At the end of the hall was a pair of double doors, with one of them cracked slightly open. I could feel the two humans huddled in the far corner of what seemed to be a large room. With the gun tucked into my shoulder, I eased the door open, its creak echoing through the entire house. Before I took my first step into the room, thirty guns clicked in unison. Shit.

Get here now! I screamed at my companions as I dove across the hall and into an empty room. Bullets ripped through the double doors and pounded through drywall and timber. A trio of bullets scraped across my flesh in various locations, leaving a burning sensation behind. I clenched my teeth and pulled myself into a sitting position as Stefan, Valerio, and Danaus appeared next to me. Danaus knelt beside me, inspecting the latest laceration on my arm. The bleeding was slowing, helped by his constant pressure.

“There’s a few more of them than I could initially sense,” I said between clenched teeth.

“How many is a few?” Valerio asked.

I pushed to my feet with Danaus’s help. “About thirty. Must be a freaking ballroom to fit them all.” After handing the automatic weapon over to Danaus, I withdrew a pair of blades. I felt more at ease with the silver knives in my hands, as if I had regained a part of me.

“Kill her!” screamed a female voice from the other room.

“Oh, and apparently they’ve sent Odelia on ahead to deal with me,” I said with a smile as I gazed up at Stefan. “Please don’t kill her right away. I would like to try to get a little information out of her.”

“I can’t make any promises,” Stefan replied with a bow of his head to me.

I smiled sweetly at him, trying to get under his skin. “Please.”

Neither he nor Valerio said anything as they disappeared again. They would attack the room from behind, but first we had to get their full attention.

“Shall we go serve as live bait?” I asked, turning to Danaus.

“You put a lot of faith in your friends,” he said.

My smile crumpled, but I raised my chin and met his gaze. “Yes, I do.” Valerio and Stefan had ample opportunity to easily kill both Danaus and me. We were going to walk in front of this firing squad, dependent on them to strike from behind and save our lives. A moment’s hesitation and Macaire would get his wish. Danaus and I would be ripped to shreds by the barrage of bullets, making it easy for Odelia to walk up and claim our hearts. At that moment, I was putting a lot of faith and trust in Stefan. It was more than a little unnerving.

Taking a deep, cleansing breath, I shoved the air out of my lungs as I stepped back into the hallway and kicked the doors open. Danaus stood beside me and emptied the last of the bullets from the automatic weapon as the humans facing us took aim. Muscles clenched, I scanned the room for an easy target while counting the milliseconds until Valerio and Stefan reappeared. It felt like an eternity.

Screams echoed from the back of the room, followed by the crunching of broken bones and the heavy thud of a limp body hitting hardwood floor. They came. Bullets still flew in my direction, but the concentration was not as thick as they should have been. Danaus partially hid behind the door and picked off attackers with his handgun, while I launched myself into the room, killing whomever I came into contact with.

Silver blades streaked red flashed in the pale streams of moonlight that danced through the windows filling three walls of the large room. Men fell to their knees, throats cut, intestines spilling from their stomachs. Bullets punctured me from all sides, but the wounds were largely superficial. I was moving too fast for them to get a clear shot, and we had them trapped in the room. Surrounded on all sides, there was nowhere to go and no room for mercy.

The entire battle was over in less than three minutes, but the devastation was massive. Bodies were flung and piled around the large empty room, while blood pooled in the cracks of the hardwood floors and soaked into the few carpets. When silence filled the room again, I turned to find Stefan leaning over Odelia, his fangs exposed and dripping blood. He had not killed her yet, at my request, but he wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer.

Odelia was a bloody mess. Her face had a series of three long scratches across the front, and the way her left arm hung at her side made me think that her shoulder had been dislocated. Her dark hair was a matted mess of blood and knots from her struggle with Stefan. Long tears marred her clothes, revealing more wounds. She sat with her back pressed into a corner, her fangs bared as she tried to ward Stefan off, but she wasn’t winning that battle.

“My dear Odelia,” I purred as I walked over to her side. I slowly placed a hand on Stefan’s shoulder and squeezed. The nightwalker drew in a slow breath through his nose as he straightened and put his fangs away. He was back in control of his emotions again. “It seems that Veyron and Clarion have abandoned you to your fate. Sacrificed like poor Ferko and Sofia. Did you know you were so expendable?”

“I’m not! Veyron will come for me! Just wait!” she cried even as she pressed deeper into the corner.

I laughed, twirling one blade in my hand. “Oh, I’m afraid it is far too late for that. I’m just looking for a little information before we kill you.”

“And why should I tell you anything?” Her voice cracked as she spoke. I think she was beginning to realize that Veyron wasn’t going to come riding to her rescue. Otherwise, he would have done so already. He would not have set her up against the Fire Starter and two Ancients with only a group of humans and guns.

I shrugged my shoulders as I kicked away a severed limb sitting near my foot. “It determines your death. You cooperate and you die quickly and painlessly. You don’t, and . . . well, we can be creative.” Stefan glared at me but said nothing. This had not been a part of our agreement, and I wasn’t counting on him abiding by my wishes at just this moment.

“Did Macaire approach Veyron?” I demanded.

“Macaire came to Budapest months ago,” she said, her eyes darting away from me.

“What did he want?”

“How should I know? I’m not the keeper of Budapest,” she replied sarcastically.

I sighed dramatically. “Stefan.”

Stefan moved forward to grab her and she screamed, “He wanted you dead! He wanted you dead!”

“Anything else?”

“You and the human. He wanted you both dead, no matter what it took. We were to do whatever it took to kill you both. It didn’t matter who got caught in the cross fire,” she admitted between broken sobs. She covered her face with her right hand as tears streaked down her bloodstained face.

“And Michelle?”

“Wh-Who?” she asked.

“Michelle. Vamp you had killed,” I supplied. The edge retuned to my voice and I was about to hand her over to Stefan when she finally spoke.

“She didn’t belong here. She had no business being in Budapest.”

“No business?”

“She wasn’t welcome here—we have enough pretty female nightwalkers in Budapest. There was no room for more.”

“So you had her killed? How many others have been killed for that reason?”

“Dozens,” she said, looking up at me with a confused expression.

I shook my head as I turned away from her in disgust. I had heard of hunting and toying with fledglings, but even that practice seemed to be dying out. However, I had never heard of nightwalkers being killed because there was simply no room in a city for another attractive nightwalker. Ferko was right. Odelia had been jealous and ordered Michelle’s death because she was threatened by the potential competition.

I merely had to wave my hand and Stefan was on Odelia in a flash as I walked back toward the double doors. Her bloodcurdling screams echoed through the room until they vibrated through my brain and rattled my teeth. The tearing of flesh and the breaking of bones was sickening, but in truth I hardly noticed. Those sounds had been background noises from my nightwalker childhood. They couldn’t move me now.