They didn’t want to leave her at the inn alone, but they weren’t expecting her to fight.

Their loss, Kyra decided. She could fight, especially against the scared boys who populated the compound in the hills. She’d seen the pictures Niran and Leo had brought back. She’d seen the small houses and the women, two with small children and one heavily pregnant.

“I can help with the women,” she said. “I’ve fought before. I’m not helpless.”

“Do you speak Shan or Burmese?” Alyah asked.

“No.”

“Then you won’t be much help,” the Irina said, strapping on various knives and a small pistol. “Stay with the van and keep your head down. Don’t attract attention if you can help it. Leo will be distracted enough as it is.”

Kyra suppressed the urge to hit something. Unlike Leo, who could learn languages with a few looks, Kyra didn’t have that gift. Though she was fluent in English, Greek, Bulgarian, Serbian, Turkish, and French, she had no knowledge of Asian languages. She’d never had any reason to think she would need them.

She sat in the rear of the van, watching Niran and Leo draw in the dirt as Sura looked on.

He’d come back to her the night before, fresh with excitement for the coming skirmish, even though he thought it would be a small challenge. It didn’t matter. He was a warrior at heart, like her brothers. They were never happier than when they could battle an enemy. In this case, Niran and Sura were hoping Arindam’s Grigori would flee before they confronted them. They had no desire to hurt boys unless the boys were dangerous to the humans in the valley, and according to Sura, there were no rumors of human deaths. Like his own brothers, the Grigori in this compound seemed to be living peacefully.

Kyra had her doubts.

She’d heard the thoughts of the Grigori in the compound. Though they might have been controlling themselves, it wasn’t out of any great love for humanity. They were simply wary of attracting attention. She’d heard their hunger and greed. She had no illusions that they were the same kind of disciplined band that Sura and Niran led.

“I don’t like this,” Kyra told Leo when he approached her.

He put his hands on her shoulders and squeezed. “I’ll be fine.”

“I think you’re all underestimating them.”

“Why?”

“They’re ruled by fear,” she said. “Didn’t you hear them too?”

Leo shook his head. “I only heard a fraction of what you did.”

“But you heard their fear?”

“Of Arindam? Yes.”

“Frightened creatures pushed into a corner can be the most vicious,” she said. “They strike out unpredictably.”

Leo nodded.

“Just be careful.”

Leo narrowed his eyes. “Maybe I should take you with me. Not to fight, but to be where I can keep an eye on you.”

“I’d be a distraction. Alyah is right in that. I’d like to help with the women.”

“Help with the van,” he said. “It’s early, but if anyone comes along, you can play the helpless tourist.”

They’d propped up the hood of the van. That way, if anyone looked, it would appear that Kyra was waiting on the rest of her party to return with help for the busted vehicle. There were more donkey carts than cars on the road, but Sura speculated that no one would question a tourist van with an engine problem too closely.

“You have your knives?” Leo asked.

“Yes.”

“Good.” He kissed the top of her head. “We’re ready to go. Keep safe, and we’ll be back shortly. I have my phone in my vest if you need me. If anything happens, call.”

Without a backward glance, Niran, Sura, Alyah, and Leo jogged off into the forest, leaving Kyra behind.

* * *

Leo hated leaving Kyra with the van, but there was little she could do against trained warriors. She was proficient against humans, and she’d be fine with the women, but she didn’t speak the language. Any assistance she could give would be more of a distraction than anything else. Niran wanted to go in quick and get out quicker.

They jogged down a rabbit trail through the forest, Sura leading the way. When he held up a fist, they all stopped on top of a small ridge. Switching to hand signals, he indicated he and Alyah would go right, toward the women’s cottages, while Leo and Niran took on the main house where the Grigori lived. Leo brushed a hand over his talesm prim, noticing that Niran was chanting a mantra under his breath. Like Leo’s talesm, Niran’s Sak Yant lit with a low silver glow.

Though he’d never fought with Niran before, the Grigori moved much like Malachi, swift and silent. Following him, Leo ducked under vines and low-hanging tree limbs. He could see the steep roof of the building under the ridge.

They came upon the first guard at the end of the trail. His eyes went wide a second before Niran fell on him, covering his mouth and pressing his thumb into a point under the man’s armpit. The man went limp at his knees, then with a swift blow to the head, Niran rendered him unconscious.

Tucking the guard under a bush, Niran nodded to Leo to continue down the path.

Leo found the second guard at the top of a stone staircase. He didn’t use any fancy pressure points; he just punched the Grigori in the jaw, his massive fist snapping the man’s head back as his eyes rolled up. He put the guard under a tree and followed Niran down the stairs.

The Thai Grigori moved with unearthly speed. Even Leo, who was known for his quick feet, had trouble keeping up. It was a blitz attack. Another guard met, another crumpled in a heap at Niran’s feet.

They met their first real resistance when they entered the temple. Instead of the Buddha typical at the head of the altar, there was a great gold male figure with wings, his arms spread upward with two snakes wrapped around his wrists. Two Grigori knelt before him. Before Niran could reach them, the men spun and rushed Leo and Niran, gold knives in their hands.

“Behind you!” Leo shouted, catching movement from the corner of his eye.

Niran tossed his opponent in Leo’s direction, spun, and met the two Grigori who had been standing behind the great doors of the temple.

All four Grigori bore knives and looked ready to use them.

Leo drew his silver knife, no longer reluctant to meet his attackers. Sticking out his foot, he hooked his ankle behind the knee of one Grigori, bringing the man to his knees. With a quick stab, he drove his blade into the neck of the Grigori soldier, shoving him to the side as he dissolved into dust at Leo’s feet. The other man jabbed Leo in the ribs with his blade, but Leo’s talesm did not allow the blade to bite. Deflected by Leo’s magic, the Grigori came again, quicker than Leo had expected. These soldiers were young but not untested.

A flurry of blows met his knee and his kidney, nearly taking Leo to his knees. He brought his elbow around, smashing the face of the Grigori with one quick blow. The man reeled back, stunned by the sudden strike, then Leo darted behind him and brought his blade down quickly and cleanly into the spine of the second Grigori.

Dust in the air.

Leo turned and saw Niran still fighting one of the Grigori guards. The other lay on the ground, clutching his stomach while blood pooled beneath him. Leo started toward him, determined to put the Grigori out of his misery.

“Wait!” Niran said, striking his opponent to the ground with an open hand and a hooked ankle. “I want to question that one.” He struck the Grigori again, snapping the man’s neck with a sickening punch. The Grigori fell in a heap, his neck at an unnatural angle.

Niran walked over and flipped the bleeding Grigori to his back.

“Arindam,” he asked. “Where is he?”

“Not here,” the Grigori said, blood bubbling from his lips. “Not for months.”

“Who took our sister?”

“Irin.”

“You lie.”

“Irin”—he coughed up blood—“and two of our Chin brothers from the west.”

“Where is Prija now?” Niran asked.

“Too… dangerous. Chao-Tzang sent her away. He said she could not stay here. Our brother screamed and grabbed his head. She burned his mind.”

“Yes,” Niran said. “She does that. Tell me where they took her.”

“West.”

“I need more information than that.” Niran pressed the heel of his hand into the man’s belly, ignoring the screams. “Tell me where.”

“Mong Kung,” he said. “The hills west of the city. There is another temple to our father there.”

Niran flipped the Grigori over and drew a blade from a sheath on his thigh. He stabbed the Grigori cleanly and stood as the soldier dissolved beneath him, then wiped the blood from his blade on the coat of the man he’d killed.

“Mong Kung,” he muttered. “We need to find Sura. He’ll know if it sounds true.”

Leo and Niran left the temple, jogging down the stairs and toward the women’s quarters where Sura and Alyah had gone. Leo saw a young soldier fleeing into the forest. He glanced at Niran.

“Let him go,” Niran said. “He’s no threat to us.”

“We get the women and we go.”

Niran nodded.

Leo was worried about Kyra at the side of the road. The Grigori who fled was running in that direction. Who knew if he was the only one.

“On second thought,” Leo said. “You head to Alyah and Sura. I’ll go back to the van.”

“Very well,” Niran said. “Though she’s not as helpless as you think.”

“It’s not that she’s helpless,” Leo said. “It’s that I’d be useless without her.”

* * *

Kyra watched the forest from behind shaded lenses and waited. Every now and then, she’d hear something stir, but she thought it was only birds or small animals. She tried to look like a bored tourist, all the time keeping her senses open and aware of the humans and others around her. She didn’t want to listen too closely and threaten her own consciousness. She knew if she reached too far with her hearing, she was deaf to anything else, and the last thing she wanted was to be vulnerable.

She heard an unknown Grigori coming and her hand went to her knife… but the voice veered away before it reached the road, heading back into the hills above her. There were humans up the road, but they were going about their daily life and didn’t appear to be moving either toward or away from her.

Twenty minutes after they’d left, she heard Leo coming through the trees. He sounded easy and happy, and she knew nothing was wrong. She turned toward him before he broke through the bushes.

“There you are,” he said with a smile.

“Everything went fine.”

He nodded and embraced her. “We had to kill four soldiers who came at us with weapons, but the rest fled or we were able to knock them out. Have you heard anything from Sura?”

She shook her head.

Leo said, “Niran was going to look for them.”

“Convincing the women might be difficult.”

“It probably will be, but you never know. Most of it depends on how many women they’ve seen die. Do you remember Prague?”

Kyra nodded. How could she forget Prague?

The Fallen they’d killed outside Prague the year before had abused his human lovers horribly. He’d killed so many that the survivors were plotting to find a way out with their children even before Leo and his previous watcher, Damien, had led a team to extricate them and kill the Fallen. Most of the children they’d rescued were still in Damien’s castle, learning how to control their sometimes fearsome power.

“We’ll give them ten more minutes,” he said. “Then we’ll go in.”

They emerged in eight. Niran carried a little girl, no more than three years of age, while Alyah carried a baby and three women walked behind them, Sura following. One of the women was visibly pregnant, though Kyra suspected another might be from the softness around her face. The other woman looked nearly dead. She followed Alyah closely, and Kyra suspected the baby the Irina singer was carrying was a Grigori son who had nearly drained his mother of life.

We’re all murderers. We kill our own mothers when they give us life.

Her brother’s bitter words never left her. Kyra’s own mother was dead, of course. All the human mothers were. Looking at Niran and Sura, Kyra wondered if they carried the same guilt that Kostas carried like a yoke around his neck.

“Can I help?” she asked Alyah.

Alyah nodded to the nearly dead woman. “Do you speak any French?”

“I do.” Kyra approached the woman, who began to cry and reach for her baby.

“Please,” she said in broken French. “Please, my son.”

“What is your name?” Kyra asked, bringing a blanket and a bottle of water to the woman. “Look, my friend is being so gentle with him. I promise—”

“He’s my son,” the woman said.

“She’s from a hill tribe,” Alyah said. “I tried to explain to the others, but I don’t think she understood me.”

Kyra put the blanket around the woman’s thin shoulders and helped her into the back of the van while Leo and the others helped the other women into the middle seats.

“Sit next to us with the baby,” she told Alyah. “She’s not going to listen unless you bring him close enough for her to see him.”

Through rudimentary French, Kyra tried to explain to the human woman why her own child could be making her ill, but Kyra didn’t know how much the woman understood. Eventually, as the van bumped back to the country inn, the human woman fell asleep, her bronze skin sallow and her cheeks hollow with sickness.

“I’m hoping Ginny brought Kenneth,” Alyah said.

“Kenneth?”

Alyah smiled. “In another life, he’s a linguistics professor at the university. Kenneth is originally from Hong Kong. He speaks and writes almost every language in Southeast Asia fluently. Preserving local languages is his passion. I think this girl might be from the Wa people. Part of her tribe lives in Yunnan Province, and Kenneth has probably studied them.”

“How likely is Ginny to have brought him?” Kyra reached for the baby wrapped in a colorful pink cloth. “She’s clearly attached, but she can’t continue to care for him as she has been or she’ll die. I don’t think she really understood what I was trying to tell her.”

Alyah happily handed the baby over to Kyra. “I’m hopeful,” she said. “Kenneth is incurably curious. If Ginny told him she was going into Burma to get some women out, he might have volunteered.”

Kyra wrapped the swaddling more tightly around the sleeping baby. Despite his mother’s sickness, he was round-cheeked and blooming with health, sleeping peacefully with two fingers stuck in his mouth.

Perfect. All the babies were so perfect.

Her heart twisted.

What would it be like to have a child of her own? Was it possible if she and Leo mated? Her mind supplied the dream of a round-cheeked, blond baby with vivid blue eyes and milk-pale skin. She glanced up to see Leo watching her with an expression she couldn’t read.

Longing. It might have been longing. Or that might have been her own.

She kissed the silky black hair of the boy in her arms and held him as they bumped over the country roads.

For now, the little boy was the son of a Fallen angel.

For now, his fate was balanced on the edge of a knife.