His primary self, now bending over the vampire whose hands shook near his cut-up face, thrust the dagger at a low angle through the rapist’s chest, reaching upward until the sharp point connected with the tougher flesh of the heart.

He screamed one final time, lost air, and arched. Lucian held the blade steady until the vampire lay still, his hands falling away from this face.

For a long moment, he stared down at the man he’d just killed, breathing hard. But as his adrenaline eased back, his hearing opened and he heard the weeping of the young women in the cells. They’d had to witness these kills.

He stood up, stripped off his shirt, and threw it over the corpse. The captives had had enough trauma for one night.

He turned and saw Claire put her arms through the bars of a cell and embrace a young woman with black hair. He made his way back to his second self, looked into his own eyes, and with a powerful vibration rejoined.

All four vampires were dead, and the woman on the table lay very still. Her clothes hung off her in ragged, torn pieces. She’d lost a lot of blood, but she hadn’t died, and for that he was grateful. How many times had he found human women in this state: gang-raped, drained, in terrible pain, traumatized? And how many times had they died because of it?

He didn’t dare try to touch her. She wouldn’t understand he meant to help. He called for Claire, who took charge of her, lifting her from the desk, putting an arm around her shoulders and speaking in a low voice. “We’ll have help here soon to get everyone out, medical assistance as well.” She drew the woman to a corner away from the desk as well as the cells and held her as she sobbed.

With the victim taken care of, he turned to getting the dead bodies out of viewing distance. He moved them into an adjoining room, a task that, given his increased physical strength, took less than half a minute to accomplish. He didn’t want the women staring at this much carnage.

He withdrew his cell and called Gabriel.

“What’s your ETA?”

“We’re already here, though we’re looking at a bunch of astonished dockworkers.”

“I’m sure you are.”

“So what have you got?”

“One rape victim who will need medical attention and it looks like at least a hundred recent abductees. The guards are dead. They’ll need to be processed, and I’m sorry to say one of them got dropped in the Pacific.”

“I’ll send someone out to retrieve the body.”

They would do everything they could to keep the vampire genome a secret from the human world.

Gabriel continued, “I’ve got my people with me, but this is some serious disguising power. There’s even a trace of something violet. Just a trace.”

“Can you follow that trace?”

Gabriel was quiet for a moment. “I sure can. I take it this is Claire’s signature.”

“It is. Just follow it and you’ll find us.”

“We’re on our way.”

A moment later Gabriel arrived along with this team.

Claire turned the rape victim over to the physician in charge, but continued to hold her hand until the woman could let go. A shot of morphine for her pain helped a lot. Claire wasn’t surprised that by the time she was strapped to a stretcher, she’d passed out.

Only then was she able to rejoin Lucian, who stood beside a vampire almost as big as he was. Lucian introduced her to the man called Gabriel, the one she knew Lucian thought of as his real father. He had short spiked black hair and gray eyes, similar to Lucian’s, but they held more tenderness than she’d seen in any of the vampires she’d met before.

She liked him already, but mostly because from what Lucian had told her, Gabriel had taught three teenage boys to function with a conscience even though they’d each gone through hell at their father’s hands.

“You’ve done a wonderful thing here, Claire.” He gestured down the long row of cells.

All the young women were now clustered together in the middle of the room as his team began making its way through their number, tending to each one.

“I was only too glad to help.” When she heard Amber call to her, she excused herself and hurried in her direction.

Now that all the cells had been opened, she caught Amber in her arms and held her tight. Amber wept against her shoulder, then gestured for Tracy to join her. Claire had never met Tracy before, but she opened her arm and all three women embraced.

Claire, though having boasted to Lucian that she wasn’t a weeper, found tears streaming down her cheeks anyway.

After a moment, Amber drew back, linking arms with Tracy. “What’s going to happen to us?”

“You’ll be taken home.”

“But won’t they come for us again? The ones who took us in the first place?”

Claire glanced back at Lucian, who had remained near Gabriel. The men appeared deep in conversation, their expressions serious. “I’ll talk with Lucian, the one who battled your captors. I’m sure he’ll fix things so that you will never have to worry about being abducted again.”

Amber nodded, but she had the skittish look of a woman who’d been taken against her will, her gaze bouncing around from the cells, to the medics, to the other young women.

Claire didn’t say anything. She just let Amber find her own pace with the situation.

Finally Amber’s gaze settled on Claire. “Do you know where Zoey is? I thought maybe she’d be with you.”

Now the next hard part. “No, I’m afraid she’s not. It’s a long story, but after we were abducted, we were separated. Right now, however, I’m finally able to start looking for her. And I feel very confident that I’ll have the means to find her within the next few days.”

“But it’s been two years? Why are you just looking for her now? I don’t understand.”

Claire debated just how much to tell her but finally sketched out her own experience, adding that Lucian was now working with her to find Zoey.

Amber kept shaking her head, and more tears streamed from her eyes. Claire hugged her once more, drawing Tracy in as well, then reassured them both that all would be well.

As she held the girls, she glanced once more in Lucian’s direction and found that he was still talking quietly to Gabriel.

Later, Lucian met Amber and her friend, but he moved away shortly after. He could tell his sheer size and the fact that he no longer wore a shirt intimidated the young women.

While he waited for Gabriel’s medical team to wrap things up, he watched Claire as she continued to comfort Amber and her friend and as she extended herself to many of the other young women around her. The new set of chains gave them both a much greater range of movement, one of the many benefits he was already experiencing.

Other aspects were similar to the single-chain, especially that he remained driven as ever to follow her with his gaze, to desire her, to long for some alone time. His need to feed rose as well, a typical response to having been in a recent battle. Splitting into his dual selves, something he often did while fighting, also tended to use up his reserves. But because of his blood-madness recovery, he already felt twitchy.

Claire caught his gaze and tilted her head, an inquiring expression. He smiled ruefully, knowing he’d been caught essentially lusting after her again.

The new chains grew very warm there for a moment. Where were your thoughts?

In my home in the Ozarks. Did I tell you I have a place there?

No, one more indication how little we know about each other.

I thought maybe you’d like to see it once we take Amber and Tracy home.

Sounds like a plan. But do you know what is amazing?

What’s that?

Only that we’re standing at least thirty feet away from each other and it’s as though you’re right next to me.