“How do you know?”

“I’d know. We can scan minds, and if a vampire has taken over a human and made him into his puppet…” He trailed off, his blue eyes going wide. “Those men with Fridrick were human. I didn’t feel them, not even when I scanned their minds, yet clearly they were under Fridrick’s control.”

He stepped back, keeping his hands on her shoulders. “We have to find out what they were doing in the tunnels before we drove them all out. Maksim just told me that when he went back under the city to find out what they were doing with all their experiments, everything was destroyed. All the equipment. The cages. Their control room with their computers. It’s all rubble. We need that information or we’re only guessing at their intentions, and now it’s lost to us.”

“I can get it for you. If there’s rubble down there, I can still ‘see’ what it was used for by touching what’s left of it,” Charlotte said. “I’ve been doing that kind of thing since I was a child. Of course I never actually told anyone but Genevieve and the people at the psychic testing center in France, but I figured I had plausible deniability if anyone found out. I’m really good at it.”

Tariq stared down at her for a long time, his expression a mixture of awe, approval and pride. The way he looked at her made her feel warm inside. She’d give a lot to see that look on his face often.

“You would be willing to go down in the tunnels and sift through the rooms with us? It could be very ugly, sielamet. You saw what they did to Liv. Reliving others being tortured can mess you up in ways —”

She put her hand on his arm to stop him. “I wouldn’t have said anything if I didn’t think I could handle it. I touch antiques all the time. I’ve run across torture before. I know it can be ugly, but if this helps get rid of Fridrick and any of his friends, I’ll help in any way I can.”

That earned her another kiss. A long one. One she could take with her when she went into a vampire’s lair.

10

Charlotte stuck the tip of her finger in her mouth. It hurt. Not bad, just a dull, irritating ache. She’d looked at it several times closely to make certain there wasn’t a splinter left in from the carousel horse, but there was nothing but a tender, red spot. Sucking on it didn’t help. In fact, the moment it was in her mouth, it throbbed annoyingly.

She’d spent the rest of the evening with Lourdes, well into the night. She wasn’t in the least tired and neither was her niece – or any of the children. All of them had slept through the day. She’d put Lourdes to bed, had a wild dawn with Tariq and then slept in Lourdes’s bed, only to wake with Tariq in his bed. Now she was being taken to an underground maze below the city where Fridrick and his boss, Vadim, had tortured men, women and children.

“This is dangerous, isn’t it?” she asked, keeping her voice low.

She was surrounded by Tariq’s friends. They kept her in the center and she knew it was deliberate, although they acted casual, so much so that most of the men ignored her after they nodded to her in greeting.

She recognized his partner, Maksim, and the one called Dragomir from the night before. Dragomir was terrifying. If she hadn’t been clamped to Tariq’s side, she might have run. He didn’t look as if he had a gentle bone in his body. If anything, he looked like a killing machine. She tried not to stare at him. He wore his hair in a long, thick braid that fell to his waist. Every inch or so a leather thong wrapped the hair so that the braid was in intriguing increments running down his back. One would think it would make him look a little feminine, but it actually added to his hard, scary look.

There were triplets Lojos, Tomas and Mataias, all with weathered features and long, streaming hair. According to Tariq, Tomas had been in a battle with vampires, had been severely injured and was still supposed to be healing but had joined them anyway, just as he had in the parking garage.

She recognized the one called Siv as well. She tried to send him a tentative smile to thank him for rescuing Lourdes, but she didn’t get a response out of him.

Dragomir glanced at her. “She should not go into that place of madness. She is sensitive, Tariq, far too sensitive.” He spoke as if she weren’t there.

“She can tell us everything they were doing, and we need to know,” Tariq explained. “Without her, we won’t know what we’re up against.”

“It is dangerous.” Simply that.

The way he said it, without any emotion at all, yet at the same time, with an order, an expectation to be obeyed, made Charlotte cringe. She realized instantly that other than Maksim and Tariq, these men lived in a cold, gray world of nothing. She couldn’t help feeling a little afraid of them and yet at the same time feeling compassion toward them.

Dragomir was not at all like Tariq. He wouldn’t want his woman to walk beside him into danger. He wouldn’t expect her to go into tunnels and use her gift in order to benefit them all. He was older than Tariq, although she couldn’t tell by how much, only that whatever had happened to him had turned him into a very dangerous being. He wouldn’t be asking his lifemate whether she wanted to come all the way into his world with him. He’d simply take her there. She had a feeling Siv was the same way.

“Hang on, Charlotte,” Tariq said softly, wrapping his arms around her and lifting her easily to cradle her against his chest.

She had no option but to put her arms around his neck and hold on. She looked around for a car. Any kind of vehicle. They weren’t anywhere near the parking lot. Genevieve and Lourdes had gone to bed, as had Danny and his sisters. Emeline’s lamp was still on, but other than that one faint beacon of light, the night was very dark on the side of the property away from the lake. She tightened her fingers convulsively when the ground began to drop away, grateful she’d had playtime with Lourdes again before deciding to go with the men to the tunnels. The idea had seemed sound then; now she wasn’t so certain, but soaring across a sky was maybe worth it after all.

“Tariq.” She breathed his name, wanting to hide her eyes, but unable to do so, not when she could stare at the house and lake from above. He didn’t hesitate or falter. Neither did the other men, still grouped in a tight circle around her.

“It’s easier and faster to get from one place to the other this way,” he explained.

That so wasn’t an explanation. But flying through the air was totally kick-ass. She opened her mouth to speak and the wind whipped every word away from her. She chose to use their more intimate path. Will I be able to do this by myself?