A wave of fire washed over Julian as screams reverberated through the air. He didn’t recall hitting the ground, but he realized he was lying on it when he felt a rock digging into his back. Turning over, he saw it wasn’t a rock after all; it was someone’s foot.

“Shit,” he snarled and threw the bloody appendage away from him.

He shoved himself upright to search for Quinn. He’d thought she’d been right beside him when he’d stopped. She should have been right beside him, but he’d let go of her when he’d realized Melissa was having a vision. Quinn had moved beyond him before the blast had exploded his eardrums and set the world on fire.

Now, he all he could see was the scorched earth around him and the flames consuming the Jeep. The vehicle had been launched into the air and rested on its roof only ten feet away from him. Through the snapping flames and curling smoke, he saw the woman inside was little more than bones as the fire had already consumed most of her flesh.

Hadie pulled herself out of the passenger window of the van and perched on the door. The vehicle was thirty feet away from him and resting on its driver’s side. The sole of a shoe faced him as someone’s leg poked out from under the van. Julian’s deadened heart leapt into his throat at the possibility that it was Quinn trapped beneath the vehicle. It took him a second to realize the sole belonged to a sneaker instead of the black boots Quinn was wearing.

Hadie dropped down from the van and flattened herself against its undercarriage. Unlike the Jeep, he saw no hint of fire or smoke from the van. Hadie used the back of her arm to wipe away the blood trickling from a jagged gash on her forehead.

“I’m going to kill these assholes!” she shouted over the crackling flames and the screams of the mutilated and dying.

Julian ignored the twisted bone of his ankle as he rose to his feet and searched through the crackling flames and debris around him. “Quinn!” he bellowed.

Smoke seared his nostrils and clogged his throat, but already the fires were fading away as the grass did little to fuel the flames. Broken bodies littered the ground, many were still alive, unwilling to move as they lay on what he now realized was a mine field. Others remained on their feet, uninjured but reluctant to take another step. Prue and Carla were five feet away from the van, unable to see around the obstacle in their way.

Turning back toward the fence, he saw Luther and Lou remained standing a good thirty feet behind him with Melissa a few feet beyond them. Chris shoved himself up from the ground two feet to his left while Dani had already regained her feet on Julian’s other side. They’d all been thrown almost back to the fence line by the force of the explosion, or explosions. Judging by the amount of damage, there had been more than one.

Chris was untouched, but the right side of Dani’s shirt had been seared away. Soot covered her face, and the blackened ends of her hair were curled up around her ears. Vern stood beyond Julian’s shoulder, paler than normal, but his eyes burned red fire as he gazed at the carnage surrounding them.

“Do you see Quinn?” Julian demanded of them.

“I…I don’t know what happened,” Dani stammered.

“Can you see Quinn?” he shouted.

“No,” she muttered.

Julian went to take a step forward, but Chris seized his arm. “What are you doing?”

“I have to find her.”

Chris’s gaze ran over the ground surrounding them as if it were the enemy. In many ways, it was. “You’ll blow yourself up.”

“I have to find her.”

“There!” Lou shouted and pointed toward the building. “I think that’s her with some of the others!”

“How did they end up so close to the building?” Dani asked.

“They were ahead of whoever stepped on the mine,” Julian muttered.

Rage filled him when he finally spotted Quinn’s broken body lying near the door of the building. Blood covered her, and the jagged edge of her thigh bone pierced through her skin. He yanked his arm from Chris’s grasp. He didn’t care if he stepped on every mine between her and him, he would get to her.

“The door of the building is opening,” Vern said, halting Julian in midstep.

Julian watched as three men slipped out the door and walked toward the nearby vampires scattered across the ground. Each of them held a stake.

Adrenaline had him plunging forward before he could stop to think about what he was doing. If those men got to her…

No! He wouldn’t allow it to happen.

He flew across the earth toward Quinn with a speed he hadn’t known he possessed as the world around him became nothing but a blur.

“Julian!” Chris shouted as something boomed behind him. Heat licked against his back from the mine he’d set off, but he was moving too fast for the fire and concussion of the blast to hit him.

Quinn remained unmoving, her body limp when one of the men arrived at her side. “No!” Julian bellowed, causing the man’s head to jerk toward him.

Something primitive and savage within him broke free, something darker than even the most twisted part of him had ever been as he poured on the speed. He’d tear every one of those men apart piece by piece and carve those pieces into tiny bits if they hurt her.

Despite the fact Julian was still a couple hundred feet away, the man stumbled back when he spotted Julian racing toward him. Quinn’s head swayed to the side, and her eyes opened as the man stepped toward her again. For a second, all Julian could see was the honeyed hue of her eyes before the man bent over her. The man pulled his arm back and drove the stake into her chest.

***

Quinn clenched the man’s wrist seconds before he drove the stake through her chest. Her ribs crunched as they gave way beneath the sharp wood piercing through her body and plunging toward her heart.

The stake grated against her bones. It twisted in her muscles as splinters of wood broke free inside of her. She kept a firm grip on the man’s wrist as she tried to hold him back from delivering the killing blow. Weakened by blood loss, her muscles trembled from the force it took to keep him from killing her. Instinctively, the tentacles of her ability lashed out and seized him. Her power pulled the life from the man as it sought to heal her broken body.

Hunter! The amount of life he possessed meant he could only be one of her kind, but there would be no trying to reason with this man if she wanted to live.

A scream strangled in her throat when the man twisted the stake deeper. Panic caused her ability to flare up. It crackled in the air between them as it became a living entity that shot sparks around them while it sucked deeper from his life force.

The man’s lips pulled back in a grimace. He tried to jerk his hand away from her as a gurgled noise escaped him. The broken bones of her legs twisted and came back together with a crack that caused the scream she’d been suppressing to rip from her.

The man tugged more violently at his wrist as his grip on the stake lessened. His eyes bulged from his head; his skin took on the yellow hint of jaundice before slipping away to the gray shade of death. The broken bone in her ankle shifted and locked into place, causing her to scream again as it fused back together.

Her right leg, which had been lying in ruin only seconds ago, now had flesh knitting itself closed over the hole her bone had created in it. Strength flooded her as the man continued to perish before her.

The man’s face hollowed to the point that all it consisted of were the harsh angles of his cheekbones and his bulging blue eyes. A sickly yellow color crept through the whites of his eyes. She had been so unbelievably close to dying, she could feel the tip of the stake against her heart, but life flooded her system.

Beneath her grip, the leathery feel of his skin became rough against her fingertips. The spark of life filling his eyes dimmed considerably. The knowledge of his impending death radiated from him as he gazed at her.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” she choked out.

His mouth parted on one last breath before his eyes rolled up and his body slumped forward. The sluggish pull of what remained of his life slipped into her body before the wrist within her grasp collapsed completely into ash and fell away from her fingertips.

His remains fell about her like fine soot. She had only a second to process what had happened before agony tore through her chest once more. Blood pooled into her mouth; her fingers clawed at the stake. The influx of the man’s life had worked to heal her other wounds, but with the stake still embedded in her chest, it wouldn’t heal until the wood was free of her.

Her fingers felt thick and heavy as she tried to get them around the stake. Her blood loss and the discomfort of the stake embedded in her made pulling it free difficult. Every attempt she made caused the tip of it to scrape against her heart. One wrong move and she might drive it in deeper.

Julian! He wouldn’t survive without her, and if he did, he would go on a path of destruction so brutal he would make Vlad the Impaler look like a kitten. Tears clogged her throat, her sorrow for him outweighing her pain.

Splinters embedded into her fingers when she tugged at the stake, scrambling to pull it free. Her back bowed as blackness loomed up to drown her within its depths. Then hands fell on her shoulders. Tentacles of her power whipped out and latched onto the vibrant source holding her.

Screams echoed in her head, and perhaps she released them too, she couldn’t tell as something twisted within her chest. A pulling, sucking sensation filled her. She was lifted up before something within her body gave way and she fell back to the earth.

Feeling returned to her fingers. Her limbs were no longer heavy or numb. Warmth seeped through her while her body worked to close the hole torn into it. Her eyelids fluttered open to find Julian leaning over her. His blood-red eyes were filled with a fury the likes of which she’d never seen before, but there was also love there and a fear so intense it rattled her already shaken bones.

“Don’t you leave me,” he growled.

She tugged at his wrists when she realized the source of the vast life flooding her. “Let me go,” she croaked.

“Never,” he vowed as his normally pale, vibrant skin took on a sallow hue.

“Let me go!”

“Shh.” He ran his fingers over her face before bending to kiss her forehead. “Take what you need from me, Quinn. Take everything you need.”

She struggled to break free of his ironclad hold. He refused to release her as he pulled her closer and moved her protectively toward the shadows of the building. Over his shoulder, she spotted some of the vampires still standing in what she now realized was a minefield.

The flames of the Jeep leapt into the sky as the vampires closest to the vehicle were cautiously trying to move away from it. A vamp with graying hair stepped forward and froze. In the next instant, he was screaming as he flew through the air. A wave of fire erupted as the ground beneath her shook from the force of the explosion.

Some of the others were running through the smoke covering the field toward them. They followed a charred pathway that she assumed Julian had left behind when he’d come for her. He could have gotten himself killed, and if he continued to hold her, he just might. She couldn’t get her power to retreat now that she’d set it free and her body was still repairing itself.

“Julian, please let me go,” she pleaded as the bones of his shoulder stood out beneath her hands. “I can’t…”

A man materialized through the smoke with a crossbow in hand. “Julian!” she screamed, her fingers digging into his shoulders.

She tried to pull herself over his back to get at the man. Snarling, Julian spun; he jerked her back at the same time the man fired the crossbow. Julian snatched the bolt out of the air and snapped it in his fingers before lunging for the man.

“Don’t kill him!” Quinn gasped when Julian’s hand encircled the man’s throat.

He turned toward her, his mouth open in what she knew was about to be a protest, but he snapped it shut when she reached for them. Her fingers opened and closed in a gesture meant to indicate she wanted to touch the man. Julian dragged the man forward and kept hold of him as he dropped the man on the ground beside her. He wrapped his free arm around her shoulders and held her against him.

Quinn shuddered as her hands fell onto the man. He didn’t offer the same amount of vitality and nourishment Julian or the Hunter did, but her ability still latched voraciously onto him. An influx of life filled her, and she realized she’d still been keeping herself somewhat restrained while connecting with Julian. She had none of that restraint now as the man’s body withered before her while her body healed further.

With Julian’s hands still on her, she fed some of the life she’d taken from him, back into him. Julian’s skin took on a healthy hue again, and his face and shoulders filled back out. He kept her cradled against him as the man’s skin became gray and his eyes spun in his head.

“I’m sorry,” Quinn whispered before the man crumpled before her.

Julian’s fingers ran over her hair; he turned his lips so that they rested against her forehead. “You have nothing to be sorry for,” he whispered. “You have to protect yourself, protect us.”

Her battered body thrummed with the influx of life it had received. Her bones still grated as they finished mending and every muscle in her body felt like it had been beaten by a thousand fists, but those aches were already fading away. She finally managed to get the tentacles to retreat into her again, though a part of them remained connected to Julian. She didn’t take any more from him as she kept a steady flow going between them. If she took hold of someone else while they were touching, she would feed that power into him.

“I know I do,” she whispered, “but I still don’t like taking a life.”

“If it saves yours, I’ll gladly take every one of their lives.”

“I’m better now,” she told him. “I can control my ability again, and I’m nearly healed.”

His hand fell to the hole in her shirt, his fingers touched upon the blood seeping out from the closing wound over her heart. She tore her eyes away from the hole. She couldn’t stand to see her near death stamped onto her body in such a way.

“It was so close,” she whispered.

Julian’s body tensed around hers as he enveloped her closer. “Thankfully, you have many secrets and talents.”

Chris arrived at their side. Trails of sweat streaked through the soot covering his face. His sapphire eyes ran over her before settling on her chest. He opened his mouth to say something but clamped it closed again. Over his shoulder, she saw Melissa, Lou, Luther, Dani, Vern, and some of the other vampires coming closer. The looks on their faces were ones of reverence and curiosity as they approached her.

Julian rose from his crouched position and set her carefully on her feet beside the piles of ash she’d created. Quinn didn’t look at the remains; there was nothing there she wanted to see. She did, however, have to brush some of their dust off of her.

Just remains of a fire. She tried to tell herself this as she wiped the ashes off her clothing the best she could, but it didn’t work. Lifting her head, she met the awed gazes of those surrounding her.

“Burn like the sun the life from anyone she touches.” Vern’s gaze was focused on the ashes at her feet while he muttered this line from the prophecy. “It really is her.”

“Did you doubt it?” Julian demanded.

Vern lifted his head to gaze at him. “I was never one for prophecies.”

Quinn looked to Julian, who set his jaw and glared at everyone before them. “Neither was I, but she is different, and she has brought us all together here. We have to finish this, now.”

“Quinn just took out two of them,” Luther said. “The rest of The Commission and their lackeys retreated into the building while we were following your path through the minefield. The vampires still on the field and road are too far away from the path you created to follow it. I told them to remain where they are for now.”

Quinn stared at the field as the smoke drifting across it began to clear. The coppery scent of blood from the injured and dead hung heavily in the air. The muted cries of those who had been wounded filled the night as some of the other vamps moved cautiously toward them, seeking some way to get them off the field and to safety.

Through the smoke, she saw the vampires they had split off from and left with the vehicles as an insurance policy approaching the fence. They had come forward as Julian instructed when trouble arose. There would be no hiding their numbers from The Commission anymore now that those vampires had revealed themselves.

Quinn turned her attention back to the building. The metal front door was closed and most likely bolted shut. The thick bars on the windows were a good five inches in diameter. She had a feeling everything in this building had been specifically designed to withstand Hunters and vampires.

“One of the ones I just killed was a Hunter,” she said. “But the other one was entirely human, probably a member of The Commission or a Guardian.”

The vampires all gave her an admiring look. She’d hated killing those men, but she’d earned the vampire’s seal of approval by doing so, and most likely a little bit more of their loyalty. She’d proven to them what they’d been saying all along; they would be allowed to defend themselves against those seeking to kill them, even a Hunter or Guardian, with no punishment in return.

“What are we going to do?” she asked Julian.

“We’re going in,” Julian replied.

“How?”

The grin he gave her made her blood run colder than it had when she’d had a stake driven into her chest. “I’ll tear it down with my bare hands if I have to. They never could have prepared for me, and they have no idea who they’re fucking with.”