She took in the rest of the room in that same initial glance.

A gaily wrapped box lay on the fog-gray carpet, while Elena’s half sister, Eve, a petite Valkyrie, stood in an offensive posture, her eyes huge and her newly issued long blade held out with guild hunter precision.

Muddy boot prints led from the back of the sofa to the kitchen.

The strides were long. Running. Whoever had left those prints had been running.

“Ellie.” Eve lowered her arm, her breath a touch uneven but her stance solid. “I think we interrupted the robber. I was afraid they’d come back.”

Elena wasn’t sure this had anything to do with robbery, not when she could see Harrison’s wallet sitting right there where even a fleeing robber could’ve grabbed it. “You did good, Eve.” Striding to the kitchen door while Eve continued to stand guard in the living area, and Laric worked on Harrison, she nudged it open with care—if the assailant was a vampire in the throes of bloodlust, she couldn’t expect him to act rationally.

But the kitchen proved empty.

She swept the entire space inch by inch regardless, to make sure no one was hiding in a cupboard or under the island at the center.

The back door lock was broken.

After jury-rigging it with a piece of twine from Beth’s junk drawer then reinforcing that with a fork bent to block the mechanism, Elena returned to the living room and told Eve she was going to clear the rest of the house. “I’ll lock the front door on my way. Keep an eye on the entrance from the kitchen.”

Eve nodded jerkily as Elena left. She moved quickly and was able to confirm the house was free of intruders within minutes.

She returned to find Laric motioning for Jeffrey to remove his hands. Blood began to gush out the instant Jeffrey obeyed . . . only it was slow.

Too slow.

Harrison had lost most of the blood in his body. Replacing Jeffrey’s hands with his own, Laric began to do whatever it was that healers did to encourage healing in immortal and semi-immortal bodies. Keir had once told her it felt like coaxing a flame in the wind, or waking a sluggish sleeper.

Their job was to lead the body to heal itself.

It was wholly unlike Raphael’s ability to heal without any involvement from the injured’ s own body.

Laric’s hands were a stark and icy-white ridged with fine pink lines that quickly became streaked with viscous red. The lines had been much thicker when Elena had first met him, and Laric had said they were impossible to cut through.

Of course, buried as he’d been in the isolated stronghold of Lumia, he hadn’t ever tried lasers.

His body remained badly damaged within, but he was getting regular treatments to shave away the worst ridges so that he had better movement and flexibility.

“You must stop panicking and start trying to conserve your energy,” he said aloud; his voice was crushed gravel, so rough and broken and painful to the ear that it was rare for him to use it.

Aodhan had told Elena it actually hurt Laric to talk.

Shifting into Harrison’s line of sight, Elena took one of his hands so that Laric could get on with his work without having to deal with her brother-in-law’s desperate attempts to cover his wound with his own hands. Bloody and sticky, Harrison’s fingers gripped weakly at hers.

She squeezed back. Whatever Harrison’s faults, he didn’t deserve this. Beth and Maggie didn’t deserve this.

“If you’re going to survive,” she told him, “you need to stay calm and let Laric help you.” Beth’s husband was fewer than ten years old in vampiric terms. He couldn’t have survived even a partial decapitation. Thankfully, Eve and Jeffrey’s interruption had stopped the blade from transecting his spine. Add in the rapid arrival of a healer and he might have a fighting chance.

She damn well hoped so. Beth loved him, and, to Harrison’s credit, he treated both Beth and their daughter, Maggie, like princesses.

“Think of Beth.” It was the one topic guaranteed to get his attention. “You know what she’s like. If I tell her you’re bleeding out, she’ll have a panic attack. But if I tell her the healer has things under control and you’re handling it without worry, she’ll do fine.”

That wasn’t quite true—the youngest of Marguerite’s four daughters had far more depth to her than most people realized. Even Elena hadn’t understood that for a long time. Beth might prefer to live in a bubble of joy, but she understood the harsh realities of life. And when it counted, she’d always been there for Elena.

It was Beth who’d gathered up Elena’s things after Jeffrey threw them out in the rain and the snow.

I have no desire to house an abomination under my roof.

Her oh-so-loving father’s words to his eldest surviving child. Elena might’ve spent her life hating him for them if she hadn’t figured out that her father was as fucked up as she’d once been. Jeffrey Parker Deveraux had watched his hunter mother be beaten and decapitated by vampires, then lost two cherished daughters and the woman he loved beyond life to another killer, only to discover that one of his surviving children was the reason the monster had come to their door. Elena’s hunter-born scent had been the irresistible lure; Ari, Belle, and Marguerite the casualties.

Yes, Elena had a certain amount of sympathy for her father.

Forgiveness for his rejection, however, that would take a lifetime.

All the years when Elena had walked alone but for her friendship with Sara, it was Beth who’d held out a hand and kept her connected to their shattered and ruined family. Her younger sister had become lost in trying to please Jeffrey for far too many years, but no matter how bad their sibling relationship had become at times, Beth had refused to cut the bond or just ignore it. She had a quiet stubbornness most people never realized.

But the mention of Beth didn’t calm Harrison. Eyelids blinking rapidly, he pulled even more desperately at her hand.

Elena froze. “Is Beth in danger? Maggie?”

Jagged nods.

Fuck. She considered the time of day, where her sister might’ve gone. “Has Beth taken Maggie to visit our grandparents?”

Another nod.

Relief rocked her. Jean-Baptiste was a far older vampire than Harrison, and ruthless with it. Elena didn’t know who he’d been before surviving decades of torture, but the Jean-Baptiste she knew wouldn’t hesitate to summarily execute anyone who threatened to harm his own.

She dug out her phone and sent through a warning regardless: Beth and Maggie at risk. Stay alert.

Jean-Baptiste acknowledged her message with a single word: Understood.

“They’re safe,” Elena told Harrison. “Now focus on staying calm so Laric can help you.”

Harrison gave as much of a nod as was now possible for him to give. His breathing seemed to have improved, but his olive-toned skin was deathly pale. He’d lost an exponential amount of blood before Laric arrived.

“Will my blood make any difference?” she asked the healer—consort to an archangel or not, she was a baby immortal who had a flicker of wildfire in her blood. That wildfire was a weapon capable of wounding Lijuan. Who knew what it’d do to Harrison? But if there was no choice . . .

“I don’t want to use your blood when I cannot judge the impact it might have,” the healer said in his broken voice.

“I can donate,” Jeffrey said, stiff but resolute, while frowning at Eve.

Elena’s youngest sister closed her mouth.

A headshake from Laric.

Understanding, Elena translated: “Harrison’s injury is beyond the rejuvenating capacity of human blood.”

She knew Laric himself couldn’t donate without losing the energy he needed to help Harrison—and Laric was young, too. Not in years, but in development. He’d been in a kind of stasis for the hundreds of years he’d spent hidden from the world, his growth stunted.

Thinking quickly, she pulled out her phone again and called Dmitri. “We need strong blood to save a vampire’s life,” she said the instant he answered. “My brother-in-law.” She rattled off the address, though she was sure Dmitri already knew it. It was his job to know anything and everything that could impact Raphael.

“I’ve got someone nearby,” was the response before he hung up.

Only three minutes later, Harrison’s eyelids trapped birds as he fought to lift them and failed, another angel walked into the room. He was the night, his wings an inky black and his clothing obsidian. The intricate tribal tattoo that covered one half of his face only added to the impression of danger and darkness and a man who walked his own path.

Elena hadn’t even known that Raphael’s spymaster was in the city. Not an unusual circumstance with Jason. He came and went like the wind. Which was why it caused her no surprise whatsoever that he’d made his way through a locked door without a whisper of warning noise.

Walking up to Harrison, he used a small blade to slit his own wrist. The scent of blood—powerful blood—had Harrison’s eyelids flickering again, but he was too weak to even angle his head toward the source of the life-giving fluid. Jason pressed his bleeding wrist against Harrison’s mouth after tugging back Harrison’s head just enough that he could drip the blood directly into Harrison’s mutilated mouth.

Elena couldn’t tell if her brother-in-law had enough of his throat left to swallow, and she could see no sign he was trying to suck in the blood. Jason had to remove his wrist and cut it again multiple times before Laric signed, He has had enough.

Harrison’s fingers went limp on Elena’s hand at the same time, dropping heavily to the sofa. No blood dripped from his throat, though the gash was wet and red. As if he’d run dry. “Is he still alive?” She did not want to have to tell Beth that Harrison was dead.