For the first time in more than a year, Aidan felt a sense of hope.

Tempered with anger, yes, at what had been done to so many of his people.

Tempered with guilt, over insisting that he stay in charge without giving either himself or Krys time to heal.

Tempered with regret, for not taking care of the vampires and humans who’d put their trust in him.

But there was hope.

He climbed the ladder from the subsuites into the clinic and walked toward the lab, where Shay waited with Mirren and Keys.

Almost eight weeks had passed since the night in Atlanta when Greisser had been taken, five since Shay had begun working on her temporary fix for the pandemic vaccine problem. She thought a permanent fix could be found within a year if she had someone to help her and all the materials and equipment she needed—whether than was done in Penton or elsewhere.

Aidan had some thoughts on that, but first they needed to see what happened tonight.

Shay was scared—her heart beat so rapidly that Aidan could sense the rapid pumping of blood before he cleared the doorway and saw her pale face and wide eyes. Mirren had done too good a job of preparing her to meet Frank Greisser again, damn it. Why hadn’t he asked Will to talk to her? She’d be laughing instead of being on the verge of hyperventilation.

“I don’t even have to ask. Mirren laid it on a bit thick.” Aidan gave him a raised eyebrow and got a stormcloud-gray glare in return. “At no time will you be within range of either Frank Greisser or Marianne Turner. If you have everything you need, let’s get this done.”

Shay and Krys talked softly as they retraced Aidan’s steps into the subsuites, then through the tunnel beneath the training center. He pulled a big cooler on wheels behind him.

It hadn’t taken many calls to the few allies he trusted for Aidan to learn Marianne’s surname and confirm her status as leader of Atlanta’s largest scathe. She’d also taken control of Simon Landry’s former scathe in New Orleans.

There was some movement among her scathe members to re-form around two young master vampires vying for power. For the moment, they were preoccupied with their own rivalry. But one of them, if not a master vampire in another city in the U.S. or Europe or Asia, would try to reform the Tribunal eventually.

Aidan wanted to be the one to do it. Not because he wanted to lead the Tribunal or be involved in vampire politics. He’d just learned the hard way that he couldn’t trust anyone other than his own people. But he wouldn’t try to rally support until he had at least a temporary fix to the hunger problem.

A few dozen yards past the hatch that led up to the training center, a branch of the tunnel hooked left. Mirren led the way. The lighting was dim, the floor and walls bare concrete. A few folding chairs, blue with padded seats, were propped against the wall and, past them, at the end of the tunnel, was a twelve-by-twelve cell with silver-coated steel bars across the front. A row of similar bars split it into two six-by-twelve spaces, and in each space was a cot, table, and chair.

And on each cot, a vampire.

Will sat in a folding chair near the cells, but well out of reach.

Other than a brief check to make sure Greisser was secure, this was Aidan’s first trip to the cells. Will designed and directed the building of them. Mirren secured and policed them. They didn’t need him looking over their shoulders.

“How are our guests?” Aidan stood beside Will until Mirren unfolded a chair for him. Then Mirren opened chairs for Shay and Krys, and took the sentinel post against the tunnel wall.

Aidan leaned forward in his chair. “I trust your accommodations are satisfactory?”

Both vampires gave him sullen silence. Greisser was thinner than ever. Penton didn’t have any humans willing to feed either of them, and Aidan refused to force them. So Frank had done without for almost eight weeks, Marianne for four. Which should make them willing for tonight’s adventures.

“Good then, if you have no complaints.”

“Oh, wait.” Frank stood up and approached the bars of his cell. “I see you brought our mother and child. Too bad you have the vaccinated one, but perhaps we can have a taste of the fetus.”

“Yummy.” Marianne sat up and craned her neck to look around Aidan and Will. Mirren had prepared Shay for this, and she didn’t respond.

“We do have food for you, although you’ll have to take it like a human.”

“You are a sadistic fool.” Greisser went back to recline on his cot.

Had the man looked in a mirror lately?

“Perhaps. But here’s what the fools of Penton have been working on, in addition to fighting off your poor excuse for an army.” Aidan gave them an abbreviated version of Shay’s work, although didn’t say she had done it. He and Mirren had agreed that the less Frank knew of Shay’s involvement, the better. It was probably a lost cause since they needed her here to make sure the dosages were right; Krys had come as both moral supporter and decoy. Frank knew that Shay was a doctor, but he also knew that about Krys.

Will had agreed to take credit for being the mad scientist, though, and he took up the explanation from Aidan.

“I’ve been working for a while to isolate what it was about the pandemic vaccine that was deadly to us,” he said. “Finally, I found a protein that basically starts killing our blood cells as soon as it is ingested, and that sucker works fast.”

When Aidan had begun talking, Frank had been leaning in an insolent pose against the wall behind his cot. But as Will explained the specifics, he sat up, then leaned forward. His frown told Aidan the man was listening and understood the implications of what he heard.

No one had never accused Frank Greisser of stupidity. Or at least of being no more stupid than all of the older vampires, including himself. They should have considered looking for a medical solution in the first place. With age came arrogance, and they had suffered for it.

“To make a long hunger short, I’ve developed two vaccines that could offer all of us a short-term solution until a permanent ‘anti-vaccine,’ if you will, can be developed. That could take, oh, a year or so.”

Aidan looked at the ruins of Marianne’s face to keep from smiling. Will was such a good bullshitter. Even Aidan would believe the man had done all the scientific work if he didn’t know otherwise.

“Why two vaccines?” Marianne still sat on her cot, back straight and rigid, but she’d obviously been listening.

“One would be given to a human who’d been vaccinated, in the hopes the vampire could feed. If that doesn’t work, there’s also one that the vampire would take to allow him to ingest that protein without damage.”

“And how long would these vaccines last?”

Aidan put a hand on Will’s arm. He’d take over now. “That’s one of the things we need to test. First, to make sure the vaccines work. Then, to see which one works best. Finally, to see how long it lasts.”

He paused and smiled. “For this, we’ll need a couple of guinea pigs, of course.”

“Fuck you.” Greisser propelled himself off his cot and grasped the bars of his cell without thought. It took about a half-second for him to remember they were silver and jump back, staring down at the red burns on his palms and fingers.

“Oh, come on, Frank. You look as if you need a good meal.”

“If you want to kill us, kill us.” Marianne stood up and approached the bars. “If you want to poison us, poison us. But I didn’t think torture was your style, or are you still a sick little vampire like you were in Atlanta?”

Aidan stood, folded his chair with exaggerated calm, and placed it against the wall. “Who wants to go first? If there are no volunteers, one of our humans will inject you during daysleep with the vaccine and blood, and you have no say in it. You’ll have a better chance of survival if you just agree to test the vaccines and suck it up. That’s a joke; get it? Suck it up?”

Frank and Marianne looked at each other, and Aidan wondered if they were communicating. Do you think they’re bonded? he asked Mirren telepathically.

Oh yeah. No wonder they’ve been so quiet for the last month. Probably chattering like fucking monkeys in their heads all day, for all the good it’s done them.

Good. Unless Frank blocked the bond, if Marianne got sick from the vaccine or the blood, he would enjoy the ride as well. Aidan had no doubt Frank would not volunteer to take one for the team.

“Fine. I’ll do it.” Marianne would take the first hit.

“Let’s try the human anti-vaccine first.” Aidan walked back to the cooler Krys had rolled in, opened it, and took out a marked vial of blood. “This is vaccinated blood into which our anti-vaccine has been injected. It’s fresh, so it won’t tell us anything about how long the effects will last. It will tell us whether or not it would allow you to drink from an unvaccinated human.”

He handed the vial to Marianne through the bars. There were backups in case she smashed it against the wall, but she just sniffed it.

“It’s not enough to kill you if it doesn’t work.” Aidan gave her a grim smile. “You just won’t feel very well until you go through daysleep.”

Marianne looked at Frank, and he nodded. She took a deep breath and drank the vial, then handed it back to Aidan. “It tastes disgusting.” She turned to walk back to her cot, but fell on it rather than sitting. She drew her knees to her chest in pain—no easy thing in the tatters of her leather pants. “Damn it. It was a trick. My guts are on fire.”

Aidan watched her a moment. She wasn’t that good an actress. “Frank, that means you get to try the other one. You get a shot, then you wait a few minutes and drink regular unvaccinated blood.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then our impasse will continue and you’ll stay in this cage until you shrivel up from lack of food.” Aidan glanced over his shoulder. “And maybe Mirren Kincaid will play with you every now and then if he gets bored. Would you like that, Mirren?”

The big guy just smiled, which was scarier than his frown if you didn’t know him well.

The threat of an encounter with Mirren seemed to dampen Frank’s belligerence. “Fine, you’re going to do what you want anyway. Sadist.”

Yeah, well, Aidan did enjoy watching Frank squirm. He retrieved a marked syringe from the cooler and returned to the cell. “Do you want to give this to yourself, or have me do it for you? Through the bars, of course.”

Frank stuck his hand through the bars, careful not to touch the silver edges. “I’ll do it myself, unless you’re willing to open the cell.”

Aidan didn’t respond, but handed the syringe to Greisser with its cap on, then stepped back in case the bastard decided to use it on him.

Frank pushed up his sleeve and stabbed the needle in his upper arm, then threw the syringe at Will like a spear, needle-first.

“Sonofabitch!” Will dodged it, but the needle only missed his face by a few inches. A good reminder that they should never relax their guard around the enemy.

“Now what?”

“We wait about, what, fifteen minutes?” Aidan looked at Will, who nodded.

They all sat in silence. Aidan and Frank stared at each other, neither willing to look away first—or at least Aidan sure wouldn’t. Marianne remained curled on her cot with her eyes closed, probably hoping she wouldn’t get called on to try again.

Aidan retrieved the vaccinated blood Krys had taken from Shay before they came downstairs—just an inch and a half in the bottom of a small paper cup. He handed it to Frank. “Guten Appetit.”

“Screw you, Murphy.” Frank upended the cup in one swallow and went to sit on his cot.

After a few seconds, he blinked and frowned at Will. “Are you sure that was vaccinated blood?”

Will nodded and leaned forward in his chair. “How did it taste?”

Vaccinated blood generally tasted like it had ashes stirred into it, or at least how Aidan imagined it might taste with ashes. Pretty revolting.

“It tastes….normal. Quite refreshing.”

Aidan felt his hopes take another leap. He stood up and motioned for the others to head out. “We’ll be back in an hour. If you haven’t become sick, we’ll try some more and see if the anti-vaccine is still working.”

“I’ll be waiting.” Frank’s voice didn’t sound nearly as sarcastic as usual. Maybe the old goat had developed a little hope of his own.