I blinked, and my surroundings returned. A sea of silver dusted the pool and the desert beyond. But it was the look on Payne’s face that held my attention. Absolute disbelief.

It wouldn’t last long, and I wasn’t immune to his knack in this form. So if I was going to get closer to Lon, I needed to take Payne down first. I knew this. But power coursed through me, from my fingertips to the agitated slap of my tail against the cement. And I didn’t know if it was the heat of the moment or if what had happened between Lon and me earlier was affecting my good sense, but I was done with being careful.

I tossed the beer bottle and heard it crash somewhere behind me as I stalked around the viper pit. What a foul fucking mess. What was the matter with people? I was sick to death of crazies who had zero respect for anything outside their own selfish motivations: Dare, my mother, the owner of the reptile shop, and now this lunatic.

But if he thought he was taking Lon away from me, he could think again.

“Get thee back!” Payne shouted, thrusting the golden snake in front of him like a shield.

“Oh, but I thought you liked serpents. You want to slice open my belly and eat me, too?”

Payne gulped for air and then began chanting something low and quiet. And just as I had in the temple, I felt that same whoosh of sleepiness. No way in hell was I going down again.

One moment I was striding toward him. The next I flew like an loosened arrow. I didn’t even feel the cement beneath my shoes, just the slice of cold wind through my clothes, and I was in his face. The flattened head of the golden snake reared back. I knocked the metal contraption from Payne’s hands. Both it and the snake sailed through air and struck the wooden fencing, which collapsed under the weight and toppled backward as if it had been struck by a wrecking ball.

“Aeyyhhhh!”

Payne stumbled a step, shouting hysterically as his eyes widened in terror. And I might have almost felt sorry for the old bastard had I not caught a glimpse of Lon’s limp body on the diving board. And that just sent me into a rage.

“Holy Light Bringer,” he prayed to the night sky, “protect me from this monstrosity—”

I clamped a hand around his throat and squeezed.

He reached behind his back and pulled out Lon’s gun. The cold muzzle slammed against my forehead. Half a second, and I’d be dead. But half a second was all I needed to jerk my head around and knock it away with my horns.

The shot exploded over my shoulder.

Out of my peripheral vision, I saw the gun swinging back around. I didn’t even think about it. I just let go of his neck and pushed with my mind.

The gun dropped. And Payne sailed backward . . . and backward, until he was flailing in midair over the pool. His disbelieving eyes met mine one last time.

And I dropped him.

The descending scream was muffled by the eruption of snake-filled water that shot several feet up into the air when his body hit the surface.

Let his ill-kept vipers do what they wanted. I frankly didn’t care if the crazy asshole lived or died. All I cared about was wrapping my arms around Lon’s legs and tugging him back to safety. Back to me, where he belonged. But God, he felt so heavy as I pulled him onto the wet cement. So heavy. Not moving.

I barely heard Payne flailing around in the viper pit. Barely heard his gurgling screams. Because I was too busy listening for Lon’s breath. Lon’s heartbeat. It wasn’t there. And something much worse: his halo had faded away.

No breath. No heartbeat. No halo.

And still, my mind fought it.

Lon couldn’t be dead. This wasn’t happening. It was a trick of Payne’s knack. Never mind that I’d never seen a knack do this. Maybe he’d amped it up somehow, with something like Dare’s bionic drug.

And even as my panic-fueled mind was trying to rationalize all this, the frantic splashing in the pool had slowed and finally stopped. Payne was dead. His knack would stop working on Lon.

Which meant . . .

The golden snake had bitten Lon.

But where? Not on his face or neck. Not his hands. I lifted his shirt and saw nothing there. Legs. Arms—

Arm. There. Two ragged holes in his thin leather jacket, just above his left elbow. The pale brown leather was stained with blood.

The jacket was too tight to remove without effort. I reached inside his jeans pocket and fished out his pocketknife, right where he always kept it, next to his car keys. Guess Payne hadn’t bothered to confiscate Lon’s stuff as he had mine. I supposed he’d counted on Lon being too paralyzed to be a threat.

Dare had once thought that about me.

Never assume.

I used the pocketknife to saw open the cuff of his jacket and sliced up the sleeve, splaying open the leather. Jesus. No wonder I couldn’t get the jacket off—the bite was already swelling. Okay, think, Bell. Think. What did I know about snakebites? Only that you were supposed to cut them open and suck out the venom. But what if the venom had already stopped a man’s heart? Removing the venom wasn’t going to help that.

CPR. I could do that. Kar Yee and I had both learned it for the bar. After dropping the pocketknife, I pinched his nose and puffed air into his mouth. Once. Twice. Then I tried compressions on his heart. One, two, three—

What the hell was I doing? Screw CPR, I had something better.

Tapping into Payne’s electricity, I found a fat pocket of current nearby and reeled it into my body. It surged and sank inside me like the tide rising over a dry beach. I held it for a moment, letting it kindle my Heka. Then I pressed my palms over Lon’s heart and zapped him.