With a soft sigh, Layla stirred against him, repositioning her head on his arm. Seeking to soothe her further, he rubbed her back slowly with his palm.

He knew he should close his eyes and follow her example, but there was no chance of the latter. Fortunately, he was used to operating on no sleep.

Lying there in the dark with his love, Xcor marveled anew at how she had transformed him. And then he went back into his past.

It was hard not to wonder what would have happened if he had decided not to rob that group of fighters in that particular wood on that specific night. Harder still not to regret that single decision that had led to so much else.

Because an evil had found him …

The Bloodletter.

Dearest Virgin Scribe, Xcor had thought as he had stared up at the tremendous male vampire who had appeared in the wood from out of nowhere and thrown him onto the ground. Indeed, it seemed as though Xcor had sought to rob, but then had to kill … a squadron of the Bloodletter’s males.

He was going to die for this.

“Have you nothing to say,” the great warrior demanded as he stood over Xcor. “No apology, for what you have taken from me?”

In the now-brisk wind, the Bloodletter stepped from Xcor and went over to pick up the severed head by the hair, dangling it such that blood dripped from the open neck.

“Do you have any idea how long it takes to train one of these?” The tone was more annoyed than anything else. “Years. You have, in one night—in but one fight—robbed me of a vast investment of my fucking time and energies.”

With that, he cast the cranium aside and Xcor shuddered as the head bounced through the undergrowth.

“You,” the Bloodletter pointed at him, “shall make amends unto me.”

“No.”

For a moment, the Bloodletter seemed taken aback. But then he smiled with all his teeth. “What say you?”

“There will be no amends.” Xcor got to his feet. “None.”

The Bloodletter threw his head back and laughed, the sound traveling through the night and flushing out an owl overhead and a deer elsewhere.

“Are you mad, then? Is it insanity that gave you such strength?”

Xcor slowly eased to the side and retrieved the scythe once again. His palms were sweating and the grip was slippery, but he held onto the weapon with all the strength he could.

“I know who you are,” Xcor said softly.

“Aye. Do tell.” More with that hideous, bloodthirsty grin, as the gusts picked up long, braided hair. “I rather like to hear my accomplishments come out of the mouths of others—before I kill them and fuck their corpse. Tell me, is that what you’ve heard of me?” The Bloodletter took a step forth. “Is it? Is that what horrifies you so? I can promise you, you won’t feel a thing. Unless I decide I want you whilst you still breathe. Then … then you will know the pain of possession, I promise you that.”

It was as if Xcor were being confronted by pure evil, a demon given unto flesh and placed upon the earth to torment and torture souls who were otherwise more pure.

“You and your males are thieves yourselves.” Xcor tracked every twitch in that body, from the curl of the hands to the shift of weight from one foot to another. “You are defilers of females and law unto yourselves, serving not the one, true King.”

“You think Wrath is coming for you the now? Truly?” The Bloodletter made a show of looking around the vacant forest. “You think your benevolent ruler is going to turn up here and intercede upon your behalf and save you from me? Your loyalty is commendable, I suppose—but it is not a shield against this.”

The sound of metal upon metal was like a scream in the night, the blade the Bloodletter outed nearly as long as that of the scythe.

“Still pledging allegiance, are you?” the Bloodletter drawled. “Are you aware, I wonder, that the King is nowhere to be found? That after the slaughter of his parents, he hath disappeared? So no, I think you shall not be saved by the likes of him.” A pumping growl started up. “Or anybody else.”

“I shall save myself.”

At that moment, the clouds lost their battle with the wind elements, the heavy cover breaking apart and providing an oculus through which brilliant moonlight shone down from the night sky, bright as the daylight Xcor hadn’t seen since before his transition.

The Bloodletter recoiled. And then angled his head to one side.

There was a long moment of silence, during which naught stirred save for the pine boughs and the underbrush.

And then the Bloodletter … reholstered his dagger.

Xcor did not put down his weapon. He knew not what was transpiring, but he was very aware one should not trust one’s enemy—and he had put himself against this feared warrior through his actions in self-defense.

“Come with me then.”

At first, Xcor did not comprehend the words. And even when he did, he did not understand.

He shook his head. “I shall go to my grave a’fore I go anywhere with you. ’Tis one and the same, at any rate.”

“No, you shall come with me. And I shall teach you the ways of war and you shall serve beside me.”

“Why would I e’er do that—”

“It is your destiny.”

“You do not know me.”

“I know exactly who you are.” The Bloodletter nodded at the decapitated body. “And it makes this much more understandable.”

Xcor frowned, a sudden quickening that was not about fear vibrating in his veins. “What lies do you speak.”

“Your face is the giveaway. I thought you were but a rumor, a slice of gossip. But no, not with your dagger hand and that lip. You come with me and I shall train you and put you to work against the Lessening Society—”

“I am … a common thief. Not a warrior.”

“I know of no thief who could do what you just did. And you realize this as well. Deny it all you like, but you have been bred for this outcome, lost into the world, now found.”

Xcor shook his head. “I shall not go with you, no … no, I shall not—”

“You are my son.”

Now Xcor lowered his scythe. Tears came to his eyes, and he blinked them away, determined to show no weakness.

“You shall come with me,” the Bloodletter repeated. “And I shall teach you proper the ways of war. I shall harden you as steel tempered by fire, and you shall not disappoint me.”

“Do you know my mahmen still?” Xcor asked weakly. “Where is she?”

“She doesn’t want you. She never did.”

This was true, Xcor thought. This was what the nursemaid had told him.

“So you will come with me now, and I will pave the way for your destiny. You shall succeed me … if the training does not kill you.”

Xcor returned to the present by opening lids he was unaware of having closed. The Bloodletter had been right about some things, wrong about others.

The training in the war camp had been so much worse than Xcor could ever have imagined, the fighters therein battling each other for scarce food and water and also when they were pitted one against the next for sport and contest. It had been a brutal existence that had, night after night, week after week, month in and out … throughout the course of those five years … done exactly what the Bloodletter had promised.

Xcor had been hardened into living steel, his compassion and emotions stripped free of him as if they had never existed, the cruelty upon cruelty layered upon him until his nature had been suppressed by all that he had at first seen, and then later done.

Sadism could be trained into a person. He was living proof of that. And it was also viral, such that he had done to Throe what the Bloodletter had done to himself, subjecting the former aristocrat to a barrage of indignities and challenges and insults. The effect had been similar as well: Throe, too, had risen to the tests, but also been soured by them.

As it was, so it had turned out to be. Although unlike Xcor, Throe seemed not to be mediated by any blessed force, his ambition as yet unchecked.

Or at least it had been prior to Xcor’s abduction—and there was little to suggest any change in the male’s proclivities or ambitions might have happened in the passage of time.