Will Ludlam ducked to the left as a lug wrench the size of a tire jack sailed past his head and crashed into the wall of Mirren’s and Glory’s living room. The big guy was in the middle of an old-fashioned Scottish temper tantrum, complete with cursing in a language Will didn’t understand.

He got the gist of it, though. Mirren had awakened from daysleep to find his house empty and a nine-word note from his mate pinned to the pillow next to him: Gone to New Orleans. Get over it. Love you.

Randa had found the crumpled note on the floor when they’d arrived to talk to Mirren about a looming security crisis. They’d decided to let him calm down before stirring him up again.

Mirren disappeared down the hallway toward the bedroom, followed by the sounds of drawers slamming.

“What’s he doing?” Randa tossed Glory’s note on the table. “Think we need to go back there?”

Will shook his head. “Just make sure he doesn’t slip out the back door. We have to talk to him. Plus, there’s no need for him to go to New Orleans. Glory’s been there for hours if she left right after sunrise. It would be stupid.”

A black leather boot that would probably fit a Yeti flew straight into Will’s nose. “Hey, stop that!”

“Who are you calling stupid, Junior?” Mirren loomed over them, holding the other massive boot in one hand and his truck keys in the other.

Will rubbed his throbbing nose, sighed, and climbed to his feet. “That would be you, if you think you’re going to New Orleans to rescue Glory. She has that black jaguar shifter with her—Archer or Arrow or whatever his name is—not to mention Robin and Cage and Nik.”

Mirren’s frown etched so deeply into his face that Will half expected his eyebrows to meet. “Cage is wounded, and we don’t even know if Zorba survived.”

“He did—Mark talked to him,” Randa said. “And we’ve got problems here we need you to handle.”

Mirren retrieved his boot from Will, sat down in the oversized leather armchair at the end of the sofa, and began pulling it on over his thick black socks, which matched his black combat pants and his black sweater. “What kind of problems?”

Will swallowed the urge to throw something at Mirren. “We think Greisser’s people might be planning a direct attack on us.”

Mirren sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “What’s happening?”

Will nodded at Randa, and she spread a detailed, stylized map of Penton on the table. Gadget had created it.

“Here’s downtown.” Will poked the center of the map with his finger. “And here”—he ran his fingers across several sets of red X’s on the fringes of the map—“are the spots where we’ve detected vampires who aren’t members of the Penton scathe.”

An average vampire scathe, or group of bonded vampires, was five or six strong. Aidan’s scathe in Penton had once numbered well over a hundred, which is one reason the Tribunal considered it such a threat. Now, it was more like forty-five, plus about a dozen bonded humans.

“Have any of these non-scathe vamps been caught?”

“No.” Randa ran a hand through her shiny, dark-red hair, and Will tracked the movement with a flash of desire. They hadn’t had a minute’s time alone in what seemed like a month, and his body ached for hers. “We’ve come close a couple of times, but it’s more often we’re catching their scent trails after they’ve moved on.”

“I don’t like that these appearances seem to make a circle around town.” Mirren leaned forward. “Before, we’ve tracked them only on the east and northeast, toward Atlanta. Now they’re south and west as well.”

“I think they’re scouting to see if they can establish a perimeter, or find a weak spot,” Will said. “It’s a sound strategy if they have enough vampires to man it at night and humans during the day.”

Mirren leaned back. “Then all they have to do is keep tightening the noose until we’re trapped in the middle without enough people to fight them. Shit.”

Will let out a sigh of relief. Mirren got it. He’d been afraid the big guy would be so stressed and angry about Glory that he wouldn’t take time to listen, or would think Will was being paranoid over random vampire sightings.

“I need to talk to Aidan if he’s awake,” Mirren said. “When’s the last time you checked on him?”

“Before daysleep yesterday.” Will had stuck his head in but, as always, Aidan and Krys had been unconscious. For them, daysleep was day-and-night sleep. Will hoped they were healing and not dying, but there was no way to tell. “He was still out but he had moved to her bed.”

“Well, I’ll look in on him. In the meantime, mobilize whoever we’ve got left and start getting the word out for everyone to be ready to move into the new training center on a moment’s notice. In fact, they should hang out there during their down time. Make sure it’s stocked with any surplus from the Chow House. Tell anyone who wants to go ahead and set up camp over there that it’s okay.”

Will nodded. He’d already talked to Melissa Calvert about getting the humans to move food and water out of the community dining hall, affectionately called Glory’s Chow House, and into the storage rooms of the new training center. The building had been constructed as a shelter of last resort, as much as he hated to call it that.

“I’ve also got Mark and Melissa doing walk-throughs of the center to make sure we didn’t forget anything.” Will had walked it plenty of times himself. From the outside, it was a huge, red-bricked rectangle. But inside the brick veneer and wooden structure was a building of solid steel with a fireproof roof. A bomb couldn’t put a dent in that building. It was the aboveground version of their old Omega underground shelter of last resort, complete with sophisticated air circulation and waste removal systems.

Mirren stood up and paced the length of the room twice before coming to rest with his back against the wall next to the fireplace, arms crossed over his chest. “Okay, now what’s this business about Mark talking to Nik?”

Will hoped the answer wouldn’t send Mirren back into overprotective mated vampire mode. “Nik called this morning, trying to reach you. You’d been in daysleep maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Glory and Archer were on their way out, so Mark ended up talking to him. Nik was awake.”

Excited, Will leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees. “Do you think he can function in daylight?”

Mirren stared at Will, but Will knew the man didn’t see him. He was deep in thought. “Fuck-all if I know,” he finally said. “I mean, Greisser tried to turn shifters into vampires hoping to create a day-walking vampire, and we know what a cluster that was. But Nik wasn’t a true shifter. He was about to be a hybrid created by another hybrid.”

Mirren looked at Will and almost smiled. Almost. “If we have a day-walking vampire on our team, we could actually win this thing.”

Will had been trying to keep his mind from jumping to the possibilities. All Greisser could throw at them during the day was a human contingent to try burning them out, and he’d match his humans against theirs, especially from the training center. But if Penton had a vampire who could fight their humans, to lead their own human fighters, it could be a game-changer, especially with Glory’s telekinetic abilities and a couple of shifters at their disposal.

“Killing whatever Greisser is about to throw at us wouldn’t solve everything,” Randa said. “It would help us win the battle, but the war is going to take finding a solution to the feeding problems.”

“That’s for future discussions,” Will said. “In the meantime, I’m working with Gadget to devise some vampire prosthetics. Cage is going to need a way to rebuild his life.”

“And be able to fight,” Mirren said, picking up his keys from the coffee table. “You wanna come with me to talk to Aidan?”

“No, the faster we can get Cage more mobile, the better.”

Will watched Mirren leave, and kissed Randa goodbye before she, too, left. It was almost time for her to go on patrol.

Locking Mirren’s door behind him, Will headed across the street and up the hill to the training center, where he and Gadget had set up their computer nirvana. What he hadn’t told Mirren—or Randa either—was that they also were working on a prosthetic for his right leg. It had never healed properly after being crushed in an explosion several months ago, and before Gadget arrived Will had resigned himself to always walking with a limp. Always relegated to strategy and technical duties while others carried heavier burdens.

To run again, to have the agility and balance he’d once taken for granted, Will would cut off the damaged leg and take the mechanical replacement.

And then he would fight alongside the people he’d come to consider his family. He’d fight to save his home.