Someone grabbed my arm and I swung back, struck out.

“Elisa! It’s me! It’s Theo!”

I stared at him, waiting for his face to come into focus. “Theo?”

“Yeah. Let’s get the hell out of here, okay?”

I blinked, nodded, offered him the knife. “Can you get this one? They magicked me, and I think my aim is off.”

“Sure,” he said, and sawed through the vines.

“What . . . was the noise?” I asked, opening and closing my eyes again until he had only a single head.

“I sacrificed the Auto parked outside.”

“They hacked my Auto account.”

“Yep. You didn’t show this morning, and we couldn’t reach you. Lulu found your katana outside her apartment when she came back from a run, called me. And then Petra checked your account and learned they brought you here. She says she’s sorry about the hacking. And you should change your password. But not until she makes sure you aren’t charged for the entire car.”

“I will do that . . . at the first opportunity. What’s a little privacy violation between friends?”

“My thought,” he said with a smile. “We reported this to the CPD, but dispatch is overwhelmed because of Lincoln Park and the looting and the protests. But let’s discuss that elsewhere.”

We ran across the yard, fairies shouting behind us.

“Doors!” I said, when we got into the gatehouse, and we grunted as we pushed them closed, then flipped the steel bar down to give us more time. Then we ran through the building to the outer wall. And I stared at the empty lawn.

“Where’s your car?”

“Outside the gate,” Theo said as we took off down the stone path.

“You couldn’t park next to the door?” I asked.

“I didn’t want to drive on their lawn. That seemed rude.”

“They kidnapped me.”

“We don’t all have to be assholes.”

We’d made it twenty feet when something whistled over us. We both covered our heads, then stared when an arrow pierced the grass in front of us, still quivering with energy.

Another whistle, and a second arrow pierced the grass a few feet to our right.

“Figures they’ve got damn arrows,” Theo muttered. “Let’s haul ass.”

We pushed harder, arms pumping as arrows whistled through the air like angry hornets. I was faster than Theo, and I was working up a nice lead when I heard the muffled scream of pain behind me.

I looked back. Theo was on the ground, an arrow through his thigh, pinning him to the ground.

“Oh, damn,” I said, and ran back, sidestepping another arrow that nearly tagged my calf.

“Shit,” Theo said as I went to my knees beside him. “Shit.”

“Yeah, you’ve got a little bit of a problem,” I said, and looked it over. The arrow had gone right through the middle of his thigh, spilling blood across the ground. Not enough, I thought, to have nicked his femoral artery. But enough to worry about.

Blood scented the air like wine. And that was enough to silver my eyes.

“Oh, damn,” Theo said, his pupils enormous. Shock was going to be a concern if I didn’t hurry. “You’re not going to—”

“Bite you?” I said with a grin, trying to keep the mood as light as possible. “No. It’s just a reaction to the blood.”

I fought to keep my fangs from descending, as I didn’t want his heart pumping harder than it already was. The point was to keep the blood inside him. Not on the ground, and not in me.

An arrow whistled above us. I ignored it, made myself focus on the arrow that had already become a problem. The shaft was probably a quarter-inch in diameter, and the diameter stayed the same from top to bottom. Based on the length of the other arrows around us, it embedded in the ground four or five inches.

There wasn’t going to be an easy way to do this. Not without pain, and not without risking further injury or keeping him in the open for longer than was safe.

“Theo, I’m going to hold on to the arrow and lift your leg to raise the arrow out of the ground.” Sliding the arrow out of the dirt and threading it through his leg seemed like an injury risk, and while I might be able to snap the arrow in half, I didn’t want to hurt him further.

“As soon as you’re free, I’m going to pick you up and carry you to the car and drive us the hell away from here.”

He swallowed hard. “You’re going to leave the arrow in my leg?”

“For now, yeah. I want someone more skilled to remove it. Someone trained in keeping the blood actually inside your body. My expertise is kind of the opposite.”

“Okay,” he said with a forced smile. “Okay.”

I wiped my hands on my pants, smearing blood and dirt, then reached beneath his leg and gripped the arrow. I put the other hand beneath his knee, prepared to lift his leg straight up. I pulled, but my fingers slipped away, and I ended up slamming my hand into his leg.

“Damn,” he said through his teeth. “Oh, damn.”

“I’m sorry, Theo. One more time, okay? For all the marbles. Brace yourself.” He sucked in a breath, readying himself for the pain. And I didn’t make him wait. I gripped the arrow again. With Theo rigid and shaking beside me, I lifted his leg and managed to keep the arrow in place, removing it from the soil one slow inch at a time.

A volley of arrows made a quick ring around us, a Stonehenge of armament.

“Almost there,” I told Theo, ignoring the flash of an arrow in my peripheral vision. I grabbed his leg, the arrow, and pulled.

He stifled a scream as he was freed.

“Hold the arrow,” I said, then climbed to my feet, pulled him up.

“Put your arm around me,” I said, putting an arm around him and trying to avoid jarring the arrow that still stuck sickeningly through his leg.

“Lean on me,” I said.

“I’m bigger than you,” he said, chin trembling as he fought against the pain.

“I’m a vampire,” I said as we hobbled across the yard toward his car. “But are you made of Adamantium, by chance?”

“No.”

“Or possibly dark matter?”

“No,” he said, the word falling to a grunt as he stumbled a little. “I sure as hell would like to see the goddamn getaway car right now.”

I thought I was losing him, that he was going loopy because of the blood loss, because there wasn’t a single siren on the wind.

Until the enormous black SUV burst through the open gate. It roared toward us, then spun to a stop with a spray of dirt and grass.

And then Connor was throwing open the back door.

“’Bout time,” Theo muttered, and his head slumped against my shoulder.

“I’ll get him,” Connor said, casting a curious glance at the arrow and then picking up Theo with a grunt and loading him into the back of the SUV. He closed the door just as an arrow buried itself in the door panel.

Connor swore. “Eli is not going to like that.”

Another arrow flew overhead, but I couldn’t stop staring. Or smiling. “What the hell are you doing here? You should be in, I don’t know, Iowa by now.”

“Good to see you, too, Lis,” Connor said, and his smile was as cocky as his tone. “Get in the vehicle.”

“I called Connor, too,” Theo said in a singsong voice from the backseat. “And he rode to the rescue again. Really screwed up the lawn, though.”

* * *

• • •

I called Yuen as Connor drove to the nearest hospital, explaining what had happened and arranging to meet him at Cadogan House when Theo was on the mend.

We got Theo situated in the ER, which was full even in the middle of the night, and walked outside to get some air. And talk. Because we needed to talk.

“I thought you were leaving,” I said, when we sat on a bench in a small garden area.

Connor leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “I was. And then Theo called, said you’d been taken to the castle. So I borrowed Eli’s SUV, and there you go.”

That this gorgeous man who’d had his pick of women for years seemed flustered in this moment made me relax.

“I guess I owe you for the second rescue.”

He slid a glance my way. “Maybe you do.”

We looked at each other, years of memories and history and insults between us. “What— What is this?” I asked.