I dragged him back through the storeroom, trying to think. I'd been a fool to come here, to let them see Tomas and me together. Despite being told otherwise on a regular basis, half the people at the club assumed he was my lover. If Tony's thugs started asking about him and anyone told them that, they'd torture him to death trying to find me. I should have known better than to get involved, even platonically, with anyone. I was like some kind of poison—get anywhere near me, and you're lucky if you just die. Somehow, I had to get Tomas away as well as myself and, like me, he could never hope to return. Some life I'd helped him build.

There was also the problem that the vamp had let us go. I'd seen them look like they dissolved into the wind, they could move so quickly. He'd had more than enough time in those few seconds to strike, swift as a snake, or to shoot me from a nice, safe distance. Vamps didn't really need guns against mortals, but the Senate preferred hits to look as natural as possible, so most of Tony's guys carried them. He might have suspected I was armed, too, but I doubted he feared my gun even if he didn't know how bad a shot I was. The best I could hope for would be to slow him down. No, I was alive because whoever was out there had been ordered to play the game. The obit had said 8:43, and 8:43 it would be. I could hear Tony telling the family that he'd arranged a last little Seeing for his prophet, and this time, she didn't even have to do the work herself. I wondered if they planned to kill me here and carry me over to Peachtree, or if they'd simply overwhelm my mind and have me walk there like the proverbial sheep to slaughter. I wasn't real keen on either plan.

I licked suddenly dry lips. "Okay, here. Put this on and get your coat. Tuck your hair up." Mike had left one of his many baseball caps on a storage shelf and I grabbed it, but no way was all that hair going underneath it. "We need to find somebody who has a coat with a hood you can borrow. You're too easy to identify." Maybe one of the Goths would loan us a cape. If I could make Tomas look different enough, he might be able to sneak away while the vamps were concentrating on me.

"Cassie, listen. There is—" I never found out what Tomas had been about to say, because the door we'd just entered slammed open as if the lock wasn't even there, and five huge vampires rushed into the room. They looked like a bunch of linebackers who had joined a grunge band—all bulging muscles and shoulder-length, greasy hair.

For one frozen moment, we all stared at each other. Size is pretty much irrelevant when you're undead, but Tony likes them big, I guess for the intimidation factor. It worked—I was intimidated. The fact that they weren't bothering to hide their real faces under polite masks didn't help. I knew what a vampire looks like when hunting—I'd seen it enough times—but it was still the stuff of nightmares. I had time to wonder if I'd live long enough to need to worry about bad dreams before they moved in a blur of motion. I got a shot off into one in the general area of his heart, but it didn't stop him. I hadn't thought it would. Not that it mattered: I hadn't expected to rank five vamp assassins, and no way could I deal with those odds. Tony must be even more pissed than I'd thought.

Chapter 2

The gun was snatched from my hand and I was smashed into the mason-block wall, face first. In the same breath, my arm was wrenched up so far behind me that I was afraid it would break. I didn't see what happened then because I was too busy getting a concrete facial, but I heard what sounded like every metal shelving unit in the place being turned over. Someone gave a roar of rage, then a swell of power billowed through the room like a hot wind, crashing against my skin in a hail of sparks. If I'd had enough breath, I would have screamed, both at the sensation and at the sheer pettiness of the bastard who wouldn't allow me even a tiny chance of escape. Not only had Tony sent a whole squad of vamps after me, but at least one of them simply had to be a master. No one else could summon that kind of power, not even five ordinary vamps working together. And it wasn't just any old master, either.

Most vamps spend their immortal lives as little more than slaves, serving whoever made them without the ability to break away or to refuse an assignment. But some, usually those who were the strongest willed in life, over time gain power. When they reach master level, they can make other vampires to serve them, and are usually given some autonomy by their makers. Seventh level is the lowest master rank, and most never progress past it, but for those who do, each additional step up the ladder gains them new abilities and more freedom. I'd been around master vamps all my life, up to third-level ones like Tony, and I'd seen plenty of them lose their tempers. But it had never before felt like their power might actually burn holes in my skin. It seemed impossible that Tony had talked a senior vamp, second or first level, into taking on a sordid little assassination—offing me wasn't exactly a challenge—but there wasn't any other explanation.

I yelled for Tomas to run, even knowing it wouldn't do any good, and my vamp decided I must not be in enough pain if I could make all that noise. He lowered the hand holding the back of my head to my neck and squeezed. I remember thinking that, if I was lucky, he'd choke me to death before he remembered to bring me over. It didn't make for a great night for me, but it was better than looking at Tony's ugly face for eternity.

A second later, when I was beginning to see dots swirling around my vision and to hear a roaring in my ears, the vamp gave a high-pitched scream and the pressure suddenly let up. I gasped and fell to my knees, struggling to get a deep breath past my burning throat, while he flopped around in front of me, screeching as if he was literally being torn apart. It took me a few seconds to figure out what was wrong with him, since it wasn't an everyday occurrence. A big hint was the warm, almost liquid feeling tracing a lopsided pentagram on my back, as if someone had drizzled heated oil over my skin. Another clue was that the vamp's arm and part of his chest were covered in lines that glowed gold as they sizzled and popped, cooking the flesh between them and the bone. As I watched, one molten welt obscured the small indentation over his breast where my bullet had gone in and kept going. I stared at him in paralyzed shock. From the shape of the marks, it was pretty obvious that my ward had flared to life.

That was ironic, considering that Tony must have been the one to have it worked into my skin in the first place. I'd always thought he'd been gypped: its original pentagram shape had stretched as I grew older, and all I'd ended up with was an ugly tattoo that covered half my back and part of my left shoulder. But although it wasn't a very good-looking design anymore, it seemed to work pretty well. However, the vamp who attacked me wasn't a master—that surge of energy had come from somewhere behind us—and how my ward would fair against one of the big boys was an open question. I was pretty impressed that it had done this much; the only time it had flared up before, it hadn't put on nearly as much of a show. It had only burnt the would-be mugger's arm, singeing him enough that I was able to get away. Of course, then it had been a human trying to rip my head off. Maybe it became stronger depending on the strength of the one it was fighting? I had a bad feeling I was going to find out.

I know something about wards, since Tony always kept two wardsmiths on staff to maintain the fortress of magical protections around his home and businesses. I'd learned from them that there are three main categories: perimeter wards, energy wards and protection wards. Perimeter wards are what Tony uses as camouflage when he's up to something illegal—in other words, constantly. Energy wards are more complex: at their best, they are better than Prozac at relieving stress and helping people work through emotional problems. At their worst, which is the way Tony usually used them, they could allow him to influence important business negotiations. Everyone within the perimeter of the wards would start to feel very mellow and would suddenly decide that cutthroat tactics were too much trouble when they could simply do whatever Tony wanted. There are two types of protection wards: personal shields and guards. Eugenie instructed me in the first type when I was a kid. Without them, I could even sense the ghosts of ghosts—the thin energy trails stretching back in time like glowing lines on a map, telling me that once, maybe hundreds of years ago, a spirit had passed by. The older I got, the more distracted I became by the impressions, maybe because Tony's old mansion was sandwiched between an Indian burial ground and a colonial cemetery. Eugenie had finally tired of my mind wandering during lessons and gave me the tools to shield against them. She taught me to sense my energy field, what some people call an aura, then use my power to build a hedge around it for protection. Eventually, my shields became automatic, filtering out anything except active spirits in the here and now.

But shields are only as powerful as the person building them, since they usually draw on personal power, and most aren't enough to thwart a major spiritual or physical attack. That's where guards come in. Crafted by a group of magic users, they are designed to protect a person, object or location from harm. They can be set to fend off danger, usually by turning the evil intent back on its sender or, in cases like mine, ensuring that anyone touching me with harm in mind ends up screaming in agony.

These types of wards are big business in the supernatural community. Tony once paid a wardsmith a small fortune to craft a special perimeter-protection combo for a convoy of ships carrying some highly illegal substances. He was supposed to make them look like old garbage scowls to any observers—not the sort of thing the authorities enjoy searching too thoroughly. But the smith was young and careless, and the wards failed right as the ships were heading into port—almost in front of a Coast Guard patrol. Tony lost the cargo and the wardsmith lost his life. I had been too young when my ward was done to remember the experience, but whoever had crafted it knew what he or she was doing. Tony must have paid a pretty penny for it, although this was probably one instance when he wished he'd gone cut rate.

My eyes had begun to water from the stench of frying vampire flesh, not something you smell every day, and I gagged for a moment before suddenly realizing that I could move again. I looked around frantically for my weapon, before almost immediately giving up and scrambling around the edge of a shelving unit. There was no sign of my 9 mm, and no way was I going to make it to the door without it. And the few boxes on the unit that formed my sad excuse for a hiding spot were not going to fool anybody for long. No weapon, no way to hide and only a warped ward for protection. I decided on the better part of valor, also known as running and hiding, and started backing down the aisle.