“Scan the area!” I replied without looking over my shoulder at him.

“Mira?” the naturi asked, her head popping up again. “Mira? As in the Fire Starter?”

“The one and only,” I said with a devilish grin. She got a good look at my fangs and lurched backward a couple feet, trying to edge away from me, but there was nowhere for her to go.

Danaus’s power swept over the island and over the surrounding marshlands. I flinched inwardly, my body still sore and aching from our earlier connection. I was in no hurry to feel his powers again.

“There aren’t any naturi in the area,” Danaus replied.

“Where’s Rowe?” I demanded, taking a step closer to Cynnia.

“Rowe?” Her voice wavered as her gaze darted from me to Shelly and then to Danaus.

“Yes, Rowe. Where is the one-eyed bastard?”

“I—I don’t know. I’ve never met him,” she said with a shake of her head.

I was on her in a flash. Kneeling next to her, I roughly grabbed a chunk of her hair and jerked her head back. I pressed my knife blade into the long line of her throat, drawing a bead of blood that slipped down her neck. “Where is Rowe?” I growled.

“I’m telling the truth. I don’t know,” she said.

“Mira!” Danaus sharply said, snapping my head around to look at the hunter. A low snarl rumbled in the back of my throat, and my upper lip curled so he could see my fangs. It was a warning. “What if she doesn’t know anything?” he asked, his right hand on the handle of the blade attached to his waist. He was ready to attack if he thought I pressed things too far.

“Then she’s going to die in agony,” I said, tightening my grip on her hair, causing her to let out a little whimper.

“Please…I—I don’t know anything,” Cynnia said. “I just arrived here and they said I planned to betray my sister. I’ve been held captive for days.” The words flowed from her like a river.

“Your sister? Who’s your sister?” I asked, lowering the knife slightly.

“Aurora,” she whispered.

I lurched to my feet and took a couple steps away from the naturi. At the same time, Danaus stepped forward so he was now standing beside me. I suspected that his thoughts were whirling away in the same direction as mine. Could it be possible? Were we truly holding the sister of the queen of the naturi? I couldn’t be that lucky, but even as my doubts mounted, I couldn’t get over the fact that she looked familiar. And now I knew why. She looked like Aurora. I’d caught a brief glimpse of Aurora centuries ago, when we battled the naturi on Machu Picchu and her frighteningly beautiful face had been burned into my brain. I would never forget it, and now I saw kneeling before me a younger, more vulnerable version of the queen.

“You’re Aurora’s sister?” I demanded slowly, needing to say the words aloud.

“Yes,” she winced, possibly realizing her vulnerability now. “Please, I love my sister. I would never do anything to harm her. I came here looking for my brother. This war needs to be stopped, and I thought my brother would be able to help me.”

“Who’s your brother?” I asked, swallowing a smile. I felt like Alice slipping down the rabbit’s hole. It all seemed too fantastic.

“His name is Nerian, and he has brown hair like me. He—”

“Had,” I interrupted coldly. “Nerian is dead.”

She lifted wide green eyes to my face, a frown pulling at the corners of her mouth. “You killed him, didn’t you?” she asked, though the question wasn’t accompanied by the splash of tears I had been expecting. In fact, she seemed quite calm about the news.

“Yes,” I hissed, grinning from ear to ear. Nerian had been my tormentor at Machu Picchu, my constant waking nightmare. I couldn’t begin to express the relief I felt at wiping his existence from the face of the planet.

Cynnia shook her head and looked back down at her hands. “I never knew him.”

“Count yourself lucky. He was a cruel, sadistic bastard. Completely insane.”

“A good soldier,” Danaus added, to my surprise. “He believed in your sister’s cause. He would never have helped you.”

“Why here? Why were you being held here?” I demanded, drawing her attention back to me.

“I don’t know. I was brought here from across the ocean. They seemed to be following someone.”

“They were following you,” Danaus said. I looked over my shoulder to find the hunter’s intense gaze locked on my face. “They followed you from Europe back to your home.”

It was an interesting theory. “Why?” I murmured, sliding my hands into my back pockets as I stared down at the naturi once again. She was a strange puzzle piece that I had to figure out if we were to survive the next few nights.

“For two possible reasons,” he said. Danaus walked forward so until he was standing beside me, his arms folded over his strong chest. “They expect you to kill her.”

“Which would not be out of the ordinary for me,” I said with a nod. I tended to kill the naturi and ask questions later. The naturi were better off burned to a crisp, not running around causing problems. “And as the sister of their queen, it could definitely work to unite the splintered factions within the naturi host. The evil nightwalker kills the sweet, innocent younger sister of Aurora, unifying them against a common evil. Of course, that’s assuming she’s telling the truth.”

Cynnia’s head popped up and her mouth fell open to argue with me, but the words halted in her throat when I pointed my blade at her.

“Or they expect you to take her hostage and torture her for information,” Danaus continued.

“That wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for me either,” I admitted with a nod. “But then they could be counting on me wanting to have control of Aurora’s so-called sister as a bargaining chip. We take her with us, and she kills us all in our sleep.”

Frowning, I slid the knife back into the sheath on my side as I stared at the naturi, turning over the different options facing me. Killing her now would rid the world of one more naturi. But leaving her alive gave me that chance to garner a little information out of her. And what better source of information could I ask for than Aurora’s sister?

What’s more, it might actually draw Rowe to my side, at long last. The naturi had been happy to appear in Venice when it looked like a naturi was being held by the Coven. If word reached him that I was holding a naturi hostage, especially if it was his wife-queen’s sister, then he might finally come running. And ending this standoff between the naturi and the nightwalkers was dependent upon Rowe finally meeting an untimely demise.

We could use her to draw out Rowe. I pushed the suggestion into Danaus’s brain, preferring to keep my plans private from both Shelly and Cynnia. The earth witch had turned a sickly shade of green when I put the knife to the naturi’s throat. I was reluctant to count on her to keep her mouth shut when it came to the well-being of my new captive.

Do you think he will come for her?

Don’t know. But he hasn’t come gunning for me, so why not try something new?

We have to leave for Peru soon. We’re out of time.

I frowned. He was right, we were running out of time. But I was unwilling to waste this unique opportunity. Cynnia was the first naturi I had met that didn’t seem to immediately want to kill me or use me. I had to find a way to get a little information out of her before I finally killed her.

“Do you still have that house? The one with the basement?” I asked, looking over at the hunter from the corner of my eye.

He shook his head, a frown pulling at his lips. “No. Burned down.”

I wasn’t surprised. I had killed Nerian in that house. It would have been a perfect place to keep Cynnia locked up for a day or two, but I suspected that Danaus had seen to it that the house burned down in an effort to wipe away all evidence of both his and Nerian’s existence.