she'd be boasting some hideous scars, assuming she lived long enough to find out.

What about Cal Nichols? And Dov Amit? She'd last seen them by the Prahova River, locked in combat with a bear.

Drip, drip . . .

Gina was bleeding. Her dagger shook in her hand, and she suppressed the panic that clawed at her thoughts.

Moments ago, after ripping free, she had sliced through the restraints on her right wrist, then cut the thorny tangle from her throat, a slave no longer to her mother's brand of bitterness. Still, she was a Lazarescu--born to work her fingers to the bone; raised to accept life's burdens without complaint.

Okay, so she might end up disfigured. So she might never again have full use of this arm. What of it?

Drippp . . . drippp . . .

Her flayed skin was turning numb. She was probably going into shock.

Whatever. The Collectors could do nothing more to her. Already, they'd stolen the life of her newborn son with a pipe bomb full of nails. And only hours ago, they'd desecrated Good Friday by impaling young Petre Podran against the orphanage bus.

Gina blinked against that memory.

Let the Collectors tear at her neck, her arms. Let them do their worst. Anything more would be an escape from the images seared into her skull.

At her feet on the cave floor, her vampire captor gasped. He began crumbling in on himself, and his clothes sagged. Gina, with quivering muscles, had twisted this dagger of ancient origin into his chest and felt it pierce that malignant heart. "It has its own symbolic power," Cal had assured her.

Apparently so.

"You took it all," she hissed at the creature. "Isn't that what you wanted?"

The Collector's last breath was desert heat blowing over desiccated flesh, and she knew he could do nothing more to her. Nevertheless, the high-mountain chill caused her to shiver, and her earrings trembled against her neck.

Gina thought of the whisk broom from the chores of her childhood, in the distant village of Cuvin, and wished she could sweep away these Collectors once and for all. She kicked at the abomination before her, determined to keep him from ever rising again.

A metallic sound rang out.

An old coin.

She kneeled, ignoring the crimson drops that pooled at her feet, and took hold of the object. Buffing it, she noted letters running along the circumference, encircling a Maltese cross. She'd seen this symbol in history books, embroidered on vestments of the Knights Templar.

Similar to the letter Tav.

Once, she'd borne that letter on her own forehead while carrying her son in the womb. She'd been told that the Hebrew symbol signified salvation, that it marked her child's purpose, and then . . .

Well, then everything had come undone.

Attention to the task at hand, Gina scolded herself. Pull it together.

So, this coin. Had it been in the Collector's hand? In his jacket pocket? What was its place of origin?

She suspected Cal could tell her more, but he was not here. He had agreed to protect the busload of orphans, to meet her in Bucharest when this was all over, and the hope of that rendezvous now became her top priority. She would sneak from this cave, down the slopes into the town of Sinaia, and find transport to Romania's capital city. She would proceed on the belief that Cal and Dov had survived their encounter with the bear.

It was the one thing, the only thing, keeping her upright.

She slipped the coin into the breast pocket of her dress. A rumble rose from the lungs of the Bucegi Mountains, and the cave exhaled musty air. In the following lull, she was certain she heard footsteps.

"Lord Ariston?"

Gina recognized the female voice. It was Shalom, the sharp-fanged entity who had first carted her up the slope to this spot. The Jewish name borrowed from her human host had nothing to do with peace.

"Father?" Shalom called. "Are you there?"

Gina raised her blade to meet this returning threat, then teetered before a wave of blackness. She braced herself. Her body, she realized, was failing to match her mental resolve.

She eased around a bend in the cavern, stilled her breath, and lifted her left arm over her head. She hoped to slow the flow from her wounds, yet the drops continued spilling, warm and sticky, into her hair.

She reeled.

Faint . . . feeling faint. Eyesight blurring.

She had to hold herself together, had to get out of this cave.

Pebbles scraped along the dirt, and she figured Shalom must've found her undead father by now. In confirmation, a keen of anguish echoed through the subterranean chambers, indication of the Collector's conflict between her host's familial concerns and her own rapacious nature.

Gina pressed further back and bumped into a pair of makeshift coffins. Dust quavered along the lids, and a throat-constricting odor rose from fissures in the wood. From what she understood, these Akeldama Collectors had no fear of the sun, no need for gothic-style naps in felt-lined caskets. So what was this? Their vampiric burial site?

Murky light from the cave opening revealed names carved into each lid.

Sol and Eros.

She'd heard from Cal that the Akeldama Cluster was a union between the Houses of Ariston and Eros. Though unsure of Sol's identity, she knew that Ariston lay lifeless only feet away, and here beside her was Eros.

Both leaders, fallen.

Gina had already helped play a role in the cluster's downfall, fulfilling part of her"destiny"--as Cal called it--but she knew this conflict was far from over.

From around the bend, Shalom's warbling cries dropped into a low-pitched snarl that turned Gina's knees to water. Her strength was ebbing. She doubted her own ability to put up much of a fight. Not yet, not with vitality still seeping from her thorn-scoured arm.

If, however, she stayed quiet, maybe the Collector would leave.

Drip, drip . . .

She looked down, and even in the dim light she couldn't miss the trail of red-black circles that betrayed her location.

"Gina?" The snarl gave way to a voice of caution. "I know you're there. Come out, so we can talk."

"There's nothing to say."

"My father's been banished," Shalom said. "How'd you manage that?"

"C'mon back here and I'll show you." Gina knew that in seconds she would be cornered anyway, and in her present condition she was sure to lose a hand-to-hand battle. Perhaps, if she kept her wounds out of sight, she could stand down her foe with a display of fearlessness.

"I'm not fooled," the she-vampire said. "You're hurt."

"Then c'mon."

"You're trapped. There's no way out but through the front of this cave."

"And you'll wait all day for me?"

"If need be."

"Why don't you just come end it now? Or are you afraid to fight one-handed. I bet that's it, huh? I saw what happened at the train station." A quick image: Shalom sprinting forward, then howling as one of Cal's metal tent pegs severed her wrist. "See," Gina said, "there's the problem with relying on a host. You want the full use of the senses, but with it comes a whole world of pain."

"I like pain."

"Must run in the family. Your dad, he just kept begging for more."

Shalom snapped her teeth.

"Did you find your hand, by any chance?" Gina goaded. "Maybe Cal could sew it back on for you. He only cut if off because you were trying to kill the kids. I mean, really, can you blame the man?"

"Where is he now, do you think?"

"How should I know, since you dragged me off before I could say proper good-byes? Either way, I'm sure he and the orphans are long gone."

"He's gone, yes," Shalom said. "Erota destroyed him."

Erota: in the form of a predatory bear. Gina had seen those massive claws and yellowed teeth. The possibility that there was any truth in the Collector's words shoved Gina back into the stone wall.

Cal Nichols . . .

Without him, who would there be to guide her through this new paradigm of eerie landscapes and bloodthirsty beasts? Of secrets and half-truths? Yes, he had failed her back in Chattanooga, but at least he'd tried to save Jacob. And even though she questioned his hands-off approach through most of her childhood, none of that negated her need for him.

She envisioned now the waves of his wheat-colored hair, his broad shoulders, the gentle strength in his gold-flecked gaze.

Were Cal's feelings for her personal? He'd seemed to intimate as much with things he'd said. Or was he simply carrying out a duty, an obligation to her?

"I don't buy it," Gina told Shalom. "He's still alive."

"What is there to buy? He gave himself up."

"I don't accept that."

"He did it for you," Shalom said. "We told him we'd kill you otherwise."