The vampire raised my head for another slam against the floor. I went limp—dead weight in his grip. His fingers loosened just enough.
I twisted hard, driving my elbow into his windpipe. He gagged, grip failing. I rolled sideways through Kathrin's blood, the stake glinting three feet away.
"Stupid bitch!" He lunged after me.
My fingers closed on silver-wrapped wood as his weight crashed down. I spun beneath him, drove the stake between his ribs. Metal scraped bone—wrong angle, wrong depth.
"Missed." He slapped me hard enough to split my lip. "Try again."
Blood filled my mouth. I wrenched the stake free, slammed it higher between his ribs. The tip punched through muscle, lodged against something hard.
"Still wrong." His hand circled my throat, hauling me half-upright. "The heart's here, pretty lady." His free hand pressed his chest, marking the target while my vision darkened. "Right here. Even a noble whore should manage that."
Arrogant creature. Teaching his own execution.
I gripped the stake with both hands and drove forward—legs braced, back arched, every ounce of fury channeled through silver and wood. The resistance gave with a wet surrender as the tip found cardiac muscle.
His eyes went wide. "That's not—"
"Possible?" I twisted the stake deeper. "Watch me."
The vampire's mouth worked soundlessly. His fingers loosened on my throat. Then his full weight crashed down, pinning me to the floor.
Dead weight. Literally.
Two hundred pounds of corpse crushing my ribs, my lungs fighting for each breath. I shoved against his shoulders. Nothing. Bucked my hips. He didn't budge. Black spots danced across my vision as oxygen became memory.
"Move, damn you." The words came out strangled.
I wedged my hands beneath his chest, feeling the stake's pommel still warm from my grip. Gathered my knees to my chest. Planted both feet against his torso and pushed with the desperate strength of suffocation.
He rolled sideways with the wet sound of meat hitting marble.
Air rushed back into my lungs—painful, glorious, tasting of copper and death.
I crawled to Kathrin on hands and knees, petticoat dragging through the lake of blood. Her face had gone the color of tallow candles. No rise in her chest. No flutter at her throat.
"Kathrin?" My fingers found her wrist, searching for the impossible. "Please. Alistair needs you. He needs someone who remembers him before."
Nothing. Skin already cooling.
The tears came sudden and violent.
This woman who'd terrified me, who'd wielded propriety like a blade, who'd loved her son with the fierce protection of a wolf—she didn't deserve this.
Didn't deserve to die while her vampire son hunted another monster entirely.
"I'm sorry." I pulled the coverlet from her bed, drew it over her face with shaking hands. "You deserved better than blood on Persian rugs. Better than your daughter-in-law arriving too late."
The room's silence pressed against my ears. Somewhere below, voices shouted orders. Glass shattered. The living taking account of the dead.
I forced myself upright and stumbled toward the door.
The great hall looked like a battlefield's aftermath. Bodies sprawled across marble—some vampire-still, others too human in their terminated breathing.
Nathaniel stood at the center, blood painting his shirt, directing survivors with battlefield efficiency.
"Those three to the courtyard." He pointed at vampire corpses. "Sun will finish what silver started. Check the east wing—every room, every closet. Marcus, take four men and barricade the wine cellars."
"What about the servants' quarters?" A footman clutched a fireplace poker like a talisman.
"Already swept. We lost two maids and the undergroom." Nathaniel's voice carried that particular flatness of a man counting casualties. "Get water boiling. Bandages torn. Every door barred until I say otherwise."
Nicholas materialized at my shoulder before I'd taken three steps into the hall. "My lady, you're injured."
"I'm fine—"
"You're bleeding from the scalp." His hands hovered near my shoulders, not quite touching. "Lord Blackwood? Lady Kathrin?"
"Alistair hasn't returned." The words scraped raw. "Kathrin is—" My voice cracked. "She's gone."
Nicholas's face went stone-still. "How?"
"Vampire in her chambers. I was too late."
"My lady—"
The floor tilted. My knees buckled. Nicholas caught me before I hit marble, shouting for help as darkness swallowed everything.
* * *
Sunlight burned through my eyelids. Mid-afternoon light, judging by the angle. A maid perched beside my bed, basin in her lap, pressing cool cloth to my forehead.
"My lady, you're awake." She helped me sit, holding a cup to my lips. "Small sips."
The water tasted like salvation. "Alistair? Lady Maeve?"
Her face told me before her words. "Neither has returned, my lady. Mr. Crowe says his lordship pursued the elder vampire to retrieve Lady Carrow."
"How long?"
"Since last night, my lady. It's past three now."
Eighteen hours. Anything could happen in eighteen hours.
I swung my legs over the bed's edge, testing my balance. Pain shot through my skull. My ribs screamed protest. "I need to dress."
"My lady should rest—"
"I need to find Nathaniel."
"But—"
"Now."
She helped me into a clean dress, wincing at the bruises blooming across my arms. I waved away her protests and climbed the narrow stairs to Nathaniel's room.
He'd transformed the space into an armory.
Silver stakes arranged by length. Iron blades sorted by weight. Crossbow bolts tipped with blessed metal. He tested each edge with his thumb, adjusting tension on bow strings, checking powder in a collection of small glass vials.
"Preparing for war?" My voice came out steady despite everything.
"War has already come." He didn't look up from the blade he was oiling. "This is for what comes next."
"Why haven't they returned?"
"Several possibilities." He set down the blade with excessive care. "Best case—Alistair's tracking at distance, keeping the elder focused on him instead of the estate. Or he's found Maeve and they're taking a longer route to avoid pursuit."
"Worst case?"
"The elder's forcing a chase through difficult terrain. Wearing him down." His jaw tightened. "Or Alistair found them and lost."
"He wouldn't lose."
"No?" Nathaniel finally met my eyes. "Your husband's been a vampire for months. The elder had centuries to perfect killing. That's not a fight—it's an execution."
The tears came silent and sudden, rolling down my cheeks without sound. My hands pressed to my belly where life still fluttered, stubborn and insistent.
Nathaniel crossed the room in three strides, pulled me against his chest. His arms wrapped around me, solid and warm and alive. "He'll find a way through."
"You don't know that."
"I know he's too possessive to let anyone else raise his heir." His hand covered mine on my belly. "Too stubborn to let an elder vampire win. Too much your husband to leave you unprotected."
"You believe that?"
"I believe you don't doubt it." He pulled back enough to meet my eyes. "Whatever else Alistair is, he's yours. That means something. Has to mean something."
I wanted to believe him. Wanted to trust that love could overcome centuries of predatory evolution. But outside, the sun tracked toward evening, and still no sign of my vampire husband or my captured friend.