I couldn’t decide if I wanted this to be successful or not. If this guy did know what had set our enemies on us, was I ready to hear the answer? It didn’t matter if I was ready or not.

Ben moved close to me, our arms brushing. “Torturing him isn’t going to work. He’ll know we have to kill him one way or the other.”

Justice, Wolf growled. This man would have killed us—me, Ben, whoever else he could have, all on the orders of some vampire like Mercedes Cook. This was justice.

Didn’t mean it was going to be pretty.

“I don’t know if I can watch this,” I said to Ben.

“Will you lose face with these guys if you don’t?”

“Yeah, probably.” And I wanted to be here when he talked. I’d stay. I thought of saying something about how this was going to mess up Ned’s very nice, very expensive carpet. Likely, Ned didn’t much care.

Still propping his head up, Caleb slapped his captive across his face a couple of times. Not hard, just noisy and startling.

He flinched suddenly, batting at Caleb with his freed hands, but when he tried to scramble back, to put himself in a position to fight, his still-bound feet tripped him and he crashed to the floor, flopping.

Caleb let him struggle a moment before grabbing an arm and twisting it back. The werewolf cried out in frustration and bared his teeth.

“Settle down, there,” Caleb hissed in his ear. “There’s nothing you can do, so you might as well let it all go.”

The man gave a wordless moan and kept thrashing, or trying to, anyway.

“Ned,” Caleb said. “It’s your turn, I think.”

Oh—on the other hand, this wasn’t going to be messy after all.

Ned rose from his chair, adjusted his coat, brushed imaginary dust off its hem, and arranged himself as if about to step on stage. He commanded attention; no one would ever guess that he’d been injured. I expected him to launch into a soliloquy.

Instead, he knelt before the captive, seeming to regard him with scientific curiosity as the man flailed in a panic. Finally, Ned took hold of the man’s chin. Making a deep-throated noise of denial, the werewolf squeezed his eyes shut, straining to turn away. Ned merely closed his hands around either side of the man’s face, put thumbs over his eyelids, and pried them open.

“Hush,” Ned breathed. “There, now. Don’t fret. It’ll all be over soon.”

The werewolf froze. Slowly, his muscles relaxed—tension actually seemed to seep out of his body. His jaw hung open and his eyelids drooped as he met Ned’s gaze, and fell into it.

“That was a splendid little offensive you and your friends mounted in the park just now.”

“No,” the man said, chuckling sadly. His accented voice—he might have been German—was haunted, dreamy. “It was a mess. Rushed.”

“Oh?” Ned feigned curiosity.

“We were just supposed to be watching … sur-surveillance.” He sighed, tried to shake his head, but Ned wouldn’t let him break his gaze.

“Watching who?”

“The American bitch.”

I never knew whether to take that term figuratively or literally.

“I think I need to get that on a T-shirt,” I whispered to Ben, who quirked a smile.

“Who else were you tracking?” Ned asked.

“Mexican delegation. The Indonesian doctor. The wolf soldier.” I tensed, my instinctive, protective reaction at the mention of Tyler. The prisoner continued. “It’s no secret where they’re staying. But when the bitch went out with you all … we called it in.”

“Called it in to whom?” Ned asked.

“Jan.”

“He’s holding your leash?” The werewolf nodded, and Ned went on. “You were ordered to watch Kitty Norville, then. You didn’t get your information from anywhere.”

“Her. Her mate. We tracked them.”

“Why target them?”

“Not them. They’re in the middle of it … but not important. Follow them, secure the target.”

Ned raised a brow and seemed genuinely intrigued. “Oh? Who, then?”

The werewolf smiled, a conspiratorial edge showing even through the trance. “Edward Alleyn, Master of London.”

“Am I to take it, then, that Jan saw the opportunity to remove a foe from the field and sent everyone he could muster to attack?”

“Too good a chance to miss,” he said. “You’re the obstacle. Without you, the rest would fall.”

“Well.” Still holding his gaze, the vampire absently stroked the man’s face. “How do you feel about that now?”

The werewolf’s body tensed, straining against the grip that held him. Anguished lips pulled back from teeth, and he snarled. But the gaze held, and the werewolf didn’t struggle. The vampire shifted his grip, twisted, and snapped. Neck broken twice in a night. Had to suck.

But I had a feeling he wasn’t going to wake up from this one.

Caleb dropped the limp form to the carpet and brushed his hands. “First London, then the world, is that it?”

“And it wasn’t Emma who told, right?” I said.

“No,” Ned said, looking at the young woman. “But you understand, we had to ask.”

She’d collected herself, sitting straight and calm, not letting the least emotion flit across her face. She tipped her chin up in acknowledgment, that was all. A gesture she’d learned from Alette. Ned must have recognized it, too; he turned to hide a smile.

“I didn’t think you’d really done it,” Antony said, spreading his arms. “It was just a possibility.”

“This cannot stand,” Ned said. “Any neutrality they’ve enjoyed, they’ve lost.”

“So the war begins,” Marid said. “At last.”

Ned shook his head. “They’ll go to ground when their minions don’t return. Move to new lairs. It’ll take time to find them, and it’s getting too close to dawn to search.”

“Dawn’s a perfect time to go after vampires,” Ben said. “Get ’em when they’re woozy.”

All the vampires gave him a look, even Emma.

“It’s a perfect time for you to go after vampires,” Ned said. “But I intend to twist Jan’s head off myself.”

“I can track them,” Caleb said.