My heart damn near stops in my chest. The camera pans to the vampire tent, and I curse, needing it back on Violet.

“Oh, the show’s getting sad now. She’s about to learn the hard way what you couldn’t make her understand,” Pandora says with a sigh. “But at least it’s not my pets anymore.”

The vampires are barely holding Arion back, as the fury doubles in his eyes.

“Violet said to let her handle this. As your future bride, she deserves that respect,” the triplets say in an attempt to manipulate him.

It seems to mostly work, but it’s obvious his composure is a thin shell at best.

The camera pans to Damien, who is staring with a furrowed brow, while he slowly stands to his feet. He stares in some confusion ahead of him.

The camera pans back, just as Violet stands and snaps her broken neck back into place. Her arm cracks and pops as she sets the broken bones there, all while never making any sort of verbal noise.

Her back stays turned, and she smiles as she looks over her shoulder at Idun.

“I don’t know the rules, but isn’t excessive violence breaking one or two?” Violet asks her with more brass than brain.

“Just kill me and get her off the field,” I tell the bitch, who’s forcing me to watch this while bound in chains.

“And spare you the indignity of being all tied up in a trap while your young and dumb girlfriend gets punished for your own insolence? Absolutely not. Now you know how it felt to watch my Bobo wither away under her reign. And she’s just getting started, Van Helsing. I’m afraid you stuck your head in the sand for too long, and now you’ve got it up in the clouds. One day you’ll look ahead and actually see what’s really going on in front of you.”

“Then help me, Pandora. I’ve gotten quicker, smarter, faster, and more determined. Arion’s in the best shape he’s ever been in. Damien is at an all-time high, and he’s actually a contender for a change. Emit’s gained strength since his mating, and his wolf is in more harmony with him than ever before. If we had your help, we wouldn’t need two or three centuries to dull her image. With you, we could do it in under a century,” I tell her.

“Recruiting me this late in the game will reap you no awards, Van Helsing,” she says, holding my gaze. “I’m not as strong as I once was. You missed your opportunity. My magic has faded and withered and bled back into the world I borrowed it from, since I held onto it for much longer than I was meant to have it. Your ‘plan’ is a hopeful fool’s errand, and you know it, or you would have tried such a thing long, long ago. It’s only now you’ve turned into a hopeful fool, though, so I suppose hope is the thing to blame for making someone outrageously idiotic.”

She presses closer, almost as though she’s planning to tell me a secret.

“I trained an occult of witches who had small traces of blood magic in their trees,” she whispers conspiratorially. “Who do you think was leading and hiding the shifters during the long years she was underground?”

I tilt my head, studying the batshit crazy woman anew.

“Why would you do that? Why stay loyal?”

“To raise Idun, of course. I’m loyal because she’s in charge, and there’s no changing that. The witches or shifters would fetch the Portocale sacrifices. I’d have my occult use their magic to help me siphon the life from them into these,” she says, holding up a locket.

“Then I’d wear the necklace to one of the gravesites and started the long process of unsealing Idun’s graves. All while sending you into pain and misery upon the death of one of those orange-smelling gypsies.”

“As well as the Simpletons, who are also affected by that curse,” I point out.

“It was going to happen anyway. However, their Portocale curse broke after the first death woke them. Marta Portocale severed that curse, and could have done the same for you all along. But she hated you and loved your suffering.”

She’s so genuine in dropping that last big dig, that it distracts me from the next bone-crunching I hear. For the moment, I’d rather stick my head in the sand than see Violet go through this pointless beating.

“How could you possibly know that?” I ask her, giving up on struggling with the chains.

She turns her head to the TV for the first time, and I summon the silver, feeling it slide into my fingers. I work it to a short blade, and manage to stab into the chain…

The chain doesn’t budge.

Pressing as hard as I can, with as little leverage as my position allows, I strain, desperately waiting to hear the telling snap of the metal.

But this metal is stronger than my silver, because there’s no give. She found a way to fully confine me. When I come back from the death I’ll likely suffer this day, I’ll know everything there is to fucking know about this metal.

But today…I’m defeated.

It’s rare I step into a trap.

It’s rarer that I die after someone’s been foolish enough to capture me alive.

It’s rarest to have an adversary who knows more about my strengths and weaknesses than even I do.

She looks my way, giving me a cold smile.

“I know things because I pay attention,” she says, smiling tightly. “Just like I knew your girl was no ordinary Portocale. She killed my witches and the shifters I borrowed, during the times they tried to siphon her life. Terribly rude young lady, that girl.”

She tugs at a strand of her hair, eyes getting colder.

“She’s been quite the enigma until recently. Now she’s rather anticlimactic,” Pandora carries on.

“Why would you raise Idun when you hate everything she’s done with the eternity you helped her gain? Give me a real answer this time, Pandora.”

She looks back at the screen, and I look too, just as Violet is slammed into once more. This time, her bones break so badly she looks unnatural and dead when she lands.

When it pans to Damien and Arion, they’re both unconscious, and father is holding a bag of salt. He whirls around, as though he’s searching for ghosts.

Where the fucking hell is that useless wolf?

Anger stirs in my body, as the defeat sinks in.

A tickle at my hand only mildly distracts me, until it starts spreading upward. When the tickle continues all the way to my wrist, I start noticing a wet sensation as well.

Looking down, I barely catch a glimpse of silver through the chains, as the tickle spreads to my elbow.

“What the hell is going on?” I ask as calmly as I can.

She cuts her gaze back toward me, spots the silver working its way up, and shakes her head.

“Vancetto Van Helsing was a naughty boy. You tried to cut me, didn’t you?” she asks in a tone that suggests she thinks I’m a young lad.

She wags her finger in front of my face.

“I merely tried to cut free,” I say in my defense.

Her jaw tics with genuine anger. “So you could do what? Try to kill me? None of us can die, and we still keep trying to kill each other. I never could understand Idun’s logic.”

“Says the madwoman who raised her,” I remind her very angrily.

“A promise was set in stone. I didn’t want the promise broken to Idun. The universe has an active hand in righting our wrongs in some confounding and terrifying ways, at times. You failed to raise them, so something unique and different was born into the world. Then you found that unique treasure, and…you stuck your dick in it, painted it a target for Idun, and now you’ll lose it. Just as all of us have lost something. It keeps us humble, at least.”