Luc was beyond speech now. Everything was said with his eyes as he gazed at me, like I was some angel sent to carry him home. Bastien nudged me.

“Fleur, he’s going to stay alive a little while. You know how long stomach wounds take. It’s agony.”

“I know,” I growled, choking off a sob. “You don’t need to tell me.”

Bastien’s voice was grave. “You can stop it. Ease his suffering.”

I stared at Bastien incredulously. “What do you expect me to do? Go get that knife and finish him?”

He shook his head. “He’s only got a little life left, Fleur. Only a little. You won’t need to do much.”

I didn’t get it right away. When I did, I felt my eyes go wide. “No…I can’t…”

“He dies regardless,” said Bastien. “You can make it faster…sweeter…”

I was still shaking my head, but Bastien’s words had penetrated. He was right. He was right, and I hated him because he was right. Turning from Bastien, I looked back at Luc, whose brow I’d been stroking with my hand. His gaze was still turned upward, still at me. A drop of water fell on his cheek, and I realized it was one of my tears.

“Good-bye, Luc,” I said softly. It seemed like I should say a million other things to him, but I couldn’t form the words. So, instead, I leaned down and brought my lips to his. I pressed against them, making full contact, though it had none of the animal passion from before. This was gentler. A whisper of a kiss.

But as Bastien had said, it didn’t take much. The beautiful, silvery sweetness of his life energy flowed into me. It was just as pure and perfect as before—and it was gone quickly. I took it into me and sat up, just as Luc exhaled his last breath. The eyes that had watched me so adoringly saw nothing now. I sat up and leaned against Bastien.

“I killed him,” I said, no longer holding the tears back.

“You brought him peace. You were his angel.” It was an eerie echo of my earlier sentiments.

“No, this…I mean, before. He shouldn’t have been out here. He’s here because…because of me. If I’d slept with him, this wouldn’t have happened. But I couldn’t. I didn’t want to hurt him…didn’t want to taint him…and then this happened….”

Bastien put his arm around me. “If it makes you feel better, his soul won’t be going to our people.”

I buried my face in his shoulder. “This is my fault. My fault…I should have done what I was supposed to do. I was ready to—then he asked me to marry him and—damn it. I should have done it. I should have lied. It would have been better for everyone. I don’t know how this happened….”

“It happened because you get too close to them,” said Bastien. He was stern but trying hard to be gentle. “Men like this…anyone like this…they enchant you, Fleur. You get attached and then you get hurt.”

“Or I hurt them,” I murmured.

“You need to stay indifferent.”

“It’s getting worse,” I said. “Every time, it’s harder on me. I don’t understand. What’s happening to me? What’s wrong with me?”

“Immortality,” he said wisely. “Too many years.”

“What do you know? You’re younger than me.”

Bastien helped me stand, though I was reluctant to let Luc go. “I know that you can’t keep doing this. Listen to what I said: don’t get attached to these good ones. No matter what you do, it won’t end well.”

“I won’t go near the good ones at all,” I said in a small voice. “No more. I’m staying away from them altogether.”

Bastien’s kindly mien dropped. “That’s ridiculous,” he scoffed. “Weren’t you listening to me earlier? You can’t go after immoral men for eternity. You’d get no energy. You’d have to do it every other day.”

I looked down at Luc, Luc who had loved me and gotten killed for me. My fault. All my fault.

“Never again,” I said. “I won’t ever hurt anyone like that again.”

When I returned to the box in the dark, I didn’t need the Oneroi to enlighten me. All of that dream had been true—except for the last part. It had been a lie. I had continued to hurt people, over and over.

Really, when you thought about it, what I was going through wasn’t that much different from dying after all. They always said you saw your life flash before your eyes, and that’s how it was for me. Dream after dream. I relived the most painful moments of my life, true dreams where I’d done terrible things and seen terrible things done to those I loved. More “realities” that had never happened were shown to me as well. In one, Roman’s recent display of affection turned out to be a scam. It was a front to punish me for my role in the death of his sister. Only, he didn’t go after me directly. He went after all my friends, mortal and immortal. I watched him kill them one by one as he ignored my pleas to just finish me off instead.

The Oneroi latched onto how I was bothered more by the suffering of those I loved than of myself. They mocked me, claiming that Roman’s rampage was a vision of the future that had come through the gate of horn. I didn’t believe it…at least, I didn’t think I did. Nyx could see the future. Could they? Or were they maybe in contact with her, despite her imprisonment? My higher reasoning was giving way to paranoia as I was stripped further and further of my essence. I even began to dread the true dreams from the mortal world, the ones that showed me my friends. They were no longer a comfort; they only plunged me further into darkness. Because as the Oneroi had predicted, there seemed to be no hope of rescue in sight.

Still, I kept dreaming….

Roman, Hugh, and the vampires were in a van. Peter was driving, and the clock on the dashboard read two o’clock in the morning. No one spoke in the small space, giving me no clue as to what was transpiring. Their headlights illuminated a sign along the freeway that indicated an exit for Idaho State Route 41. Idaho?

“Can you change the station?” asked Hugh. “I hate talk radio.”

“Because you might learn something?” asked Peter.

“Because I’m trying to stay awake.”

“It’s a rule of the road: driver controls the radio.”

“What rule book says that?”

“Enough,” said Roman. His voice was weary, his face more so. He looked like he hadn’t been sleeping much, but considering the time of night, that wasn’t a surprise. He unfolded a map and then checked a piece of paper with some notes scrawled on it. “It should be the next exit.”

“How’d Carter even find this guy?” asked Cody.

“Because Carter moves in mysterious ways,” said Hugh. “Hard-drinking, hard-smoking mysterious ways.”

“Yeah, but if he knew, why didn’t he tell Jerome?”

“Because Jerome would go into blasting mode if he found out. I guess Carter was keeping it on the down-low as some sort of compassionate act. He’s an angel and all.”

“Oh, right.” Cody seemed to have forgotten about that. It was an easy mistake.

“Jerome’ll blast us too if he knows what we’re doing,” warned Peter.

“He’s too distracted. He thinks we’re just following a vampire lead.”

“That’s the point,” said Peter. “If he finds out we lied to him—”

“He won’t,” interrupted Roman impatiently. “Not if we just get what we need from this guy and get out of here. This is it—take that exit.”

Hugh veered off onto what hardly seemed like a road at all. It had no businesses and only one streetlight to illuminate an intersection, just before darkness swallowed everything. Roman continued giving directions, steering them farther and farther into the countryside.

“You can’t do anything to him,” said Hugh, craning his head to look at Roman in the backseat. “Show any flare of power in another demon’s territory, and you’re dead—probably along with the rest of us.”

“Do you think I’m stupid?” demanded Roman.

“Not exactly. But I do think you’re short-tempered, have poor impulse control, and would do anything for Georgina.”