Saxson Olaru, one of Napolean’s sentinels, placed his destiny in Julien Lacusta’s arms, confident that the Valium would keep her under, and asked the tracker to take her to the first SUV: “Cover her in a warm blanket, and make sure her head is resting comfortably on a pillow. I still have some unfinished business.”

He immediately turned his attention to Owen’s vaulted ceiling and stared icily at the naked, unconscious human hanging from the rafters, as if on a cross. Owen’s arms were spread-eagled and pinned to the wall, pierced with a pair of bronzed candlesticks. Both shoulders had been dislocated from the drag of his weight, and his feet dangled weakly beneath him. Something like a letter opener—or was that some kind of tuning fork?—was dissecting his penis like a piercing. His mouth was oozing blood, and from the sounds of his breathing, Saxson figured Nathaniel had cut out his tongue.

The sentinel glanced over his shoulder at the stainless-steel table, the place where he had converted Kiera, and he snarled, remembering the brutality of the painful, exhausting process, how perilously close his destiny had come to dying…

More than once.

“Nathaniel,” he barked, “take Owen down. In fact, wake his ass up, remove the candlesticks, and let him fall to the floor.”

Nathaniel flew to the top of the ceiling, smacked the human briskly across the cheek, and breathed ice-cold swirls of air up his nostrils until he jolted awake with a start. Moving so quickly the motion was a blur, the vampire extracted both candlesticks from his palms and watched with indifference as the broken body hurled downward and crumpled against the floor.

There was a sickening crunch, several unnatural pops, and a scarlet pool of blood began to expand all around him. But thank the gods of fortune—and vengeance—the human was still alive.

Saxson glided across the room, as silent as a panther, snatched the human by the back of his neck, and placed a vial of smelling salts beneath his nose, courtesy of Nathaniel’s breaking-and-entering at the local pharmacy. He dragged Owen across the warehouse floor, flung him onto the table, and encircled his wrists with the chains, quickly moving downward to tether his flaccid ankles in the bloodstained leather loops. Then he bent down slowly, commanded the vampire-hunter’s gaze, and reveled in the visage of his terrified pupils. “Do you know who I am?” Saxson snarled savagely. Owen didn’t react quickly enough, so Saxson cuffed him, causing a perceptible ringing in the human’s ears. “Do you know who I am!” he repeated.

Owen’s body began to convulse in terror.

“I am a vampire from the house of Jadon, the species you pretend to be hunting, while you torture a helpless, innocent woman.” He flashed his fangs for effect and began to speak in a thick, Count Dracula accent: “I am the grim reaper, the creature of your nightmares, and the instrument of your death. I am the mate of the woman you tortured.”

Owen’s eyes bulged in his head, and his teeth literally chattered as he twisted and bucked in fevered urgency, trying to come off the table.

Saxson snickered: deep, low, and sinister.

“No!” he barked angrily, his accent growing thicker. “We are only getting started.” He turned his attention to Nathaniel, who was watching from a distance, standing beside a large iron candleholder with six red wax candles decorating the cups. “Vampire, toss me the two thickest candles.”

Nathaniel did as Saxson asked, and the sentinel laid them on Owen’s stomach.

Placing a finger over his lips, he furrowed his brows in concentration. “Hmm. What was it you said to my destiny? What did I find in her memories?” He smiled a lascivious grin. “Ah…yes…you wanted Jon, Mike, and Nick to all…defile her…at once.” He shrugged an apathetic shoulder, slowly scanning Owen’s naked body. “Sadly, I don’t think you can accommodate…three violations…but we’ll work with what we’ve got.”

“Mh…mh…nhh!” Owen grunted, shaking his head violently from side to side in protest.

Saxson cuffed him again.

He lifted the longest of the two thick candles and gripped it in the palm of his hand. “Relax your throat,” he snarled. And without hesitation, he shoved it into Owen’s bloody mouth, breaking his teeth as he worked it deeper…and deeper…into the human’s gullet.

Owen jack-knifed off the table and gagged as Saxson thrust the candle in and out…in and out—again and again—in a vulgar parody of copulation. “Yeah, just like that,” he parroted, taking the words from Owen’s memories. “Is it good for you, Owen? Would you like it harder?”

Owen continued to gag—and weep—even as he struggled to draw desperate, piteous breaths through his flaring nostrils.

Saxson lifted the other candle from the human’s stomach, stared at it, and winced. Leveling his glance a little lower, he grimaced. “This is just…not going to fit.” He turned to regard Nathaniel. “Brother of my house, any idea how this works? I mean, somewhere—at some time—someone must have tried it. Humans do get off on the weirdest things. Thoughts?”

Nathaniel shrugged his shoulder and frowned. “Maybe…with some lube…some Vaseline?” He cocked his head to the side at a curious angle. “Nah, not gonna work. Maybe with a shoehorn.” He shook his head and whistled a dramatic, disturbing melody. “Hell, that won’t work either. That shit is bigger than his entire left ass cheek.” His voice grew cold and indifferent. “Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but any way you turn it, that just defies the laws of physics.”

“Mm,” Saxson murmured, as if contemplating it further. “I think you’re right. But then, he is a big, bad vampire-hunter, correct? So, he can take it like a man. Besides, I imagine he’s watched every Dracula movie ever made, and he’s just dying to meet Vlad—the Impaler. Perhaps we should give him his wish.”

Nathaniel chuckled and turned away.

Despite the vampire’s sadistic proclivities, he clearly had no desire to witness the desecration.

As Owen grunted, groaned, and screamed around the first protruding candle, Saxson shoved the second one where the sun would never shine and twisted it back and forth for good measure, forcing it deeper…and deeper…until the wax disappeared.

“Eww.” He grimaced, shaking out his hands, then washing them in a nearby basin. “Disgusting. I think he just soiled himself, or maybe that was just…inevitable.”

Owen groaned in unspeakable pain—there was no doubt the candle had punctured his colon, and he was suffering from internal bleeding.

Saxson turned around and glided across the warehouse, retrieving Kiera’s violin. He removed it from the case, plucked a taut string to hear it vibrate, and then brought it back to the stainless-steel table. Wielding it by the neck like a club, he drew back his arm and bashed it over Owen’s head, splintering the wood into a handful of jagged pieces. He tested a particularly sharp, splintered section against the tip of his finger and nodded. As Owen grunted and squirmed, sobbed and choked, and suffocated beneath the first ghastly candle, Saxson carved all the symbols he had found in Kiera’s body deep into the human’s flesh, using the broken violin as his scalpel.

When, finally, there was nothing left but a bloody, expiring, carved-up torso, he backed away from the table. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” he said to Nathaniel, making his way toward the busted elevator door, planning to fly down the channel.

“Want me to clean up this mess?” Nathaniel asked.

Saxson shook his head. “No. Leave him to die on his own—it won’t be long. Besides, maybe his comrades will find him.” He froze then, dropped his head in his hand, and closed his eyes. “Shit. I almost forgot.”

“What?” Nathaniel asked, gliding up to his side.

“We need to make a stop by the hospital on the way to Dark Moon Vale. Something I pulled out of Owen’s memories.”

Nathaniel cocked his brows in question.

“Two other so-called hunters—they were here earlier, eager to participate in Kiera’s torture. A female named Rachel and a male named Travis—he was one of her original captors, until she stabbed him.”

Nathaniel nodded knowingly, his dark predatory eyes gleaming with lethal shadows.

“They’re at Denver General, presumably in the ER, but this night, they will exit in body bags. I don’t want to leave my destiny’s side—not again—but I cannot let them live until morning.” Saxson curled his fingers inward and extended his arm to the side, and Nathaniel met the offering with a fist bump.

In the blink of an eye, an unspoken exchange, Saxson transferred the psychic information through the contact: a clear visual picture of Rachel Collins and Travis Landin so that the Ancient Master Warrior could not mistake them.

“Quick and easy?” Nathaniel asked.

“Slow and painful,” Saxson said.

“Done,” Nathaniel promised. “In fact, if you’re comfortable driving for a while, with Julien following behind you in the second SUV, then go ahead and hit the freeway. I’ll catch up. My father and Nachari will be here shortly—they’re going to try and find Xavier. Julien offered to track him for the house of Jadon, but…” His voice grew as dark as black satin. “I know what he did to your female, but Keitaro has claimed the right to Blood Vengeance: for himself, for Arielle, for Nikolai.” His tone lightened, marginally. “My guess? The lycan’s punk-ass is already back in Mhier.”

Saxson nodded. “Probably. He’s obviously a coward.”

“Yeah,” Nathaniel muttered. “Considering that he comes from a primordial species of vampire-hunters, and he’s an alpha male at that, he’s a real gutless wonder. But he cannot hide forever.”

There was nothing else spoken between them.

There was nothing else that needed to be said.