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Copyright © 2023 by J.D. Monroe

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Editing by Two Birds Author Services

Cover Design by Yocla Designs
Formatting by J.D. Monroe

ISBN: 978-1-944142-57-5
 Contents

Reader Note

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
The Rogue’s Curse - A Sneak Peek

About the Author

Also by J.D. Monroe
 Reader Note

Dearest readers, I want reading to always be a wonderful escape. If you have concerns about tropes
or content, please visit my website for a description of elements in this book.

Thank you and take care of yourselves!

 1

T he pretty blonde passed by the window yet again, blissfully unaware that she was being
watched. She and her partner had dimmed the lights, but vampire vision made her easy to track
each time she passed an open window, a darker form slipping through the shadows.
Blood streaked her delicate hands, which she absently wiped on her jacket from time to time. For
the last ninety-three minutes, Sasha had watched from his perch in a nearby tree as she and her
partner, a brawny man with buzzed black hair, dragged headless vampire corpses through the
darkened house. When the woman raised a question about leaving the heads, her partner snapped
back, “We need to send a message.”
This was not the assignment he had expected. Yet Hugo had been clear.
Kill the vampires. Leave the bodies.
Messages abounded tonight. Like the vampire hunters, Hugo also wanted to send a message,
though Sasha could only guess at its intended audience. Most of his waking hours were filled with
uncertainty, but Hugo was always sure of how to move forward and ensure that Sasha was useful.
They were in a fight for their very survival, Hugo had said. Evil vampires threatened the city and
endangered good vampires like Sasha and his family. At Hugo’s command, Sasha had put a dozen
vampires down in the last few weeks. Each mission had begun with a stern reminder: This is a top-
secret mission of the utmost importance, Sasha. You must be discreet. The others will be distracted
if they know.
Sasha had met only one ‘other’, his somber brother Julian. Weeks ago, he had awoken in a strange
place with an unfamiliar face looming over him. After reassuring Sasha that he was safe, Julian
introduced himself, told him that his memory was broken, and promised to protect him until it was
healed. He visited Sasha every few days to share a meal, and he was pleasant enough company. But
even when Julian smiled, his eyes were filled with sorrow, his shoulders heavy with a secret burden.
Before leaving, he always thanked Sasha for his dedication to his family.
That dedication was aided by Hugo, whose unflinching certainty felt reassuring. Not only did
Hugo know the way forward, he found a way for Sasha to be of use. Despite his broken memory, his
senses were sharp, his instincts keen. The rules were simple: Leave no witness. Keep it quiet. When
in doubt, ask Hugo.
So when Sasha arrived at the big, gated house out in the suburbs and found two live humans
instead of the vampire nest he expected, he immediately contacted Hugo with a text message.
The response came quick and clear, as always.

Kill one. Bring the other in.

 That was an easy enough choice. The blonde looked delicate and soft; he didn’t particularly like
the idea of killing her, even if she would have gladly killed him given the chance. That left her
partner, who finally stepped outside and into Sasha’s sights. The man’s heartbeat accelerated as he
stepped into the dark of night, hinting at his fear. He’d left the door open, but Sasha could grab him
and have him halfway down the block before the woman heard his cry for help.
Running his tongue over his fangs, Sasha leaned out of the concealing branches of his tree perch
and prepared to pounce. A second heartbeat layered the first, and he froze as the woman stepped
outside and said, “Did you hear back from Jonas?”
The older man hurried inside and closed the door behind him as they discussed their orders and
who was going to drive across town to meet with someone named Alicia.
Dammit.
A minute later, a mechanical rumbling accompanied a rising garage door. A black van backed out
of the garage. From his vantage point in the tree, Sasha watched the human man driving down the
winding driveway before pulling through the gates and out of sight.
Below him, the blonde remained in the house.
Alone.
Hugo wanted one alive, and that’s what he would get. Maybe this one would know how to bring
back his memory.
Sasha dropped from the tree and landed silently, then sprang forward. A belly full of fresh blood
made him quick on his feet. Clearing the yard in two long strides, he clambered up the side of the
house to a balcony, where he twisted the metal door handle hard enough to break it.
Inside, the house stank of fresh vampire blood and old decay. Dead vampires smelled different
than dead humans, and the house was filled with a foul blend of both. The sickly scent of
decomposition permeated the air, leaving a putrid scent that clung to his skin. Hugo thought the human
owners of the house had been killed by vampires, but it seemed the killers had since been put down,
too.
The balcony door led into a large, empty bedroom. Dark, dried blood splattered the pale gray
bedcovers, which lay puddled at the foot of the bed. Someone had been pulled out of bed here, but the
smell of sweat and fear was old and faded. It had to have been days since the scuffle. A pair of
shattered eyeglasses lay on the ground near the door.
Sasha slipped through the bedroom and lingered at the door to listen. The woman downstairs was
quiet as she moved across the house. Her steps made no sound, but he heard the soft whisper of
fabric, of her arms brushing her sides. For a human, she was extraordinarily graceful and quiet. Her
breathing sounded soft and slow, not the noisy rasping of some humans.
“What am I even looking for?” she asked.
More whispering fabric, then the soft whine of a door opening. A distant wooden creak of
furniture. Then came a rapid clicking sound that intrigued him. Moving as quickly as he could while
keeping quiet, Sasha hurried downstairs and caught her scent. It captured his mind, making him forget
why he was even here.
Beneath the stink of decay and vampire blood and the acrid bite of cleaning products, there was
something achingly familiar. It made him think inexplicably of home, even though he had no idea
where his home was. Something about that sweet scent felt so right and true that it had to be something
he had known before his memory was ruined. Did he know her somehow?
Grabbing onto that lovely thread like a rope, he crept down a dark, narrow hallway lined with
picture frames. Faces smiled from behind the glass, unaware of the violence that had transpired here.
The clicking sound grew louder. Inside a room lined with bookshelves, the blonde woman sat at a
desk with a screen glowing harsh blue against her face. Her eyes were fixed on the screen, giving him
a chance to watch her for a moment.
Long, golden blonde hair was bound back in a ponytail, baring her slender neck. Exertion had
painted her cheeks with a rosy glow. Though she did not speak, she produced a pleasant music of
quiet breaths and a soft, steady heartbeat. Along the side of her neck, her skin twitched ever so
slightly over her carotid artery.
She was such a beautiful creature that he couldn’t bring himself to move closer. Just a few more
seconds to enjoy her essence — rich, warm, and promising something ever sweeter to the taste —
before it was curdled by terror.
For the first time, he did not want to follow Hugo’s orders. Someone so lovely couldn’t have hurt
him and shattered his mind. What if he could simply touch her instead? What if he could ask why he
knew that scent, why it made more sense than even his own name?
The clicking stopped. Blonde hair whipped as she whirled to see him. He froze, captivated by her
stunned gaze.
She gasped and lurched out of the seat, drawing a gun as she went. He dodged. Two gunshots
cracked the silence, followed by two bursts of plaster in the wall. When he stepped into the doorway
again, something clattered at his feet and exploded in a burst of acrid smoke.
Something burned at his nostrils, then his throat, like he’d swallowed acid. Wood poison. Hugo
had made sure he recognized it. Even without breathing, the toxic smoke slithered into him. His
muscles seized, and he had enough foresight to duck behind the doorframe before she fired again.
Footsteps clambered past him, and he gave chase.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she muttered.
Bring one back, Hugo had said. If his orders didn’t provide enough certainty, the searing bite of
poison was enough to convince him she was dangerous.
The woman’s heartbeat thundered like a drumbeat, her sweet scent taking on a sharp bite as
adrenaline flooded her system. He could have found her blindfolded from miles away. Pure predatory
instinct was etched into his bones, written in every single blood cell.
With keys jangling in her hand, she bolted. Sasha barreled into her and pinned her against the front
door. Her head slammed back into his shoulder, one hand swinging wildly. He caught her wrist and
squeezed until her keys clattered to the floor.
Covering her mouth with one hand, he dragged her backward. Muffled screams vibrated against
his hand. Her lithe body bucked against him, but she was weak as a lamb.
Her scent was all over him now. God, it smelled so familiar. It would drive him mad if he
couldn’t pinpoint it.
It was…
Dull teeth sank into his palm and startled him out of his reverie. “Let me go!” she shrieked,
stomping on his foot and throwing an elbow back into his side. She was strong, but the pain was not
enough to make him release his prey.
There was one good way to subdue a human without killing them, and he gave in to that instinct.
With a growl, he bent her head to one side and sank his fangs into her exposed throat.
The first taste of her blood thrust him out of his body and into another plane of existence. Rich,
decadent heat poured down his throat, dissolving every fragment of uncertainty. With each molecule
igniting his senses, he knew her.
The woman went limp in his arms, and she let out a soft sigh before mumbling, “Stop.”
 Regardless of how decadent and rich she tasted, he had to follow orders. Bring one back, Hugo
had commanded. She was his only option.
Reluctantly, he withdrew from her throat, then swiped his thumb over one sharp fang to draw
blood. After smearing his blood on the oozing punctures to heal them, he bit into his palm and
covered her lips.
Cold washed over him as she took a long drink. Then, much to his surprise, she twisted her head
away, digging her fingers into his wrist. “No!”
What?
Humans didn’t usually resist. Hugo told him they liked the taste of vampire blood. But she had
rejected him. It hurt. Was he so unpleasant to taste?
She twisted away from him, but he caught the hood of her jacket and pulled her back. “Don’t make
this harder than necessary,” Sasha said, spinning her around to face him. “I don’t wish to cause you
any pain.”
Her bright gaze slammed into him like a bullet. “Please don’t hurt me,” she whimpered. Tears
welled in her eyes, making him feel strangely guilty. She was so soft and pretty, almost angelic.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said roughly. “Just be calm.”
“I’ll go with you. Please don’t hurt me,” she said softly, her eyes wide and innocent. Their
mingled blood smelled intoxicating. Slowly, she reached up to stroke his arm.
God, her touch felt good. Her hand lifted to his cheek, as if she meant to caress him. Without
meaning to, he leaned into her touch, savoring the warm softness of her fingers on his cheek. He
couldn’t remember ever being touched so gently. He would have given anything to linger here with
her for hours.
Her fearful expression twisted into sheer fury. Excruciating pain radiated from her grasp as she
grabbed his ear and twisted violently. Her other hand swung around to pierce his side. A terrible burn
poured into his chest from a needle in her hand. His vision blurred, but he lunged for her.
She slammed one foot into his kneecap with an awful crunch, and he went down hard. Before he
could recover, she was on his back, legs wrapped around him tight as she drove another sharp
implement into his throat. Wood poison boiled in his veins, making his limbs heavy and sluggish.
She wasn’t so soft and pretty now. He got his hands under him, growled, and tried to get up.
When he rose, she was aiming a gun at him. Unlike Sasha, she did not hesitate.
Three thunderclaps.
Three powerful impacts to his chest.
He flew back and landed hard on his side. Her weight settled on his hips, pressing him to the
ground. One trembling hand slid up his neck, and he felt a shock of sensation as she brushed the red
mark there.
“Bingo,” she muttered. She leaned down to whisper in his ear. “It’s your lucky day. I’m not going
to take your head off.”
He groaned, tried to get up again, but she slammed something into the base of his skull, and the
world went black.
 2

F reaking vampires. Two hefty doses of concentrated wood poison had almost knocked out the
wiry vampire sprawled across the blood-stained rug, but he’d still fought back. The thin stake at
the base of his skull left him paralyzed, but he occasionally let out a soft groan that betrayed the
fact that he was still conscious. The bastard just wouldn’t give up.
Kristina stood in the airy kitchen with a dishtowel pressed to her neck, trying to catch her breath
after the tussle. As a mere mortal, she was accustomed to being outmatched while hunting, but this
tussle had been way damn close.
Don’t ever get lazy, Krissy, her father would say. It only takes one wrong step.
He was right. And if he saw her bloodied neck, he’d just shake his head and say I told you so.
Fighting vampires was never going to be fair or evenly matched. She preferred to kill from far
away when she could, never risking the dangerous gambit of being within arm’s reach. Her body
shook from the adrenaline rush, and she gripped the cold stone counter as she took out her phone.
Two rings. “This is Wynn,” he answered gruffly.
“It’s Kristina. I have a complication,” she said. “Angel just left, but we had a fourth vamp that
jumped me.”
“Is it dead?”
I’m fine, thanks for asking. “Got him knocked down and staked,” she said. “I want to bring him
back.”
“Are we taking pets now? Is this—”
“He’s got an Auberon marking,” she snapped. Did he give this much shit to all the hunters, or just
the ones he shared DNA with?
“Well…that certainly changes things,” he said, all the acid in his tone suddenly neutralized.
“Bring him in. Call Angel and have him come back to you.”
He hung up, leaving her staring at the phone. “Good job, Arensberg,” she muttered. Pulling the
dishtowel away from her neck, she winced and brushed her fingers over the bite mark. A strange
shiver rolled through her, prickling down her spine and settling in her core like molten heat.
She hurried into a bathroom just beyond the kitchen to examine the bite. Angry red marks still
oozed blood, but they weren’t the vicious, ripped wounds she would have expected. And there was
no pain when she touched it, only a strange tingling sensation. If she didn’t know better, she’d have
thought it was a perfectly lovely feeling, like having warm, powerful hands all over her body.
That absurd fantasy had to be the mouthful of vampire blood taking her rational brain for a ride.
Long before Dad had ever put a gun in her hand, he’d hammered home the rules.
Stay out of reach.
 Don’t drink. If you drink, you’re dead.
Don’t look them in the eyes.
Well, she’d failed on all three counts, and she was lucky to still be standing. Given that her fallen
prey hadn’t simply ripped out her jugular, she knew he intended to enthrall her. It took every shred of
her willpower to spit his blood out instead of gulping down that lovely rich liquor. What little had
trickled down her throat had still been enough to sway her, and when she’d stood there and stared up
into those gray-blue eyes, she’d thought inexplicably of how beautiful he was, how full and lush those
blood-stained lips looked.
Thank God her survival instincts eked out enough of a victory to get her away from him. As she
came down from the rush, it was staggering to think of all the what-ifs, a dozen nightmare scenarios of
how it could have gone so much worse. It was pure luck that he’d hesitated instead of immediately
enthralling her.
She tore away from the mirror and hurried back to the fallen vampire. After starting a
speakerphone call to Angel Palacio, her partner for the night, she rifled through the vampire’s
pockets. He was casually dressed in jeans and a dark jacket. He carried no weapons but had a
prepaid burner phone in his jacket pocket. After powering it down to prevent tracking, she shoved it
into her pocket. He had no wallet or ID, but she didn’t carry hers hunting, either. Not all that strange.
“Kristina?” Angel said from her phone.
She gave him the quick version of the story she’d just given Jonas, earning a few holy shits and a
promise that he’d be back soon. After checking that her vampire was still down for the count, she
hurried through the house to gather portable electronics. Her hunt yielded four phones, two tablets,
and two laptops. Surely there had to be something of use here.
The luxurious house in the Atlanta suburbs belonged to the recently and violently departed Landry
family, a pair of empty nesters who seemed to have done nothing wrong except stumble into the sights
of nasty predators. Mrs. Landry lay dead in the laundry room, which had been sealed off for days to
create a pressure cooker of decay that threatened to turn Kristina’s stomach inside out. Her throat was
mangled, an apron of dried blood covering her nightgown. Mr. Landry was dead in one of the smaller
bedrooms, presumably a guest room. His neck and arms were covered in vicious bites, and he didn’t
smell nearly as ripe. He’d probably been kept alive for a few days to feed the vampires.
It was not the first time they’d seen such a scene in the last few weeks, and if they didn’t get this
vampire situation under control, it wouldn’t be the last.
But what had the Auberon vampire been doing here? Was he a straggler who’d just stopped in for
a snack? The other vampires bore an unusual Covenant mark, one she hadn’t seen before coming to
Atlanta. She was calling it the Phantom Court in her notes until she knew more. Some of the other
vampires they’d felled in the last few weeks had born this Phantom mark, while others had been
unmarked. But the Shieldsmen had barely seen or heard from the Blade of Auberon since the
disastrous encounter with Rachel Ryan about a month ago.
Until now.
With spiraling lines raised like old scars on pale skin, her fallen vampire bore the mark of the
Blade of Auberon. He was a golden ticket with bloody fangs, and maybe her key to getting this job
done.
The garage rumbled open, and she nearly screamed in surprise. Angel hurried in and said,
“Krissy, are you okay?” His hand drifted to his neck.
“I’m fine,” she said. “Let’s get him out of here.”
TEN MINUTES LATER, she was dripping with sweat and watching the interstate blur by as Angel hauled
ass to the gated compound out in Kennesaw. Together, they’d manhandled the groaning vampire into
the back of the van and secured his wrists with cable ties. He’d stirred just long enough to look at her
and frown, as if he was confused about how he’d ended up hogtied in the trunk. The accusation in his
eyes made her feel guilty, and she slammed the back door before he could enthrall her with the blood
still simmering in her veins.
Now that she was out of the slaughterhouse of the Landry home, she was feeling the wooziness of
blood loss. She felt too hot and too cold at once, and she gripped the door handle to keep herself
grounded.
“Your da– I mean, Jonas is gonna be stoked,” Angel said eagerly. “Hey, I’m sorry I left you alone.
They sent orders, and I didn’t know, and—”
“It’s okay,” she said gently. “We didn’t realize he was there.”
“Yeah,” he said. “Still, I would have felt terrible if something happened to you.” Mere minutes
after leaving the Landrys’ neighborhood, Angel pulled into the left turn lane and wheeled into the
parking lot of an all-night convenience store, as if they didn’t have an unconscious vampire in the
backseat and her in the front with her throat bitten. Surely snack time could wait.
At four in the morning, there was only one other car at the pumps, with a nurse in green scrubs
yawning while she scrolled her phone. Kristina flipped up her collar and watched the parking lot
carefully while Angel made his purchases.
Carrying a rustling plastic bag, he jogged back to the car and plopped into the seat. It was hard to
stay annoyed when Angel put a cold sports drink in her hand, then opened a pack of peanut butter
crackers for her. He smiled and said, “It’ll help get your blood sugar back up.”
“Thanks, Angel,” she said, pointedly taking a sip of the drink.
He beamed and pulled back onto the road. Ten minutes of winding away from the interstate
brought them out to a big plot of land with a long-defunct farm. Lined with dried rows of what might
have been corn stalks and a rusted barn, this was the glorious home of the Atlanta contingent of the
Shieldsmen. The house had been the property of another hunter, who’d eagerly handed over the keys
when Jonas brought the team to Atlanta. Inherited from a long-dead great-aunt, the house had been
unused for a while and had the layers of dust and mouse droppings to prove it.
Angel drove down a winding dirt road to the sprawling two-story house that had become their
unassuming command center. After letting Kristina out at the front, Angel drove around to the barn,
presumably to dump their fanged cargo. Her heart thumped as she punched in the security code to
enter the house. With a few hours until dawn, the bottom floor was bright and active.
Computer monitors were set up in the living room, which was filled with furniture that had been
outdated thirty years ago, complete with cracked plastic coverings and yellowed doilies. The sleek
flatscreen TV mounted on the wall looked out of place amid the peeling floral wallpaper and framed
prints of pastel ducks.
Brooklyn Boone, one of the younger hunters, rocked in a recliner with a laptop casting a blue
glow on her face. She glanced up and said, “Welcome back. Is Palacio with you?”
“He’s driving around back,” Kristina said.
“I’ll check him in,” Brooklyn said, returning to her computer. With her wavy brown hair and pink
jacket, she looked like she should have been rushing a sorority instead of acting as the highly detail-
oriented, no-nonsense dispatcher for a group of vampire hunters. “Jonas is in his office if you want to
check in.”
“Does he want me to check in?” Kristina asked drily.
Brooklyn spared her a knowing half-smirk. “He wants to hear about your cargo. You can interpret
that how you want.”
Kristina sauntered past the kitchen, where a picked-over party tray of sandwiches was wilting.
Past that was a small bedroom that had been cleared out to make an armory, a cramped half-bathroom,
and a linen closet. At the end of the hall was a dark-paneled office from which Jonas Wynn called the
shots.
With silver-flecked dark hair and smooth, tanned skin, one might guess Jonas was in his mid-
forties, and a very fit, genetically blessed mid-forties at that. He had looked that way since Kristina
was a toddler, and likely would when she was old and gray, at least if she survived that long. Her
father was dhampir and had been hunting vampires for nearly two hundred years.
Since she had begun hunting in earnest, rather than being occasional backup, she was Kristina, and
he was Jonas, not Dad. When her parents separated, her mother had gone back to her maiden name,
and seven-year-old Kristina had no say in the matter.
It wasn’t as if their relationship was a secret, as the furtive glances and slips of the tongue
betrayed. But she preferred not to use his name to gain any standing, and he clearly wanted no
accusations of favoritism. It wasn’t hard to pretend that their relationship was cold and distant, given
that she had nearly three decades of practice.
Before he looked up from his notes, Jonas sniffed the air and said, “Did you get bitten?”
“Yes,” she said.
He glanced up at her, tilted his head. “Did you drink?”
“Only a little,” she said.
Jonas quickly rounded the desk and came close enough to kiss her. He drew a long, deep breath
through his nose, then said, “Lay all your weapons on the desk.”
With dread prickling her stomach, she slowly peeled off her blood-stained jacket and deposited
her weapons on his desk, one by one. Several of her stakes currently resided in the vampire prisoner,
but she still carried three syringes loaded with wood poison, two guns, three extra magazines, a
hunting knife, and a garrote. It came as no surprise that he was concerned about her being dangerous,
rather than being in danger.
“This was careless,” he said, brushing his finger over the bite marks.
“I know,” she said, trying not to flinch. Just another disappointment from the hunter’s daughter,
who had been letting her father down since the day she was born human instead of the super-powered
dhampir child he’d wanted. Never mind that they’d taken out three vicious vampires and brought back
an Auberon prisoner. One mistake was all he’d see.
Her father backed away and shook his head. “We can’t afford any risks, especially after what
happened with Henry.”
“Yeah,” she murmured.
What ‘happened’ with Henry.
As if her father had been there instead of sending orders via video call to an increasingly reckless
Thomas Moon and Jordan Cole. She’d been there on the ground, when Rachel Ryan got a hand on her
and nearly short-circuited her brain with the most excruciating pain she’d ever felt. Kristina had been
certain she was going to die at the hands of an unhinged vampire, and the worst of it was that she
wasn’t sure she didn’t deserve it.
 She set her backpack on the chair next to her and said, “I rounded up the electronics from the
Landry house. Our best guess is that the vampires targeted the house because it was empty and
secluded. The refrigerator was empty, as were most of the closets, so I’m thinking it’s a rental
property. I’ll follow up to be sure.”
“Any internal security or doorbell cameras?” Jonas asked.
“Yeah, both. We should be able to gain access with one of their phones,” she said.
His brow furrowed. “Do you want to explain how you let a fourth one get the jump on you?
You’re lucky you’re alive.”
“I don’t know how it happened,” she said. “We surveilled the house for a couple hours the other
night and only saw the three. And when we came into the house this afternoon, there were definitely
only three there.”
“Clearly not,” he said.
She frowned. “The fourth one wasn’t with them. He’s from the Blade of Auberon.”
Jonas’s expression faltered. “That doesn’t mean he wasn’t with them.”
“I’ve been keeping track of what we hunt. This is the first time in nearly a month that we’ve seen
anyone with the Auberon marking,” she said. The last time had been Rachel Ryan, who had certainly
not been the villain in that scenario. “I don’t think he was affiliated with them. It doesn’t fit the
patterns.”
Jonas sighed. “Well, we’ll just have to ask him after letting him sweat it out in the sun for a
while.”
Sick, squirming heat twisted through her gut. It wasn’t like she didn’t know what they would
ultimately do to the vampire she’d caught. And if she hadn’t stopped him, he would have taken her
back to his people. Maybe killed her, or used her for a blood bag, or forced her to turn into a
vampire.
But she didn’t feel triumphant at the thought of him being tortured. It just made her feel sick and
tired. “Do you think he’ll lead you back to the Auberon headquarters?” she asked.
“That’s my hope,” he said.
“Oh,” she murmured, pulling the burner phone from the bag. “This was his phone. I powered it
down so no one could track it. Might be helpful.”
Jonas took the phone, then brushed his fingers over his neck. “Go see Erin and get that patched up.
You’re on house arrest for forty-eight hours to let the blood clear out of your system.”
Gritting her teeth, she nodded and said, “Got it. Thank you, sir.”
A few years ago, Jonas had recruited Erin Mack, a nurse practitioner who’d gotten connected to
the Shieldsmen when her husband was killed by vampires in Boston. She’d helped the hunters up
north, stitching their wounds and keeping them stocked in antibiotics without steep bills or raised
eyebrows at local hospitals.
After the incident with Rachel Ryan, they’d decided they needed in-house medical staff, so Jonas
had brought Erin to Atlanta to join the team. At the opposite end of the first floor, another small
bedroom had been converted into a makeshift infirmary.
Despite the hour, Erin was offensively cheery, her curly golden-brown hair pulled back from her
face in a fireworks explosion of curls. “Hey, Arensberg,” she greeted amiably.
“Doctor,” Kristina said, unable to resist a smile.
“Not a doctor. Just as smart, no student loan debt,” Erin replied cheerfully.
Kristina sat on the edge of a plastic-wrapped cot while Erin examined the bite marks on her neck.
The brush of her gloved fingers awakened the shivering warmth in her belly, and she was struck again
by the memory of the vampire’s blue eyes, strangely innocent and vulnerable. It had to be his blood in
her system, making her think about how much she wanted to touch his face and come in close for an
embrace.
Had to be.
“Looks like your biter was fairly considerate, all things considered,” Erin said, gently swiping
her neck with a disinfectant. “Withdrew nice and clean instead of ripping his teeth out. Did he put his
blood on the wounds?”
“Maybe,” she murmured. She’d been so awash in the sensation of it. It wasn’t her first time being
bitten, but it had never felt good before. There’d been the startling pain of teeth piercing her flesh, but
it faded into a roar of pleasure, a swimming euphoria that felt like falling into bed with a bellyful of
margaritas and a suntan warming her.
“Well, that was nice of him,” Erin said. She dabbed a cool gel on the bites, then fixed a small
bandage to her neck. “They’re already closed, but let’s keep it bandaged for a day or two so they can
fully heal.” She rifled through a drawer, then handed Kristina a blister pack with six green tablets
inside. “Two tonight, then one every day afterward. Mouths are dirty, and I don’t want you risking an
infection.” She tilted Kristina’s face back and forth. “Any other ouchies?”
“I don’t think so,” she said. “The first three kills were nice and clean. Never even touched us.
This one just caught me by surprise.”
Erin nodded, then patted her shoulder. “Well, I’m just glad you’re okay. Living to fight another
day, right?”
“Right,” Kristina said.
After leaving Erin, she headed to the kitchen for a bottle of water to take the antibiotics. Angel
was there, piling a paper plate with sandwiches. “Got our boy strung up in the barn,” he said. “Jonas
is going to ask him some questions, and then let him enjoy the sun to warm him up for conversation.”
Her throat went dry. “Maybe he’ll give up the location for the prisoners. We let him go if they let
Thomas and the others go,” she said.
“Yeah,” Angel said absently. His eyes drifted down. “You think they’re still alive?”
She shrugged. “I don’t like not knowing.”
“Me either,” he said quietly. Then he gestured with one of his sandwiches. “Did you eat
something?”
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
“Krissy,” he said, with the indulgent, yet stern tone that only fathers could manage. Without
waiting for her response, he got another plate, put two sandwiches and a banana on it, then pushed it
toward her. “You have to eat, especially after losing blood. That’s why they give you cookies when
you donate to the Red Cross.”
Irritation was her first instinct, but it paled in the shadow of sympathy. Angel had become a
vampire hunter just a few years ago, after his ex-wife and daughter were killed by vampires not
unlike the ones they’d killed tonight. He’d nearly died. Kristina and her father had visited him in the
hospital to find out what happened, and she would never shake the memory of Angel pleading, Let me
die, too. Let me be with my baby.
So when Angel got protective and fatherly, even though he was too young to be her dad, she
smiled and took it the way he meant it. “Thanks. I’m stuck here for a few days until I get the vampire
blood out of my system.”
He wrinkled his nose. “I hope that doesn’t mean I have to take Ollie out.”
“Probably does,” she teased.
 Angel groaned. “You better eat and detox fast.”
Coming from a long line of Shieldsmen, Oliver had quite a bit of practical knowledge, but he was
obnoxious and definitely didn’t have the upper body strength to back up his cocky attitude. He’d
specifically asked to join the mission after his uncle, Henry Marks, was captured by the Blade of
Auberon. On paper, Angel didn’t have the hunter pedigree that Ollie did, but he was retired military
and could outshoot virtually everyone here with his eyes closed. Plus, he was way better company in
the car.
She retired upstairs with her sad, paper plate dinner and claimed one of the narrow air mattresses
in an upstairs bedroom. The farmhouse was a temporary base of operations, but they didn’t all live
here. That was a little cultish, even for the Shieldsmen. After their recent brushes with the Auberon,
the Atlanta contingent had realized that decentralizing themselves was critical. They kept several
apartments in the city, one of which Kristina usually shared with Brooklyn Boone. On a normal night,
when she wasn’t on quarantine, she would drive back to the city a few hours after dawn to get some
rest, run a few errands, and then get back to work here.
Despite her promises to eat, Kristina set the plate of sandwiches on the folding TV tray next to the
air mattress and lay back, feeling sick to her stomach. She’d outplayed the vampire, but she wasn’t so
arrogant to think that she could do it again. If her doe-eyed pleas hadn’t worked, she might be on her
way to whatever hellish fate had awaited Thomas, Jordan, and Henry.
And no one would come for her. Not even Jonas Wynn, who had made it clear years ago that she
would never get special treatment from her father.
That wasn’t what the Shieldsmen did, after all. Those three were as good as lost. No one would
ever trust the two humans again, knowing they were likely under the control of vampire blood. They
might make an exception for Jordan Cole, who was dhampir and immune to blood compulsion. But
even he could have been twisted and broken by now, depending on how badly they’d tortured him.
The leader of the American Shieldsmen, Jack Eslinger, had given strict orders that they were to give
up nothing, to cede no ground to acquire the prisoners. They knew the risks, after all.
Though she’d never say it aloud, it was easy for Jack to say things like that from his secret bunker,
when he hadn’t set foot in the field in years, if ever.
She just wanted this mess to be over. They needed to find Eduardo Alazan, the leader of the
Auberon, take off his head, and clear this city out. Then everything would be fine again.
But she didn’t quite believe that. The situation in Atlanta wasn’t as simple as things had been
before. She’d come from Portland, where the Shieldsmen had waged a quiet battle for nearly three
years against a vicious pack of vampires who were notorious for capturing hitchhikers and runaways
and taking them out to a national park for hunting.
This was not the same. Things were far more complicated, and she couldn’t let go of the suspicion
that there was something they were missing. She just hoped they figured it out before losing any more
hunters.
 3

H ugo had to come for him. Hugo always had his back.
So where was he?
After the beautiful woman with the sweet blood and golden hair left him incapacitated,
time had unfolded around him, with awareness coming sporadic and sharp as lightning strikes. But
when the silver-haired man with the strange-smelling blood showed up, Sasha had become acutely
and painfully aware of his surroundings. After chaining him to a splintered wooden beam, the man
had shouted questions at him for what seemed like hours, his voice piercing and distorted.
After identifying himself as Mr. Wynn, he’d asked over and over about Eduardo Alazan. Sasha
didn’t know that name. The man didn’t believe him. As if it wasn’t enough to be strung up with a stake
in his chest, the silver-haired man had inserted something sharp in his back that made his legs go
numb.
The dark, musty barn had begun to glow with the low light of dawn before the full brightness of
daylight arrived with a vengeance. Sunlight broke through cracked wood planks. With his wrists
chained to a metal hook that forced him onto his toes, he couldn’t get away without a painful
contortion. Blistered red stripes crossed his chest. He’d tried for hours to twist himself enough to get
the thick wooden stake out from between his ribs, but the silver-haired man had driven it deep.
Where the hell was Hugo?
With the harsh light burning his skin, he’d become desperate and even screamed out for Hugo
once before he realized what he was doing.
Hours in the sun did not magically produce answers to Mr. Wynn’s questions. What Sasha did
know was that he was in serious trouble. These vampire hunters would likely kill him unless he got
out of this somehow. He also knew that they were his best chance at fixing the fractured mess of his
mind, given that they’d taken it from him.
After his one self-indulgent moment of panic, he fought to remain calm. Losing his head would not
get him any closer to freedom. Hugo had told him how capable an assassin he was, how his instincts
were still as sharp as ever. That had not changed.
Instead of indulging his fear, Sasha focused on lifting himself enough to dislodge the stake in his
back. The sun pouring through the slats of the barn made him weak, but he wasn’t dead yet.
Each shift of the stake sent a sharp bolt of pain scraping up his spine. After what felt like hours, he
could have sworn he felt a tingle in his toes. Perhaps it was madness. Perhaps a glimpse of hope.
Who was he to know the difference?
The sun still shone bright when Mr. Wynn and another young male walked into the barn. Their
scents hit him from across the dirty barn; the young man was human, but Wynn was something else; not
human, but not vampire.
Mr. Wynn walked up to him and smiled. “Have you had a nice day, vampire?”
Sasha glared at him.
“I forgot my manners. Blame it on meeting in the middle of the night,” he said. “What can I call
you?”
Sasha remained silent, then narrowed his eyes as the man held out his hand. The younger human
produced a bag of thick, opaque red, then twisted off the seal. The smell of blood instantly awakened
his senses, and his fangs descended with a stinging ache.
“Tell me your name and you can have a taste,” Mr. Wynn said.
What was the harm in a name? With Wynn blocking the sunlight from hitting his chest, he was
already feeling better. There was certainly something happening in his left leg. It felt heavy and stiff,
but he could move his toes. A little more time and a taste of blood might have him moving again.
“Sasha,” he finally said.
“I’m sorry we have to meet this way, Sasha,” Mr. Wynn said. He held up the bag and tilted it
toward Sasha’s mouth. A scant few drops fell on his lips before Wynn snatched the bag away.
Sasha snarled and lunged at the retreating man, who now wore a coy smile. “You lied.”
His head cocked. “Come now, you can’t be that naive.” The younger male snickered. “But maybe
I’ll share a little more. You give me what I want, I give you what you want. Where is Eduardo
Alazan?”
“I told you that I don’t know who that is,” he said.
“You have his mark on your neck,” Mr. Wynn said. “Are you not with the Blade of Auberon?”
He glared at Mr. Wynn,. “You tell me.”
“You expect me to believe that you don’t know the man who put that mark on you?”
The small taste of blood was like an electric shock to his body. Nowhere near enough to feed him,
but it had awakened him. The tingle in his toes was spreading. He could move his ankle, and if he
concentrated, he could contract the muscles of his thigh.
“I’m telling the truth,” Sasha said, continuing to wiggle his toes in his shoe, hoping his nerves
would spread the word to the rest of his body that it was time to wake up.
“What were you doing at the house in Kennesaw? Did you kill the owners?”
He wrinkled his nose. “Of course not. I don’t kill humans unless they try to kill me first. That’s the
rule.”
The other men exchanged a look, as if they didn’t understand what they were hearing. “Why did
you attack Kristina?” the younger man asked.
His head tilted. “Kristina?”
“The blonde woman who brought you in,” he said.
Kristina. It was a pretty name, although he found her significantly less magnetic after she’d staked
him. “She attacked me first.”
“Yeah, right,” the younger man said, still inching closer.
Come on, Sasha thought. “If I help you, will you break the spell?” he asked.
“What the fuck is he talking about?” the younger man asked. In his sneering bravado, he took
another step closer. Instinct made Sasha check his silhouette for weapons, and his gaze snagged on the
outline of a holster beneath his loose shirt.
“You broke my memory. If you fix it, I’ll help you. There are bad vampires in the city and I know
how to track them,” Sasha said. When he was well-fed, he could find them from miles away. Hugo
called him a bloodhound, which seemed like a compliment.
Sasha tested his right leg, found he could push against the beam. He eyed the human man, who
took a small step away.
Shit.
Mr. Wynn shrugged. “These vampires leave bloody trails, so I’m more than capable of hunting
them. I’m much more interested in Eduardo Alazan.”
“Don’t know who he is,” Sasha said.
With a little growl, the human man cocked his fist and punched him in the gut. There was a dull
pain, but it was barely noticeable compared to the sharp pain of wood and the scorching sun. He
glared up at Sasha. “Tell us.”
“I don’t know,” Sasha said.
Another punch, another dull impact.
Before the human could hit him again, Mr. Wynn caught his wrist. “He doesn’t breathe, Oliver,”
he said quietly. He reached into the bag at his feet and produced a plastic box. Sasha’s stomach
twisted with dread as he opened the box to reveal thin wooden stakes, each the width of one of his
fingers. Their sickening smell was far worse than normal wood.
Mr. Wynn handed over one of the stakes, and Oliver shoved it into Sasha’s side. He let out a
clipped groan, blinded by the pain. Oliver got closer, like he was trying to drink it in.
“Idi syuda,” Sasha mumbled. Come here.
Oliver leaned closer. “What’s that?”
Sasha let out another quiet groan, barely moving his lips.
Oliver inched closer. “Speak up, Sasha,” he mocked, taking another step. “I can’t hear you.”
There.
With a snarl, Sasha shoved his right leg against the beam and yanked down with his arms. Wood
snapped, but he wasn’t free yet. Instead, he wrapped his right leg around Oliver’s waist and bent his
head to bite. He couldn’t get to his throat, but he got a mouthful of the human’s cheek. Oliver
screamed and staggered back.
With fresh blood coursing down his throat and the sky darkening, Sasha was a different man than
the one they’d dragged in. Lifting Oliver off the ground for leverage, he yanked hard on his wrists and
wrenched the metal hook out of the rotted wooden beam. He toppled to the ground and grabbed
Oliver by the throat. Flexible cartilage gave away under his fingers. One squeeze, and he’d crush the
boy’s throat. His arteries throbbed against Sasha’s fingers, tempting him with fresh, hot blood.
Despite the squirming protests of his young friend, Mr. Wynn was smiling. He put up his hands in
a show of surrender. “That was impressive, but didn’t you say you don’t kill humans who don’t try to
kill you?”
“What do you call this?” Sasha growled. The young hunter’s protests vibrated against his fingers,
but he held Oliver firmly in front of him.
Mr. Wynn nodded. “You make a fair point. Let Oliver go, and I’ll let you walk out of here.”
“Really?” Sasha asked.
“Really. There are rules of engagement after all, and we are both men of honor, it seems,” Mr.
Wynn said. Still holding up his hands, he tilted his head toward Oliver. “Just release him.”
Sasha let Oliver drop to the ground in a heap. As he extended his wrists, Wynn moved in a blur.
Sunlight flashed in Sasha’s eyes, making him recoil. Before he could react, thunder cracked. A
powerful impact slammed into his chest and knocked him off his feet. He fell back, groaning as wood
poison soaked into his veins. The silver-haired man loomed over him and said, “You might be the
dumbest vampire I’ve ever encountered.”

DAYS PASSED . The misery did not end.

The sun rose and found him securely chained, painting blistered watercolors over his bloodied
chest. Thin spines of wood pierced his body, and there was little of his skin that was not covered in
grime or dried blood.
Wynn stopped in periodically to ask him questions.
Where is Eduardo?
Where can I find the Blade of Auberon?
Where are Thomas Moon and Henry Marks?
What did you do to Jordan Cole?
Sasha had to believe he wasn’t a complete fool; he understood that Eduardo had to be the leader
of the vampires, even if Hugo had never explained as much. The other names meant nothing to him,
and it was probably for the best that he didn’t know. He did, however, understand that Wynn intended
to cause serious harm, and he felt an obligation to protect the others as best he could.
I don’t know was more or less true, but it did not satisfy Mr. Wynn, who got progressively angrier
with each denial. He let some of his cronies use their fists and stakes and blades, leaving him battered
and bloody. The human he’d bitten had returned with bandages on his face and a grudge, which he
carried out with a vengeance.
Pain became a familiar companion, one that was becoming fast friends with maddening hunger.
Other than those first few drops Wynn used as a cruel tease, he hadn’t fed since before his ill-fated
mission. And he was helpless, able to do nothing but stare at the fat silver moon and imagine it
dripping with scarlet.
Was Hugo looking for him? Was he important enough to be rescued, or would Hugo rather he died
to protect his secrets?
He had lost track of time when Wynn visited him again, this time carrying a mug of warm, fragrant
blood. Through the gaps in the barn walls, he could glimpse the deep blue-purple of dusk. Sasha
rattled the chains and lunged, hating how hunger turned him into an animal.
As he did every time, Mr. Wynn crossed his arms and asked, “Tell me how to find Eduardo
Alazan.”
“I don’t know who that is,” Sasha bit out.
Wynn sighed. “Either you’ve a will of steel, or you’re telling the truth.”
“I’m telling the truth,” Sasha said. “Maybe if you undo what you did to me, I could remember.”
The other man shook his head. “What are you on about? We didn’t do anything to you.”
“You took my memory,” Sasha growled, trying to rattle his way free.
Wynn raised an eyebrow, then slowly turned the mug over, pouring the dark red liquid onto the
ground below him. Sasha let out a furious roar, swearing and snarling so he didn’t weep at the cruel
waste. “They say that scent is tied to memory. Perhaps this will help you focus,” he said, leaving the
cup beneath Sasha’s feet.
The aroma of blood taunted him. How long had he been here? Through broken slats in the barn
wall, he could see the moon, full and fat.
Had Hugo forgotten him?
 Closing his eyes, he prayed to gods and saints whose names were buried in his memory, hoping
they had not forgotten him as he had forgotten them.
Please deliver me.
The only blessing he received was sleep. Starved as he was, even the sunlight seeping through the
cracks could not stave off the death-like sleep of day.

HIS WRISTS WERE FREE, but his hands were soaked in blood. He trudged across a battlefield where
blood soaked into the mud and filled the air with its biting scent. Mangled corpses lay among
discarded rifles with blood-crusted bayonets. Amid the thundering roar of distant cannon fire, he
could hear whispered prayers for forgiveness and deliverance.
Was he free now?
Looking back revealed only more corpses and a rapidly darkening sky. The full moon had gone
pure red, a bloodied eye staring down at him. A small stream ran red through the battlefield, and he
followed it as quickly as he could. In the red-tinted reflection, strange shadows slithered with no
source.
Not wanting to see what was behind him, he bolted as if the Devil himself was on his heels. In
long, leaping strides, he practically flew over the ground until the cold blanket of corpses gave way
to blood-stained snow. Great splotches of red dissipated into smaller droplets until he came to a
dizzying expanse of untouched white.
Snow covered the rolling hills, which rose and fell until they lapped up against a dense forest like
a stream against rock. The winter-bare trees cast impossibly long shadows, their branches seeming to
hold back the moon with those barbed fingers. He ran into the forest, not knowing what he was
looking for, but afraid to stand still.
A voice rang out like a gunshot.
Sasha!
He whirled to see a dark-haired man with a hook-like scar on his eye waving from a clearing.
Something tugged at Sasha’s memory. He knew this man. His name was… What was his name? “Are
you—” Sasha began.
An arrow sank into the man’s eye. He collapsed without a sound. As Sasha ran to him, his body
disintegrated into dust, leaving only a faint shadow on the snow.
Jumping back in horror, Sasha whirled to look for the source of the arrow. Across the clearing, he
saw a beautiful red-haired woman in dark leather armor. She smiled at him, raising a hand in greeting.
He knew her too. Her name hovered like a shadow at the corner of his mind. When she reached out
for him, a barrage of arrows pierced her chest. Each fletching was pure red and dripping with blood.
She tilted her head and said, “Don’t forget me.” Her sharp white teeth were stained red, but she still
smiled as she fell back.
“No!” he cried, running for her. Her body disintegrated before it hit the snow. He bolted through
the trees, following the gradual slope of the forest up and up, hoping he could escape whatever was
killing them all.
Over and over, mysterious voices called his name. Each time, he felt their names on his tongue,
trying to tear free from the silence before they died.
Another clearing opened ahead of him, and he tripped headlong over a ridge of rock. He fell to
his knees and considered lying down to die under the eerie gaze of the blood-red moon.
Warm fingers brushed his cheek, tilting his face up. There stood the pretty blonde woman who had
captured him.
Suddenly, the strangeness slammed into him like a fist. This place wasn’t real. Or was this the
first real thing he’d experienced? Had Jonas Wynn and the barn and all the questions been in his
head?
He whirled, seeing only the dead, dark forest all around him. The woman called to him, “Sasha.
Look at me.”
He turned to stare at her, surprised to see her smiling. Even in this strange place, he could taste
her on his tongue, could still feel the way she burned in him.
“Give me your hand,” she said in a musical voice, offering her left hand. When she touched him,
lightning shot across the night sky. Her skin shone like ice, and he was baffled as he watched red,
vine-like lines tangle over both their hands. “Don’t forget.”
“Wait,” he pleaded, stumbling as he tried to rise. He knew how this would end. Perhaps by
calling her name, he could claim her and keep her here. “Kristina!”
She smiled, but when she opened her mouth to speak, the gleaming silver head of an arrow
protruded from her lips. It did not seem to cause her pain, but she fell back and disappeared in a
cloud of dust.
The world trembled beneath him, and he fell to his knees, trying to gather up the tiny remnants of
her. There were only fragments like burnt paper, which disintegrated as soon as he touched them. He
screamed in wordless horror.
Soft steps rustled through dead leaves. A raven-haired woman gazed down at him. Her golden
eyes gleamed like stars, while her slashed throat hung open like a screaming mouth. Behind her, the
moon was impossibly huge, as if it had crept closer to hear her speak.
“You who took all from me shall lose yourself,” she spoke, her voice like thunder in the trees. The
forest around them trembled, snow falling to the ground.
“Who are you?” he asked.
Glowing red symbols danced around her. The sight of it made his stomach churn, and he
instinctively lunged for her. His hands passed through her uselessly, and then cold hands clasped his
face.
“Stop!” he bellowed, but her glacial touch brought him to his knees.
“You will have nothing. You will die an empty shell,” she hissed. “May fate curse you until your
final breath.”
He cried out in wordless terror. He did not know who would listen, for every name he had ever
known was gone.
Only shadow lingered, consuming all that had once been Sa—

WHO ?

S OMETHING SHOOK HIS CHIN , then slapped his cheek. He opened his eyes to see a strange face. All at
once, a thousand sensations hit him. His body was aflame with pain. Looking up, he saw his own
bloodied wrists secured with dark chains, hooked to a beam overhead. His skin was streaked with
blood and grime.
The world was painfully loud. There were heartbeats and noisy breathing and distant roaring
sounds that threatened to deafen him. Overlapping scents of blood and musty old dirt and decaying
plants and ancient animal excrement crowded his senses. His stomach churned, as if to inform him
that it both did not appreciate all the smells and to alert him that he was starving.
“What… where…” he murmured.
A steely grip clamped his jaw and forced him to look. A powerfully built man stood in front of
him, low light glinting off silver streaks in his hair. “Are you going to talk tonight, or do I have to
keep getting creative?”
He stared blankly. “What?”
The man frowned. “You’re—”
“Who are you?” he asked. “What’s going on?” He rattled his chains weakly, awakening the
flaming prickle of pain in his shoulders. “Why am I chained?”
The other man gaped at him. “Very funny.”
Tears pricked his eyes. “Please let me down, sir. This hurts,” he said. “I just woke up and I don’t
understand.”
Where had he been before? It seemed as if he should know how he’d gotten himself into such a
precarious position, but everything before opening his eyes was featureless black in his mind.
“You don’t remember me?” the man said.
Staring intently as his amber eyes, he could feel a strange push. The silver-haired man sneering,
and a stabbing pain in his side. A betrayal. But there were no clear images, not so much as a name. He
shook his head. “I don’t know who you are.”
The other man glanced at his watch, then chuckled. “I have to admit, this is a new one for me.
Let’s see if I can jog your memory.”
 4

J ust after lunchtime, Kristina was having a vastly improved day over her last few. First, she had
waited out Jonas’s mandatory forty-eight hours holed up in the farmhouse, with no lingering
effects except the pesky memory of the vampire’s hand over her mouth, callused and curiously
warm against the smoothness of her lips.
That had to be his blood in her system. Vampire blood awakened lust and desire. It was a
predatory adaptation, one that had nothing to do with her going on three years of celibacy and a
lifetime of loneliness. That would be her story, dammit.
After taking a look at the mostly-healed bites on her neck, Erin had cleared her medically and sent
her on her way with a smile and a strawberry lollipop. Family practice habits are hard to break,
she’d said sheepishly.
Unfortunately, her golden ticket with the Auberon mark had turned out to be something of a dud.
Before leaving the compound, she’d met with her father, who irritably reported that Sasha wasn’t
giving him anything useful. He seemed more annoyed with Kristina, as if it was her fault that he
wasn’t getting anywhere. Judging by the blood spattered on Jonas’s shirts, he’d been very persuasive.
“Maybe he really doesn’t know,” she’d ventured.
“Yeah fucking right,” he’d snapped. “Something’s not right with this guy.”
But that was not her problem. Or so she told herself, but her brain hadn’t gotten the message that
she didn’t need to be thinking about the vampire with the beautiful gray-blue eyes and that strangely
innocent face. Maybe he hadn’t killed the unfortunate Landry family, but he was still an apex predator
and a vicious killer.
Wasn’t he?
She’d spent her days of farmhouse quarantine working on her database. Upon arriving here in
Atlanta to help salvage Jordan Cole’s botched operation, she’d promptly begun documenting every
vampire they had as known contacts, including those they killed.
Back in Portland, they’d dealt with a pack of vampires serving a powerful woman dubbed
Baroness Albrecht. Based on interrogations, they’d figured out her court was an offshoot of the
Casteron court, a group that was strangely fragmented compared to most vampire courts. Shieldsmen
journals were full of stories about the Casteron, who had a reputation for being noisy and bloody. In
addition to not valuing secrecy like many other vampires, the Casteron frequently splintered into
smaller groups and challenged each other for leadership. Several of the vampires she’d encountered
here in Atlanta had borne a mark like the Casteron that she’d seen in Portland, though there were
minute variations. She was no expert in vampire magic, but it seemed as if the different marks pointed
to the Baron of their territory, all of which fell under the larger scope of the Casteron.
 Regardless of who they really served, not one of those dead vampires bore the mark of the Blade
of Auberon. That didn’t surprise her, given that the Auberon had gone undetected for so long. At first,
she wasn’t even sure that the Auberon were really here, but her father told her that Mr. Eslinger
himself had given them the intelligence. Her father was a big deal among hunters, but Jack Eslinger
was the head of all the Shieldsmen in the United States. If Jack said that the Auberon were here, then
they were here. Sasha’s mark was the first tangible proof she’d seen.
After updating her database with the three new kills and Sasha, she’d started investigating the
video doorbell footage from the Landry house. Her initial theory had held up. Sasha hadn’t been one
of the vampires coming and going from the Landry house.
As best she could tell, the three unmarked vampires had first come to the Landry house four days
before she and Angel put a stop to their little enterprise. They had triggered the video doorbell
multiple times, as well as the cameras inside the house. Her stomach churned as she watched the
vampires drag an already bloodied Mrs. Landry into the hall. Mr. Landry had been taken into the side
bedroom, which was where they’d found him more recently deceased.
The other vampires came and went at night, always tucking themselves in shortly before sunrise.
There was no sign of Sasha. She watched herself and Angel approaching just before sunset. They’d
wanted to wait until the next day to kill the vampires while they slept, but they weren’t sure if the
Landrys were alive, so they’d taken the risk of dealing with conscious vampires.
The doorbell camera never picked up Sasha. The first evidence she found of him was when one of
the hallway cameras caught him stalking down the hall to the office where she’d been snooping
through an abandoned computer. Stranger still, he’d lingered in the doorway for several minutes
watching her.
The sight of him just staring sent a chill down her spine. He could have ripped her throat out
before she knew what was happening. It was pure luck that she’d noticed his reflection when the
laptop went dark to give a firewall alert. That annoying pop-up had saved her life.
She’d had to shake it off. What might have been had not come to pass. She’d walked away.
But she still had questions for Sasha, namely: why were you there?
And if she was being honest: why did you hesitate?
Four days after bringing in the Auberon vampire, they were no closer to any answers. Once Erin
cleared her, she returned to the downtown apartment she shared with Brooklyn Boone. With one
entire bedroom turned into an office, their apartment was the administrative hub for the Shieldsmen.
Brooklyn rarely went into the field, but she acted as eyes and ears for the entire group, keeping tabs
on everyone’s location while monitoring police scanners, news reports, and hospital admissions as
best she could.
Just as she had in Portland, Kristina had made herself useful with her databases and research into
Shieldsmen historical documents, and it was lost on no one that two women had been left doing the
administrative work. After a brainstorming session at the apartment a few weeks ago, Jonas had
sheepishly told them, “It’s not what it looks like. You two are both great at this, and I need you
digging in.” Vampire hunting in the twenty-first century was more detective work than slinging stakes,
and they really were skilled at it, even if her father was almost certainly bullshitting them to prevent
friction. And after getting bitten, she wanted to earn her way back into his good graces so he didn’t
prepare another you’re not cut out for this speech.
Kristina grabbed coffee and breakfast sandwiches from a bakery down the block, and after an
obligatory session of small talk, she and Brooklyn got back to work. They were friendly, but not
friends, and that was just fine with Kristina.
 After scraping through police reports, Brooklyn had turned up another two deaths she suspected
were vampire related. Atlanta was a big city where people ended up dead every day, but those
people usually died from gunshot wounds and car accidents, not exsanguination from fangs to their
throats.
They had seen this same pattern of behavior before in Baroness Albrecht’s bloody reign in
Portland. As vicious as the Casteron were, her father had always taught her that the most dangerous
vampires were the quiet ones. They couldn’t even guess how many American cities had a thriving
vampire community that simply remained quiet and had the good sense to bury their kills.
The Casteron vampires in Portland had not learned that lesson, and they had left a trail of bodies
that had true crime enthusiasts speculating about a serial killer or even a whole cult of them on the
loose. Even with their relatively small numbers and messy habits, it had taken several years to finish
them off and put an end to the bloodshed.
While it had been quiet until recently, Atlanta was now following the same pattern, with the
additional complication of having the personal nemesis of the Shieldsmen right here in the city.
Eduardo Alazan’s name was thrown around among the Shieldsmen like a curse, an invocation of death
and a call for vengeance. He and his vampires had wiped out their European predecessors centuries
before, leaving only a handful of survivors to rebuild their cause and seek out vengeance. For several
of the dhampir hunters like Jonas, Eduardo was the white whale.
Kristina spent most of her afternoon trying to get something useful out of the phone she’d lifted
from Sasha’s jacket. It was clearly a burner with only a few numbers stored in it. One of the numbers
seemed to belong to a superior, who had been sending orders via text. Sasha’s last message had asked
what to do about the hunters.

There are two humans in the house. What should I do?

The chilling response that followed had no name, just a phone number:

Kill one. Bring the other back.

An hour later, another message had come through from the unnamed sender.

Where are you?

After that, there were no messages or calls. Perhaps there was a concerned vampire looking for
his partner out there. She’d already tried looking up the number and even called it with an app that
masked her number. There was no answer.
She gave up on the phone and shifted her focus to the electronics they’d found in the Landry house.
Several of the phones and tablets seemed to belong to the dead vampires. While there was no
smoking gun like a contact card for Eduardo Alazan, she did manage to find a few names and e-mail
addresses connected to the owners, which she could pass off to Brooklyn. None of the names were in
her database, so she added each one along with their contact information.
Sunset was rapidly approaching, so Kristina headed into the office to share what she’d learned
for the day. Inside, several computer monitors were set up on a big folding table. A whiteboard hung
on one wall with names written in Brooklyn’s impossibly neat, kindergarten teacher handwriting. The
other wall held a corkboard, where they had been slowly trying to build up a view of the Auberon
court. Eduardo Alazan was at the top, but they had gathered intelligence on several more, including
Rachel Ryan, Ryan partner? (Handsome guy with goatee), Scary gray guy, Redhead.
 The list was pathetically sparse, but it was the best they could piece together after a few months
of work. ‘Scary gray guy’ and ‘Redhead’ had come from half a year ago, when Henry Marks and
Sabrina Milan encountered vampires in the MARTA tunnels underground. It was chilling to realize
that both were no longer with them. Sabrina had been killed when the hunters attacked FLOW, and
Henry had been taken prisoner, not once, but twice. Nearly all the hunters who’d originally come to
Atlanta were either dead or imprisoned.
And things weren’t improving. This was a bloody business. It was important work, but it had a
drastic impact on life expectancy.
Like Kristina, Brooklyn had grown up around vampire hunters, but the aunt and uncle who raised
her after the untimely — but not unexpected — demise of her mother insisted that she stay out of the
field. She and Kristina had worked together for almost two years in Portland, piecing together
Baroness Albrecht’s movements, hunting down her subordinates, and ultimately cornering her. Though
Jonas and his new paramour, Alicia, had killed the baroness, they gave a nod to their investigative
team. And when Jack Eslinger dispatched another team to smoke out Eduardo Alazan, her father had
demanded Kristina and Brooklyn be assigned to his team. It was the closest to an endorsement he’d
ever given her, even if he wanted her ass in a computer chair, not in the field.
After handing over her list, Kristina stretched and said, “I’m going to get dressed. I think I’m
hunting with Angel tonight.”
Peering over her monogrammed pink mug, Brooklyn shook her head and said, “Don’t get dressed
yet. Mr. Wynn just called to tell me he’s coming into the city with a job for you.”
Her throat went dry. “For me in particular?”
Brooklyn nodded. “Something to do with the vampire prisoner.”
Her stomach twisted in a knot. What the hell was going on? If her father wanted her to question
Sasha, she wasn’t sure she could handle it. It was one thing to fight off a vampire, and another entirely
to torture someone. Surely he didn’t think that she could be more violently convincing than he and
Ollie had been already.
An hour after Brooklyn planted the seed of dread in Kristina’s belly, there was a knock at their
door. She opened the door to find Oliver Marks waiting. Small bandages still covered the bite marks
on his cheek. “Mr. Wynn is waiting downstairs. Let’s go,” he said.
She followed him down the hall. “What’s going on?”
“That’s need to know, and you don’t—”
She grabbed his arm firmly. “Listen, you little smart-ass,” she seethed. His eyes went comically
wide. “I’ve been doing this longer than you have. I was hunting my first vampire before you got your
first boner. Don’t talk to me that way.”
He shrugged off her grip, but he looked chastised. “Whatever.”
When they got to the curb, Oliver climbed into an idling black SUV. Behind them was a midsized
blue sedan that would have been at home in the driveway of any cookie-cutter suburban
neighborhood. Its nondescript appearance was exactly why her father had picked it. She hurried to the
car and climbed into the passenger seat.
“Sorry for all the mystery, Krissy,” he said.
The diminutive nickname scraped at her nerves, almost as much as the absolute certainty that her
father was not one bit sorry. Jonas Wynn didn’t do apologies, especially not to his offspring. “What’s
going on?” she asked.
Ahead of him, the black SUV pulled away. They merged into traffic, headed for the dense sprawl
of downtown Atlanta. Jonas glanced at her after checking his rearview mirror. “Something strange is
going on with our vampire friend. Last night when I went to interrogate him, he suddenly started
acting like he didn’t know me.”
“You think it was an act?”
Jonas frowned. “I thought so at first. But there’s something that’s just not right about him.
Vampires are tough, but no matter how many times I’ve asked about Eduardo, he insists he doesn’t
know who he is or where he is. It’s never I won’t tell you or go fuck yourself. And you know how
that can be.”
In her hunting days, she’d been spat on, threatened, and called dozens of colorful, misogynistic
slurs from all over the world. It really was a learning experience. “Right. But how is it possible that
he doesn’t know who Eduardo is? That mark is absolutely an Auberon marking. I even checked the
journals.”
“I know it is. Maybe all the wood messed caused brain damage. But last night was even stranger.
I put a bullet right through his kneecap because he wouldn’t tell me his name. He told me his name
days ago, but last night he insisted he didn’t know it. He acted like he didn’t know where he was or
who he was,” Jonas said. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think he developed amnesia overnight.”
“Sounds weird, but why am I here?” she asked.
He raised his eyebrows. “We’re going to turn him loose and see what he does.”
She gaped at him. “You can’t be serious.”
“Dead serious. And you’re going to track him. Alicia sewed a couple of trackers into his jacket,
and we got a burner phone for him with location services turned on,” Jonas said.
“And what if he attacks the first pedestrian he sees?” she said. “You’ve been starving him for
days.”
“That’s a risk we might have to take,” Jonas said.
“Sir, I’m not comfortable with playing so fast and loose with innocent lives,” she said.
He chuckled. “I figured you might say that. You’re going to trail him and if he starts making a
move for a snack, you attack. A couple of warning shots should send him running. Instinct should take
him home.”
“Why me?”
“Why not you? You’re well-rested, and you’re an excellent shot. This is what you wanted, isn’t
it?” Jonas said.
Her stomach twisted. “Yes, sir.”
If anyone thought that Jonas Wynn showed her favoritism, they were mistaken. She’d realized at a
young age that Dear Old Dad wasn’t like other dads. Hunting vampires was his religion, and while he
hadn’t sworn off family, his relationships were a means to an end. She wasn’t sure he would care all
that much if she got killed in the line of duty. If anything, losing a kid added to his unflinching
mystique.
He’d been reluctant to let her join the hunt. Her mother hated the idea, but once Kristina was an
adult, there was no stopping her. For his part, Jonas had set increasingly difficult tasks in front of her
to keep her away. His insistence that being human made her a liability grated her nerves, and only
made her want to prove him wrong.
The summer before she went to college, she’d taken a stack of old Shieldsmen journals in German
and French, scanned them into a database, and painstakingly translated them page by page, just to
prove that she could.
Then he’d told her she could come with him if she could disarm him in hand-to-hand combat.
Given that he had supernatural strength and reflexes, that was a nearly impossible task. Two years
later, with countless Krav Maga and jiu-jitsu classes at the university under her belt, she finally did it.
Then it was target shooting. Finally, when she turned twenty-two and finished college, he
begrudgingly agreed to let her join the hunt. And for the first time since she was a child, she’d gotten
to spend more than a few hours with her father.
She was never sure if he wanted to dissuade her to protect her or to protect his own reputation.
Allowing his daughter to hunt and having her screw up would reflect badly on him. So far, she had a
damned good record, but things were getting increasingly complicated here, as evidenced by their
capture-and-release plan.
Ahead of them, the SUV turned into a darkened parking lot. They were near Piedmont Park, a
sprawling park that had recently seen several late-night attacks. Hopefully no one would be taking a
late-night shortcut through the park.
Oliver got out of the car ahead of them, meeting Angel on the other side. They opened the trunk
and dragged out a familiar figure with a bag over his head, then dropped him on the sidewalk. Oliver
bent to pull a stake out of Sasha’s back. The vampire struggled to roll onto his side. His dark blue
shirt was shredded, soaked through with blood and grime that turned her stomach. Even knowing what
he was, it was excessive to treat him that way.
“Go find a vantage point,” Jonas said.
Kristina burst out of the car, immediately running for the shielding wall of hedges. She ducked
behind a hedge on the inner side of the park, watching through the branches.
Sasha let out a pitiful groan as he flexed his arms behind his back. With a growl, he snapped the
plastic zip tie binding his wrist, then shook out his arms. With one hand, he swiped the bag from his
head and raked his wavy hair back. Moonlight pooled on his handsome face, catching on the bruises
and cuts left by angry fists.
“Allo?” he said quietly, his voice shaky and uncertain. “Hello? Is someone there?”
He turned in place, then stared up at the full moon and spoke quietly to himself.
“Where am I?” he murmured. His speech was thickly accented, with what sounded like the heavy
edge of Russian or Polish. He ventured down the sidewalk into the park. A low, balmy breeze rustled
the dark trees. “Hello?” he said again.
Veering off the path, Sasha braced one scraped hand against a nearby tree. He lifted his head and
closed his eyes. Then his head snapped around, and he turned directly toward her. He took a tentative
step closer, then two, then began running for her.
How the…?
Her heart scrambled up her throat like a cat avoiding water, and she launched to her feet just in
time to feel his hand closing on her shoulder. “Let go!” she said, trying to pull away. God, how was
he so fast?
“I’m sorry,” he said, putting up his hands in defense. “I just… do I know you? You smell
familiar.”
“I smell…” She gaped at him and saw tears welling in his eyes. He looked innocent and lost, and
for a moment, she felt sorry for him. His torn shirt exposed bruises and half-healed cuts. And with
those pretty blue eyes, he looked so human. “You don’t remember?” she said tentatively.
He shook his head. “Something’s wrong with my head, I think. There were some bad men who
were hitting me and asking me questions, but I don’t know anything. And then they left me here and
told me to go home. But I don’t know where my home is.”
Her phone was buzzing furiously in her pocket, but she ignored it. This was one strange, long
game, and the second she saw teeth, she would drop him like a hot potato.
 Before she could speak, he backed away with his hands up. “I’m sorry if I frightened you. I should
not have startled you.” Then as if he’d just noticed, he stared up at the moon again, swept his gaze
over the dark, abandoned park, and then finally back to Kristina. “Why are you out here alone? It’s not
safe for a woman to be alone at night.”
“I’ll be all right,” she said. A strange, bubbling anticipation spread in her chest. He was probably
just trying to get her to let her guard down.
“So… do I know you? I know it sounds strange, but I know your scent. Being close to you feels
right,” he said.
“I…” She hesitated, staring up at him. What was she supposed to do? Jonas’s orders had been
clear, and he was a stickler for a plan. But clearly Dreamy Eyes here hadn’t gotten the memo.
Quit getting sucked into the big blue eyes, she scolded herself. Behind that sweet, vulnerable
mask was a creature that was lovingly crafted for killing. She was no safer than a toddler walking up
to a post-nap tiger that hadn’t yet noticed how hungry it was.
Her phone buzzed again. She tore her gaze away from Sasha’s and checked her messages to find
Jonas had sent her three messages. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Just a second.”
She rapidly read the messages, which asked her what she was doing. A second told her to get him
moving. A third repeated the message of the second with a few extra expletives.
When she put her phone away, Sasha looked so hopeful that it nearly broke her heart. Maybe some
of his blood still lingered in her system, because she didn’t feel anger or revulsion like she might
have felt with another vampire. Instead, he made her inexplicably sad, and she desperately wanted to
give him a hug and assure him that he would be all right.
The mission of the Shieldsmen was to eradicate vampires, and having sympathy for this one didn’t
fit that mission. Sasha could have been responsible for any one of the dozens of deaths they’d
investigated over the last few months. He could have been the one who snapped Sabrina’s neck.
There were dozens of mysterious deaths in the area, and any one of those bodies could have been his
handiwork. His conscience was probably dripping with blood.
But right now, he existed in this tiny sphere of moonlight where there were simply two people and
a lot of unanswered questions. “Could you please just tell me?” he said quietly. “Do I know you? Or
do you know my name?”
“You’re Sasha,” she finally said.
“Sasha,” he said, relief bringing a wave of relaxation to his features. “And you?”
“I’m Kristina,” she said.
“Kristina,” he repeated. The way he said her name did things to her that she wasn’t ready for. He
had a lovely, rich voice and a clipped r that gave her name a little kick she liked. And as that final
vowel trailed into quiet, it left a little smile on his face. “I would—”
He froze, whipped his head around, and grabbed her arm firmly. A gunshot rang out, pinging off
the sidewalk near them.
“Come with me,” he hissed. Banding one arm around her waist, he took off sprinting and left her
wondering if she’d just signed her own death warrant.
 5

T he world was a confusing blur, but primitive instinct drove him in long, fast strides over the
damp grass.
Protect Kristina.
Her scent was irresistible, but he pushed it away as he surveyed the vast open ground.
Dangerous ground.
Too exposed.
His shadow, dense and long over the lush green, reminded him that he was an easy target. The
thundercrack of gunfire had awakened something in him. Flashes of another time, when days and
nights were filled with gunshots and the specter of death. A grim shadow stalked them. It would not
get its bony hands on Kristina if he had anything to say about it.
Holding the human woman tight to his chest, Sasha sprinted across the open field toward a cluster
of trees. Their dense, dark foliage would make good cover. He sprang into the air, prompting a little
ooop! from Kristina.
“Sasha, I—”
He landed on a branch, then leaped to the next tree, bounding up and up until he found a nice
sturdy branch on a tree at the center of the cluster. They were walled in by dark leaves, with just a
smattering of silver moonlight leaking through. Kristina wriggled against him and started to protest,
but he clapped his hand over her mouth.
“Mmph!” she protested.
“Shh,” he murmured. “I will protect you.”
She batted at his wrist, then pried at his fingers. A little growl vibrated against his hand.
“If I let you go, you must be quiet,” he whispered.
She nodded, and he uncovered her mouth. “Sasha, this is unnecessary. We should just leave.”
“Someone just shot at us,” he said. He gently took her hand, brushing his fingers over the
underside of her wrist. Her heartbeat was rapid and strong, like a soft drumbeat against his fingertips.
“I know so little right now, but I know that I need to protect you.”
Her jaw dropped. “Sasha, I—”
“Shh,” he murmured, putting his finger over her soft pink lips. They pursed into a tight little bow
beneath his fingertip, forcing him to wonder what they would taste like. Focus, he thought. “Stay here.
I’ll be back.”
He left her in the tree, then dropped silently to the grass below. Her scent clung to him, and he
nearly climbed back up the tree to get another whiff of her.
When his captors dumped him off, he’d stumbled into another storm of confusion. Insects buzzing,
the distant roar of road noise, the smell of damp earth…
And then there was her. A distant heartbeat, and a smell that was so sweet and enticing that he had
to find its source. When he’d touched her, it was like the world came into focus, and he knew
something. Even before he’d heard her name and shaped it lovingly with his tongue, he knew that she
was right. He belonged near her for some reason, and that certainty was rare in his current chaos.
Golden hair and wide blue eyes had flashed through his memory, and he glimpsed her reaching out
to touch his face. Her eyes had been so wide and vulnerable as she looked up at him.
Kristina.
She was something solid to grasp, a tether into reality. He could not lose this one precious thing
before he could understand who she was to him.
Sprinting back to the bench where the bullet had struck the ground, Sasha found the bite of
gunpowder. He followed its trail, bounding over dew-damp grass toward an expanse of strange gray-
black stone.
Humans had been here.
Gold glinted against the dark stone. He picked up a metal casing, still warm to the touch. As he
surveyed the dark expanse, he realized he stood in the open, waiting to have his head blown off.
“Kristina,” he murmured. Zigzagging through pools of shadow, he rushed back to the stand of trees
and looked up. She stared down at him, a strange look on her face.
“Can you please get me down?” she whispered.
“We must go somewhere safe,” he said. He scrambled up the tree and took her in his arms again.
One small hand curled into his shirt. The sensation of her nails lightly scraping his skin sent a shiver
up his spine. He jumped down and landed quietly.
“Isn’t that bad for your knees?” she asked as he put her down.
“It doesn’t hurt,” he said. Then he looked over his shoulder to survey the dark hills. Feeling a pit
of embarrassment in his gut, he turned back to Kristina. “I don’t know where to go.”
Her head tilted. “You don’t remember how to get home?”
“I don’t remember any home. I only remember you.”
“You remember me?” she asked.
“Just a glimpse,” he said. He took her hand and pressed it to his cheek. “I remember you touching
me like this.”
Her heart gave a noisy thump, and she snatched her hand away from his cheek. Then she gently
took his hand and said, “We should go.”
They walked in silence for a while, though he remained alert for any sign of their shooter. They
passed a small lake, and he startled when a fat frog leaped across the path. There were distant cries
of owls and a whirring song of insects around the water. The moon reflected on the rippling lake. In
the distance, he saw a strange glow rising against the sky. Bright lights glared, much too close and
orderly to be stars.
But he was more interested in Kristina and the steady, thrumming sensation beneath her skin.
“Kristina, why does your heart beat so quickly?” he asked.
She gasped. “Can you hear it?”
“Are you frightened?”
“I think…it was just the gunshot that scared me,” she said.
“But it got faster when I touched your hand,” he said.
She laughed. “You surprised me.”
“Oh,” he said. “I like touching your hand.”
 “I like it too,” she said quietly. Her pulse remained quick and noisy as they walked through the
park, then emerged into a strangely bright street. A gleaming silver carriage waited on the road,
producing a foul-smelling gas.
He froze. “What is this?”
“It’s a car,” she said. Her head tilted. “You don’t remember cars?”
Cool air billowed from an open doorway in the back of the carriage. He craned his neck to peer
inside at the strange woman in the front of the carriage. “Is it safe?”
“I promise,” she said, squeezing his hand. “We’re going somewhere safe.”
He let her guide him into the carriage, which was filled with a mélange of unpleasant smells that
burned his nose. The woman in the front gave him a strange look, then put her hands on the wheel in
front of her. The whole carriage vibrated beneath him with an unsettling sensation.
He held Kristina’s hand tightly as the carriage began to move. She whispered in his ear. “It’s all
right. I promise it’s safe.”
But he was overwhelmed by the tall buildings that rose around him, with eldritch light glowing all
around them. There were unpleasant flashes in his mind, too quick for him to grasp. He closed his
eyes and concentrated on Kristina. Her heart was still noisy, but he liked the sound of its insistent
thumping. Each pulse sent a small burst of heat through her skin, intensifying her scent.
“Here we are,” the driver said.
“Thanks,” Kristina said. “Be safe.”
Kristina tugged on his hand, and he followed her lead to get out of the carriage. A huge, blocky
palace loomed over them. For such a large building, it was hideously ugly and plain. Most of its
rectangular windows were dark, though he glimpsed slivers of light here and there. Behind them, the
street glowed with so many lanterns that it looked like broad daylight even beneath the canopy of the
night sky.
Hand in hand, they walked through dark glass doors and into a blindingly bright room. Kristina
walked up to a metal door and pressed a jewel-like protrusion. After a strange bell, the metal door
split open to a small room. Fear rushed through him at the sight of the small, cell-like chamber. She
beckoned. “It’s safe, I promise.”
He hesitantly entered, then startled again as they surged upward. His world was becoming
unbearably confusing. The moving room halted, and the doors split open again to reveal a long,
carpeted hallway framed by stark white walls and identical gray doors. Kristina led him down the
hall and used a key to open one of the doors.
When the door swung open, he had the first welcome experience that he could remember. The air
rushing out smelled clean and fresh. It smelled like Kristina. This had to be her home.
Inside, the decorations struck him as odd, but they did not seem nearly as startling or foreign as
the metal carriage or the traveling room. There was a low wooden table with several glasses on it,
along with a large settee and two chairs. The small space was filled with sounds; one was the quiet
rush of air, while another was an eerie, metallic hum that he could almost ignore if he focused on
Kristina’s heartbeat.
She locked the door behind them, then hurried to yank curtains over the windows. With a deep
breath, she turned and said, “You can stay here tonight.”
“Is this your home? Is it…our home?”
Her eyes went wide. “It’s my home. Not yours.”
“Oh. Where is my home?” he asked.
“That’s complicated. Um…” She fidgeted with her hands, then gestured to a large chaise. “Please
sit.”
He obediently sat, and she perched on a chair across from him. For the first time, he noticed her
odd, masculine clothing. The trousers didn’t seem befitting of such an exquisite woman, but they
afforded a lovely view of her narrow waist and long legs.
“How much do you remember?” she asked.
“Not much. There were the men shouting at me and asking me questions. Then I was burning in the
sun. Then someone took me in a noisy carriage and dropped me off in that park where I met you. And
you know the rest,” he said.
“Right. But you can obviously speak English,” she said. “And you recognized a gunshot.”
“I can’t explain why, but I knew that sound was a gun. But I don’t know why I remember guns,” he
said.
“But not the car?”
He shook his head. “Do you know what happened to me?”
“I have an idea, but if it’s okay with you, I’d rather talk about it after we both rest. It’s very late,
and you need to get to bed before sunrise,” she said. Her brow furrowed. “You know you’re not
human, right? You’re—”
“Vampire,” he said, running his tongue over his teeth. “I think I understand. The men who hurt me
shouted it at me.”
“That’s right. That means the sunlight will hurt you,” she said.
“I understand. Is the sunrise soon?” he asked.
She glanced at her watch. “In another hour or so. I think it would be best if you got some sleep,
and we can discuss things tomorrow night when your head is clearer.”
Perhaps his memory would return after a night’s rest, though he didn’t feel particularly optimistic.
At Kristina’s beckoning gesture, he rose and followed her into a small bedroom that smelled even
more strongly of her clean scent. “This is your room,” he said. “It smells like you.”
“Yes,” she said. “What does it smell like to you? Is it bad?” She looked embarrassed, a strange
reaction.
He shook his head. “I don’t remember many things. But in here, it smells…it smells safe. Clean.
You say that this was not my home, but it still smells familiar to me. Like my home would smell, if
that makes any sense.” He fiddled with the edge of the strange, linen shirt he wore. “It will be very
pleasant to rest here. Will the sun come in?”
She shook her head and moved to the windows. “I have blackout curtains. That means the light
doesn’t come in.” As she adjusted the curtains, he peeled off his shredded shirt, then did the same
with his filthy, bloodstained pants. His body was marked with half-healed wounds and dried blood.
Some could have been from just before the park, but some had to be older. Perhaps he’d been fighting.
“And you can— Sasha!” She whirled and stared at him.
He froze. “What?”
Her eyes scraped over him. “Is there a reason you’re taking off all your clothes?”
“I did not want to bring dirt into your bed,” he said. “Did I do something wrong?”
Her cheeks were furious pink, and her heart was racing even harder than it had when he first took
her hand. An inviting scent of warm spices tickled at his senses. “No, that was… very considerate.
Maybe in the future, let me know so I can step out before you start stripping.”
“Oh. I can do that,” he said agreeably. He held up his pants. “Should I—”
“No, don’t put the dirty clothes back on,” she said, dismissing his gesture. Then she ducked
through a side door. The sound of rushing water greeted him. When he followed her into the small
chamber, he found her adjusting silver knobs beneath a pouring fountain of water. “Here. I’ll make
sure your clothes get cleaned.”
He followed her instructions to get under the water, then let out a soft groan of pleasure. Warm
water on his skin felt almost as good as her hands. The clean water cut through layers of sweat and
grime, turning the water brownish-red at his feet. She handed him a cloth and a small white bar of
soap, then quickly closed the curtain.
He lingered under the water long after it ran clear, long after he had scrubbed himself from head
to toe. A tattoo of a crudely drawn black bird was inked over his heart. What did it mean? Old scars
crisscrossed his belly and legs, with two particularly nasty round, puckered scars over his hip and
shoulder.
One hand drifted to his cock, and at the merest brush of friction, he thought of Kristina. Whatever
had become of his memory, his body certainly understood physical desire and animal hunger.
“Nyet,” he scolded himself. If she was embarrassed by seeing his naked body, she surely would
not appreciate seeing him touching himself, even if it really was a compliment to how lovely and
magnetic she was.
Finally, he raised his voice. “Kristina? I am finished.”
Her voice carried through the door. “See the silver handle on the wall? Grab it and turn it until the
water stops.”
When he twisted it, the water became painfully hot. Jumping away from the burning spray, he
swore noisily. “It’s hot!” he bellowed, cramming himself into the tight, tiled corner.
“Righty tighty, lefty loosey,” she called back. “Turn it to the right.”
He turned the handle to the right, and the water went cold before stopping entirely. Then he pulled
back the curtain and emerged, dripping, onto a soft rug. “You said to warn you. I am very naked
again.”
A soft laugh tickled at his senses. Her arm appeared around the door frame, clutching a white
towel. “Dry off and wrap that around your waist.”
He followed her instructions, then padded out of the room. Her eyes scraped over him again. Her
faint smile faltered, and she rose to gently brush her fingers over the purple welts on his chest. “Do
these hurt?” she asked.
“Not badly,” he said. “I think they will heal quickly if I can rest away from the sun.”
She nodded slowly. “I could get you some Neosporin or something.”
“Neo…” he trailed off.
Her brows furrowed into a charming little frown. “It’s an anti… um, it’s an ointment for healing.”
“Oh. No need,” he said. Regrettably, she withdrew her hand, and he wished she hadn’t. He
considered asking for some of her mysterious ointment just to enjoy the touch of her fingers again.
Everything was so confusing, but her touch felt like an anchor that kept him from drifting into unknown
seas. Nervous flutters began in his chest as he added, “Thank you for protecting me.”
Her head cocked. “I think you protected me, didn’t you?”
“Perhaps. But I would have wandered through the night aimlessly until the sun rose if not for you.
And I am very much looking forward to a good rest,” he said.
Her gaze softened, and she spared him a soft, sweet smile. “Okay. Good night, Sasha. I hope you
sleep well.”
“Good night, Kristina,” he said. When she closed the door behind her, he sank into the bed and
groaned with relief. His entire body ached, his joints protesting. Upon waking, his arms had been
bound over his head, and he guessed it might have been a while since he’d been unbound and able to
lie down.
Burying his face in the pillow enveloped him in her scent. The only thing better would have been
to have had her right there. He listened for her in the other room, hearing the faint footsteps across a
hollow floor. Around him, he heard strange, muffled voices, rushing sounds, and mechanical noises.
This place was noisy, but he was exhausted enough to fall asleep within minutes.

TOWERING HEDGES LOOMED OVER HIM, their dense leaves allowing only the giggles and whispers of
the other guests to trickle through. The moon shone bright overhead, and he could just hear the lilting
waltz from within the ballroom.
Where was she?
A thread of a scent caught his senses, and he grinned. “I’m hunting you,” he said playfully. A faint
giggle erupted from the east, and he chased around a series of turns only to find a dead end beneath
the watchful eye of a statue with a red ribbon tied neatly around its wrist. Her perfume clung to the
scrap of fabric, taunting him.
Now this was a proper hunt.
Another giggle, then a rustle of leaves. With his blood roaring in his veins, he took in her scent, let
it suffuse him, and followed his instincts. A flash of blue silk blurred ahead of him.
Sasha launched himself off the path and high into the air, quickly scanning the ground below as
gravity fought to get its grip on him again. In a billowing bloom of silk skirts, his prey ran down the
eastern path of the garden maze. He landed silently in a cobblestoned intersection, then bounded over
three tall hedges to land directly in her path.
Instead of screaming in fright, the beautiful blonde planted her hands on her hips and said, “That’s
cheating, radnoi.” Her elaborately pinned curls had come loose, streaming around her flushed face
like a halo. She was an angel, glowing like the sun even beneath the night sky.
“I caught you,” he said proudly. “And would gladly break the rules of any game to do so again.”
Her brows raised as she backed away, crooking one finger at him. “And what will you do now
that you’ve caught your prey?”
With a low growl, he grabbed her by the waist, leaped into the air, and landed in the rolling field
beyond the labyrinth. A shimmering curtain of stars cast a silver glow upon them. Bearing her to the
ground, he stole her full, wine-stained lips in a kiss and drank her down. Her little hands shoved at
his chest, and he humored her by letting her roll him over and pin him down.
“I’ve got you now,” she crowed.
“I concede defeat,” he said. Even when she won, his was still the sweetest victory.
Her eyes gleamed with mischief as she took a fistful of her gown, and somehow tore it away,
leaving only shreds of sapphire silk to drift away on the breeze like crumbling rose petals. The moon
painted her body in streaks of silver, limning each sinuous curve as she climbed astride him and
unlaced his trousers. He watched in wonder as she stroked his cock, then slid him inside her, into that
decadent warmth that stole his conscious thoughts and left only yes good wonderful booming around
in his foolish skull.
Her long golden curls tickled his skin. “Look at me, Sasha,” she said, rolling her hips against him
as she squeezed him tight. “You must not forget me.”
Despite the mounting pleasure, her words startled him. “I could never forget you,” he said.
 A sad expression twisted across her pretty face. “I know you think you couldn’t. But there are
powerful forces that are stronger even than you.” She traced a spiral on his chest, then planted her left
hand flat against the muscle. The pleasant heat of her skin turned to a painful bite, and then a searing
burn.
He stared down at her hand, where a huge ruby ring glowed upon her ring finger. The stone
glowed like fire encased in glass. “Kristina, it hurts,” he said.
“You cannot forget me if I leave my mark,” she replied, still rising and falling, stealing more of
his conscious mind with each stroke. When she finally withdrew her hand, the pain ceased, but her
handprint remained over his heart.
“I am yours,” he said, staring up at her.
Her blue eyes glazed over, she lowered herself and murmured, “Mark me so you won’t forget.”
The pain of her touch faded as he bit into her throat, tasting the familiar spill of her blood. Utter
perfection. He drove his hips into her, holding her tight as she writhed and trembled, then let out a soft
cry that vibrated through him. Orgasm made her taste even sweeter, and he drew one last pull as he
finished.
Her little heart pounded against his chest as he stroked her hair. “Promise you won’t forget me,”
she murmured.
“I could never. I promise.”
 6

“W hat the fuck was unclear, Krissy?” Jonas snapped.

Don’t cry. Having him angry at her made her feel like a gawky girl again, when she’d
made some unknown misstep that earned her another lecture. She was exhausted and stressed and
confused, and this didn’t help. Thankfully, the vampire lay fast asleep upstairs while she sat
downstairs in Jonas’s car with the early morning sun burning her retinas.
“I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t know what else to do. He came right for me, and I didn’t have a chance to
scare him off,” she said.
“So you stood and chatted with him instead of taking out a gun and shooting at him?” he said.
I like touching your hand.
That had nothing to do with it. She shoved away the memory of his sweet vulnerability, of the
overwhelming innocence that did not belong in the body of a killing machine. “I panicked,” she said.
“This could have cost us our best opportunity to get to Eduardo Alazan,” Jonas complained.
“He doesn’t know where Eduardo is,” she insisted.
“You’re certain? Or were you so busy giving him doe eyes that you forgot what you were dealing
with?” he said.
Her cheeks heated. “I don’t appreciate your implication. You said yourself you thought his
memory was screwed up, and I think you’re right. He had no idea where his home was. Hell, he was
scared of the car and the elevator.”
Jonas sat in silence for long enough to make her wonder if she was about to get kicked out of the
organization altogether. That would definitely prove he wasn’t playing favorites. His fingers steepled
together. “I want you to convince him he’s one of us,” he finally said.
“As in a vampire hunter?”
“Yes. He wouldn’t be the first vampire to hunt with the Shieldsmen. If it comes up, tell him that he
tried to get away from the Auberon because he disagreed with their disregard for human life, and they
left him for dead. Their attack must be what destroyed his memory,” Jonas said.
It was genius. So why did it feel so awful?
“And how do I explain the fact that you and Ollie tortured him?”
Jonas winced. “Tell him you don’t know anything about that. Keep him here at the apartment for a
few days and work on your story. Dodge anything you can’t answer easily, and in the meantime, I’ll
talk with Mr. Eslinger for guidance. We can’t waste this opportunity twice.” His eyes narrowed on
twice, as if to remind her exactly who was to blame.
She gaped at him. “That’s it? I’m fostering a lost vampire puppy now?”
 He scowled. “In case you forgot, you brought him home. Deal with it,” he said sharply. “I’ll have
Oliver deliver some blood so you can feed him and earn his trust.”
“And if he kills me?”
“You can take care of yourself, as you reminded me so often before I vouched for you,” he said
mildly. “Take care of it.”
She sighed. “Can you please tell Ollie to get some clothes, too? He is not shy, and I really don’t
want to have a Tarzan of the vampire jungle situation in my apartment for the next few days.”
At that, Jonas spared the tiniest chuff of laughter. “He’ll take care of it. Get all of Brooklyn’s shit
together so she can work at the hotel. Oliver will pick it up when he delivers the blood bags.” Her
father’s amber-honey eyes flicked to the door in a silent command. “Good luck.”
As she got out of the car, she winced at the bright morning sun. She desperately needed to rest, but
taking a nap while an unpredictable amnesiac vampire slept in her bedroom was certainly poor
tactical planning. Instead, she walked down the block to the small convenience store, bought an
energy drink and a breakfast sandwich in a greasy paper wrapper, then trudged back to the apartment.
“What are you doing?” she muttered as she lingered outside the door. With one hand on her gun,
she nudged the door open. The dark apartment was still and quiet. After locking up, she peeked into
her bedroom and found Sasha asleep. A tiny stripe of light from the hall painted over his features, but
he was still as a statue. His face appeared relaxed, and she could have sworn he looked like he’d
already partially healed.
Her comforter was thrown askew, baring a well-sculpted chest tattooed with the arching wings of
a raven. After the night she’d had, she had earned the right to take a peek, hadn’t she? His sweet
vulnerability had made him seem young, even gentle; but he wasn’t a small, weak little creature that
needed a human’s protection. He was wiry and lean, with impressive biceps and broad shoulders.
As warm desire pulsed in her core, she sprang back from the door and closed it. What the hell
are you doing?
He might have thought she smelled like home, but she remembered how he’d grabbed her in the
Landry house, overpowering her without batting an eye. He was dangerous, and she would do well to
remember it.
She stalked back into the living room, where she popped open the energy drink and chugged the
caustic, artificially fruit-flavored battery acid to rejuvenate herself. Everything about Atlanta had
been weird from the moment she arrived. Back in Portland, things had been so much simpler. The
vampire problem that had drawn them there had been a group of suspicious ‘animal attacks’ that first
hit hikers near Mount Hood before gravitating closer and closer to the city.
They’d been behind the curve for months before they finally caught one of the wild, Untethered
vampires that orbited the Casteron vampires. Nearly two years of hunting had brought down most of
Baroness Albrecht’s followers. With Kristina and Brooklyn sifting through banking records and phone
data, they’d figured out where Albrecht lived, where all her closest associates spent their money, and
where they’d go to ground. Years of work culminated in one bloody week to bring the rest of the court
down. Jonas, Alicia, and several other dhampir hunters had swept in to bring down the blade. It took
one bloody night to kill the Baroness, and another three nights of hunting to kill her subjects as they
fled.
Portland had been a difficult hunt logistically, but it was morally and ethically straightforward.
The Casteron vampires had killed countless humans, many of which they’d probably never found.
Killing them made Portland safer, and by extension, the rest of the world.
So why was this different?
 She had been tying off loose ends in Portland when Jack Eslinger’s assistant called and told her to
get on a plane to Atlanta right away. All she knew was that Jordan Cole — a real asshole of a hunter
— had botched a mission, and Thomas Moon was failing spectacularly to pick up the pieces after his
capture. As far as Kristina knew, she was going try to cover Thomas’s bloody trail and keep the
hunters off the Auberon radar. Jack’s chipper assistant had failed to mention that Kristina was
walking into a hostage exchange with a vampire mother who was ready to burn the world down.
When she’d reported back to Jonas about how Thomas had kidnapped a human child, he’d agreed
that it was irresponsible.
“And completely wrong,” she’d added.
“Mm,” he’d said, the very definition of noncommittal. He seemed more concerned about
provoking an extreme response from Rachel Ryan’s allies than the inherent immorality of kidnapping
a fucking child.
That casual sound that could have meant anything from I agree to I don’t give a damn what you
think had haunted her for weeks now. She needed something more substantial than that, and she’d
been working up the courage to say so when Jonas had changed the subject to pry about the details of
the vampires she’d encountered. He was much more interested in Rachel’s apparent taser-touch than
in the morality of Thomas Moon’s tactics.
But the physical pain of tussling with Rachel had been nothing compared to the shame of staring
into the eyes of a mother who just wanted her child back. Thomas had made it clear that they weren’t
to hurt the little girl, as if any of them wanted to.
But Rachel didn’t know that. And her daughter certainly didn’t know that.
Furthermore, even if they’d stolen her away to Disney World, they’d still hurt her by stealing her
away from her life and making the world that much more frightening. They’d put her in danger. What
if a stray bullet had struck her? What if a vampire had gone crashing through the wall and crushed
her?
And worse… what if it hadn’t worked to lure Rachel out? Would Thomas have resorted to cutting
off the little girl’s fingers on camera if it achieved his ends? How far was too far to rid the world of
vampires?
After receiving a reminder text from Brooklyn, Kristina quickly packed up all the files and took
down the whiteboards from the spare room. When Sasha had deposited her in a tree for safekeeping,
she’d quickly texted Brooklyn to tell her to get out of the apartment in case she couldn’t track him
back to the Auberon court. Before vacating, Brooklyn had sprayed the apartment with a cloying apple
cinnamon air freshener to mask her scent, though Sasha had been so focused on Kristina’s scent that
he didn’t comment on it. Luckily, he’d been content to shower and go to bed, which had left her time
to hide anything he didn’t need to see.
Once everything was packed, Kristina spent the day working on her database. While her list of
Auberon vampires was sparse, she had a lengthy list of vampires with the new markings. Each dead
vamp provided another set of identification through their phones and wallets, which sometimes led to
bank records and addresses and social media accounts. She’d mapped everything she could, but so
far, she couldn’t find any patterns that got her closer to the center of this ‘Phantom’ court rather than
branching further outward.
About half of the vampires had out-of-town IDs, while several others appeared to be brand-new
vampires. It seemed like their mystery court had a protocol; find a nice place to hole up, kill the
owners or turn them, and live in the house until they got caught. She’d stumbled on the Landry house
while combing through credit card statements from one of their vampire victims. In a three-day span
she’d found more than a dozen Amazon orders all being sent to an address that didn’t match the card’s
owner, who had already been dead for days. The Landrys were the fifth such house they’d raided in a
month. It made her skin crawl to think of how many suburban neighborhoods might be playing host to
the vampires right now.
It was nearing sunset when Oliver texted to say that he was on the way up. She met him at the door
and helped him carry two big plastic totes downstairs. After loading his truck, Oliver handed her a
duffel bag and a cooler packed with several blood bags. “Have fun with your new project,” he said
mildly.
Eat shit, she thought, simply nodding and walking back into the building. No need to give him any
reason to suck up to her father by reporting on her piss-poor attitude. Bigger problems lay ahead.
In a few hours, Sasha would wake up, and she would have to put her dismal improvisation skills
to the test. She quickly showered, then lingered at the mirror for way too long. Her scoop-neck top
revealed the pink welts where he’d bitten her. Running her fingers over them awakened the warm
shiver again.
“No, no, no,” she scolded herself. She dug an oversized flannel shirt out of her big suitcase and
flipped the collar up to cover her neck.
Anticipation set her stomach twisting and turning as sunset approached. She stowed one of her
guns loaded with wooden bullets in a holster over her back, then put two injectors filled with the
signature Shieldsmen wood poison at arm’s reach.
He was the enemy, no matter how sweet and innocent he seemed. No matter how nice it had been
when he told her she was the only certain thing in his world and promised to keep her safe. He’d
stalked her through the Landrys’ house with every intention of enthralling her and had forced his blood
on her. He was no different than the three vampires she and Angel had killed before he arrived.
Or was he?
Maybe Sasha had never killed a nice old lady with a closet full of yarn and a wall covered in
pictures of smiling grandchildren. Maybe he was a cruelty-free blood drinker.
The bedroom door creaked, and she sat bolt upright. The hall was already empty. A blur in her
peripheral vision caught her eye, and she realized just how fast he moved. One moment she was alone
in the living room, and the next, he was standing in front of her with the towel bunched around his
waist. Looming over her, he made it impossible to look anywhere else but those chiseled muscles.
Several patches of twisted scar tissue marked his torso.
But instead of pretty blue eyes staring down at her, there was a hungry, scarlet gaze. His lips were
parted over his sharp fangs, and he was stalking toward her.
Heart pounding, she sprang up and leaped over the couch, drawing her gun in one smooth motion.
He startled and dropped the towel, backing away with his hands up. “Kristina!”
“Sasha!” she blurted. Do not look at his cock, for the love of God.
Too late. A-plus.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said, standing there in all his naked glory. Her cheeks burned
as he caught her eye.
“Sasha. Towel.”
“I don’t mind,” he said.
“I do,” she squeaked. “Cover up!”
He fumbled to grab the towel, then turned around. Of course he did, because she hadn’t seen his
entire, perfect little peach of an ass yet. So kind of him to complete the image in her mind, which she
would certainly never forget. Did humans even have those muscles?
 When he got the towel around himself again, he turned back to ask, “Why are you trying to shoot
me? Is it because I am naked? Do you find me displeasing?”
“You’re not displeasing,” she protested. “It’s just that it’s not polite to walk around naked in
someone else’s house.”
“Oh. I don’t understand,” he fretted. “But if you wish for me to cover myself, I will be polite.” He
carefully tucked the edge of the towel in and folded his arms over his chest. “Why do you still have
your gun out? I’ve covered myself now.”
“Because you just rushed at me with your teeth out,” she said. “And your eyes are red. That means
you’re dangerous.”
He lifted his hand as if he was surprised, running his finger over his fangs. “I’m sorry. I didn’t
realize they were showing. I am very hungry, and you smell so good. Would you allow me to drink
from you? I will be gentle.”
“No,” she said firmly. She needed therapy, because some foolish part deep inside was purring,
Yes, please do. Another round of vampire euphoria coming up.
“Oh,” he said again. His brow furrowed. “Is it rude of me to ask? It’s just that I had a dream about
biting you, and you enjoyed it very much.”
Her cheeks went furiously hot. “It’s not…” She sighed and holstered the gun. “No. In a weird
way, it was very polite to ask. But most people don’t tell each other about their dreams.”
“Oh.” The look of disappointment on his face was like a punch to the gut. And now she was dying
to know exactly what he’d dreamed about. She had a feeling she knew what he meant by her enjoying
being bitten. And she was certainly not going to entertain that fantasy.
With her cheeks heating, she scrambled for the duffel bag and offered it to him. “There are some
clothes for you in here. Why don’t you get dressed, and I’ll get you something to eat?”
“Thank you for your kindness,” he said, retreating down the hall with the bag.
While he was gone, she took out one of the blood bags and tried not to think too much about its
contents. She pondered the near-empty cabinets and took down a coffee mug. When she turned, Sasha
was inches away from her, gazing down with an inquisitive expression. She squealed in surprise and
jumped back.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” he said.
“You’re just very quiet,” she said, fighting to catch her breath. Loose sweatpants and a snug
undershirt somehow looked like high fashion on Sasha’s muscular frame. It was hard not to stare as he
reached for the mug, muscles shifting on his forearms. “Let’s sit and talk.”
He nodded and followed her into the living room, sipping at the mug of blood. “This is very tasty.
Thank you.”
Shifting carefully toward the end of the couch where she’d hidden one of her injectors between
the cushions, she nodded and said, “You’re welcome.”
“What do you know about me? Now that I’ve rested, I feel much better,” he said.
“Do you remember anything else?”
“No. My head feels much clearer than it did yesterday, but it still feels like anything prior to those
men shouting at me is simply a blank page,” he said.
Yesterday, he’d seemed distant and dazed, like a child who hadn’t entirely woken up from a bad
dream. Now, he was precise and clear in his speech, and his demeanor was calm. He seemed to learn
quickly, which might prove to be problematic if this charade had to go on for more than a few days.
Her chest tightened, and her voice felt shaky as she began to speak. “You’re a vampire, but you’ve
been helping me and the people I work with. We’re vampire hunters, and we’re trying to make this
city safer for people,” she said.
His scarlet eyes widened. “Really? I hunt other vampires?”
“The Blade of Auberon are made up of some of the worst, most dangerous vampires in history,”
she explained. “But you’ve been helping us hunt them down.”
“I see,” he murmured. “And that’s how I know you?”
She nodded eagerly. “You were fighting some of the Auberon vampires, and they hurt you very
badly. We think that’s what caused your memory loss,” she lied. The pain on his face was obvious,
and she could almost see him reaching through the dense veil, trying to pluck out the tiniest thread of
recollection. “You protected me from them,” she blurted.
He perked up. “I did?”
“Yes,” she said. “They got the jump on me, but you defended me.”
A soft smile spread on his handsome face. “I’m glad I could keep you safe.”
“Me too,” she said.
What the hell are you doing? her logical mind screeched. There was no need to tie herself to this
narrative. She could have been an objective outsider who’d simply come along to help.
But wouldn’t it make him trust her? Wouldn’t it be easier to get what she wanted if he believed
there was already a tie between them?
And if she was painfully honest with herself, it was a nice fantasy. It was nice to imagine someone
who cared so much about her that he’d fight to protect her. Hell, she didn’t have to work hard to
imagine it. His memory got wiped out just hours before he’d sniffed her out in the park. Long before
he knew her name, he’d decided her safety was his primary objective. And she smelled like home to
him, whatever that meant.
If vampire hunting gave her any free time for therapy, a clinician would have a field day with this
one.
“So, are we…?” His cheeks flushed. When he looked up again, he said, “Are we lovers?”
That should have been an immediate no. The fact that it wasn’t only drew out the silence, which
rang loud and accusatory. It felt like decades had passed when she finally moved her tongue to say,
“No. We were just friends.”
His brow furrowed. Was that disappointment? And God, what in the ninth layer of hell was wrong
with her that she liked that look? “Oh. I see,” he said. “I hope it wasn’t rude to ask.”
“It wasn’t,” she said gently.
“So what happens next? You said I help you and your friends, but where are they?” he asked.
Her throat tightened. “We have an organization called the Shieldsmen. Does that name mean
anything to you?”
Frowning, he sat in silence a long while before finally shaking his head.. “I don’t remember
anything.”
“What about Le Bouclier d’Argent?”
His eyebrows arched even higher, and he shook his head again.
That was for the best. Depending on his age, he might have crossed paths with the Shieldsmen of
old. Hell, he could have crossed her father’s path back in Europe. “The Shieldsmen are here in the
city to help end the vampire problem. We wanted to let you rest and heal for a few days, and when
you’re ready, we’ll get back to hunting,” she said. “Would that be okay with you?”
“Of course. If I can help keep people safe, then I want to do it.” His eyes drifted down to the mug
in his hands. “I wish I could remember more about myself.”
“I noticed you have an accent,” she said. “It sounds Russian to me, but I’m not an expert. Does
that sound right?”
At that, his eyes lit up. “Maybe,” he said hopefully.
She swiped through her phone to bring up the YouTube app, then searched for Russian
conversation. She cued up a video from a language learning channel and handed it over. Sasha’s eyes
widened as he watched the screen, and his shoulders rose as if the words were giving him
confidence.
“You understand them?” she asked.
“Da, yes,” he said brightly. “They are talking about a girl who likes to sing and write music.”
“So you must be from Russia,” she said.
At that, he gave her a rakish grin and blurted something in Russian.
“What does that mean?”
“It means I don’t know anything else about you, but I know that you are a very kind and beautiful
woman, and I am pleased that you are my friend. My only friend, perhaps,” he said with a little laugh.
The compliment made her feel warm and fuzzy, but the feeling faded rapidly. As he continued to
watch the video, she realized that while he was indeed an adult male and an intelligent one at that, he
had the innocent trust of a child.
He’s a fucking vampire, she scolded herself. That thought came in Jonas Wynn’s sharp voice, but
it was true. She couldn’t let herself get lulled into treating him like a child, nor a new friend, simply
because of those dreamy blue eyes and the kind nature.
And she certainly could not keep thinking about what precisely he meant when he said he dreamed
about her and how much she enjoyed him biting her.
7
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In the meantime Dolpho Spini, the leader of the Compagnacci, who
have instigated the riot, learns that Tito has also been false to that
faction, and orders him to be seized. He escapes, leaps into the
Arno and swims down the river in the darkness, but when, exhausted
and fainting, he reaches the shore, there is waiting for him among
the rushes the old man Baldasarre, who has found the opportunity
for vengeance, and under whose hand he falls at last.

Romola has drifted to a little village on the coast which the plague
had emptied of most of its inhabitants. Here for a while she tends the
suffering, and finally, reconciled again with life, she feels that she
must return. When she reaches Florence and learns of her
husband’s death, she seeks the helpless little Tessa and her children
and takes them under her protection.

And now Savonarola, amid the agonies of the torture, has confessed
that he was not a prophet, and he is condemned to death. She is
present at the solemn scene of execution, awaiting from him some
word, free from constraint, which should tell the final truth of his past
life. But he is silent upon the scaffold.

It is in the Epilogue that it first clearly appears that “Romola” is a

novel with a purpose, for here the heroine, many years afterwards, in
an earnest talk with Tessa’s boy, thus tells him the moral of his
father’s life:

“There was a man to whom I was very near, so that I could see a
great deal of his life, who made almost every one fond of him, for
he was young and clever and beautiful, and his manners to all
were gentle and kind. I believe, when I first knew him, he never
thought of anything cruel or base. But because he tried to slip
away from everything that was unpleasant, and cared for nothing
else so much as his own safety, he came at last to commit some
of the basest deeds, such as make men infamous. He denied his
father, and left him to misery; he betrayed every trust that was
reposed in him, that he might keep himself safe and get rich and
prosperous. Yet calamity overtook him.”
The account of the gradual degeneration of the character of Tito
Melema is, indeed, the strongest feature in the book. Tito was a man
of sunny disposition, who never made himself disagreeable, never
boasted of his own doings, was generous in small things, gave
others the credit to which they were entitled, and claimed little for
himself, was frank and engaging in manners, subtle in thought,
supple in conduct, and had an innate love of reticence, which often
acted as other impulses do, without any conscious motive. This was
the character selected by the author for her story of degradation and
ruin.

The painter Piero foreshadows the outcome when he desires the

face of Tito as a model for his picture of Sinon deceiving old Priam:
“A perfect traitor,” says Piero, “should have a face which vice can
write no marks on—lips that will lie with a dimpled smile—eyes of
such agate-like brightness and depth that no infamy can dull them—
cheeks that will rise from a murder and not look haggard.”

The character of Romola herself is a very interesting one. She is full

of womanly dignity and genuine nobility of soul, honorable, proud,
self-sacrificing, devoted to her duty, but she is too clear-headed to
deceive herself as to her husband’s baseness. At first, although her
dreams of happiness have not been fulfilled, she makes every
excuse; and even afterwards she seeks a return of his confidence.
But when that is impossible, her love becomes entirely extinct.

Running side by side with the character of Romola, and in sharp

contrast to it, is that of Tessa, the innocent peasant girl, with a baby
face. In her presence, Melema finds no reproaches, nothing but
artless affection. It was pity more than anything else which first
induced Tito to take her under his protection, and his relations with
her have been developed so unconsciously that there seems very
little guilt in each particular act. No doubt the author’s purpose was
to describe the almost imperceptible steps by which men pass from
virtue to crime.

“Romola” is a historical novel, and the part of it which deals with

Savonarola is history itself, or perhaps more properly biography.
George Eliot has not created the character of the Florentine monk;
she has merely analyzed and interpreted that character by the light
of her own imagination. Whether the man she has thus drawn is the
real Savonarola or not, he is a very interesting personage, who, with
many inconsistencies and shortcomings, is essentially a great man,
as well as a benefactor of mankind. He is often a hero, though he
falls short of heroism at the supreme moment; and his last words,
written in prison before his execution, the outpouring of self-
abasement, fill us with added sympathy for his misfortunes.

“God placed thee,” he says, “in the midst of the people even as if
thou hadst been one of the excellent. In this way thou hast taught
others, and hast failed to learn thyself. Thou hast cured others, and
thou thyself hast been still diseased. Thy heart was lifted up at the
beauty of thy own deeds, and through this thou hast lost thy wisdom,
and art become, and shalt be to all eternity, nothing.”

The psychological development of each of the chief characters in

this remarkable book proceeds by a natural law from the
antecedents and surroundings of the individual. We feel as we read
that the changes of thought and motive must have occurred just as
they are described, yet in that description itself it is evident that
George Eliot lacks something of dramatic power. She tells us in great
detail what her characters think and why they act as they do. The
highest form of art would show us this from their own words and
actions without the telling. Her characters are often extremely
complex. It might be harder to make them speak for themselves than
in the case of simpler personages, such as those described by
Dickens or Cervantes. Still the reader will often wish that George
Eliot had not told him so much of motives and reasons, but had left
these to necessary inference.

“Romola” is a work not addressed to the great mass of mankind, but

to the student. It presupposes considerable knowledge on the part of
the reader of Italian names, customs, and events. It is evidently the
product of an elaborate study and of a rather intimate knowledge of
Florentine institutions and history. It is essentially accurate in its
description of the public events of the time, although there are some
facts of minor importance which are not confirmed by the most
authentic records.

George Eliot follows the chronological and not the logical order in her
narrative. There is sometimes a lack of vividness which results from
this, and the book as a whole does not impress itself readily on the
memory. There are portions of the work which are overloaded with
details concerning public ceremonies or historical facts, or illustrating
the manners of the people; for instance, the long description of the
festival of San Giovanni in the early part of the book. Indeed, the
feeling is irrepressible that this work, especially the first half of it, is
too prolix, and that unimportant and subsidiary matters becloud in a
measure the essential facts upon which the tale depends. In the
latter part of the work, however, the dramatic interest of the story
becomes more intense, and the narrative proceeds naturally and
directly to the double tragedy with which it closes—the death of
Melema and the execution of Savonarola.

“Romola” is very little like “The Scarlet Letter” either in the scenes or
the construction of the plot. It is far more elaborate than the
American romance, yet there is a close similarity in the methods of
thought of George Eliot and Nathaniel Hawthorne. The husband of
Hester Prynne and the father of Tito Melema appear in the same
sinister way, demanding vengeance. Though Florence is very little
like the Puritan town, religious fanaticism is a prominent feature in
both the stories. The two books leave much the same general
impression upon the mind.
 CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
FEODOR DOSTOYEVSKY

Dostoyevsky is one of the masters of the Russian realistic school.

His best known novel, “Crime and Punishment,” is a psychological
study of great power. It describes the atrocious murder of two
women, an old money lender and her sister, by a young student,
Raskolnikoff, and the train of events which afterwards led to the
confession of the murderer and his transportation to Siberia.

Raskolnikoff has no sufficient motive for the crime, but he is led by

the contemplation of Napoleon and other great men who have
committed crimes to feel that he, too, is an exceptional creature,
authorized to violate all laws of morality, and that he is guilty of no
sin in killing the old women. His immediate purpose is robbery, to get
the money necessary to prosecute his studies; yet so blunderingly
does he go to work that he secures but little, and can make no use of
it. The way in which his half crazed, vacillating intellect is finally
induced to make a confession, is delineated with great dramatic skill.
The examining magistrate, Porphryrius, also an eccentric, certainly
shows great ability, not only in discerning the criminal, but in bringing
him by gradual steps into a frame of mind which leads to confession,
where there is no other sufficient evidence of guilt.

Most of the individuals described in the book are morbid, and some
of them are grotesque; yet the reader is impressed with the
consciousness that, in spite of inconsistencies and paradoxes, the
story must be essentially true to the peculiar nature of the characters
described.

The maudlin babbling of the drunkard Marmeladoff, giving the story

of his debasement and the ruin and dishonor into which he has
plunged his family, is just such talk as that kind of a man would
indulge in when in liquor, and the picture which it sets before us is
revolting, but infinitely pitiful and real. All the dreadful things which
happen afterwards in the drunkard’s household—his tragical death,
the insanity of his wife, and the beggary of their children—lie heavy
upon our hearts, while they convince us that we are in a world where
such things are realities.

In the girl Sonia, the eldest daughter of this household, we have the
remarkable spectacle of a self-sacrificing, devoted and beautiful
character, who has been constrained by necessity and by pity for her
little brothers and sisters into a life of shame.

The most incomprehensible person in the story is one Svidrigailoff,

an unscrupulous man of the world, given to sensuality, who commits
suicide in a most unaccountable way after a nightmare. He is a
character which puts at fault all calculations of what a man will do
under given circumstances.

In strong contrast with the rest of the dramatis personæ, the mother
and sister of Raskolnikoff display a dignity, strength of character and
womanly tenderness which show us that Dostoyevsky is able to
portray a normal and healthy character, a thing which might be
otherwise in doubt.

This novel, dealing as it does with the submerged tenth of society,

contains such a preponderance of repulsive features that it is by no
means agreeable, nor even desirable, reading for the general public.
Its tendency undoubtedly is to generate some of the morbid
characteristics it describes.
 SMOKE
IVAN TURGENIEFF

I have never quite understood the extravagant praises showered

upon Turgenieff by his admirers. A few of his short stories in “A
Sportsman’s Sketches” are very impressive, but his novels never
appeared to me as convincing as those of Tolstoi, nor as vivid as
“Dead Souls,” by Gogol, though they are more highly finished and
more artistic in form. Turgenieff spent most of his life in France, and
his works have distinctly a French flavor. “Smoke” offers perhaps the
best illustration of his distinguishing characteristics. In the preface to
a late edition of this work, a critic declares that it is “in every sense of
the word a classic for all time.” This estimate seems high, though the
book is in many ways a remarkable one.

The scene is laid at Baden-Baden, which for a long time was the
residence of Turgenieff himself. Here we are introduced to a coterie
of Russian “reformers” and “thinkers” of various sorts, who meet at
the apartments of Gubaryoff, “a great man,” who is writing a great
work “about everything” (as the enthusiastic Bambaeff declares),
“after the style of Buckle, you know, but more profound—more
profound. Everything will be solved and made clear in it.” At this
meeting there is a perfect Babel of inane discussion and vociferation.

“Madame Suhantchikoff talked about Garibaldi, about a certain

Karl Ivanovitch, who had been flogged by the serfs of his own
household, about Napoleon III, about women’s work, about a
 merchant, Pleskatchoff, who had designedly caused the death of
twelve work-women, and had received a medal for it with the
inscription ‘for public services’; about the proletariat, about the
Georgian Prince Tchuktcheulidzoff, who had shot his wife with a
cannon, and about the future of Russia. Pishtchalkin, too, talked
of the future of Russia, and of the spirit of monopoly, and of the
significance of nationalities, and of how he hated above
everything what was vulgar. There was an outburst all of a sudden
from Voroshiloff; in a single breath, almost choking himself, he
mentioned Draper, Virchow, Shelgunoff, Bichat, Helmholtz, Starr,
Stur, Reiminth, Johann Müller the physiologist, and Johann Müller
the historian—obviously confounding them—Taine, Renan,
Shtchapoff, and then Thomas Nash, Peele, Greene—‘What sort
of queer fish may they be?’ Bambaeff muttered bewildered.
‘Shakespeare’s predecessors having the same relation to him as
the ranges of the Alps to Mont Blanc,’ Voroshiloff replied cuttingly,
and he too touched on the future of Russia. Bambaeff also spoke
of the future of Russia, and even depicted it in glowing colors; but
he was thrown into special raptures over the thought of Russian
music, in which he saw something. ‘Ah! great indeed!’ and in
confirmation he began humming a song of Varmaloff’s, but was
soon interrupted by a general shout, ‘He is singing the Miserere
from the Trovatore, and singing it excruciatingly too.’ One little
officer was reciting Russian literature in the midst of the hubbub;
another was quoting verses from “The Spark”; but Tit Bindasoff
went further; he declared that all these swindlers ought to have
their teeth knocked out, ... and that’s all about it, but he did not
particularize who were the swindlers alluded to. The smoke from
the cigars became stifling; all were hot and exhausted, every one
was hoarse, all eyes were growing dim, and the perspiration stood
out in drops on every face. Bottles of iced beer was brought in
and drunk off instantaneously. ‘What was I saying?’ remarked
one; ‘And with whom was I disputing, and about what?’ inquired
another. And amid all the uproar and the smoke, Gubaryoff
walked indefatigably up and down as before, swaying from side to
side and twitching at his beard; now listening, turning an ear to
some controversy, now putting in a word of his own; and every
one was forced to feel that he, Gubaryoff, was the source of it all,
that he was the master here, and the most eminent personality.”

Afterwards we are introduced into high Russian society, whose

conduct is perhaps even more ridiculous. On one occasion it amuses
itself (under the guidance of an American “medium”) in fruitless
efforts to mesmerize a crab. In another place, one Potugin, who is
the pessimist of the book, dissects the shortcomings of Russian
character extremely well.

The story is a very simple one. Litvinoff, betrothed to Tatyana

Shestoff, is lured away by the charms of Irina, a beautiful and
attractive creature to whom he had once been betrothed, but who,
tempted by the allurements of rank and wealth, had discarded him.
Now again he falls madly in love with her. She promises to leave her
husband and to follow him anywhere; but after he has broken his
engagement with Tatyana, she fails again, and he betakes himself
homeward, deeply impressed with the vanity of human life. His
reflections on the journey reveal the theme and motive of the story.

“The wind blew facing the train; whitish clouds of steam, some
singly, others mingled with other darker clouds of smoke, whirled
in endless file past the window at which Litvinoff was sitting. He
began to watch this steam, this smoke. Incessantly mounting,
rising, falling, twisting and hooking on to the grass, to the bushes,
as though in sportive antics, lengthening out, and hiding away,
clouds upon clouds flew by ... they were for ever changing and
stayed still the same in their monotonous, hurrying, wearisome
sport! Sometimes the wind changed, the line bent to right or left,
and suddenly the whole mass vanished, and at once reappeared
at the opposite window; then again the huge tail was flung out,
and again it veiled Litvinoff’s view of the vast plain of the Rhine.
He gazed and gazed, and a strange reverie came over him.... He
was alone in the compartment; there was no one to disturb him.
‘Smoke, smoke,’ he repeated several times; and suddenly it all
seemed as smoke to him, everything, his own life, Russian life—
everything human, especially everything Russian. ‘All smoke and
steam,’ he thought; ‘all seems for ever changing, on all sides new
forms, phantoms flying after phantoms, while in reality it is all the
same and the same again; everything hurrying, flying towards
something, and everything vanishing without a trace, attaining to
nothing; another wind blows, and all is dashing in the opposite
direction, and there again the same untiring, restless—and
useless gambols!’”
At last, however, after some years devoted to conscientious labor
upon his own estate, Litvinoff’s engagement with Tatyana is
renewed.

Certainly the character of Irina is well drawn. There is such a mixture

of actual sincerity and deep passion in her intrigues, such a proud
contempt for the petty world around her, such a charming humility in
her momentary repentance, that it is no wonder Litvinoff yields.
There is a striking similarity between this fair creature and Beatrix in
“Henry Esmond,” though one can not but feel that the great English
novelist has drawn his heroine with a more skilful hand. It is said that
one of the mistresses of Alexander II furnished the model for Irina.

In describing Tatyana Shestoff, the author gives us in a very few

words a charming picture of womanly dignity and reserve, especially
in the scene where Litvinoff tries to tell her that he no longer loves
her.

Occasionally, in sketching his characters, Turgenieff can set before

you in a short sentence a very lively picture. Take for instance, the
following description of Bambaeff:

“He was no longer young; he had a flabby nose and soft cheeks,
that looked as if they had been boiled, dishevelled greasy locks,
and a fat squat person. Everlastingly short of cash, everlastingly
in raptures over something, Rostislaff Bambaeff wandered,
aimless but exclamatory, over the face of our long-suffering
mother-earth.”
 LORNA DOONE
RICHARD BLACKMORE

How much the apparent merit of a book depends upon the mood in
which we peruse it! When I first read “Lorna Doone” I went over it
rapidly, anxious to extract the meat of it as quickly as possible; and
while I found many quaint observations and poetical descriptions, the
style was diffuse and sometimes crabbed, the narrative was often
tedious, and to my mind the book was lacking in fidelity to truth and
deep knowledge of human nature. The love passages seemed
particularly weak, and I found it hard to understand how a dull-witted
countryman, such as John Ridd declares himself to be, could write
so well and so ill in different places.

But “Lorna Doone” must not be read in that way. When I took it up a
second time, lingering over some of the more striking portions of it
and no longer disturbing myself about the plot, I found it quite
different from what it had seemed to me at first. It is a story unlike
any other, and with a charm which is all its own. The deliberate
minuteness of the narrative interferes indeed with the action of the
characters and the dramatic power of the tale—it is hard to seize the
salient points in it; it seems lacking in perspective; the picture is like
one of the very old masters, to be studied more in detail than as a
whole. The characterization of most of the personages is not very
striking, and yet there is one that is finely drawn—that of John Ridd
himself; for it is he, and not Lorna, who is the chief personage of the
story. Here the archaic diction, the homespun phrases, the Anglo-
Saxon vocabulary, and the quaint philosophy show very plainly the
essential characteristics of the narrator, a modest, sturdy, honest,
big-hearted farmer, Herculean, slow in speech and in wrath, but
terrible when aroused. The roots of his character are planted deep in
the soil. “I feel,” he says, “with every blade of grass as if it had a
history, and make a child of every bud, as if it knew and loved me.”
He is a lover both of nature and his kind, such a man in a smaller
sphere as our Lincoln must have been. What wonderful descriptions
of farm life, of the ducks, the pigs, the horses, the birds, as well as of
natural phenomena, the sunsets, the deep Doone valley, the great
snowstorm which buried all the earth!

Many of the scenes are admirably described, as where he watches

the passing of the bandits along the Doone track and sees the figure
of the little girl thrown across the saddle; the murder of his father by
the outlaws and his mother’s solitary visit to the stronghold of the
murderers in vain quest of justice; his first expedition to the Doone
Valley, and his meeting with the beautiful girl who afterwards
becomes his wife; his interview with the terrible Chief Justice
Jeffreys, whose eyes “were holes for the devil to glare from”; and,
finest of all, the sad story told by Benita, the Italian maid, of the fate
of Lorna’s parents and the attack upon the coach when Lorna was
carried away. Such excellences are more than enough to redeem the
tediousness of the less important parts of the book, and to entitle it to
a high as well as a unique place in literature.
 ANNA KARENINA
LEO TOLSTOI

There are a few great works, both in art and literature, which impress
us not so much by their beauty as by their compelling power. No one
can listen to the “Ring of the Nibelungs” without feeling the hand of a
master in the creation of the harmonies it contains. No one can look
on the figures painted by Michael Angelo on the ceiling of the Sistine
Chapel without a sense of awe in the presence of forms of such
majesty and power. The nameless bronze by St. Gaudens, known as
the Adams Monument, in the Rock Creek Cemetery at Washington
will impose silence upon a chattering group of visitors the moment
they enter the enclosure of evergreens that surrounds it. The rage of
Othello and the horror of Macbeth make us shudder whether we will
or no. Dante has the same commanding power over his readers.

Among the writers of fiction there is none who impress us in this way
more profoundly than Tolstoi. His novels are often quite formless.
There is no carefully developed plot, as with Scott or Wilkie Collins.
The characters are by no means so strongly marked, they are
neither so admirable nor so detestable as those of Dickens or of
Victor Hugo. There is little humor in the narrative. The conversation
is seldom brilliant, and is sometimes tedious. The style has no
ornamentation, yet its very simplicity commands, and while we read
we feel that we are in the hands of a master.
Probably no one since Shakespeare has had the power of
penetrating the springs of human thought and action more accurately
than Tolstoi. He startles us with revelations of traits in our own
character which we have never realized, or instants in our own lives
which we have never recalled before and which we recognize at
once when we see them upon his pages, so that at every turn we
exclaim, “How true that is! I have known that myself!” He is the
greatest of all realists—not a mere photographer, for the
photographer reproduces the insignificant and the unessential.
Tolstoi gives us no long preliminary descriptions of persons or things,
such as we find in Balzac or Walter Scott, but the really suggestive
fact or trait appears at the right moment and gives a vividness and
reality to the picture which no detailed account could ever convey.

A mother is teaching her son. “The boy was reading aloud, but at the
same time twisting and trying to pull from his vest a button that was
hanging loose. His mother had many times reproved him, but the
plump little hand kept returning to the button. At last she had to take
the button off and put it in her pocket. ‘Keep your hands still, Grisha,’
said she, and again took up the bedquilt on which she had long been
at work and which always came handy at trying moments. She
worked nervously, jerking her fingers and counting the stitches.”

In another place a father is instructing his child. “The lesson

consisted of a recitation of several verses of the Gospel and the
review of the first part of the Old Testament. The lesson went fairly
well, but suddenly the boy was struck by the appearance of his
father’s forehead, which made almost a right angle near the temples,
and he gave the end of the verses entirely wrong. The father
concluded he did not understand what he was reciting and was
vexed.”

The leader in a ball room pays a compliment to his partner. “‘It is

restful to dance with you,’ said he, as he fell into the slow measures
of the waltz. ‘Charming! Such lightness! such precision!’ This is what
he said to almost all his dancing acquaintances.”
These slight touches give a better idea of what takes place than
many words. The descriptions, as we have observed, are few and
brief, but how graphic are they in their simple statements!

The visit of Levin, the country proprietor, to his stable to see a cow
which has just calved is thus narrated. “Crossing the courtyard,
where the snow was heaped under the lilac bushes, he stepped up
to the stable. As he opened the door, which creaked on its frosty
hinges, he was met by the warm, penetrating breath from the stalls,
and the cattle, astonished at the unwonted light of the lantern, turned
around from their beds of fresh straw. The shiny black and white face
of his Holland cow gleamed in the obscurity. Berkut, the bull, with a
ring in his nose, tried to get to his feet but changed his mind and only
snorted when they approached his stanchion. The beautiful Pava,
huge as a hippopotamus, was lying near her calf, snuffing at it and
protecting it with her back as with a rampart from those who would
come too close.

“Levin entered the stall, examined Pava, and lifted the calf, spotted
with red and white, on its long, awkward legs. Pava bellowed with
anxiety, but was reassured when the calf was restored to her and
began to lick it with her rough tongue. The calf hid its nose under its
mother’s side and frisked its tail.”

No one has ever described the coming of Spring more vividly yet
more simply than Tolstoi. “It snowed on Easter Sunday. Then
suddenly on the following day a south wind blew up, the clouds
drifted over, and for three days and three nights a warm and heavy
rain fell ceaselessly. On Thursday the wind went down, and then
over the earth was spread a thick gray mist, as if to conceal the
mysteries that were accomplishing in nature: the ice in every
direction was melting and disappearing; the rivers overflowed their
banks; the brooks came tumbling down with foamy, muddy waters.
Towards evening the Red hill began to show through the fog, the
clouds drifted away like white sheep, and Spring in reality was there
in all her brilliancy. Next morning a bright sun melted away the thin
scales of ice which still remained, and the warm atmosphere grew
moist with the vapors rising from the earth. The dry grass
immediately took a greenish tint, and the young blades began to
peep from the sod like millions of tiny needles. The buds on the birch
trees, the gooseberry bushes, and the snow-ball trees swelled with
sap, and around their branches swarms of honey bees buzzed in the
sun. Invisible larks sent forth their songs of joy to see the prairies
free from snow. The lapwings seemed to mourn their marshes,
submerged by the stormy waters. The wild swans and geese flew
high in the air, with their calls of spring. The cows, with rough hair
and places worn bare by the stanchions, lowed as they left their
stalls. Around the heavy, flossy sheep gambolled awkwardly the
young lambs. Children ran barefoot over wet paths, where their
footprints were left like fossils. The peasant women gossiped gaily
around the edge of the pond where they were bleaching their linen.
From all sides resounded the axes of the peasants, repairing their
plows and their wagons. Spring had really come.”

The shattering of an ideal by a single word of disparagement is thus

shown when a young girl hears from her father that the pious
Madame Stahl, whom she had idolized, kept her bed because one
leg was shorter than the other and she did not wish it noticed. “Her
ideal of holiness, as seen in Madame Stahl, which she had for a
whole month carried in her soul, had irrevocably disappeared, as a
face seen in a garment thrown down by chance disappears when
one really sees how the garment is lying. She retained only the
image of a lame woman who stayed in bed to conceal her deformity,
and who tormented poor Varenka because her plaid was not
arranged to suit her, and it became impossible for her imagination to
bring back to her the remembrance of the former Madame Stahl.”

How could domestic discomfort be better pictured than when a

mother, with her six children, arrives at her country home and
undergoes the following tribulations:

“The roof was leaking, the water dripped in the corridor and the
nursery, and the little beds had to be brought down into the parlor. It
was impossible to find a cook. Among the nine cows in the barn,
according to the dairy-woman’s report, some were going to calve
and the rest were either too young or too old, and consequently they
could not have butter, or even milk for the children. Not an egg was
to be had; it was impossible to find a hen. They had for roasting or
broiling one tough old purple rooster. No women were to be found to
do the washing; all were at work in the fields. They could not drive
because one of the horses was balky and would not be harnessed.
They had to give up bathing because the bank of the river had been
trodden into a quagmire by the cattle, and, moreover, it was too
conspicuous.... Walking near the house was not pleasant because
the tumble-down fences let the cattle into the garden and there was
in the herd a terrible bull that bellowed and was reported to be ugly.
In the house there was not a clothes-press. The closet doors either
would not shut or flew open when any one passed. In the kitchen
there were no pots or kettles; in the laundry there were no tubs, nor
even any scrubbing-boards for the girls.”

Nowhere, perhaps, in all literature, is a hunting expedition so

graphically described as in the account of the party that set forth
from Levin’s. The feelings of the hunters and of the dogs themselves
are given with quiet but convincing realism.

It may be doubted whether some of Tolstoi’s shorter works are not

more artistic productions than either of his two long novels. To take
the single instance of a rather commonplace official who falls ill and
dies and to make out of it the terrible tragedy of “Ivan Ilytch” requires,
perhaps, even higher powers than to give such variegated pictures
of life as appear in “War and Peace” or in “Anna Karenina.” Yet the
latter novel, being many-sided and comprehensive, is perhaps his
most representative, as it is certainly his best known work, and it
must justly be ranked as among the very foremost of the
masterpieces of fiction.

The book opens with an account of the confusion in the house of the
Oblonskys when the easy-going and good-tempered Prince Stepan
is detected by his wife Dolly in an intrigue with the French
governess, and whose “stupid smile” when confronted with the letter
that betrays him, “causes the whole trouble.” The Prince can not
really repent and persuade himself that he loves his wife, whose
charms have faded; he regrets only that he had not hid the thing
more adroitly, and his sister Anna is called from Petersburg to
Moscow to secure a reconciliation. Although he was entirely wrong,
almost every one in the house was on his side, except his little girl,
who knew only that there was trouble and that her mother was
unhappy and who blushed for her father when he asked her so
lightly after her mother’s welfare, until he too blushed when he
perceived it. About the same time Levin, the country proprietor, also
comes to Moscow to woo Kitty, the younger sister of the unfortunate
wife. He had fallen in love successively with each of the daughters of
the house, but his affection was now centered on the youngest,
whom he deemed a creature so accomplished that he scarcely
dared aspire to her hand. They had been old friends for many years,
but Kitty had then another admirer, one Vronsky, a brilliant young
officer, to whom at the moment her preference was given and Levin’s
blunt offer was rejected. But Vronsky, who had gone to the railway
station to meet his mother (whom he did not love and to whom for
that very reason he was all the more conventionally considerate)
found her in company with Anna Karenina, who had come to
Moscow to compose Dolly’s troubles with her husband. Anna is the
beautiful and accomplished wife of Karenin, an estimable but matter-
of-fact Russian official, greatly her senior in age, who was making for
himself an enviable career in the public service. At the station and
afterwards at a ball Anna meets the young officer, and the two
instantly fall in love with each other with a passion so deep and
lasting that it can not afterwards be extinguished. This passion is at
first, however, expressed only by inferences. Thus, an accident
occurs at the station; a train-hand is crushed, and a pitiful scene
described when the widow perceives his dead body; Vronsky leaves
two hundred roubles for her relief, an act which Anna sees and feels
that it “concerns herself too closely.” Anna composes successfully
the domestic trouble between Prince Stepan and his wife, and here,
too, the complete reconciliation appears in the chiding and ironical
banter renewed between the pair rather than from any express
acknowledgment.
But Anna, who has thus healed the wound in her brother’s
household, has torn open one far more fatal in her own. Vronsky,
who has neglected Kitty for the brilliant creature in whom his whole
soul is now absorbed, meets Anna again at the station as she
leaves. “I came simply for this, to be where you are,” he said. “I could
not do otherwise.” Her eyes belied the remonstrance that she forced
to her lips, and when she returned to Petersburg, where her husband
was waiting for her, her first thought as she gazed on his really
distinguished face was, “Good Lord! Why are his ears so long?”
When Vronsky afterwards meets her at a drawing-room in that city
and she has forbidden him to speak of love, she feels that by the
very use of the word “forbidden” she has recognized a certain
jurisdiction over him which has encouraged him to speak.

Her husband, who had noticed that others were observing the tête-à-
tête between his wife and the handsome officer, resolved to
admonish her. “‘Anna, I must put you on your guard.’

“‘On my guard? Why?’ She looked at him so gayly, so innocently,

that for any one who did not know her as her husband did the tone of
her voice would have sounded perfectly natural, but for him, who
knew that he could not deviate from the least of his habits without
her asking the reason, who knew that her first impulse was always to
tell him of her pleasures and her sorrows, the fact that Anna took
special pains not to observe his agitation, or even to speak, was very
significant to him. He felt by the very tone that she assumed that she
had said openly and without dissimulation, ‘Well, thus it must be, and
from henceforth.’ He felt like a man who should come home and find
his house barricaded against him....

“‘Your rather too lively conversation this evening with Count Vronsky
attracted attention.’ As he spoke he looked at Anna’s laughing eyes,
for him so impenetrable, and saw with a feeling of terror all the
idleness and uselessness of his words.... He trembled; again he
twisted his fingers till the knuckles cracked.

“‘I beg of you, keep your hands still; I detest that,’ said she.
“‘Anna, is this you?’ he said, trying to control himself and stop the
movement of his hands.”

When he declares that he loves her a frown passes over her face.
The word irritates her.

“‘Love!’ she thought; ‘does he even know what it means!’ And when
they retired she waited long without moving, expecting that he would
speak to her, but he said nothing. Then the image of another filled
her with emotion and with guilty joy. Suddenly she heard a slow and
regular sound of snoring. ‘Too late! Too late!’ she thought, with a
smile. She remained for a long time thus, motionless, with open
eyes, the shining of which it seemed to her she herself could see.
From this night a new life began for Karenin and his wife. There was
no outward sign of it. Anna continued to go into society, and
everywhere she met Vronsky. Karenin understood it, but was
powerless to prevent it. Whenever he tried to bring about an
explanation she met him with humorous surprise which was beyond
his penetration.”

Another incident revealed to him still more clearly the terrible truth. A
hurdle race at which Vronsky rode is described with a realism of
which Tolstoi only is the master. Anna’s husband observes her while
she watches the contest in which her lover is involved. “Her face was
pale and stern. Nothing existed for her beyond the one person whom
she was watching. Her hands convulsively clutched her fan. She
held her breath.... He did not wish to look at her, but his gaze was
irresistibly drawn to her face, whereon he read only too plainly and
with feelings of horror all that he had tried to ignore.” When others
fell in the race he saw that those were not the ones on whom her
gaze was riveted. “The more he studied her face the greater became
his shame. Absorbed as she was in her interest in Vronsky’s course,
Anna was conscious that her husband’s cold eyes were upon her,
and she turned around toward him for an instant questioningly and
with a slight frown. ‘Ah! I don’t care,’ she seemed to say as she
turned her glass to the race. She did not look at him again. The race
was disastrous. Out of the seventeen riders more than half were