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Memories, painful and brutal, threatened to roar to the surface, but Dmitri had had almost a thousand years to learn to think past the pain “You were lying in a pool of your own blood e discovered you” It was a quiet reminder, a final chance “She’d whipped you until she’d shredded the skin off your back, then ridden your ck while you screaer marred the flawless lines of Kallistos’s face “You didn’t understand her, peasant that you were”

“And you were naught to her but a pretty toy,” D she would have perhaps regretted breaking, but only for as long as it took her to find a new bauble”

Copper burned hot, but Kallistos didn’t strike, didn’t react “She broke your bauble, didn’t she?” A vicious s while they rutted on her”

Rage seared his bloodstreaive Kallistos the satisfaction of seeing what it did to hirede’s final moments on the earth “Do you still love her, Kallistos?”

A dark silence, followed by a sito decapitate

But Kallistos was no longer there, having race to shield hilea place by the heavy piece of furniture, “or you’ll never find out where she is”

Dht Honor’s scent near the doorway “You have nothing”

Asmile “It wasn’t difficult to take her All I had to do wassatisfaction that was as chilling as it was iht into ”

Honor didn’t have younger brothers But Sorrow did

Ice steeled his blood “Surrender totendrils of unexpected scent that told hi protovampires at his command, “and I’ll make your death an easy one” Honor was out there alone, but the instant Det

Kallistos laughed again, a rough, broken, painful sound “It a she died a slow, painful death—after servicing me until I tired of her It’s a pity you didn’t arrive an hour earlier” A smile that aimed to draw heart’s blood “She screamed your na, shoving the raw fury of his emotions to the back of his mind That would co the lethal strike, the other vampire twisted and almost flew over the sofa to land on his feet on the other side “Neha,” Kallistos said as Ds One of which is a hter,” D to strea the exit

“Anoushka was arrogant” Kallistos came at him in a blur that sliced a line across D the black material the dark red of his blood “I, however, don’t care about showing off Only causing you pain”

D Kallistos used the opportunity to cut a deep gash on his back, the blade skating agonizingly off his spine “How does it feel to be the weaker one, Ded you to spare her life, begged you!”

Ten of the young, weak protovauns No more sounds in the hallway

“She was a bitch who deserved to die” With those cold words, he began totoward Kallistos, he spun out toward the edges of the rooun hih the air, spurting blood onto the walls as Kallistos screaed after him

So, Isis’s former lover bore so his feet to push off a wall splattered with red, he flipped over Kallistos and down into a crouch below the barrage of bullets But one caught hi off the pain, he sliced out with the scis at the knees The va, too badly Made to survive it, his screah-pitched, endless

The survivors were already shootingbut their shots suddenly ild, their hearts blown out fro with a fiery center

Raising his head to see Kallistos rushing toward Honor, lip curled into a snarl, he shifted position to block the other vah the rooht with body partsout at Kallistos’s knees, he grazed him with the blade as Kallistos twisted out of the way and ran not toward the doorway, but toward the s of thick old-fashioned glass that looked out over the grounds Not stopping his headlong lass and out into the yard in a shattering cascade of sound and blood

“Honor!”

“I’lass, he rolled up into a standing position to find hi a Kallistos whose face bore a blood-soaked syou” Lifting two fingers to hisfilled the air and suddenly hounds as black as night were boiling out from the woods toward the front of the house, their canines razor sharp and their ai around Kallistos, they came at Dmitri—but not all of them Part of the pack headed into the house, likely drawn by the spilled bloodor by Honor’s scent Because Kallistos was laughing, a look in his eyes that said he’d played his endga a flash of blue in his peripheral vision, Dmitri yelled, “Inside!” He sliced out at the hounds at the sa their thickly muscled bodies in half, but they continued to pour out of the woods If he fell to the ground, they’d tear him to pieces, probably eventually succeed in the decapitation that was the only thing that would end his near-immortal life