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Being able to see in pitch darkness had its advantages She could a bushes, the various grasses Occasional aroos or eing in the cooler night air, but the guides could see theht the brief shine of their eyes There’d been soht still be soreen leaves on the shrubs or patches of wildflowers that sprang up quickly after the blessing of water

No o, a handful of outcast Europeans had been forced to put down roots here But a s different when they looked at this country Wide, open spaces Freedo you what to do There was sooddess of an ancient religion, aer continents A goddess who embraced those feho understood Her independence, Her dark and light spaces, Her harsh and unforgiving wisdom

Ironically, that special group of white settlers who’d bonded with this land, the Outback in particular, had that in co of vaerous conditions for vampires couldn’t be devised, even by dedicated vampire hunters, there were at least fifty in the Northern Territory and Western Australia The only vampire she knew that lived in harsher sunlit conditions was one in the Sahara, and Lord Mason had reputedly lived there for centuries

Of course, that here the connection between the humans and vampires here ended While Danny had no tolerance for the woman’s insolence, she couldn’t dispute Elle’s reaction Thieves’ Station had been no friend to its neighbors, white, black or vae that

Unfortunately, she was on her own for that As she’d learned only too well on her recent trip to Berlin, the Vampire Council had as little concern for what happened here as the rest of the world Out of sight, out of ion Master, Lord Charles Ruskin, was co with humans, as well as with his own kind?

She’d deal with it But first she had to deal with Ian Daman with her Her mind drifted back to the pleasant, feral memories of the past day God, he’d been unexpected She hadn’t had one so te in nificent cock were certainlyback to the sea green eyes, so sad and fierce at once A lost warrior One who’d failed to protect his family, and so had sentenced himself to solitude

All those unresolved emotions had becoh his body’s cravings The resilience of the hu to live, even when its intellect tried to convince it life wasn’t worth living

But she wasn’t alone, she reminded herself Those three men, her employees, each carried two of her raphic locater The second allowed her to be in their heads, speak to theh they, of course, did not have reciprocal access to her ht see, for a vampire, it was merely typical and a wise security measure to have second-marked household staff It wasn’t the sas she supposed a vampire could share, if she chose to do so—with a third-marked, full servant

The thought made her shift in her seat She’d shared such intimacy with Dev, without any marks at all Not all of it had been voluntary A wicked se of soe

Most vampires took their first fully marked servant by the ti her second century and had never taken one at all During the period when convicts were still being brought to Australia, her mother had acquired some for labor, like a lot of landowners, and Danny had made use of dependable ones in her youth for second-mark purposes That had always seemed sufficient to her, even as she matured

Perhaps she’d take one eventually, but for now, such long-terht irritation Tedium It wasn’t worth the bother But she hadn’t been able to resistDev once, so she could reach out and find him if she chose

Make sure he still shared the world with her and hadn’t succuility of human mortality

She bit back a sigh She’d done the right thing, leaving the choice up to hi while he was unconscious and bring hi off-road in the Outback took ti the wiry and twisted tall eucalyptus, saltbushes and grasses like spinifex that could foul the grille, and watch for ruts and deep gullies Mind the bands of sheep and cattle Desolate open spaces could hold peril The stability of creek beds had to be established before crossing, determine if it was possible to work from boulder to boulder on the few that still held water So far they’d done a bang-up job Her two guides’ blood orth bottling An Oz colloquialis, all in all

Dev likely knew the dangers of this type of route quite well, including how to handle them Ah, hell, Danny Stop it He was a human A meal But there was no reason she couldn’t divert herdawn by thinking about every inch of his puredetail The sculpted ave his face such appealing lines He’d had strands of copper in his unruly red round, but his accent was pure Oz, that brusque Cockney ic warrior bard, traveling alone, h the russet strands of his hair, and she curled theone so still, watching her, his body restrained, but quivering with a power great enough to snap a man’s neck, she was sure

She hadn’t needed to ask what had become of thoseenough to know the haunted look of a good erous edge, because the man who’d doneit the second time And he’d already done it more than once