“It’s been years since I was in Rome. Boniface IX had just been named Pope. Beautiful city, even before Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel. Have you seen it?”

“The Sistine Chapel? Yes.”

“Is it as lovely as they say?”

“Better.”

“I guessed as much.” The Sistine Chapel was one of the many things that I would never see. Whether I believed in a one great God didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things. I could never step foot into a church. Trust me, I’ve tried—it was like running into a brick wall.

“Tell me about the naturi, Mira.” His voice softened for the first time to something less than a growl. It wasn’t what I would call an inviting or pleasant tone, just one not honed to an angry edge. His right hand settled on my left knee for a moment before falling back to the bench, but the brief touch was enough to send a wave of heat through my leather pants. I pulled away from him so I could look him in the face, my eyebrows bunched over the bridge of my nose in surprise. It was the first time he had used my name.

“So you know about the naturi; bully for you,” I said. The topic of conversation was beginning to grate on my nerves. “Vampires too much of a challenge for you, so you thought you’d go after a naturi or two?” The taunt was childish, but I didn’t want to think about the naturi, let alone talk about them. I wanted to forget about that whole horrible race. A part of me wanted to get up and return to the dance floor, to drown in the warm flesh and let the angry grind of music pull me under.

“Tell me.”

“Tell you what?” I snapped, but quickly got my voice back under control. “They were here, but now they are gone. That’s it.”

The naturi wanted nothing more than to rid the entire earth of all humans and nightwalkers. For them, protecting the earth was only possible through removing its greatest threat—mankind. But it was more than that. I had my own painful past with the naturi, memories overflowing with pain and white-gray stones splashed with my blood in the fading moonlight. And worse yet, a return of the naturi held whispers of a potential return of the bori. A tug-of-war that offered no victory. For nightwalkers, the naturi represented extinction, while the bori represented an eternity of slavery. The naturi and the bori had to remain in exile, never to be spoken of.

With his right hand, Danaus reached into the interior pocket on the left side of his jacket and pulled out a sheaf of papers. He dropped the pile on the table behind me. I twisted in his lap to look at what turned out to be a pile of high gloss, color pictures. My whole body reflexively stiffened and what little warmth I had gained on the dance floor flowed out of my body, leaving a sharp chill to bite at my tensed muscles.

I reached out, forcing myself to touch the top picture. With a little pressure, the pictures spread out across the scarred tabletop. They were all of trees with symbols carved deep into their bark. My eyes skimmed over them, vaguely noting that each curling symbol was etched into a different type of tree. It was the language of the naturi. I couldn’t read it or speak it, but I had seen enough to know that I would never forget it.

A knot in my stomach tightened and I fervently hoped I wouldn’t vomit in the mix of fear and horror that was replacing the blood in my veins. Somehow I managed to keep my expression bland and noncommittal, but that’s what nightwalkers did. We kept everything hidden beneath a mask of boredom and beauty. Danaus was watching me, peering deep, as if trying to read my thoughts.

“Trees. Nice, but not exactly my thing,” I said, proud of the fact that my voice didn’t crack. “I don’t know why you sought me out. I don’t know anything about the naturi or trees.” With one hand braced on the wall to the right of his head, I slowly unfolded my body from around his and stood. Turning my back to him, I started to walk away. I needed to leave and wash down the terrible memories with blood.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Danaus rise, his left hand locking around my wrist. “What about this?” There was an ominous thunk on the wooden table beside me. Something in me screamed, Run. All the survival instincts left in my brain were screaming for me to keep going, but I had to know.

In the center of the table, piercing the pile of pictures, was a dagger. It was a unique dagger—one I was sure no living human had ever set eyes upon it. Slim and slightly curved, the silver blade straightened an inch before the tip. It was designed this way so it slid nicely into the body and at the same time caused the most amount of damage when worked around the vital organs. On one side of the blade, symbols similar to the ones in the pictures were etched into the metal. The handle was wood, stained dark from the blood that had soaked in over the years.

I knew that blade. Not just its type, but that particular blade. The metal shiv had sliced sinew and carved hunks of flesh from my body. I’d spent seemingly endless hours developing an intimate knowledge of that blade and the many-faceted layers of pain it could cause.

I spun and grabbed Danaus’s shirt below the collar, slamming him into the wall. The hunter grunted. “Where did you get that?” My fangs peeked out from beneath my drawn lips. I’d drain him to the very edge of death that second in order to get my answers.

Around us, people scrambled away, trying to keep a safe distance and yet still be able to glean something from our conversation. It had to be a strange sight. A woman was pushing around a man twice her weight and size like a rag doll, while a dagger stood straight and tall in the table beside them. They would have paid less attention if I’d just pulled out a gun and shot him.

“From a naturi,” Danaus said. His voice was calm and even, completely unshaken by my explosion of temper.

“What naturi?” My grip on his shirt tightened and I was vaguely aware of the fact that he had released my wrist. He could have been going for another knife, but at that moment I don’t think I would have felt it even if he had buried the blade straight into my heart.

“Nerian.”

“You lie,” I snarled, slamming him into the wall a second time. Desperation was starting to crowd my thoughts. No one could have told him of Nerian except for a select few, who would have killed him on sight. “He’s dead.”

“Not yet.”

“Where?”

For the first time, a cold smile lifted his lips, revealing a hint of white teeth. His eyes danced with a dark light that almost made me growl.

“I’ll crush you now, Danaus. Tell me where he is!”

He stared at me for a long time, obviously enjoying the fact that the tables had been turned and I was at his mercy. “I’ll take you to where I have him,” he said at last.

I released him suddenly, as if he had burst into flames. He had Nerian? How? It didn’t seem possible. It had to be some elaborate trick.

Stepping away from him, my eyes swept over the crowd. Everyone scurried out of my line of sight, returning to his or her conversation. Their world had shuddered to a stop for a moment and stood balanced on the edge of a knife. But with a jerk it all started again, and they banished what they thought they’d seen. They weren’t ready for my kind and all the others lurking in the shadows.

It was coming, I knew that. And if Nerian was still alive, it might be sooner than I’d originally thought. Of course, if Nerian were still alive, I had to wonder if I would live to see mankind’s Great Awakening.

Beside me, Danaus pulled the dagger from the table and slipped it back into a sheath on his left hip. His nimble fingers swept over the table, gathering the pictures into a single pile. As he placed them back into the interior pocket of his coat, I looked toward the dance floor. One of my favorite songs had started, the lead singer promising that he would not let me fall apart. His low, whispered cry settled my nerves and I reluctantly smiled. I had often toyed with the idea of seeking out this human, with his raw emotions set loose for all the world to see. But I had learned the hard way that my kind often had an ill influence upon the artists of the world, and I liked his music the way it was. Tonight I would take his promise with me as I visited an old shade from Hell.