She blinked up at him, her breathing reduced to harsh gasps for oxygen.

“Tell me where Sidonie is,” he said, his voice hard and uncompromising, “and I’ll make it quick.”

“I don’t,” she began breathlessly, struggling for enough air to speak. Her head rolled from side to side in denial. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Aden’s gaze went flat, and his eyes lit up, bathing her in their cool glow.

“Wrong answer,” he growled.

She shrieked as he ripped her mind apart, as he dug for knowledge of Sidonie’s kidnapping and found nothing. And when he was finished, he dug his fingers into her chest and squeezed her heart like an overripe tomato, feeling the bloody flesh squish through his fingers like some gruesome puree.

When it was all over, when Silas had become part of the bloody mud on the floor of the warehouse, Aden stood. If she’d had any power left, he’d have absorbed it willingly, but by the time he’d killed her, she’d been drained of every ounce. He closed his eyes against the inevitable adrenaline crash and felt Bastien and the others gathering around him, offering their protection and their strength.

“She didn’t know anything about Sidonie’s kidnapping,” Aden said quietly.

Bastien gave him a worried look. “Then where is she?”

“I don’t know.”

“We should go, my lord. There will be enough light through the windows in the morning to burn away this mess, and we can leave her vehicles out back. Local scavengers will strip them far more efficiently than we could.”

Aden glanced around the nearly empty warehouse. “If any of her minions—” He didn’t bother finishing the sentence. There’d been no one left to survive Silas’s death.

“It’s late, my lord,” Bastien reminded him. It was late, much later than he’d planned. The business with the dead doorman and its follow-up had taken far too much of his time. And he wondered if someone had planned it that way, someone who had Sidonie in his clutches even now.

It did no good to curse the rising sun and its implacable effect on his vampire nature, but he did it anyway, swearing long and fluently. Sidonie was out there somewhere. Alone or worse. She wasn’t dead. He’d taken enough of her blood that he’d have known if she died. Unfortunately, there were far worse fates than death. He had experienced many of them personally.

Did she know he was looking for her? That he wouldn’t stop until he found her?

He drew a deep breath as they exited back onto the street, grateful for the fresh air. As cold and wet as it was, it was an improvement over the warehouse, which had become oppressive with the stink of drying blood and ash.

“Is it over, my lord?” Bastien asked, pausing to look at Aden as he opened the SUV’s door.

His lieutenant was asking if the night’s battle concluded the challenge. If Aden was now Lord of the Midwest.

Aden nodded, but waited until they were in the SUV and on their way home before going into detail. “Silas was the last major challenger that I know of. It’s possible some unknown contender is out there waiting in the wings for the rest of us to kill each other off, but I haven’t heard of any.”

“But then, how do you claim the—”

“That’s Lucas’s call. He’s the current Lord of the Midwest in fact, if not in spirit. I’ll notify him of my intention to claim the territory. He has the option of fighting me for it, but I think we both know he won’t do that. Although,” he added thoughtfully, “if Silas had tried to claim the victory, he would have made her fight for it.”

“Or simply sicced Raphael on her,” Bastien muttered.

Aden chuckled. “You’ve met Raphael, Bastien. Does he strike you as a vampire who can be sicced on anybody?”

Bastien’s face brightened in a rare grin as he looked over the seat at Aden. “I think Cyn could get away with it.”

They shared a tired laugh, and Bastien said, “So, you inform Lucas, and then what?”

“Then we travel to that godforsaken ranch of his in the middle of nowhere, and he formally transfers the Midwest to me. We spend a night in drunken revelry, and then we come back to Chicago and start working. But before we do any of that, I need to find Sidonie. It wasn’t Silas who kidnapped her, so who was it? And what do they want?”

“Could it be that unknown challenger you talked about?”

Aden frowned, shaking his head. “Maybe. It doesn’t sound right, though. It took manpower to take Hamilton and his people down that way. If there was a challenger in town with the numbers to do that, I’d have heard about it. Damn it!” he swore, pounding the armrest in frustration, feeling the rippling heat inside his skull that warned him the rising sun was nearly to the horizon.

“I can have some our daylight people put out feelers tomorrow, my lord. It will give us a head start in the search for her.”

Aden nodded, his mood grim. “He used humans for the assault, and humans talk. They can’t seem to help themselves. Someone will be bragging about taking down a vampire, even though that’s not what happened. We simply have to root him out.”

“We’ll find her, my lord.”

Aden agreed silently. He would find Sidonie. He only hoped he wouldn’t be too late.

Chapter Nineteen

THE NEXT NIGHT, Aden opened his eyes to the knowledge that he was Lord of the Midwest. He’d told Bastien they had to contact Lucas, had to go through the formalities first. But that was just the paperwork. He felt the victory in his bones and blood. He knew there was no vampire in Chicago who could stand against him, and if he stretched his awareness even farther, he detected no one within the entire territory, his territory, who could.

He would have to pay Lucas a personal visit anyway, in order to receive the full power and burden of his lordship. Every vampire within the Midwest would soon look to him for his next breath, for the next beat of his heart. Aden tried to imagine the weight of it. The lives of his four vampire children seemed heavy enough. What would it be like to have thousands weighing on him every minute of every day? He’d probably come to welcome the daily rising of the sun for the rest it would bring him.

He sat up, pulling his awareness in and narrowing his focus. Lucas would have to wait. Aden’s first priority was to find Sidonie. She was somewhere in this city, a city he now owned. Somewhere out there was a vampire who knew something, who’d seen something, that would lead Aden to whoever had attacked his guards and taken Sidonie from him. He didn’t need someone to point out the house, they only had to get him close. Her blood would tell him the rest.

Throwing aside the covers, he climbed from the bed and strode to the shower. He sensed his vampires waking up in their secure rooms down the hall. And then he blinked in surprise, his step nearly faltering as he felt something more, something only a lord would sense . . . vampires waking all over the city. Good. He’d put them all to work.

ADEN WAS SURPRISED to find Earl Hamilton waiting when he strode into his office. The human had been pacing the receptionist area and turned when Aden rounded the corner. He was wearing full combat gear, including a military-grade chest plate, with a MP5 hanging round his neck on a sling. His hands rested on the weapon as he faced Aden.

“Hamilton,” Aden said in surprise.

“My lord,” the human said, dipping his head respectively. “I heard . . . forgive me, my lord, but I heard Ms. Reid had been kidnapped. Is this true?”

“Unfortunately,” Aden confirmed grimly.

The man’s face was a study in regret. “I must tender my resignation, my lord. I failed you, and Ms. Reid paid the price.”

Aden rested his hands on his hips and studied the human. He understood the man’s dismay, but didn’t see how resigning helped anyone.

“I don’t accept that,” he said finally. “I need you now more than ever. And if you insist on feeling responsible, then Sidonie needs you, too. As for whether or not you failed me, you offered your life in the defense of me and mine. Some of your men gave their lives in that defense. I would be a foolish lord indeed if I rewarded such loyalty by firing you.”

Tears shone in Hamilton’s eyes when he spoke next. “Thank you, my lord. I am honored to serve you in whatever way I can.”

“Then help me find her.”

“I will. We’ve had people out scouring the streets, listening to gossip mostly. And the phones have finally started ringing. Everyone knows we’re looking, and we’ve offered a reward.”

“Good idea. Double it for information leading to her rescue, and triple if they give us the exact location.”

“Yes, my lord.” Hamilton nodded respectfully and headed for the elevator, as Aden’s four vampires made their way down the hall toward him.

“Travis,” Aden called without turning, “the vampire who found Sidonie snooping around that slave house the first time, what was his name?”

“Elias, my lord,” Travis supplied as he came even with Aden.

“Right. Call him. If it wasn’t Silas, then someone associated with the slave network is the most likely culprit. Sidonie caused a lot of trouble there and cut off a nice flow of cash.”

“And she insisted we’d missed the top vampire in the operation, too.”

Aden nodded. “Carl Pinto,” he confirmed, the knowledge like a light going on in his brain. “Find him.”

The phone rang, and Bastien crossed to the desk to answer it. He spoke briefly, then held the phone out to Travis. “Speak of the devil.”

Travis shared a quick look with Aden and took the phone from Bastien. “Elias?”

“Rumor has it your boss is the new lord.” Aden could hear both halves of the conversation with ease.

“Rumor travels fast,” Travis said. “I’m barely awake.”

“Even faster than you think. I heard that particular bit of news in the last hour before the sun rose this morning. Is it true?”

“Looks like.”