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had no time for that.
    Turning, she signed, Three. Is that your count?
    Alejandro nodded, his gaze never leaving the corridor ahead of them. She bit back another curse when she realized how cramped he was in this space. His shoulders were hunched, his knees bent.
    Nosferatu, however, usually neared seven feet tall—and they couldn’t shift their shape. She and Alejandro would have the advantage under the low ceilings.
    We flank the chamber entrance and wait, she decided. If the creatures remained inside the chamber, she and Alejandro would slay them at dawn, after the creatures fell into their daysleep—but the nosferatu were not that stupid. They will abandon their position before sunrise. We’ll take them in the corridor as they leave.
    Deacon looked around Alejandro’s shoulder. “Why did we stop?”
    “It is a nest,” Irena told him.
    “A nest? But I was—” Uncertainty flashed through his psychic scent. He shook his head. “I only saw one. And they are usually solitary.”
    “Usually.” Irena turned away from the vampire before he saw her revulsion. Never had she seen him so disgustingly timid. Dread clutched her stomach at the thought of facing three nosferatu, but she’d never let fear prevent her from doing what needed to be done. “Yet it isn’t unheard of to find two or more together.”
    Not unheard of, but incredibly rare. The only other nest Irena could recall was a group of nosferatu who’d made a bargain with Lucifer two years before.
    She moved silently down the corridor, stopping a few feet from the entrance to the chamber. Had these nosferatu made a bargain with another demon? Or had they been here for years, waiting to carry out one of Lucifer’s plans? Or did they nest together for a different reason?
    Alejandro took the other side of the doorway. We will slay two, he signed. The last, we shall bring back to SI and question him— His hand fisted. Irena’s lips parted. She could hear it now: another heartbeat, rapid and weak. The heartbeat of someone who’d lost too much blood.
    Deacon scented the air and grimaced. “Too much rot. Is it human?”
    Human, vampire—it wouldn’t matter. She and Alejandro couldn’t wait now. The nosferatu would kill whoever it was before they abandoned the chamber.
    She turned to Deacon. “Stay at the door. There may be more nosferatu that haven’t yet returned. Give a shout the moment you see one.” An important task, but it wouldn’t require him to fight. A vampire couldn’t stand his ground against a nosferatu.
    “Christ, Irena.” Deacon smoothly chambered a bullet. Not as nervous now, she noted. “Can two Guardians handle three nosferatu?”
    What a stupid question. She’d just told him nests were rare—how would she know what chance Alejandro and she had?
    But someone needed rescuing, and so she would soon find out. Her blades would taste nosferatu flesh; their blood would run.
    She let her anticipation rise, washing away the fear, the dread, and turned to grin at Alejandro. He returned her gaze beneath half-lowered lids.
    Ah, yes. His furious expression.
    He wasn’t like her. She loved killing the nosferatu. For Alejandro, it was a duty he willingly performed—until moments such as these, when a life was at stake. When the nosferatu’s inherent evil was clear to see, and not just words.
    In moments such as these, he was as impatient as she was to rend them limb by limb and burn the remains.
    What did you see? she asked. Alejandro had passed the chamber entrance in a fraction of a second—more than enough time to memorize the layout and the location of any nosferatu.
    An ossuary, he signed. At the touch of his psyche against hers, she lowered her shields, and he projected the image into her mind. Crude block columns, wide enough to conceal a nosferatu, stood at regular intervals throughout the large room. Bones were piled against the walls, skulls arranged in pyramids. Square, twenty meters deep. The ceiling is twice the height of the