Aden pulled Freddy and Travis back, wanting all three of his vamps close at hand before the fighting broke out. It was a common tactic to pick off an opponent’s vampire children in an effort to weaken him before the battle. Aden didn’t want the distraction, but he also didn’t want to lose any of his vampires. He loved them, if not as children, then as brothers. Never having had either, he couldn’t say which it was, but he knew their deaths would pain him greatly.

“Tighten your shields,” he warned all of them.

“Sire.” Three voices answered as one.

Bastien’s low-voiced warning presaged Salvador’s appearance from the darkness on the other side of a small clearing. Not that Aden needed the warning. To his vampiric sight, the Mexican vampire shone like a beacon, his power every bit as strong as reported. Maybe stronger.

“Ramiro Salvador, I presume,” he called out.

“And you are the great Aden,” Salvador responded with a sneer. “Your name was everywhere in the ballroom on Sunday. The fools are all saying you’ll be the next Lord of the Midwest.”

Aden dipped his head in acknowledgement, already bored with the theatrics.

“I even saw you kissing Raphael’s ass, making nice with his woman, for all the good it will do you. It’s not Raphael who will decide this.”

“Perhaps not,” Aden conceded, unconcerned. “But you’re a fool if you think he can’t affect the outcome.”

Salvador bristled at the sideways insult, just as Aden had intended. The Mexican’s power was lapping across the clearing in big looping waves, as if he was making no attempt to conceal it. It was as if he hoped that broadcasting his aggression would dissuade Aden from the challenge altogether.

Or perhaps he was more clever than that. Perhaps he thought that by making himself seem undisciplined and unable to control his own power leakage, Aden would assume he was weaker than he really was.

But Salvador was badly underestimating Aden, if he thought to fool him that easily.

For his part, Aden kept his power under a tight leash as always. Even knowing that Salvador might be only playing the fool, it was simply bad form to permit one’s power to slop all over like that. Besides, it would be much more fun to see the shock on his opponent’s face when he realized who, and what, he was really up against.

Salvador stalked out from under the trees and into the moonlight. He was of better than average height, with a wiry build, and his posture was stiff with hostility. His hands were clenched at his sides, his body leaning forward slightly, leading with his jaw.

Aden watched him come, then dropped a comforting hand on Bastien’s shoulder and strolled into the light himself. He let a mocking smile drift over his face and said, “Last chance, Salvador. You can still go home alive.”

“You should heed your own warning, cabron. Only one of us will be walking out of here tonight.”

Aden’s amusement fled. He liked to think, after more than 250 years, that he’d gotten over the fact of his illegitimate birth. But that didn’t mean he had to accept the insult from the likes of Ramiro Salvador.

He loosened the hold on his power just a little, letting it waft around the clearing like a gentle breeze, still only the smallest hint of his true strength.

Salvador grinned, putting his fangs on full display. “That all you got? One more chance, big man. Walk out of here.”

Aden bared his own teeth in a blatant challenge. “Too late.”

He released his power in a flood, his eyes hooded with satisfaction as he took in the wide-eyed realization on Salvador’s face. Deep inside Aden, the part of his Vampire gift that he rarely tapped and that very few knew existed came alive. It reached out, rolling in the scent of the Mexican’s fear, like a dog in something dead, drinking it in, drawing strength from it. The more rational part of Aden’s brain waited to see if Salvador would surrender, half-hoping he would. But that deep part of him, the part that was chortling with pleasure at his enemy’s dread, that part hoped Salvador would stand and fight . . . and die.

And that’s what he did.

Once Salvador had stepped into the clearing, there had been little chance of anything else. If he’d made the challenge and then surrendered without fighting, he’d never have been able to go back home, never have been able to face his Sire. For all Aden knew, Enrique was the kind of Sire who would execute his own child for embarrassing him.

But after his initial shock, Salvador stood his ground. He stopped playing games and immediately tightened his power around himself, creating a nearly impenetrable shield.

Aden had fought many challengers over the years, had seen his opponents’ power take the form of a variety of shields and weapons. But Salvador’s was something new. Most shields were either constantly in motion, or solidly immovable. Salvador’s was like a series of overlapping plates that were constantly changing, shifting position, freezing fractionally, then shifting again. It was a particularly difficult shield to overcome. One had to figure out when the shield was weakest, when it was moving or when it was realigning itself, and then time the shifts in order to anticipate a vulnerability. But, its very complexity made Aden wonder why the Mexican vampire hadn’t fought and won enough duels to make a name for himself. There had to be a weakness, a fatal flaw.

Aden didn’t have time to consider that, though, as Salvador launched the first salvo, clearly having decided his best bet lay in striking hard and fast. Aden absorbed the initial attack—shields pulled tight around his body, fixed and secure—not even trying to deflect. He wanted to feel the weight of Salvador’s power, feel its heat through his shields. He was still learning his opponent, still gathering intel.

What Salvador saw, however, was the slight give of Aden’s shield under his attack. Misunderstanding its cause, the Mexican vampire grinned viciously.

Aden grinned back, and the Mexican’s pleasure faltered.

While Salvador was still figuring out what had happened, Aden attacked, his power whipping out in a long, flexible curve of energy, wrapping around Salvador and tightening like a noose, but a noose made of edged steel rather than rope. Salvador’s shield slid, trying to slip away from the grasp of Aden’s assault, trying to cut through the whip-thin band of energy. Aden felt the pressure and pulled his power back, once again letting the Mexican vampire grin in victory. But this time, Aden kept his own expression carefully blank. The Mexican’s grin only widened.

Aden now knew at least one of his challenger’s weaknesses— arrogance, which some mistook for confidence. Confidence was good. Arrogance would get you killed.

Salvador struck again, and the fight truly began. Power lanced back and forth without halt, singeing the trees overhead, starting little fires that were quickly doused when the next blast of energy sucked all the oxygen out of the air. Aden unleashed the full weight of his power, slamming it outward in a concussive wave that knocked Salvador back several steps and sent one of the Mexican’s minions crashing into a tree. The vampire minion yelped in pain, and Salvador leapt back into the fray, his fists raised then slammed into each other, creating a vibrating roll of energy that bombarded Aden’s shields with sound and fury, pounding against his eardrums and setting up a cacophony in his head that was badly disorienting. Aden was forced to retreat within his own shields, using his power to push back, interrupting the energy waves and stopping the noise.

Salvador had clearly been waiting for just that reaction. He attacked again, a pinpoint shaft of power this time. It burrowed through Aden’s shield, digging into his arm, burning through flesh and into bone.

It was an agonizing pain. But Aden had learned at a very tender age to set aside the worst pain imaginable, to keep working regardless of blood or torment. He flexed the muscles of his wounded arm, choosing his own pain, using the agony to fuel his rage, channeling that rage into a whirlwind of razor-edge flails, hammering and slashing at Salvador’s shields, slipping through to slash at his face, to batter his body.

Blood ran freely from every inch of Salvador’s exposed skin, from the rips and tears in his clothing. But still he fought, using Aden’s attack against him, taking advantage of his focused distraction to strike at his legs, narrow beams of power cutting through his flesh like tiny lasers.

Aden nearly staggered, but would not grant himself that weakness. With a snarl of pure fury, he doubled his attack, shifting from the pounding force of a flail to the knife-edge slice of the thinnest of whips, the kind of whip that could fillet a man as neatly as a fish, could slice the flesh from his bones so quickly he wouldn’t even know until he’d fallen that he was dead.

Salvador’s answering howl carried more rage than pain, his head thrown back, his clothes almost gone, no longer able to hold form. Bloody strips of flesh hung from every inch of his body, white bone showing through, his face barely more than a skull. His teeth were bared, his eyes wild and gleaming a ruby-tinged gold as he pinned Aden with a furious stare and launched one final salvo.

And Aden saw it. The weakness in the Mexican’s shields. For the space of a long breath, the constantly shifting plates of Salvador’s shield froze completely as he drew upon every ounce of his remaining strength, draining the shield’s power.

Aden pounced. Channeling his own power into a single whippet of energy, he slashed out, wrapping the thin beam around the Mexican’s neck, letting the whip curl around and around like a snake, and then giving a single sharp tug.

Ramiro Salvador’s eyes met Aden’s in an instant of shocked disbelief, and in that moment, something passed between them, an understanding, a recognition of mutual respect. And then his head separated from his body, and he died.

Aden fell to his knees, his head thrown back as that hidden aspect of his power came roaring to the fore. It drank in the energy of Salvador’s death, as if by dying he released his power for Aden to draw upon. Distantly, Aden heard the screams of Salvador’s minions as they followed their Sire into death, too newly made to survive the trauma of his ending, and Aden drank in their deaths, too. He didn’t like this gift of his Vampire nature, but he used it. It was a morbid and dark power, but it was also a tremendous secret weapon. And he was a warrior. A warrior used whatever weapons were available to him. Aden’s ability to draw strength from the death of other vampires made it possible for him to recharge in the middle of a fight. And it meant that when the battle was over, he was not so weakened by blood loss that he was vulnerable.