“It hurt so bad.” She whispered the truth. “I knew he wanted it to hurt. He made me hurt because my pain caused him pleasure. My fear gave him even more pleasure, but even knowing that, I couldn’t stop crying. I couldn’t stop fighting him. He made me feel weak and helpless. He made me feel filthy, and unworthy. I didn’t want anyone to know, but I knew. I knew how they touched me, the things they said.”

A sob escaped Emeline, and Amelia’s sob matched it. Amelia’s fingers tightened around hers.

“Then he put that needle in me. Nothing ever hurt like that did. It was so thick and long and when he pushed that plunger and emptied the contents into me, it was so terrifying and painful I couldn’t quit screaming. They all laughed, and he took my blood. He just sank his teeth into me and it felt so horrible. I wanted to go to that place, Amelia, the one I knew I would be safe in, but I couldn’t get there. Not even when he forced me to drink his blood.” She whispered the last admission because it shamed her. It sickened her. That black, acid blood with the parasites wiggling on her tongue and down her throat.

“Then he made me drink more blood from a cup. There was some on my face and lips and the other vampires fought to lick it off. He did. Vadim. He waved his hand and none of them could move, and he licked it off me.”

Her body shuddered. She knew tears ran down her face. She looked at Amelia to find the girl looking back at her. They stared at each other, a shared horror in their eyes.

“You’re the only one I can tell the entire awful thing to,” Emeline said. “You’re the only one who would understand what I felt. What I still feel.”

“Like you can never be good again,” Amelia whispered. “He took everything and then he made me hurt people. Dragomir. He fought for you and then he fought for me, and Vadim made me hurt him.” She closed her eyes again. “And Liv.”

“You didn’t hurt Liv or Dragomir. Even had you managed, it wasn’t you, it was Vadim. Understand that, Amelia. I had to understand when I knew I was carrying a baby and there were parasites in me…”

“Bella. How could he make me do that? How could I have followed his instructions?”

“Vampires can take our will. Vadim’s particularly powerful, yet you still fought. Dragomir said you were courageous like me. He thought you were magnificent. He actually used that word – magnificent.”

“He did?” Amelia’s voice said she didn’t believe it.

“He did,” Emeline assured. “I know it’s difficult to face others, but, honey, it’s our own fear and guilt, not what they feel about us. It’s what he planted in our minds. He wants us to feel fear and guilt. He doesn’t want us to have any kind of life because that means he loses. I want him to lose. You have so many people who love you. They want you to be with them, not lost in a world with none of them in it. Not somewhere you had to go to escape Vadim. Tariq and Charlotte want you as their daughter.”

“I’m… unclean.”

“Am I unclean?” Emeline looked her straight in the eye.

She looked confused. “No. You’re amazing. I want to be like you, Emeline. You’re beautiful and brave.”

“He did the same to me that he did to you,” Emeline pointed out. “If I am not unclean, neither are you. Dragomir said we’re alike, and he should know.”

There was a small silence. Amelia closed her eyes on the fresh flood of tears. “I’m so afraid, Emeline,” she whispered. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough.”

“Baby, I’ll be here with you. Tariq and Charlotte will be with you. Dragomir will stand with you as well. You have Danny and Liv and little Bella and Lourdes. Genevieve has hardly left your side. I want you to think about this. We’re alike, you and me. We’ve been touched by monsters, but we’re still standing. We’re going to grow so strong that if he comes at Bella or Lourdes, if he goes after Liv or Danny, we’ll be there to stop him. We’ll learn how to wield those new weapons and how to kill vampires if we have to. We’ll be that last line of defense for them.”

Emeline held out her hand. “Come on, Amelia. We can do it together.”

She hesitated but then nodded, clasping Emeline’s hand hard.

15

So far, Vadim has been the aggressor every time,” Tariq said, looking around the circle of ancients, the men he trusted with his family. “I think it’s time we struck back and struck back hard. I know many of you have been out looking and scanning all around San Diego and the surrounding parks and hills, but so far, we’ve got nothing.”

The ancients looked at one another, shaking their heads. “Not a thing,” Tomas reported. “They head out toward the water and we lose them there. I’ve checked ships. We all have. The wharf, docks, storage, they disappear without a trace.”

“Even the newer vampires,” Lojos added. “We deliberately targeted them because they tend to leave such a mess behind making them easier to find. We’ve noticed they have another vampire with them, one that’s been at it longer. Vadim isn’t taking chances with his recruits.”

“That’s worrisome in itself,” Tariq said with a sigh. “No master vampire has ever concerned himself with lesser vampires. They’ve always been pawns to sacrifice.”

Dragomir watched Gary’s face. He had the knowledge of so many centuries of battles, of experiences. Gary turned and looked at him with his strange, ice-blue eyes, so rimmed with silver it was difficult to tell what his eye color really was. He shook his head. “If a master vampire has ever had similar behavior, I have no knowledge of it.”

Sandu drummed his fingers on the table. “What is the draw here? Is it really Dragomir’s lifemate? Emeline? She is carrying a female child. That child would be useless to him, and he has already tried to kill it. Amelia is of no more use to him. What does he hope to gain by staying in this place? His underground city is destroyed —” He broke off and exchanged a long look with Dragomir. “Have we kept an eye on it?”

“When last we checked, it was completely destroyed,” Mataias answered. “Vadim brought the thing down after we discovered it. He didn’t want us to find his secrets, although we managed to get most.”

Dragomir shook his head. “Vadim is cunning. He wouldn’t leave behind anything he thought would lead you to him. Or anything of value to him. The things he allowed us to recover were of no more use to him.”

Afanasiv leaned across the table toward Tariq. “If Vadim brought down the ceilings of his city, he could just as easily have resurrected them. Or disguised them so we take a cursory look and see what he wants us to see.”

Tariq nodded. “I have to agree. Vadim Malinov has always been highly intelligent. All the Malinovs were good at strategy. Once they became vampires, we tended to put them in the category of the unthinking – every negative emotion drives them. But that isn’t so with the Malinovs. They stuck together and they had a plan.”

“Vadim is different from the master vampires I’ve tracked and destroyed,” Dragomir added. “Using his vanity against him doesn’t work. Taunting him doesn’t work. Nor does compulsion. He stays in control for the most part.”

Tariq leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t understand why he sacrificed Amelia. His spy in our camp. He couldn’t have known we were onto him. We already know he’s patient. He could have waited and instructed her to kill the children one by one. He could have had her go after Genevieve. We were watching for that. So why didn’t he?”

“He’s testing our strengths and looking for weaknesses,” Nico suggested. “We’ve come through with little damage because there are so many of us. But so far, we haven’t seen what he’s fully capable of. The worst attack was when he was trying to reacquire Emeline and he came himself. He brought so many for his protection.”

Silence fell, broken only by the drumming of Sandu’s fingers on the table. At home, in the Carpathian Mountains, the war council would have been conducted in the privacy of the sacred warriors’ caves where their ancestors would have listened and weighed in on decisions. Here, in the newer world, where technology reigned and they had to fit in with the humans surrounding them, they sat at an oblong table made of thick oak.