“You have no idea how lucky,” Damian said.

   Nolan came up the steps scowling so hard, the lines in his forehead looked like they’d been cut in with fresh knives.

   “What’s wrong?” Edward asked.

   “They won’t let us have Roarke. They’re taking him to regular lockup.”

   “You don’t have an extra cell anyway,” I said.

   “I guess we don’t, thanks to your werelion.”

   “Magda did exactly what you asked her to do. It’s not her fault that your cell couldn’t hold up.”

   Nolan nodded, gave a small laugh, and said, “Fair. My people aren’t even as strong as the Roane, but neither of us is as strong as your lioness. The combination of strength and her training made a joke out of all our preparations.”

   Dev patted his shoulder. “There, there, it wasn’t a joke. It just wasn’t as useful as you’d hoped.”

   Night fell, and it was like something inside me that had been closed tight all day opened. I took in a deep breath of the rain-damp air. My phone rang, and it was Magda.

   “The new vampires have risen here,” she said. “They were completely out of their minds until they took blood, but then they seemed very calm and much more sensible than most new vampires that I’ve seen over the centuries.”

   “That’s good, right?”

   “It is, though Nolan’s people did not like having to donate blood. Giacomo and I were there to hold them and make sure the first feeding was controlled. Otherwise they would have torn open their victims in search of blood.”

   “Are they coherent enough to answer questions?” I asked.

   “I believe so. Giacomo is talking to them now with some of Nolan’s people helping guard the little vampires. The daughter and mother are asking about the rest of the family. Did they rise as vampires, too?”

   “Oh, shit,” I said softly, but with real feeling. “I’ll call you back.” I yelled for Nolan. “Who’s watching the vampire victims from earlier today?”

   “They’re at the hospital,” he said.

   “What hospital?”

   “What’s wrong?” Edward asked.

   “The others woke savage until they’d fed. Where are the rest of their families?”

   Nolan cursed under his breath and was already on his cell phone and moving toward the cars. We all divided up between the two cars, but I kept Nathaniel and Damian with me, though maybe putting all three of us in one car wasn’t my best idea, not if the Wicked Bitch wanted to take all of us, but the thought of being separated from them, especially Nathaniel, made my throat tight. I still remembered all the panic I hadn’t let myself feel when Roarke told us that the plan was to kidnap him, because the Bitch wanted all my pretty men, but especially Nathaniel. Good idea, bad idea, I kept him with me, and Damian stayed with both of us. We weren’t alone, by any means, but it was still like triple baiting one car. I tried not to think of it that way as Donnie kicked the van into high gear and screeched out after Nolan’s car.

   I prayed that we’d get there before any of them injured, or killed, someone at the hospital. Magda had said that once they fed, the Irish vampires were lucid. How terrible would it be to wake up to yourself covered in someone else’s blood, maybe sitting beside the body? I prayed not just to get there in time to save the victims, but to save the new vampires from truly becoming monsters.

58

   BY THE TIME we got to the hospital, it was all over but the crying. I’d executed more vampires than anyone else, and killed more than I could actually keep track of some days, but I’d never had to sit across a table from one who was crying hysterically because she was covered in her victim’s blood. If I hadn’t seen the delicate fangs as the grandmother wailed her distress, I wouldn’t have known she wasn’t human. The newly dead either looked almost alive and became less human as time went on or they were more inhuman at the beginning of their existence and learned how to be more human as time went on; it all depended on the bloodline they descended from. Whatever vampire was creating these was unlike any bloodline I’d ever seen.

   Except for the hospital gown covered in fresh blood and the fact that her hands were restrained behind her, Mrs. Edna Brady looked like what she had been: a seventy-something grandmother who had been a regular churchgoer and the matriarch of a loving family. She’d managed to wipe most of the blood off her face before she’d been restrained. There was one smear in her short white hair that nothing but a shower was going to get rid of. I knew that from experience. Once you got blood in your hair . . . I looked at her and didn’t know where to start. I hunted vampires. I didn’t hold their hands and explain to them how to be the best bloodsucker they could be.

   Lucky for both of us, Damian and Jake were with me. “Edna,” Damian said in a soothing voice. “Edna, can you hear me?”

   She continued to wail, and I mean wail; terms like crying and hysterics didn’t cover it. Edward and Nolan were dealing with Edna’s son, who had also risen as a vampire. Kaazim was helping them out. The father had been utterly calm. In fact, he didn’t remember how he got so much blood on him or why he was in the hospital. Amnesia for the first few nights is a blessing apparently, because we were staring at the impact of remembering everything.

   Nathaniel was in the hallway outside the room they’d given us. Dev and Nicky were permanently attached to him by my orders. Ethan and Domino along with Donnie had gone to the hotel to pick up Fortune and Echo. Echo would go in and try to talk vampire to vampire with the male vamp Edward and Nolan were trying to question.

   I was so ready to trade vampires with Edward. I was sympathetic, but I just simply didn’t know what to do with Edna Brady. I don’t know if she couldn’t hear us or if she just didn’t care. Damian had been gentle, patient, and charming, and nothing had stopped the awful screaming or taken one shade of panic out of her eyes. I was starting to get a headache just from the noise.

   I finally screamed her name at her. At first I didn’t think she heard me, but her eyes started to focus as if she finally saw us and the room we were in rather than being trapped in that moment when she’d come to herself, cradling the unconscious body of her first victim.

   “Edna! Edna! Edddnaaaa!” I screamed at her, and the wailing slowed. She blinked and looked at us again. She was in there; behind all the noise and terror, she was still in there. That was good, I thought.

   “Edna, can you hear me?”

   She blinked at me. She looked scared and confused, but at least she stopped wailing.

   Damian tried. “Edna, can you hear us?”

   “Nod if you can hear us?” I asked, and she nodded. Yay, progress! “Do you know where you are, Edna?”