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when you were eavesdropping on me?” he asked. “I’d think that little voice inside your head would be telling you to, given what I am and who I work for.”
    “It did. I’m able to control it when I can anticipate it.”
    “So predator mind trumps sire, sire trumps willpower, but willpower can trump predator mind? Like rock-paper-scissors.”
    I was about to tell him that was an oversimplification. Nightfallen like to make everything about us epic. But then I thought about it. “Yes,” I said, “that’s basically how it works.”
    We talked more details about the attack. Then he said, “I’m going to kill the girls too. Got a problem with that?”
    I actually had some affection for Gina and Cynthia—we’d shared so much, and if there’d been some jealousy, well, it wasn’t like I hadn’t had drama with my high school friends too. But both my predator mind and will agreed that they’d hunt me forever if Nathan was killed and they knew I had a hand in it.
    “Fine,” I said.
    “Okay. I’ll hit them tonight.” He looked at his watch. “Will only take me a couple hours to prep and stage once I leave here.”
    “You can’t just do it during the day?”
    “The same process that made me a decent fake makes me vulnerable to sunlight. I won’t combust in it, but I’ll die of toxic shock before too long. So it’s nighttime or never,” Jackson said.
    “You don’t have any backup? Someone you could call for a daylight attack?”
    “What backup? This is a black-book operation. I can count on my hand the people in government that know about it, and still have a thumb left over. I’m the operation’s only warfighter.”
    “Do you need anything from me?” I asked. “I can’t be near Nathan for the fight, but I’ll get you whatever supplies you want.”
    He shook his head. “You’ve already given me their location and strength—that’ll be enough. Besides, I have decent equipment back at my bunker. Nothing military grade—all store-bought civilian stuff, so if it’s found, nothing will get traced back to anyone important. Don’t worry, it’ll be enough.”
    “You get that bullets aren’t going to kill them, right?”
    “Sure, but I saw what enough kicking and striking did to you. Figure my AR-15 will bust up their bodies enough for me to get close to behead or stake them,” he said. “Now, you go find someplace to hide for the night. We’ll meet here tomorrow night, an hour after sunset.”
    I made my way up Dominion Street, toward campus, looking for a decent place to bed down. My predator mind was still chanting in the background, louder than its baseline but not screaming, that I shouldn’t be helping Jackson. I spent most of the walk rationalizing with it, explaining to it that, once free of Nathan, I’d be able to spread more darkness and destruction. That seemed to placate it a bit.
    Reasoning with your most animal psyche is distracting, so I didn’t notice the heel clicks behind me until someone spoke.
    “Hello, little one,” a melodious female voice called.
    “Are you stepping out on the master with another male?” said another.
    I don’t have any body heat, but those voices made the stolen blood in me run cold. I turned quickly. Two women were behind me, radiating blackness—Cynthia and Gina.
    “Who was that male in the coffee shop?” Cynthia asked.
    It seemed as though Nathan was speaking through her.
    “He’s no one,” I said, the lie sounding as lame in my mouth as the ones that had come from Jackson. “Just a Nightfallen noob—I’ve been showing him the ropes.”
    “You’re lying,” Gina said. “All that cattle in the coffee shop made it so we couldn’t hear whatever sweet nothings you two were whispering, Ginny. We were watching through the window, though. We saw your hand on his.”
    “Even if he pulled his away, it doesn’t excuse your betrayal,” Cynthia said.
    “It just means that everything you’re about to endure, you’re going to suffer for