“Put your violin away, Kiera, then change into your robe.”

Owen’s heartless command snaked through Kiera’s veins like ice-water flowing through an old rusted pipe, making the vessel contract and groan. As her throat constricted, she stared at Travis Landin, standing at the edge of the living room, holding out the robe.

So they expected her to change right there…in public…in front of everyone?

She gulped, turned her back on Owen, and padded slowly toward the violin case.

The guests had arrived promptly at eight: a short, skinny, bald kid who Owen called Jon; two dark-haired muscle-heads who looked like brothers—Travis had greeted them as Mike and Nick—and a short, robust woman who dressed like a biker chick. The others referred to her as Rachel.

Four new guests, plus Owen and Travis.

Xavier was nowhere in sight.

As the vampire-hunters had entered the warehouse, Kiera had played her violin while Owen dimmed all the lights. Travis had followed behind him, lighting a stream of garish black candles, and carrying a bowl of putrid-smelling incense. And then the guests had changed their clothes, donning insane-looking, dark-hooded robes.

It had been like a scene from a horror novel.

The room had been cold. The air had been electric. And the hum of Kiera’s violin, playing one fiddling song after another, had grated like fingernails on a chalkboard: scratchy, discordant, and ominous.

And now, they just expected her to go along with this gruesome, insane, godless sacrifice.

Well, they would see about that.

Kiera tucked the violin away in its case, retrieved the tuning fork in the palm of her hand, and then slowly stood up and began to shuffle backward, heading toward the bedroom door…pretending to be too frightened to obey.

She didn’t have to pretend.

“Stop!” Owen barked. Then he nodded at Travis, and as expected, Travis strolled forward with the white terrycloth robe brandished in his tattooed right hand. The bloodred eyes of a boa constrictor, tattooed around his neck, seemed to stare right at her as the asshole approached.

Kiera sidestepped toward the decorative pedestal table and the statue of a hunter resting on top. She bowed her head in submission, and her muscles began to twitch in barely concealed anticipation.

Travis grinned, flashed his smoke-stained teeth in a parody of a smile, and his greasy hair fell forward into his eyes. Then he grunted and thrust the robe in her direction. “Take off your clothes, and put it on!” he ordered, licking his bottom lip.

Kiera almost hurled.

She inched the tuning fork further down between her fingers, prongs facing out, and slowly stepped toward him. As she reached for the robe with an extended left hand, she gouged him in the stomach with her right, directly below his ribcage. She drove her full weight into the thrust, then forced the fork inward and upward.

Travis gasped in shock, but she didn’t wait for his reaction.

She let go of the fork, twisted toward the table, and grabbed the statue in both hands. Then she brought it down over his head, like a baseball bat, her body whirling off balance from the force of the swing.

Travis crumpled to the ground, and she tripped over his falling body, sprawling onto the floor. Her socks could not gain purchase on the smooth wooden planks, so she crawled toward the bedroom on her knees.

“You bitch!” she heard Owen bellow from the living room as he scrambled into action.

Kiera’s heart sank to her stomach, and her breath hitched in her throat. “Oh, God, oh, God…oh, God,” she panted, clambering to get back on her feet. She reached down to her ankles—first the left, then the right—and yanked the socks off, flinging them away. Her toes dug into the wood, gaining traction, and she rose to her full height, like a sprinter coming out of the blocks.

She didn’t bother to look behind her.

She knew Owen was close on her heels.

Rather, she sprang through the bedroom door, slammed it behind her, and scurried to the nearby armoire. Slamming her body against the side of the dresser, she grimaced as a jolt of pain shot through her shoulders. Nevertheless, she yanked and she pulled until the tall, heavy piece of furniture toppled over.

Owen slammed his shoulder into the bedroom door just as the armoire blocked his passage.

Thank God!

The door was blocked, and there was no way they were coming through that alcove—not with all those iron inserts.

She sprinted into the adjacent bathroom, spun around, and locked the door. Once again, they weren’t getting through the alcove windows. She opened the top drawer of the nearest vanity, removed a length of violin E-strings, the thinnest of the bunch, and clutched them in her fist. Earlier that week, she had laced the strings together and hidden them inside the drawer. She had also removed two medium-sized nails from behind two pieces of artwork, and pounded them into the door frame—one on the left, and one on the right—about six inches above the tile floor.

Dropping to her knees, she twisted the ends of the strings around the nails, looping them as tight as she could, while drawing the trip-line taut. With any luck, Owen would break down the door—or use tools to remove the lock, something that would eat up time—and when he dashed into the bathroom, he would trip over the cord and bust his head on the vanity.

She could only hope.

Her lungs burning as if they were on fire, she dashed to the linen closet, retrieved the rope made of sheets, and shot through the open Tuscan shower—beyond the jetted bathtub—to the single-pane window. Her hands shook like she was afflicted with a neurological disorder as she fumbled with the latch, slid the window open, and punched out the screen.

Tears of desperation fell like rivers down her cheeks as she tied the sheet around the window frame, frantic to secure it tightly.

God help her if the sheet came loose.

Finally, once the sheet was secure, she took a deep, ragged breath for courage, climbed into the windowsill, and turned around to start scaling the building.

And then she froze in place.

The five-story, cement-gray warehouse was covered with slick, vertical siding, and that meant there was a fifty-foot drop down to the waiting pavement.

Kiera’s throat constricted, and her palms began to sweat.

She couldn’t do this!

There was just no way!

She heard Owen, and what sounded like a few other guests, slam the bedroom door against the armoire, and the heavy piece of furniture scratched the floor as it slid slowly out of the way, making a terrible grating noise.

And that pushed Kiera past her fear.

Briefly closing her eyes to whisper a prayer, she fastened both fists over the first bulging knot and slid out the window, her bare toes immediately seeking the first knot beneath her.

She felt the protruding lump against the arch of her feet and hooked both ankles around it, pressing her knees together for stability, and then she shimmied downward, like a caterpillar, searching for the next handhold…and the next protruding lump.

Panting—or hyperventilating—it was all a matter of perspective, Kiera inched her way down into the cold, damp night, undaunted by the elements: the wind swirling up behind her; the soft fall of rain beginning to pelt her shoulders; the faint stench of garbage rising up from the alley beneath her.

“Don’t look down,” she told herself as she took one section of the rope at a time, one knot after the other. Her arms burned. Her thighs began to tremble. She wasn’t in shape for this climbing. “Stop it, Kiera, just keep going. Keep moving. You’ve got to get to the ground.”

* * *

Xavier Matista receded into the shadows of the alley, trying to keep the rain off his skin.

He had promised his trite human followers a victim—a ceremony—an opportunity to blow off some steam, and he had delivered Kiera Sparrow on a silver platter.

However, by the looks of it, the humans couldn’t even get that right.

He growled deep in his throat as he thought about the whole demented setup.

The vampire-hunting society was useful to the lycans—the humans could go where werewolves could not—however, they were so simpleminded and irrational. While Owen had been a competent leader of the Metropolitan Cell, and Travis had made a good lackey, they were so obsessed with mounting their captive, they couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

Hell, even Rachel, the deranged biker chick who was still rebelling against society for rejecting her as a teenager, was chomping at the bit, at the age of thirty-five, just to watch the other males take Kiera.

Xavier had wanted no part in the ritual, and not because he gave a rat’s ass about Kiera, about the destiny of an immortal vampire. He had chosen to abstain because he thought it was a waste—the woman had an exceptional talent—and also, if and when he needed to slake his masculine urges, he had his own plaything tied up in his Earth-realm apartment.

No, Kiera Sparrow—that was all about business.

He had enough vials of blood, enough tissue samples, and enough containers of urine to take back to Mhier, turn over to the lycans, and allow greater, scientific minds to do the research.

His goal was to murder Saxson Olaru—strike a blow for the Lycan kind, for a change.

His goal was to use Kiera’s sister to strike back at Keitaro Silivasi’s clan, and she was right on the verge of doing it.

Just the same, he had been unable to resist standing out in the alley: listening to Kiera play the violin one last time with his superior, supernatural hearing; scenting the brutal sex-play; or sniffing the perfume of death.

Knowing all the while that it was finished…

Saxson’s last breath was intrinsically linked to Kiera’s…

And Xavier had made it happen.

Watching now as the determined human female shimmied down a rain-soaked string of bedsheets, he chuckled.

Damn, she had really tried.

Oh well…

Arching his back and stretching his neck, he began to shift into his lykos form.

While razor-sharp teeth and a savage canine muzzle protruded from his collapsing skull, he grew to his primordial ten-foot height, reveling in the raw, unchallenged power that enveloped him.

And then he bounded into the alley and loped toward Kiera.