Aidan Murphy took a deep lungful of the cold night air, perfumed with pine needles and sap. It didn’t clear his head the way he’d hoped. The mental clouds that had been intermittent a few weeks ago had grown thicker, his moments of absolute lucidity more rare. He felt the call of daysleep earlier each morning, and awoke later each evening.

In between, he walked in fog.

All he could do was take his turn among the vampires of his scathe, staking out the thick woods surrounding Penton and trying to avoid conversations that would reveal his lack of mental clarity. This much he knew: if his people realized his condition, they would panic. Soon, he would have to talk to Mirren about taking on more responsibilities. Maybe taking over altogether. Aidan felt death moving closer.

At least so far, their stakeouts had held the Tribunal’s hired fangs at bay. Will had come up with the idea of building a vampire version of deer stands or hunting blinds, wooden platforms hidden in the branches of the sturdy oak trees that interspersed the pines. The perches gave the Penton sentries a good view of the surrounding forest floor below. Lookout teams manned the state highway on either side of town, as well as the interstate highway almost ten miles to the west.

Sitting in his modified deer stand with his .45 and a bulky pack of ammo, Aidan was ready to stop any stranger trying to enter his town without a damned good excuse. And Penton was still his town, even though, more and more, he felt as if he were losing his grasp on it. The Penton he’d built and had come to love seemed every day to fade like an old photograph, dimming his heart and mind with it. His soul lay with his mate in a lightfast room rebuilt beneath the old Penton Clinic. His town lay in heaps of rubble, although Will and Mirren had been busy rebuilding.

God, had it been only three months since the Tribunal-related attack had left him so badly injured that he’d unconsciously drawn enough strength from Krys to put her in a coma? He and the woman he loved were in a life-and-death standoff now, and he didn’t know what to do. The mighty Aidan Murphy, who’d built a town using his wits instead of his vampire brawn, had no answers. If he drew enough strength to fully heal, Krys would die. If she pulled more from him, he also might die; he’d certainly be incapacitated.

And then Penton would die.

Exaggerating your own importance much? The thought came to him in the deep, rumbling voice of his second-in-command. Mirren had the trust of the town, and they would follow him. But the man had never wanted to lead. His other lieutenants were capable men and women, smart and dedicated. Will, Randa, Robin, Nik, Hannah. All loyal, but not charismatic enough to hold the community together. Except Cage. Everyone respected serious, powerful Cage Reynolds, but did they know him well enough to stay here if things got worse?

A noise from the woods pulled Aidan from his swirl of thoughts. He closed his eyes and tried to focus with his other senses. Beneath the cracking of tree limbs and soft hoot of a nearby owl came soft footfalls on the floor of the pine forest. Two sets, maybe three. He lifted his head and took a deep breath, sorting through the slight scent signatures coming his way. Three people, two of them vampire, one human. None were part of his scathe.

A few months ago, three against one would have been odds he’d take, but Aidan’s right hand shook as he pulled the .45 from its shoulder holster. He clamped his left hand around his right to steady it. He’d have to shoot two-handed and even then….

He sent a mental signal to Randa Thomas, who had the nearest stakeout spot to his, and hoped she got it. As a strong master vampire, he had the ability to communicate with those blood-bonded to him, but that ability had been hit and miss lately. He needed backup and sharp wits.

“Stop where you are,” he shouted, and the soft shuffling noises quieted. “Identify yourselves.”

“Jim Lesser, from Atlanta, and my human familiar.”

A female voice added, “Cindy Jones. I’m Jim’s fam.”

They had their answers ready, but not all had spoken.

“And your other companion?”

A pause, then Jim again. “There’s only the two of us. Can we talk to you face to face? We want refuge in Penton, away from the Tribunal’s hired fighters. Is it okay to move forward?”

Aidan frowned. Had he imagined the third scent? Not trusting his own abilities, doubting himself…he hated it. “Come forward, slowly.”

He jumped from the platform onto the springy forest floor of pine needles, fighting for a second to keep his balance. At least he’d managed to hang onto the damned pistol.

Taking cover behind the thick trunk of the oak, he waited to see who appeared. He wouldn’t kill them unless he had to, although the curved blade of his kukri would make quick work of removing a heart. If they appeared sincere, he’d send them back to Atlanta with a time for a future meeting. They would not enter Penton tonight, in any case.

The moonlight shone strongly enough to cast a soft yellow light on the couple that walked into the clearing before him.

“Stop there.” Aidan took a moment to study them. The vampire male was of medium height, Caucasian, his human age about forty. The female human was older, in her forties or fifties. It was hard to tell these days. There was no sign of a third person, and Aidan could no longer filter out the scent of another vampire.

He stepped from behind the tree. “Drop any weapons, and don’t tell me you have none because I’d call that bullshit.”

The man and woman looked at each other and the guy who called himself Jim nodded. They both pulled out small-caliber handguns and dropped them on the ground, kicking them out of reach at Aidan’s prompt.

“Knives too, and rope,” Aidan said. No vampire traveled without at least one knife, preferably one with a silver blade since silver slowed vampire healing and strength.

The male dropped a shiny blade on the straw next to the guns. “That’s all we have.”

Aidan studied them, trying to get some sense of deceit or sincerity. “No one enters Penton at night and not without prior approval and a background check. If you’re serious about joining us, you’ll have to set up a meeting in Atlanta next time we recruit.”

“But we walked here from the state line. We can’t get back before daylight.” Jim sounded too calm to be truly anxious about being caught unprotected after sunrise, which raised Aidan’s bullshit meter. This guy was spewing rehearsed lines. “Just let us stay through daysleep, and then we’ll go back tomorrow and do it however you want.”

Right. Let the vampire sleep and his human free to roam Penton all day and spy, or worse? Not likely. “Sorry, but no. It’s easy enough to find daysleep spots in these woods. Look for caves in the hills.”

“You’re Aidan Murphy, aren’t you?” The male’s eyes grew lighter—either he was suddenly horny or hungry, which Aidan doubted, or he was excited about recognizing Penton’s leader. “Man, I really admire what you’re doing.”

“That won’t help you—oof!”

A blur of red and the momentum of a freight train knocked Aidan off his feet at the same time as he registered a rifle shot coming from somewhere on his left and a handgun blast from in front of him.

Randa Thomas’s hair shone red-gold in the moonlight. Aidan had barely registered that she was the freight train who’d run over him when she fired her own pistol twice, taking down the vampire male, Jim, who’d almost reached them, another gun in his hand. The female, who held her own blade, also hit the ground.

“Any reason not to kill them?” Randa glanced down at Aidan. The concern in her green eyes made him want to crawl back onto his tree platform and hide in shame.

He shook his head, and watched as she thrust her own blade into the vampire’s chest, cracked open his ribcage, and removed the heart. She threw the steaming lump of muscle a few feet away from the body, then checked the human’s pulse and shook her head. “She’s already dead.”

“Good. Leave them as an example of what happens when you try to visit Penton without permission.” Will Ludlam’s voice preceded him from the wooded area to the left of the clearing. His blond hair was in its usual tousle, his mouth in its crooked grin, dimples catching the moonlight. In his right hand, Will’s own combat knife was covered with blood. In his left, he carried a rifle.

“There was another one, then.” That accounted for the extra shot. Aidan’s bones ached, and he struggled to climb to his feet. “I thought so, but then…” Then he had psyched himself out of trusting his own instincts. Shit. “Thanks, both of you. Randa, you got my message and contacted Will?” They were mates, which gave them an automatic psychic bond, but Will was also a master vampire, albeit a new one.

“No, I was already on my way to find you when I found our other friend—a male vampire, by the way. Never seen him before, but he was taking aim.” Will held up the rifle.

Aidan leaned against the oak tree, trying to make it look casual instead of what it was—an attempt to fight through a wave of dizziness and shock at how close he’d come to letting himself be duped and killed. “Why were you looking for me?”

“Mirren sent me after getting a call from Melissa. We need you back at the clinic. Krys is waking up.”

Relief washed through Aidan like a cool stream in a desert. Thank God, if God was really up there, listening to the prayers he’d been spinning out day after day. He couldn’t feel any change in his bond to his mate, but what had he been doing normally for the past three months? It had to be true. Melissa was Aidan’s longtime familiar and friend—they’d been together quite a while before she’d been turned vampire herself. She and Mirren would never give him false hope.

“Will you guys stay here and finish my watch?” He stepped away from the tree and managed to stay upright. Was he already feeling stronger?

Aidan pretended he didn’t see the exchange of worried looks between Will and Randa. And he pretended he didn’t realize that Randa offered to take his shift at watch while Will accompanied him to the clinic. He knew however much Will might care about Krys, his reason for volunteering was to make sure Aidan didn’t fall over in a heap along the way.

Aidan didn’t care. He only wanted Krys.