In moments, the attendant returned with two bottles and two glasses. She poured Ashael’s drink first, and I couldn’t stop myself from checking out the bottle. What was a demon’s drink of choice? Triple malt Balvenie Scotch whisky, aged fifty years, according to the bottle.

“Please, sit,” Ashael said, nodding at the chairs next to him.

His smile made it seem like a request, but a flash of red in his eyes caused fear to skitter up my spine. Without one threatening word, Ashael was more intimidating than anyone I’d ever encountered, and I had come up against some real monsters in my short twenty-six years.

Yet all of them could only hurt me in this lifetime. With that single flash of red, Ashael was reminding me that his kind could torment me well beyond death. I’d rather throw myself off the nearest ledge than sit next to him. Plunging headfirst from a high-rise building was probably safer.

Still, we needed him, so I was trying to formulate a polite way to refuse when a large, invisible blade suddenly sliced me from groin to sternum. I bent in instinctive need to stop my guts from spilling onto the ground, screaming as a sickening wetness rushed past my clutching hands.

Amidst the horrible pain, I was aware of two things: Vlad gripping me from behind, his fiery hands trying to cauterize the huge wound, and an answering wail in my mind that wasn’t part of my own uncontrollable screams.

Make him do it, Leila! Oh please, you have to make him do it or they’ll kill us!

Mircea. It had to be him, although I hadn’t recognized his voice. All the previous times, he’d sounded like the cruel, smug man that he was. Now he was so terrified, his voice had raised several octaves, until he sounded like a young boy.

Then do something! I thought back, fighting to push past the pain and focus my thoughts so he’d hear me. Tell me where you are and who “they” are, and we’ll stop this!

Mircea might have replied, but another brutal slash across my midsection emptied my mind of everything except the animalistic urge to get away from the pain or kill the person inflicting it on me. When I healed enough to overcome that mindless response, I heard Mircea over Vlad’s hoarse directive telling an attendant to get me blood.

. . . can’t! Mircea was saying. Even if Vlad could best them, he’d do worse than this to me if given the chance!

I gritted my teeth, shoving aside the wrist that some unknown person pressed to my mouth. Feeding now would be too distracting and I didn’t know how long I had to reason with him.

No matter what Vlad might want to do to you, as long as you’re tied to me, he can’t, I mentally snapped. He can’t even backhand you without hurting me, so you’ll fare a hell of a lot better under Vlad’s care than you will staying with the people who just gutted us twice for fun!

They didn’t do it for fun, Mircea replied in an ominous way. They did it because they want Vlad to know that they won’t hesitate to torture and kill you.

Couldn’t they just text him? I thought back sarcastically, then a chill went through me that had nothing to do with my drastic blood loss. Why would they want to torture or kill me? I don’t even know them.

No, but you’re the rudder, Mircea said darkly. And Vlad is the ship they want to steer.

I shuddered more from that than the new, far smaller burning sensations that pricked my still-healing abdomen in several places. Compared to being gutted over and over in quick succession, these were nothing. Make him do it, Leila! Mircea had said when he first contacted me. Oh please, you have to make him do it or they’ll kill us!

“Let me go,” I said out loud, pushing at the ironlike grip that encircled me. When Vlad didn’t budge, I said in a stronger voice, “Let me go! I think they’re writing something on me.”

Vlad’s arms dropped at once. I ripped off my blood-sodden blouse and yanked my skirt down. As I’d guessed, words were now forming across my abdomen. Whoever was doing this had taken a cue from Vlad because they were now burning them instead of cutting them into my skin. When a shiny gleam caught the last rays of the sun and they continued to hurt long after they should have healed, I let out a grunt of pained appreciation.

Mircea’s captors were also rubbing liquid silver into the wounds. Now, their message wouldn’t fade until we removed all the silver, giving Vlad plenty of time to read their demand, and they were obviously writing it to Vlad since it wasn’t in English. In fact, I didn’t recognize the language at all.

“Well?” I asked impatiently. “Can you read it?”

Shock flashed across Vlad’s features, answering my question before he spoke. Then I tensed as wildest rage blasted into my emotions next, until I was driven to my knees because my body couldn’t handle the sheer intensity of what Vlad was feeling.

“I can’t see it, what does it say?” I heard Ian demand through the overwhelming assault on my subconscious.

When Vlad spoke, his voice was a stunned rasp. “It says . . . it says, ‘Kill Samir and give us proof of his death or Leila dies.’”

Chapter 15

“Samir?” I repeated, horror filling me. “Not Samir, the captain of your guards?”

“Who else?” Vlad replied, his voice now edged with an emotion I couldn’t name.

I was shocked into stuttering. “B-but you can’t. Samir’s our friend. He’s been with you for over five hundred years!”

Ashael whistled. The sound snapped my head up and I looked at him, but the demon wasn’t looking at me. He was staring at Vlad.