Well, it was the sort of thing that told you everything you needed to know about her character, didn’t it.

Unconsciously, Murhder’s eyes dipped to the ring finger on her left hand. Humans marked their matings in that manner. Hers was bare.

That was a treacherous relief.

“You got him?” Murhder asked softly.

Her honey-colored eyes shifted up to his. “Yes. I do.”

Well, brace yourself, he thought. Because I’m very sure you got me, too.

Murhder refocused and shoved at Kraiten’s shoulder, reigniting the march of descent, the lineup moving down the concrete stairwell with more shuffle than alacrity. At the bottom, Kraiten stopped and seemed to want to speak.

Murhder ripped the gag out of his mouth. “What.”

“I need …” Given that the man was still fighting the commands he’d been given, his voice was slurred. “Credentials.”

“Where are they?” Xhex said.

“My breast pocket.”

The female shoved her free hand into Kraiten’s suit jacket and came out with a black alligator-skin wallet, key fob for a car, and a pass card. She swiped the last one through the reader next to another steel door, and after the lock released, they broke out into an underground loading dock and delivery area.

A black Lexus SUV gleamed under the caged fluorescent lights, and as Xhex pointed the fob at it, its running lights flashed.

Thank God it isn’t a two-seater, Murhder thought.

Leading the young and the woman over, he settled them in the backseat, and then looked at Xhex and John.

“I’ll get these two out,” he said. “Kraiten’s yours to play with.”

The man in the suit started blurting all kinds of threats, his survival instincts partially overriding the mind control.

Murhder stepped up and clapped a hold on the guy’s throat. Leaning in, he put his mouth to the human’s ear. “I could tear your beating heart out of your chest and eat it for what you’ve done.” He eased back and measured the true terror in those eyes. “But I’m going to leave you to them—especially her. What she is capable of will be much, much worse.”

As he felt his fangs elongate, he wanted to take a hunk out of the side of the man’s throat, but he was aware of the woman in the car. She was watching him through the glass as she held the pretrans tight.

Backing off, Murhder nodded at John and Xhex, and then he took the car key from the female, the pass card—and for good measure, the wallet. Turning away, he went around the hood of the SUV and got behind the wheel. Glancing up to the rearview mirror, he found the young and the woman holding each other and staring at him.

God, that face, he thought as he focused on the woman. He had been looking at it for twenty-five years … and now she was with him.

It was as if a ghost had become real.

But why did she have to be human? And why did they have to meet like this?

“Buckle up,” he told them. “And you’re going to have to tell me where to go.”

He started the vehicle and put it in drive as everyone clicked in.

The woman leaned forward. “I know where we are. Go that way.”

As she pointed to a metal garage door, he hit the gas. The panels rolled up as they approached, and then they were out in the night, on the plowed lane that went around the facility.

“Take a left …”

She was efficient with the directions, helping him to navigate the route to the single point of entry onto the site. The good news? No flashing lights on the buildings. No security guards coming after them. No human police arriving in a rush.

“That’s the gatehouse up ahead,” she said. “I don’t know how we’re going to get through security, though.”

“I’ll take care of it.”

They approached the checkpoint and slowed down. The fencing system that surrounded the property was worthy of a federal penitentiary, some twenty feet tall and mounted with security cameras. As he hit the brakes and prepared to come to a complete stop, he prayed the alarms didn’t start going off just as he dealt with the guard’s mind—

The gatehouse’s sliding door opened on their side, and an arm extended out from the sentry point, giving a little wave-through. Then the gates began to part.

But of course. The SUV’s windows were all tinted and up tight against the cold—so whoever was on duty was just assuming the CEO was behind the wheel.

As Murhder cruised through, he stared straight ahead and lifted his hand as he guessed Kraiten might have. Then he beat feet out of there.

As they came off the property, he went to the right and sped away.

“Everyone okay back there?” he asked roughly.

“Yes, we’re good,” the human woman said.

“All good,” the pretrans echoed.

Murhder started to smile.

He’d done it, he thought as he squeezed the steering wheel. He’d fucking done it. The young was out of that hellhole, and nothing was going to happen to the kid now.

He hadn’t let Ingridge down.

All at once, this strange energy entered not just Murhder’s body and mind, but his soul. After everything he had been through with his unreliable thoughts and his swirling craziness, it was hard to trust the rush. But damn, it was as if sunshine had entered him on the inside, the dark spaces between his molecules illuminated with a heavenly glow, whole sectors of his personality, previously eclipsed by penetrating sadness, now bathed in a healing warmth.

With the same abruptness as it had failed, his switchboard seemed now fully operational and ready for business again, his circuits up and rolling, his wires uncrossed, his functioning returning to a normal that he had previously taken for granted, as the healthy and whole always did.

That smile pulled hard at the corners of his mouth. And then, like an athlete after a warmup, his lips stretched wide. Sure, he was in an arguably stolen vehicle, which was owned by a man about to die in a grisly way, and he had an orphan and a human woman in the backseat who both needed his protection.

But after two decades of being in an insane wasteland, he felt like himself.

Fuck that, he felt like a goddamn superhero.

“Are you taking me to my mahmen?” the boy asked.

Murhder’s eyes flashed up to the rearview. As he met that hopeful stare, he felt a piercing pain in his heart, and all his optimism collapsed.

“We need to talk, son,” he said grimly.

In spite of all the reasons Xhex had to slaughter Kraiten where the bastard stood, she decided not to go that route. It was too easy. He had earned a much worse fate and she was just the symphath to give it to him.

“Hold him for me?” she asked her mate.

As John nodded, she transferred Kraiten over into what turned out to be a vicious headlock—and yup, she had a moment of reconsideration. Her hellren had bared his fangs and was looking like he was ready to make a meal of the guy.

Except she had a better plan.

“John,” she said, “you gotta loosen that hold on his neck. He’s turning blue—there you go. Respiration is a good thing for the living.”

Certain that John was in control of himself, in spite of that bloodthirsty snarl of his, she calmed herself and entered the human’s brain.

Kraiten’s emotional grid was interesting, and one not uncommon to sociopaths: He had little to no registry around the core of his superstructure—which meant that nothing affected him deeply. Everything was superficial to him, with the ego sectors the only thing that were lit up elsewhere.