“NO!” Bruce roared, and leapt forward. He grabbed Christophe, wrenching his arm away from the

greedy, fanged mouth on the bed. A jolt rammed through me, crown to soles, and for a dizzying moment I was standing up and lying down at the same time, pulled in completely different directions

like a piece of Saran Wrap someone’s trying to untangle. My teeth clicked together with a heavy billiard-ball noise, echoing inside my skull, and red agony tore through me.

Snarling. Sound of fist hitting flesh, a scream of pain that was mine, rising from my burning throat.

The place at the back of my palate where the bloodhunger lived was on fire, a hot sweet kick like

the Jim Beam I used to spike my Coke with sometimes when Dad wasn’t home. My body was a riptide catching an unwary swimmer, flesh constricting around the core of what I was, the me that had

just gotten used to freedom. Muscles screamed and locked and I—

—fell, slithering off the operating table and fetching my head a stunning blow. Landed on something too soft to be the floor, writhing underneath me, and my fingers sank into a head of hair before

whoever it was surged upward, rolling me away and shaking free. Plastic tubing yanked free of my

nose, the loops of it over my ears tearing loose.

Confusion. Yelling. Noise. I screamed again, thrashing as the bloodhunger ignited. It hurt. I hurt all

over as if I’d been doused with gasoline and set on fire, and I wanted more of the sweet red stuff. I

could taste it on my lips, smoke and spice, a smooth hot redness full of the flavor of a boy’s lips and

the tang of winter-cold eyes. He tasted like danger and wildness and a hot breeze through a car window at dusk out in the desert when you’re going eighty and not going to make the next town anytime soon. Cinnamon and male and goodness, and I wanted more.

Christophe grabbed me. He was ashen, his cheeks sunken. But his eyes blazed, and the aspect on

him was like a drenching perfume. I could feel it, waves of invisible power lapping at my skin.

Nobody else felt even remotely like him.

My chin jerked forward, quick as a striking snake, and my teeth champed together again, a bare

inch from his throat. This close I smelled the salt of sweat on him, and his body half-under mine

was maddeningly far away. I was cold and hot all at once, fierce sensations fighting for control of

me.

“Dru!” he barked, and I froze.

I knew that voice. It was like Dad’s shut up and hand me that ammo tone. It meant I needed to stop

and pay attention, and I did. My eyelids fluttered, turning everything into shutter clicks.

“How many?” Bruce demanded from across the room. Funny, but he sounded scared. “Reynard?

How many?”