ava clenched her teeth, embracing the predator within her, and then slowly looked up.

The relief in the dhampir's expression wavered, his eyes darting to the syringe in his hand, then back to her face again. Whatever reaction he'd expected from her, this was not it.

Ava flexed her arms, a growl of rage filling her throat. Not again. Never again. Hague flashed into her vision, overriding the dhampir's face. One rope tore apart under the force of her arm, and then she turned and spun the chair against the wall, smashing it to bits, the other rope still dangling loosely from her wrist. The veins in the back of her hands were almost bruised, as though something was wrong with her blood, but her heart ticked on.

"How?" the dhampir barked, grabbing hold of her arms. "How are you doing this?"

Ava drove a piece of chair leg into his abdomen. A hand flashed up, smashing her across the face, and pain exploded through her jaw. She staggered back into the counter, and then he was there, grappling with her, the steel syringe clattering to the floor.

Red, red everywhere. It was all she could see. That and Hague, smiling down at her like a father as he cut the stitches out of her chest that last time. "You're my finest creation, Miss McLaren."

Ava kicked and fought, overwhelmed by only one desire: to kill.

"That," she snarled, stabbing him again, "is for that poor old lady!" Again. "And her husband!" Again. "And that little girl I nearly ran over—"

A hand caught her wrist and her suddenly nerveless fingers dropped the makeshift stake.

"Bitch." He caught her by the throat and kicked her feet out from under her. They both went down, Ava hampered by her skirts. His weight overpowered her, but she was fueled by something she'd never felt before.

She screamed a scream of pure rage, raking at his face and shoulders with her nails, wishing, damn her, she'd learned how to fight better when Byrnes taught her the basics. Pain bloomed through her hand.

"Stay down!" the dhampir hissed, but he looked frightened, as though he hadn't expected any of this. He clapped one hand over her mouth and nose, and the other over her throat. "The serum should have worked. What are you?"

She couldn't breathe.

But she hadn't been able to breathe a long time ago, and she'd survived that too.

"It should have stopped your heart," the dhampir yelled, and Ava suddenly understood.

Her cursed clockwork heart had just saved her life.

She rolled her head from side to side, trying to throw him off. No help for it. He was too strong. But... she caught a glimpse of the syringe in the corner of her eye, half an inch of milky green liquid inside it.

Pressure popped behind her eyes. Her lungs heaved. Color was starting to come back to the edges of the room, as though the craving was retreating, the predator silenced by lack of air.

Ava's groping hand reached for the syringe. Nothing. Nothing. Her vision swam. She didn't want it to end like this. There was too much she hadn't done, too much she hadn't seen. A life lived in a laboratory. Hiding in her books. Keeping her emotions and life strictly controlled. No blood. No Kincaid....

Her fingers closed over the syringe. Ava drove it into her assailant's side, pumping the rest of the dose into him.

His body arched instantly, a scream tearing from his lips. She could breathe again. Move. Ava shoved her way out from under him as he fell into convulsions on the floor, and then the door burst open, and—

Kincaid and Malloryn burst in, pistols drawn.

"Blood and steel," Malloryn muttered, lowering his pistol a little as the dhampir thrashed.

Ava groaned, rocking on her hands and knees. Something hurt deep inside. There was blood in her mouth, and the veins across the back of her hands pulsed, as if liquid mercury slid through them.

"Ava!" Kincaid sheathed his pistol, his face tight with concern. The color fled from his skin. "Jaysus, Ava!"

Malloryn kicked her attacker over onto his back, pointing the pistol warningly, but the dhampir's heels drummed on the floor, a bloodied froth forming at his mouth. Ava's mouth dropped open. That could have been her. It should have been her.

"What happened to him?" Malloryn barked.

"She's hurt." Kincaid knelt beside her, soothing a hand up her spine. "Jaysus, look at her face. Ava? Are you all right, sweetheart?"

The craving virus returned with force, the scent of Kincaid's body overwhelming her. All she wanted was to bury her blunt teeth in his throat, and drain him dry.

Not Kincaid. He'd never forgive her. "Leave me alone!" She scrambled into the corner, her hands curled in claws and her body trembling as pain overtook her.

"Ava!" The cursed man came after her. "Ava, we're here. You're okay. We've got you." His rough voice thickened. "I've got you."

There was an unspoken message there she didn't have time to study. A sudden urge overtook her and Ava started coughing, blood spraying across her black-marbled hands.

Whatever the dhampir had injected her with, it hadn't finished wreaking havoc within her.