“I was putting up a good fight,” she pointed out. “And I’d gotten to the claymore.”

A wan but cheeky smile, then, blessedly, she moved toward the stairs.

At the foot of them, she glanced back. “I know you probably don’t care, because we’re leaving, but you should tell the building manager that this penthouse has some serious heating problems. Would you mind turning it up a bit?” She rubbed her arms through the coverlet and, without waiting for an answer, hurried up the steps.

Five minutes later, he was still leaning against the wall, shaking from the battle he’d almost lost when she’d so innocently touched her lips to his. She’d kissed him as if he were honorable, in control. Safe.

As if he weren’t the man who’d been about to take her virginity by force. As if he weren’t dark and dangerous. Once, he’d gone to Katherine when he’d been in nearly as bad a state. He’d seen the fear mixed with the excitement in her eyes when he’d taken her roughly, without speaking a word, in her kitchen where he’d found her. Had known she’d sensed it in him, the darkness. Had known it had turned her on.

But not Chloe. She’d kissed him gently. Beast and all.

Trevor watched Dageus MacKeltar and his companion from a distance as they exited the building onto Fifth Avenue. The police had been crawling all over the place for hours, removing Giles’s body, and questioning witnesses, but by midafternoon, had moved on, leaving two grizzled and grouchy detectives in their wake.

He felt no grief for Giles; his death had been swift, and death was not a thing they feared, as the Druid sect of the Draghar believed in the transmigration of the soul. Giles would live again in some other body, some other time.

As the Draghar would live again in the Scotsman’s body, once they’d taken full possession of him.

Trevor was awed that the man had managed thus far to fend off the transformation. As powerful as the Draghar were, Dageus MacKeltar must be uncommonly powerful in his own right.

But Trevor had no doubt the Prophecy would come to pass as had been promised. No man could contain such power and fail to use it. Day by day, it would seep into him until he no longer knew he was being transformed. They simply needed to provoke him, to goad and corner him. The use of dark magic for dark purposes would plunge him into an abyss from which there was no escape.

Then, the Draghar would walk the earth again. Then, all the power, all the knowledge the Tuatha Dé Danaan had stolen from them millennia ago would be restored. The Draghar would teach them the Voice of Power that brought death with a mere word, and the secret ways to move through time. When their numbers were many and strong, they would hunt the Tuatha Dé Danaan and take what should have been theirs long ago. That which the Tuatha Dé Danaan had ever denied the Draghar: the secret of immortality. Eternal life, no chancy rebirth necessary.