Neither . . . ? Senna struggled to get up. Mirya had to be wrong. It was dark in the stable, and now, outside. Firelight cast shadows. Maybe Mirya had misread what she thought she saw. Or maybe it was what she wished, what she willed, that this unexpected child had been born without the vampire taint.

“Take me outside.” The boy was rooting for her breast.

“Soon, soon. Let the child feed.”

Senna had no time for that. Because if the girl showed no vampiric scarring—then she was in danger. They’d want to sire her—both clans. Or kill her.

“Dominick—” As if he’d understand. She saw it in his eyes: he was already enamored of the boy.

“There are no scars, Senna. She is not of either clan,” Dominick confirmed.

“Ohh . . .”—as the boy found her breast. “When he’s done,” she said to Dominick, “I want to walk the grounds of Drom. I want to feel the ground on which I was sired when I name our son.”

Mirya shook her head, as if to say, Don’t heed her.

“I want to see,” Senna said fiercely, “where I was consigned to hell.” Her daughter had not been. The unexpected child, with the fine black hair so like her own, could redeem her choices. She could escape and live the life Senna should have lived.

She would teach her about the traps of the blood-driven existence, Senna promised herself. Her daughter wouldn’t be seduced by a handsome, vengeance-seeking vampire. She wouldn’t walk into a den of them and willingly sacrifice herself so her vampire lover might live.

None of that. She wouldn’t be that hypnotized by emotion or a victim of events. She would live in hiding until she was grown and able to manage her own life.

Senna would make certain of it. Her daughter would be raised by someone sensible and knowledgeable of the reasons Senna had abandoned her child. She was giving her a better, truer life, away from vampires and death and eternal damnation in a life that never ended.

The boy rested. The girl must be fed next, but Senna hesitated, uncertain if her milk was dangerous or poisonous. She had no way of knowing anything except the girl needed to feed.

And the babies must be named. She felt a fury to arrange things for her daughter, to get things done, to escape the thing most inescapable.

“In the morning,” Dominick said softly. “When the sun rises. It won’t be long now. I have the sun stone; the babies will be protected. All will be well, Senna.”

But he didn’t believe it himself. There were still at loose ends—Charles and Dnitra most immediately. Charles might be having sex with Dnitra at this moment, but he’d make no move to legitimize her until he found out whether Senna’s child bore the clan scars of the Eternal Ruler.

But now they knew—Peter’s sire-bite had not penetrated Senna’s blood.

And that meant Dominick’s son was wholly Iscariot, even to the reddish hair, an Iscariot trait.

It also meant he’d be coveted by Iosefescu, what with his determination to breed male children to infuse the clan with new young blood.

There was no point fixating on that threat. Dominick’s first loyalty lay nestled in Senna’s arms. His son needed a name, a family. He would grow fast, faster than Senna knew. They’d have to let him go sooner than she would want to discover his own forever destiny.

As for the girl—Senna, looking distressed, had now taken her to her breast—she would have to forge her own future, in all probability disavowing her heritage as she moved further and further away from the bloody night world of her parents and brother.

She would grow fast as well because she might well have some underlying vampire traits in her blood that would show subtly, unexpectedly. She would always be aware of and governed by the fear of her heritage. She would be alone, with a foreseeable end to her life, knowing that her parents and brother would exist in eternity.

He didn’t envy her that knowledge or the path she would travel.

His beautiful daughter, with her sweet head of dark hair and deep blue eyes, so like Senna’s. And no scar marks. Just smooth, silky baby skin.

His daughter. Not one of his clan.

Did he feel just the whisper of a wish that she were?

Not a Tepes either. That was enough.

How could he give her up? And yet—letting her go was the best gift he could give her.

This should be a moment to celebrate life even in the midst of a field of death. But that other world awaited them. The one where Charles still lived and Dnitra was fertile, available, and a fiend for sex.

Soon, dawn would break. And the blood hunger would rise like a wave with no ready bodies to feed on—except Mirya’s, and Dominick could see she was well aware how tenuous this emotional trip to nowhere really was.

Drom reeked of death. It was in the air, a thickness, an aura, a scent, a sickness. It seeped into his pores, it pulled him like the lure of a siren, demanding the total surrender of his humanity.

It was too potent. He could easily capitulate to the one thing in his nature that he had suppressed for more than twenty years and that he could now barely keep under control.

He cradled his daughter a little more tightly. Soon . . . he closed his eyes, as if in denial. Soon he would have to let her go. But not yet. He inhaled her unmistakable baby scent. Not yet.

He opened his eyes. Mirya cradled his son, Senna was on her feet beside her. “It’s dawn, it’s time.”

He followed them out of the stable into the pink-streaked dawn. On the horizon, the glow of the sun outlined the rim. Before them, the barren, spongy ground of Drom gave with their every footstep.

What remained of the house was a blackened ruin, surrounded by a desolate landscape bereft of anything but blood memory.

Senna knelt near where she thought Peter had caught and bit her.

“Here . . .” She crawled to where Dominick had lain with the Countess nearby, dying. She dug up a handful of soil, remembering how she’d dragged the Countess to Dominick’s inert body so she could infuse him with the last of her blood so he wouldn’t die. How, with her ebbing strength, she had sunk her fangs into Senna’s chest and, fulfilling a promise to her, turned her into a creature of the night.

All that she remembered as she rocked back and forth on her knees in a kind of agony, holding the handful of the blood-saturated dirt, sniffing it, tasting it, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Bring him here,” she whispered finally, and Mirya handed the baby to her. She held him close with her dirt-encrusted hands, she pulled aside his wrapper and rubbed one hand up and down his baby body as if it were holy, and she murmured, “Your name is—Renk.”

Renk. Dominick rolled the name around on his tongue. Renk. Short, to the point.

Senna handed Renk to Mirya, wiped her hands on Mirya’s hem, and motioned to Dominick. “The girl now, please.”

Dominick knelt beside her and put the baby in her arms.

She did not take another handful of dirt. She held the baby close, staring into her face and the blue eyes so like her own. This baby, this girl, the heart of her heart. The soul she could have been.

The regrets for the life she’d so cavalierly given away poured through her like hot iron. She couldn’t control her tears. She wanted to hold her, protect her, hide her, and keep her safe.

But all she could do was give her a name. “You name is Rula.”

She kissed Rula’s forehead, baptizing her with her tears. “I was a child of the streets and so you will be too,” she whispered in Rula’s tiny ear. “I wish it were otherwise. But I’ll teach you, I’ll show you. You’ll know what I know. And whatever your fate, and mine, I’ll love you forever.”

It was time to take a hand, Dominick thought. “Give Rula to me.”

Senna shook her head.

“Senna—give her to me. It’s time. We have to leave this place. Right now.”

Senna gave in and reluctantly put Rula into Dominick’s outstretched arms. “Let me die here,” she whispered. “There’s no point to anything now. She was born to die someday, maybe soon. My son is destined to become a blood-guzzling murderer. And you and I—we’re already bloodthirsty ghouls—”

“With perhaps the last shred of conscience,” Dominick put in as he cradled Rula against his chest so she could feel his heartbeat. But he didn’t believe that. He felt removed, surreal. He held his daughter and wondered how much love he could summon for her after all.

“And yet this moment, the lust for blood is in my soul and I would kill any one of us to feed.”

“You haven’t,” Dominick pointed out. “You won’t. Neither will I. We’ll feed on the road to London. But our babies need you right now. And we’re not done. We have things to do, babies to care for, England to save.”

“Oh, that,” Senna muttered as she climbed into the carriage, where Mirya had already fixed up two little cloth nests for the babies on the opposite side.

“That.” And enemies to defeat. They’d been gone too long from town. It didn’t take hours to mobilize a vampire army.

Charles could be up to anything. He could be massing the Keepers around the Palace even as they were on the road. Dnitra could be pregnant by now.

They were still hours away. And now he must drive with care because of the babies. Renk and Rula. He tested their names out loud to tamp down his worry.

Renk and Rula. He would take them to Mirya’s hovel. They would be safe there. Until he killed Charles.

The space felt tight and airless. The twins slept in makeshift cradles at the foot of Mirya’s bed, where Senna lay dozing. Dominick sat at the table, drumming his fingers while Mirya stirred her pot of gruel over the fire and slanted curious glances his way.

“I have no answers,” he said flatly. “Do you?”

“Oh, they are here,” Mirya said to her rhythmic stirring. “They wait, they watch, they are unified in all ways.”

Dominick made a sound. They were together, Charles and Dnitra. That meant Iosefescu approved, and it was possible he’d always intended to gain power through the Tepes, and that he’d seen Dominick as the way to do it. That he’d lied about rebuking the ancient feuds.

All that clan vengeance had just been lying dormant, waiting for the right instrument, and the right moment, to take control.

Dominick had to find them.

“I have to leave,” he said finally.

Mirya nodded. “You will find them.”

“And you know this?”

“I know.”

“But you can’t tell me where.”

“I can only tell what I know,” she said cryptically.

Which was the problem, he thought, as he transhaped his way out of the alley. What she knew and how much she told of what she knew did not equate.

He wondered how much of an ally she really was.

He veered off suddenly as he saw the green glow of the Keepers patrolling the outer boroughs. Immediately, his instinct was to view the burned wreckage of his town house.

Maybe that would be a mistake. Too many memories were still spiraling in the smoky air. The life he’d built as a merchant to cover his vampiric activities had been as evanescent as smoke. And his plan to avenge himself on the Countess had all gone wrong when Senna appeared on the scene, an unexpected prospective mate for his half brother, Charles, because the Countess so badly wanted an heir.

He’d been so ready to oblige—to get Senna pregnant instead and present the Countess with an heir with tainted blood—

It hadn’t quite worked out that way.

He’d bound Senna to him by virtue of taking blood from her earlobe, drop by drop, until she was fully his.

Memories . . .

With his wing, he swept a layer of ash from the stoop where he perched and watched curiously as they floated back down to the surface.

Devil’s bones. He had lived a man’s life in this house. He had seduced Senna in this house, given his twins life in this house.

And now he had a son who would soon scour the streets to feed his own bloodlust. And a daughter who must be protected at all costs. A daughter for whom he’d give his life to save from the knowledge of what her parents were.

He shouldn’t have come here. The pain of the consequences of his decisions was too acute. He caught the faintest ripple of a breeze just as he heard a sound from somewhere deep in the recesses of the burn and ash.

A voice? A purr? A laugh? He checked his loft and angled back down to the stoop. Perched. Listened. He heard a voice, blurred and low.

He flew into the debris to get closer, wading through the dust, grit, dirt, smoke-larded ash. He surmised he was in the parlor, though every detail had burned away, the staircase was gone, and the floor had pancaked into the one below.

He heard faint, muffled sounds and followed them into the inky-dark devastation of the lower floor.

Charles had obviously decided that opportunity was at hand, and he’d brought Dnitra to this hellhole to roll around naked in the ash and dirt as he unleashed orgasm after orgasm into her accommodating body.

Dominick watched, his fury quickly inching into bloodred rage.

The son of a bitch. He felt his body unfolding, transforming, and shifting into a kill stance. He felt like attacking and ripping both of their bodies to shreds. But he waited as Charles kept banging away and Dnitra’s screams echoed into the night.

The bitch. Betraying Iosefescu for the possibility of carrying a child of commingled blood. To be the vessel who bore the Eternal Ruler.

Or had Iosefescu planned it that way?

It was time Dnitra paid for her sins. He hadn’t thought to kill them both tonight, but they were vulnerable in their nudity and their brazen coupling. And their certainty no one would ever discover them.

That deserved some acknowledgment. He would attack them at their most susceptible points, the places where blood would drain profusely and the body could not easily heal.

All he needed was a length of charred wood. He burrowed into the debris until he found one the size of a dagger that didn’t crumble in his hand.

Not totally burned through. Enough heft to do some damage.

If he aimed at Charles’s gutless heart.

He perched just above them, carefully calculating the right angle, just the right moment to launch the makeshift dagger.

He aimed it to pierce right to the small of Charles’s back, to graze his spine, to stop his pumping. He aimed it to damage Charles to the point where he could never have sex again.

Dominick wanted blood, and blood he would have.

Charles howled, cursing to the night sky as he rolled off Dnitra’s still undulating body and reached for the object impaled in his back, which he could not, as Dominick intended, reach.

Dnitra never saw Dominick with the burn-scuffed plank as he swung it hard and heavy at her head.

Blood and brain matter flew, and she collapsed into the muck of soot and ash, a naked rag doll.

Charles lifted himself on one elbow. “She’s dead.” He was beginning to grasp just what had happened.

“That was my intention,” Dominick said flatly.

“Get this thing out of me . . . ,” Charles managed to say, before he slumped over trying to grasp the wooden dagger still impaled at the base of his spine. He was unconscious and dying and could not summon any kind of healing power to make a difference.

But just to make certain, Dominick swung the plank at Charles’s head. Harder this time; the bastard deserved it. Dominick stoically swung twice more, drawing blood, guts, gore. There couldn’t be enough blood. He wouldn’t rest until Charles was dead.

Something stopped him. Something said it was enough.

He stared at Charles’s inert body for a long moment. His half brother, heedless, feckless, narcissistic, irresponsible, grandiose, enamored of bloodshed, killing, and death long before he’d been turned into a monster, and on a rampage to gain power ever since. He had no feelings for Charles at all, in death or in life. No qualms about leaving him to melt into the scorched dust and ash of what had been Dominick’s own fantasy life.

It was done. It was over.

He felt nothing as he transhaped once again and flew away from the fetid ruins of what had been his home.

It was done, forever over. No one would rise in Charles’s place. No one who had died like that could regenerate. Dominick’s children were safe and were now his first priority, while there was still some fatherly feeling in his gut.

He headed toward the green aura streaming through the outer roads, and the prospect of food for his son.

Dominick had lived like a man among them, aristocratic, self-made, wealthy. He had moved in their circles, attended their parties, their musicales, their theaters, contributed to their charities.

None of them knew of his secret life, his blood-saturated past. He had been respected, feared, and sought after.

And now everything was gone. That life was gone, his town house was gone. Vengeance was done. Nothing was left but a long slide into eternity.

They should go back, he thought suddenly as they sat around the bare wooden table in Mirya’s hovel. They should go back to Lady Augustine’s town house.

No one would question it. Everybody still believed Senna was her beloved ward.

And he’d have a new base, a place to return to, to suppress and hide the murderous ghoul he really was.

The plan came to him whole and complete.

They’d start by burying Peter in a public ceremony so it was clear that no one else could claim Lady Augustine’s estate. And he’d consult the lawyers to make it ironclad.

Then when they took possession of the town house, he would have another chance to return to the life he’d known for the past twenty years.

With differences, of course. A helpmate, well-known to the stratum of society in which he and Lady Augustine had traveled. And the twins. It would be easy enough to compel their circle to remember that all of that had happened already in the normal course of events.

But first—he must see the state of Peter’s body and if there was even enough of him left to bury. Then he’d arrange for the rooms to be cleaned and everything freshened for his family.

His family. It sounded odd on the tongue.

Blood and bone—boy and girl.

What would they do about the girl?

In the wake of the pregnancy and births, he hadn’t considered the ramifications of having a child who was not a vampire.

A normal child who couldn’t possibly be expected to keep their secret.

A child who would be revolted by what went on behind closed doors. Or by having a mother who slept in a shroud in a bed of rotted burial dirt. How could she know these things and not be utterly repelled?

Not quite the happy family he’d envisioned.

What to do about Rula?

He stalked through the town house taking note of bloodstains, of dust, of dirt, of which room might suit Renk, which room to designate for Mirya. If Mirya would come. Mirya must come—she knew too much, but she was controllable whenever there was a subtle threat on her life.

She was also expendable.

Rula was another matter. They would need to provide food, clothes, schooling . . . they’d have to hire a cook, find a nanny, educate her, marry her off someday.

He couldn’t conceive of a life that involved all those aspects of normalcy. Nor could he picture how they would keep her vampiric heritage from her, or how Rula would operate in the real world once she knew everything.

She couldn’t possibly comprehend their life. For a time it would appear normal to her, but once she was beyond a certain age, revulsion would set in. He couldn’t let that happen. He didn’t want to see it. He didn’t want Rula to ever see it. For her own good, and for her to live a normal life, the conclusion was inescapable. Rula couldn’t ever know, couldn’t ever be with them.

Even if she inherited inexplicable-to-her vampire traits.

For them to survive, Rula must leave.

It was a simple, rational, pragmatic, cold-blooded decision.

His next thought seemed inevitable: Rula could live with Mirya.

Or could she? Mirya wouldn’t lie for them, but Senna trusted her; she had been Senna’s protector and mother figure, she’d helped her survive. Wouldn’t she do the same for Senna’s daughter?

Did Mirya even feel any loyalty to Senna? Or was she just trying to endure, as he was?

He paced the parlor trying to resolve the inconsistency.

But that shred of humanity that still existed within him hated that he felt that cavalier about his daughter. He loved her. He would have given anything not to have to make this decision.

He had to do what was best for Senna and Renk.

Since they hadn’t expected a second child,, and certainly not a girl with no clan scar, it came down to their survival with a member of their family an abject danger to their existence.

Maybe not immediately. But the way vampire babies grew, that was problematic.

Rula must leave.

Or Rula would die.