“But—”

“Just go,” I interrupted Ryan before he could argue further. “I’ll clean up here.”

I sat still on the ground next to Hugo, my hand still pressed to his stomach as if it was my only anchor to sanity in this world. For the first time since becoming a nightwalker, I could feel the night pull in around me and a deep emptiness filled my chest. Even when I was being held captive by the naturi, I didn’t give up hope that Sadira or another nightwalker would come to my rescue. But with one nightwalker dead by the hand of a man I had come to rely on, and another dying in my arms, I couldn’t find any hope to cling to. The naturi would crush us all.

I sat with my back pressed against the stone wall of the mausoleum I hid in during the daylight hours. Exhaustion had settled deep within my bones, making it hard to even move, let alone crawl into the crypt so I could hide from the approaching dawn. Too much had happened in the past few hours, which left me struggling to find some good to cling to in the end.

When I moved Hugo to the car, I discovered that he had also been stabbed in the back, puncturing his heart, which explained why he was so weak. Stopping at the edge of Heraklion, I summoned a dozen inhabitants from their warm, comfortable beds. Hugo fed briefly from each of them before I sent them blindly back to bed again. The drain on my powers was enormous, forcing me to feed as well before I could deposit a sleeping Hugo in a dark crypt in a cemetery between Heraklion and Knossos. When I dropped him off, only the worst of his wounds was slowly seeping blood. I hoped he would last the day.

After leaving him, I returned to the palace ruins, where I burned the bodies of the naturi and Penelope. Guilt gnawed at me for burning her with the naturi, but I no longer had the strength to maintain several fires, and I didn’t want to take any chances being so close to the swell of energy rising up from the earth. I’d been burned once; I couldn’t afford for it to happen again. What bones I couldn’t destroy were buried in a shallow grave. It was the best I could do. Daylight was approaching.

With all evidence of our existence eliminated from Knossos, I cleaned the blood and fingerprints off the car and left it in the heart of Heraklion. I checked on Hugo one final time before finding my own crypt, not far from his.

Now as I sat in the dark, my mind numb, I felt someone approaching me. I pulled the Browning from the holster at the base of my spine and laid it on the ground beside me, partially hidden in the shadows cast by my body. A quick scan revealed that my visitor was Danaus, but I was surprised when I found that I didn’t want to put the gun away. I didn’t trust him any longer. If push came to shove, I knew I wouldn’t try to kill him with a gun. I’d just try to slow him down enough so I could rip his heart out with my bare hands.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I murmured wearily when the hunter finally came into view. He was still several yards off, but his hearing was nearly as good as mine. He heard me.

“I came to talk,” he said in a low voice, as if he was afraid of waking some other graveyard occupant.

I snorted, but still loosened my grip on the gun at my side. My fingers didn’t completely uncurl from around the butt, but stayed close just in case. “I can’t image we have much to talk about. Everything has been cleanly laid out.”

Danaus walked around the last tree separating us in the cross-dotted garden, coming into full view. From what I could see, he was completely unarmed. Both his guns were missing, along with the sword on his back and the two knives usually attached to his leg and waist. Even his leather wrist guards were missing. He stood before me as vulnerable as it was possible for him to be. Could he still kill me in a heartbeat? Without a doubt. He could boil my blood as quickly as I could set him on fire, but he was trying to come before me without weapons.

“I—I came to apologize,” he admitted.

I sat in stunned silence for a moment before finally shaking my head to clear it. “I’m not the one you should be apologizing to. You should be apologizing to Penelope for taking her head off. You should be apologizing to Hugo for stealing away his one chance at survival,” I bitterly snapped.

“I’m apologizing to you because I should have trusted you,” he corrected, standing before me with his legs spread wide, his hands shoved in his pockets. I gazed up, my frown matching his. “I know you. You wouldn’t have let Hugo kill those two people. But Penelope would have. Hugo would have. They wouldn’t have thought twice about it, and I can’t forgive them for that.”

“You can’t forgive them for wanting to survive?” I demanded, my hand reflexively tightening around the gun as my other hand balled into a fist in the dirt.

“I can’t forgive them for killing innocent people,” he said. What sympathy and compassion he may have felt drained from his voice, leaving it cold and hard like Siberian permafrost.

“But you have no problem with him dying for these people that you protect,” I said, gritting my teeth as I sat up. “We’re allowed to fight for them and die for them, but we’re not allowed to do anything that might save our own lives.”

“It’s not like that,” he said, hesitant. He took an unsteady step backward with one foot then shifted it forward again.

“Yes, it is.” I rose to my feet in a boneless manner, using my powers instead of my muscles for the sole purpose of unnerving him and underscoring my otherness. I did nothing to hide the act of putting the gun back in the holster at my lower back. “You and I work great together so long as you forget what I am. When it’s just you and me against the world with sword in hand, we work great together. But if I need to feed or give you some other small reminder that I’m a nightwalker, then you freak out. You can’t understand that I’m something beyond what I am.”

“Forget?” he said in a louder voice. “How could I ever possibly forget what you are? I sense you more clearly than I have ever sensed any vampire. When you’re hungry, the feeling burns through me like a fire in my veins. When you use your powers, it’s like a cool breeze on a hot summer day. You’re in my head and I’m in yours. Do you think I didn’t feel your horror and disappointment tonight? What am I supposed to do? I’m a hunter! I’m supposed to protect humanity from threats like nightwalkers.”

“Maybe it’s time to get a new job,” I said, feeling myself softening toward him. I hadn’t realized how strong our connection had been for him. I didn’t want to forgive him. I didn’t want to understand his point of view. I wanted to hold onto the anger so I could easily walk away from him when we finally finished our business with the naturi.

“Enough, Mira,” he said in disgust. I had given him similar advice in the past, but this time I was serious.

“Do you believe in fate?”

“What?”

“Fate. That great cosmic force that leads us down particular paths during our existence to—”

“Yes, I know what fate is. No, I don’t believe in it.”

“Maybe you should,” I suggested, sliding my hands into the back pockets of my leather pants. “I’m beginning to wonder myself. Maybe fate brought you to this point not to be a nightwalker hunter but a hunter of naturi. You have the strength, the speed, and the ability to sense them. You have an edge over every nightwalker in existence. Maybe it’s time to stop saving humanity from my kind and start saving them for the naturi.”

“And who will protect mankind from you?” he demanded, shaking his head at me.

A weak smile twisted one corner of my mouth as I looked up at him. His hair fell forward around his face, hiding his features in dark shadows. “Nightwalkers? No one will need to. It looks like we’re on the path to extinction without your help at all.”