He moves in, and when our lips touch, his memories erupt in my mind: his sisters singing a duet; a debonair vampire helping him out of a shallow grave; a gallery of faces; a mudslide of emotions I shrug off.

Jude’s kiss is even more aggressive than Gunnar’s, like it’s our only chance and he wants to make it count. His hand drops to my waist, where Gunnar is still holding onto me, and their fingers knit together. The air thickens, and our intimacy spreads throughout the room—other mouths colliding, other tongues, other hands—and all of the sensations pass back into me. Whatever drug this is, I’ll never get enough.

When Jude pulls back, his cheekbones are sharper, his teeth extended. He and Gunnar stare at each other, and then finally reconnect. Their hands are still together at my waist, and I’m tied to their emotions, a kite caught in a turbulent sky. Their history storms and surges, love and hurt and want, and their desire builds until the pressure between my legs is almost too much to bear.

And that’s when one of the massive windows high above us explodes, daggers of shattered glass raining onto the dance floor. The crowd shrieks and begins to scatter, just as a figure with bony limbs and long hair plummets down among us, making a dramatic three-point landing. The party crasher looks up, right at me, his eyes bright as molten bronze and his fanged teeth bared in a twisted smile. The spell of bliss broken, my blood runs cold as I recognize him from all my late-night research.

It’s Grigori Rasputin—the Mad Monk of Russia.

19

Whatever magic was holding this crowd together, it dissolves in an instant. More glass shatters overhead, figures flying through the windows and plunging into the cavernous basement, while dancers—human and vampire alike—panic and try to take cover. Instinctively, I trip away from Rasputin, his freaky pinwheel eyes still fixed on mine, and the crowd surges with me. A body flies overhead, and then another, and a wave of frightened screaming sweeps through the mob.

Suddenly, there’s a stampede for the exit, and I’m swept into it like a toy boat in a whirlpool. The music cuts off, but the lights continue to pulse and flash, fake smoke rolling while the horrific sound of tearing flesh and spraying blood fills the air. When something warm splashes my arm, adrenaline sends me into survival mode, and I start shoving.

Another vampire drops out of nowhere, touching down only a few yards to my right, and the crowd diverts again. I’m brought off my feet, nearly carried into a concrete wall—but a hand grabs my elbow, an iron grip yanking me back to safety in the nick of time. When I look up, gasping for breath, Daphne glares back at me, irate disbelief in her eyes.