Or what if she’d moved from where she’d received Havers’s surgical aftercare, but stayed in the same town? The fact that the female hadn’t included her home’s location or a phone number had made sense to him because she hadn’t been any surer of where he was than he had been of her identity. And as vampires living in a world dominated by humans, everyone was careful.

Especially someone like her who had been tortured by the other species.

But now, he wondered. Was this all a ruse? Except then how had she known what had happened as he’d broken into the lab?

These questions burned up the short distance to the front door, and out of the corner of his eye, he noted that Xhex had discreetly taken out a handgun.

Curling up a fist, he knocked to announce their presence—and did not like the way the panels rattled in the frame. When there was no answer, he knocked again.

The door had an old-fashioned iron latch instead of a modern knob, and as he lifted the weight, he expected the metal to fall right off its mounting. Instead, he got resistance as he tried to push and then pull things open.

He knocked a third time. And then his training and experience as a Brother took over. This position at the door was too much exposure, sentries in the woods notwithstanding.

Murhder turned his shoulder to the flimsy barrier and busted through it, his momentum carrying him into an ice-cold center room.

Silence.

Taking out a penlight, he moved the thin beam around, fine dust turning what was a spotlight into a flood. There was a threadbare sofa. A TV, which surprised him until he recognized it as being from the nineties. A desk with …

Walking across the floorboards, he trained the light on a letter that was partially written on paper that was the same as the missives that had been sent to him. And sure enough, in the same hand, the salutation was to Eliahu Rathboone.

He didn’t bother reading the two and a half paragraphs.

“She’s here. Or she was—”

The moan was so soft, a creak of the floor beneath his feet nearly drowned it out. Hurrying toward the sound, he went into what looked like a cold-water kitchen, everything painfully neat on the pitted counters, the old seventies-era refrigerator making a rhythmic choking noise.

The bedroom was in the back on the right, and now he could scent a female. But she had a terrible visitor with her.

Death.

The acrid and achingly sad scent of the dying was heavy in the still, frigid air, and as Murhder breached a narrow doorway, he clasped the shard of seeing glass once more.

“You found me,” a weak voice said.

In the glow of the penlight, a bed was revealed, and upon it, under layers of handmade quilts, a female was on her side facing him, her skeletal visage on a thin pillow. Wisps of hair, gray and curled, formed a halo around the stark bones of her features, and her skin was the color of fog.

Murhder went to her, dropping to his knees.

As her sunken eyes sought his, a tear escaped and dropped off the bridge of her nose. “You came.”

“I did.”

Strangers they were. And yet as he reached for her hand, it was a family connection.

“I have no more moons left,” she whispered. “And my night skies are going starless.”

“I will do what you need me to do.” He rushed the words, in the event she passed right now. “I will find your son, and I will get you medical help—”

“Too late … for me.”

He looked over his shoulder at Xhex. “Get the Brothers. Bring them here to help her—”

The hand in his own squeezed. “No, it’s all right. I know you will not fail … I cannot hold on any longer, and I do not want my beloved son to see me like this.”

Xhex disappeared, and he was relieved. She would bring aid.

“What is your name, female?” he asked as those lids lowered.

“Ingridge.”

“Where are your people?”

“I have been shamed. Leave them be … I told you where my son is. Go, rescue him, make him safe. He would have come unto me here if he had escaped. He knows of this place. We were to meet here if e’er we were separated.”

“Ingridge, stay with me,” Murhder prompted as she fell silent. “Ingridge … stay …”

“Find my son. Save him.”

“Don’t you want to see him again?” Murhder was aware he could not promise such a reunion, but he would say anything to keep her on this side of the grave. “Hold on, help is coming—”

“Save him.”

Beneath the faded quilts, her body jerked and she inhaled sharply as if a sudden pain had gripped her. And then came an exhale that lasted as long as eternity.

“Ingridge,” he choked out. “You need to stay here …”

As he tried to find words to compel her unto life rather than death, he thought about the testimony of wahlkers, those who had come up to the brink of death yet returned unto the living, those stories of a foggy landscape that parted to reveal a white door. If you opened the door, you were lost from the earthly world forever.

“Do not open that portal,” he said sharply. “Do not step through. Ingridge, come back from the portal.”

He had no clue whether the command made sense or even if she could hear him. But then her eyes popped open and she seemed to focus on him.

“Natelem is his name. I told you where to find him—”

“No, you didn’t—”

Ingridge switched over to the Old Language, the syllables muddled in places, the words running together. “Upon my bed of mortal demise, and with the Virgin Scribe watching o’er me, I hereby grant you all rights and responsibilities o’er my young, Natelem. I seek your acceptance of this precious gift upon your honor as a male of worth.”

Murhder twisted around. He wanted to see Brothers rushing in with a medic.

Not happening.

On to plan B.

Yanking up the tight cuff of the parka, he didn’t get far enough so he ripped off the jacket, and pulled his shirtsleeve up to reveal his wrist.

“Swear it,” she begged. “So that I might die in peace.”

“I swear it.” He met her eyes. “But you’re going to live.”

As she exhaled in relief, he bit into his own vein and then brought the puncture wounds to her mouth. “Drink, take from me and …”

She was still exhaling, her eyes closing, her body loosening, but she opened her mouth prepared to accept what he offered—

“Ingridge,” he said sharply. “Ingridge, take from me.”

His blood, red, warm, vital, dropped onto her lips. Yet she did not respond. There was no turn toward the source, no seal of her mouth upon his vein, no response whatsoever.

Murhder’s heart pounded. “Ingridge! Wake up and drink.”

With his free hand, he awkwardly reached under his extended arm and gently shook her body. Then he did this again, more forcibly—

She rolled off her side onto her back, but the movement was like blocks falling from a stack, not anything that represented volition.

She was gone.

“No …” Murhder swallowed hard. “Don’t go. Not now … please.”

As he argued against the reality before him, his eyes clung to her hollowed face and he prayed for some kind of rousing, his blood slipping down the back of her throat and entering her body, reviving that which was animated no longer.