John pointed to the kid. Then pointed to the center of his own chest. Then he curled his upper lip and tapped his fang with his finger. After that, he made a slashing motion in front of his own throat.

“You were alone, too? In the human world.”

John nodded grimly.

“Really? I thought I was the only one.” The boy took a deep breath. “It’s kind of a relief to know that isn’t the case.”

When John nodded once again, the kid half-smiled. “No offense, I’d rather we have winning the lottery in common.”

The two of them laughed, the young with sound, John without.

Not that the difference mattered.

In making the immunology pitch, Sarah had played the only card she had. Her instincts were telling her that her time with the group was ending. Somehow, they were either going to disappear on her, or disappear her—although not in a mortal sense: At no time had she felt threatened or fearful for her life. But this secretive enclave of … she didn’t know what … had resources, talent and intelligence, and clearly liked to stay under the radar.

She thought of the security guard at BioMed. Kraiten, himself. She couldn’t begin to explain how the commandos had seemed to take control of those men. And the fact that she didn’t understand so much of what had happened made her want to know more about them. Was it the researcher in her?

Or maybe something more primal?

Across the kitchen, leaning back against the counter, the commando with the red-and-black hair was looking at her with the kind of speculation usually reserved for women who were not like Sarah. And no, she didn’t mean that she wasn’t attractive. But those hooded eyes, the fixated stare, the erotic air around his big body, were more often directed at those who put their sexuality on display and encouraged the currency exchange of sex and attraction with men.

Meanwhile, she was looking like a hot mess over here in the damn hazmat suit.

Unless, of course, he had a fetish thing for weather balloons.

“You’ve never told me your name,” she blurted. When he hesitated to respond, she had to smile. “Top secret, huh.”

“Is it important?”

“It’s where most people start when they want to get to know each other.”

Abruptly, his voice dropped low, the tone deepening. “Do you want to know me?”

The words were simple. The question behind the curtain of those syllables was anything but.

Sarah glanced down at her hands. It had been so long, she thought.

“Sorry,” he muttered.

“Yes,” she said without looking up. “I do want to know you.”

That scent, that cologne he wore, returned to her nose, and she swore the smell of it gave her a contact high: All at once, she was floating in her own body.

“Sarah.”

Taking a deep breath, she shook her head. “I’m not good at this.”

“Good at what.”

She wanted to tell him that she hadn’t been with anyone since Gerry died, but she didn’t want to dwell on that. People were allowed to move on, weren’t they? And it had been two years since he’d been gone. Two years … which had been preceded by a lot of lonely nights.

And it was funny, in the midst of this drama, this storm of incomprehensible scope and unprecedented magnitude, she found herself wanting to break free of everything: Her humdrum life, her complicated grief, her sense that she had somehow missed her future because nothing had ended up as it was supposed to.

Gerry gone. Her alone. Now her job likely over—because she’d trespassed at her goddamn research facility, busted out a hostage patient, and gone on the lam with a bunch of commandos who were so far off the grid, they had their own medical team.

“Lam”? Or was it “lamb”? She didn’t even know what the proper term/spelling was.

Because, hello, the closest she had ever come to committing a crime was parking too close to a frickin’ fire hydrant.

Sarah rubbed her aching head. Hell, maybe the tossing sea of emotion she was in was part of her attraction to this stranger. He represented an anonymous outlet for all the energy she couldn’t seem to hold inside her skin—

When a floorboard creaked, she looked up.

He was standing in front of her, this incredibly tall man with that hair, those peach-colored eyes … that body …

Okay, fine. The attraction was also probably his body, she decided. He would look amazing laying naked in messy sheets, all those muscles on display and his … sword of love … all erect and—

Sword of love? Had her brain really just spit that one out?

And please, God, let her have kept that to herself.

“Sarah …”

The way he said her name was a caress, something tactile as opposed to just sound through air. And as she allowed her eyes to travel down his chest to his hips, it became abundantly clear he could more than follow up on the sexual tension between them.

He was fully aroused. And not bothering to hide it in the slightest.

“Yes,” she said.

As she spoke, she was aware that she had answered the question that arousal of his was asking: She didn’t know where and she didn’t know when, but she and this stranger were going to be together.

The doctor came into the kitchen. “Okay. Let’s bring you in. Let’s do it.”

Yes, Sarah thought to herself as she got up from the table. We’re going to.

Throe, son of Throe, sat at a Louis XV bureau plat in a canary-yellow parlor in a mansion he had inherited from a distant relative because of a murder.

Or at least that was how he had come to frame his largesse. In reality, he had no official property rights to the home and he’d had no relation to the deceased other than sharing the social status and DNA common to all aristocrats. Still, he had possession of the structure, and that was not going to be challenged by rightful heirs because no one knew the previous owner was dead.

Fine, he had previously shared such status. But the genetic ties were immutable.

And he did have a blood connection to the male of worth who had been stabbed.

Throe had ordered the murder to be committed.

Looking around at the damask wallpaper, the Aubusson rug, the oil paintings of distinguished males and winsome females, he felt an existential calm bloom within his body. He had been on the outs for so long, his forced tenure with the Band of Bastards a period in his life he would sooner forget: That centuries of fighting and surviving in the Old World with Xcor’s group of rogue soldiers had been an aberrant interruption of where he had started and where he was now, a bout of existential flu, a passing infection that his destiny had managed to surmount and cure itself of.

He put his hand on the Book. “Isn’t that right, darling.”

As his palm made contact with the ancient tome’s leather cover, he felt a shimmer travel up his arm to his heart—and the resulting resonance in the center of his chest was rather like the warmth one felt when complimented or hugged, a reassuring glow of happiness, a subtle charge of well-being flaring where one needed it most.

His ambitions were finally gathering momentum once again and it was all because of the Book. Courtesy of its powers, he had conjured weapons from thin air.

Shadows which did his bidding.

The ghostly forms were the perfect fighters, capable of killing at the slightest direction from him and requiring no armaments, no ammo, no food or rest. And just as significant, they had no independent will or aspiration. They were content to serve him as he saw fit, with no chance of argument or threat of mutiny.