"It will do," Annis said. She was a tall, spare woman who looked to be in her late forties, with straight black hair, stern features and gray eyes. "I want to know if we'll be able to get cell reception."

"I tried when we were out earlier," Xavier told her. "It's patchy, but if you search around, you might be able to make a connection."

"I'll keep trying until I get word out." Annis's jaw set in a determined line. She sounded outraged. "People need to know what's going on in here."

"You should tell everybody you can," Xavier said to her, his tone solicitous. "In fact, our next objective will be to free Leopold too, so he can help you."

Behind her back, his dry gaze met Melly's. Before the hour was out, she knew the entire council would be informed, and she was willing to bet they would all descend upon Evenfall within the next few hours.

"Good," Annis said viciously.

They reached the outside of Julian's suite. Rapping on the doors, Xavier called out. Herman and his partner let the group in. As soon as everyone had stepped inside, they slammed and bolted the doors again.

If the suite had felt crowded before, now it was positively cramped. The Light Fae guard showed the former prisoners the opening in Julian's bedroom wall that led to the tunnel staircase, and one by one, they began to leave.

Melly blocked out the noise. She followed Xavier as he pushed his way through the crowd, and Shane joined them. When they reached the office area, Tess stood so fast, she knocked the chair back. She and Xavier came together in a tight clench.

Tess pulled back almost immediately. "Gavin didn't disconnect the server from Evenfall's internal network," she told them. Her face and voice were full of some kind of emotion that Melly didn't know how to identify. She met Melly's gaze. "He and I have been talking, and I have a visual feed from several cameras. I have to warn you, the feeds are hard to watch. I saw everything that happened in the great hall."

For Melly, everything else fell away. She rushed to kneel in front of the computer and gripped the edge of the desk with both hands. Xavier, Tess and Shane joined her.

At first, Melly struggled to sort all the information. There were six camera feeds on the screen, and all of them showed different scenes.

The bottom right camera feed focused on Gavin and two other people. They huddled together, their expressions tense. The scene behind them looked like a typical busy office, with cubicles, workstations and electronics parts laid out on a nearby table. The trio appeared to be looking right out Julian's computer screen.

Gavin's voice sounded clearly over Julian's speakers. "Xavier, there you are thank the gods."

Xavier said something in reply. Melly didn't pay attention. She tuned out their conversation as she searched the other camera feeds. The two others in the bottom row of images were of main thoroughfares in the castle. One was of the great hall, now standing silent and empty.

The top three feeds showed different scenes of a battle. Or maybe they were different battles.

The left feed focused on an image of an industrial-sized, reinforced steel door. The door looked battered and scarred with scorch marks. Two people knelt on the floor on either side of the door, using blowtorches along the edges. Others surrounded them, facing outward with weapons poised.

The middle feed showed the giant underground parking lot, but instead of peaceful rows of parked vehicles, Vampyres fought and shot at each other. A few cars burned. Billows of black smoke made it difficult to see details, and when she could, several of the Vampyres moved so fast, they were blurs.

The third feed focused on a wide stone stairwell and more fighting. She caught sight of a few Light Fae guards, along with Julian's salt-and-pepper hair and distinctive, powerful form in the middle of the undulating wave of people.

"These aren't all the same place, are they?" She clenched her hands into fists. "That stairwell is the one that leads into the parking garage, right?"

"Yes," Xavier said. He sounded as tense as she felt.

Someone took hold of her shoulder in a hard, steady grip. She jumped violently and whirled, but it was only Shane. His gaze was sober, even compassionate.

He said, "With your permission, I'll put together a small team to send after councilman Leopold. Annis hasn't left yet. Maybe she'll agree to go with the team to convince Leopold it's safe. Then they can evacuate together. You don't need to be involved."

"Good thinking. Thank you."

She had already turned back to the battle scenes before his hand left her shoulder.

Xavier told her, "There are several layers of barriers that were built into the lower levels. The first set of locked doors is at the head of the stairwell, where Julian and his team are fighting right now." He pointed to the feed on the battered door. "This is the munitions area. There's a door on the other side of the garage that leads down a hallway to this place. Both of those doors are made of reinforced steel."

"If this is a visual of the second door, you're saying they've already broken through the first," she said.

"Yes. Rocket launchers and other distance weapons are kept in there. If they break through and get into the munitions area, Julian will have no choice. He'll have to retreat."

Gavin leaned forward, until his worried face looked distorted in the feed, his forehead large and domelike. "Yolanthe and her group are just outside our doors. They were trapped, but now Julian's attacking from the rear. Justine and Dominic have to deal with a fight on two sides now."

Melly began to make sense of the feeds. Searching each scene, she muttered, "Where are they?"

Xavier knew exactly who she meant. He pointed to the top middle feed, showing the parking garage. "There's Dominic."

Despite the chaos of the battle, Dominic's tall, athletic form, scarred features and blond hair were unmistakable. He wielded two swords with terrifying expertise. As Melly's attention focused on him, he staked one Vampyre in the chest and slashed at another.

Xavier asked Tess, "Can we get sound on this feed?"

Tess leaned forward to tap on the keyboard. The tumultuous sounds of battle blared over the speakers, and quickly she adjusted the volume.

Melly barely noticed Shane's return, even when he laid a hand on her shoulder again. Tension strung her muscles tight until her neck and shoulders ached.

An eddy of fast movement swirled through the battle. Suddenly Julian appeared, leaping over the heads of a cluster of fighters, sword in hand. While the feed was black and white, his fangs glinted long and wicked, and Melly knew his eyes would have turned hot red.

Landing, Julian moved toward Dominic, who focused on him and strode forward to engage.

Oh gods. Uselessly, she reached out to the screen. The blond Vampyre looked confident and lethal, while Julian was a juggernaut.

As they neared one another, Julian roared at him, "KNEEL!"

Even despite the physical distance and the all the noise from the rest of the battle, the savage Power in the command rocketed out of the speakers with such force, Xavier groaned and staggered.

All around Julian, every Vampyre fighter who heard the command reacted. Those visible in the feed slammed down onto his knees.

Except for Dominic.

He didn't kneel.

But his forward momentum hitched for a critical moment.

Julian lunged into a blur and struck. Dominic's blond head flew spinning from his shoulders, while his body froze in a posture of immense surprise before it vanished forever as it collapsed into dust.

Eighteen.

U.

sing the Power of the blood oaths he had taken as Nightkind King was Julian's modern-day version of throwing sand in the face.

The Power command only bought him a few moments, and he doubted it would work again. He had felt the Power shoot out of him like a verbal bullet. It would take a while before he could pull that much together again.

Also, once Vampyres heard a Power command from someone who was not their sire, they instinctively fought to throw it off and were more resistant to hearing it a second time. The older and stronger a Vampyre was, the less effective Power commands were, until they worked only minimally or not at all, which was why Dominic had been able to resist kneeling, yet he had not been able to contain his reaction.

Julian didn't pause to savor his victory over Dominic or wait for the Vampyres around him to recover. Instead, he spun to behead as many opponents as he could while they were still reeling and vulnerable.

He killed six before the command wore off. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the Light Fae guards who had joined his team were doing the same.

It turned the tide of the fight. As the other Vampyres recovered, they scattered.

Quickly he scanned the scene. If any of his direct progeny had heard the command, they would remain on their knees until he released them.

Julian didn't personally turn many Vampyres. He didn't like to carry the responsibility for them. Aside from Xavier and Yolanthe, he had only four other surviving progeny. They were all in the Nightkind guard, but none of them had been close enough to hear him.

He beckoned to his team, and they gathered around him, facing outward, weapons ready. As they did so, he noticed how Xavier's humans and the Light Fae soldiers coughed. A few had tied cloths around their lower faces.

Rubbing his face with the back of one hand, he looked around. The air in the garage was hazy with black smoke from the burning vehicles. The quality of air, or lack of it, didn't matter to him or to any of the other Vampyres, but it did to the rest of his team.

He told them, "I'm grateful for what you've done, but you'll be no good to anyone if you pass out from smoke inhalation. Fall back. Go help Melly and her team."

They were good people, good fighters. Their reluctance to leave was obvious, but they followed orders.

As they pulled back, he did a quick head count. He had lost four of his own, and now after sending the humans and Light Fae away, his team was down to eleven. They needed to join up with Yolanthe and her troops.

To find Yolanthe, all he had to do was follow the noise.

The hallway that led to the munitions area was across the garage on his right, while the IT area lay to his left. The bulk of the fighting had been on the left, but now it had shifted.

Toward the munitions area.

Followed by his team, he strode to the conflict.

As they closed in, he saw that enemy forces had breached the first security door and gained entrance to the hallway inside. He raced from cover to cover, first hiding behind a concrete pillar, then behind a BMW riddled with bullet holes, while his team did the same.

Scanning the scene, he finally saw Yolanthe crouched behind an SUV. Lunging into a sprint, he joined her.

Her dark, short hair and hawkish features were smeared with soot.

When she saw him, she said, "Yo. Glad you're alive."

"Back at you." He slipped his sword into its shoulder sheath and braced one hand on a fender. "Dominic's dead."

"Witness my happy dance. Fucking fucker." Rolling up and around, she fired at the open doorway to the munitions hall. "We were pinned just outside IT until you got here. Dominic kept hammering at us, while Justine worked over here. I guess if she had already broken through the inner door, she would have fired a rocket launcher or two in here by now. So there's that."

He had to flush Justine and her fighters out of that hallway before they managed to break through the inner door. Justine couldn't gain the capacity to send a fireball through the garage.

A lot of times fighting took finesse, patience and strategy.

Sometimes it took a high body count and a bludgeoning force.

He said, "We need enough fire in that hallway to drive them out. I have two grenades. Do you have any?"

Her dark eyes flashed as she glanced at him. "No. Wait here. I'll see if any of the others do."

While he waited, he rubbed his dry eyes. He had so many things he wanted to tell Melly, but mostly he just wanted to know if she was all right.

Where was she? How had the evacuation gone? Had they run into any resistance?

He wanted to tell her, you're the light of my life. I had no idea how bright and open things could become with you.

Yolanthe reappeared, running so hard, her body slammed full tilt into the side of the SUV. When he looked at her, she opened her hands and showed him a grenade belt with three more grenades.

"Okay," he said. He gathered the belt out of her grasp and added his two to the belt. "Here's what we're going to do. I'll get these into the hallway. I need to get close enough and at the right angle to throw this in, so I need you to cover me."

"I love suicidal missions," Yolanthe said. She readied her automatic rifle and gave him a bright grin. "Let's go."

He gave a ghost of a chuckle and pulled the pins on the grenades. They pushed away from the SUV and raced toward the hallway. While Yolanthe laid down a hail of covering fire, he sprinted hard, spun like a discus thrower, and heaved the grenade belt. He put all the force he could into it, sending the belt shooting deep into the hallway.

He felt an invisible force punch his right shoulder and left thigh and knew he'd been hit, but his body armor blocked most of the damage. When he and Yolanthe had run past the hallway several yards, they spun around.

Fighters poured out, fleeing the impending blast.

One of them was Justine, her auburn hair flying out from her head like a flag.

She sprinted toward the staircase. She was one of the oldest, most Powerful Vampyres present, and she moved faster than almost anybody else in the garage.

Except for Yolanthe and Julian.

Everything in Julian narrowed down to the need to kill. He leaped forward, but his leg buckled underneath him. The hit he had taken in the thigh had done more damage than he had realized.

Yolanthe wasn't impaired. She shot forward, moving toward Justine like a linebacker. Leaping, she grabbed Justine by the hair with both hands, bodily lifted the other Vampyre, swung around and flung her through the air.

Justine's body slammed into a concrete pillar several feet off the ground. She dropped like a stone.

Yolanthe said in Julian's head, Bitch wants to throw down with her lovely locks all loose and shiny? Okay then.

Down the hallway, the grenades blew. The concussion blasted out through the garage. It knocked Julian to his knees.