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said about me missing my true calling. Surely he didn’t mean to make a Donor out of me. I tightened one hand into a fist. Fear and panic drowned out the opening strains of his conversation with the Burdraks.
    Vampyrs regularly slummed it in Undertown for illic it feedings, but I’d been smart. I knew how to fight of their advances in the dark allies and nooks of the Undertown labyrinth. I’d kept my body pure. I wouldn’t succumb to the Vampyrs’ venom now.
    Finch’s voice echoed in my head. Whatever you have to do to draw information out of him, I expect you to do it. Probably he meant sex—it was always his favorite tool for manipulating people—but I feared he meant offering myself up as a Donor, as well.
    But I couldn’t do that. I didn’t care what the cost would be to Finch and the Resistance. I would not— could not—let Victor Bressov feed off of me directly, injecting the Vampyr toxin directly and irrevocably into my veins. Not even once.
    Victor strode toward the couch, still carrying on with the Burdraks. He’d heard every one of my words in the earlier presentation perfectly—he was reciting my analysis back to them without missing a beat. He settled onto the couch beside me, knees set in a wide stance, his thigh brushing against mine. I could feel the smooth nap of his bespoke suit even through my scratchy nylon hose. Once he’d finished his pitch, he turned to me with a smile. I offered him a hasty smile back before my fear rubbed it out.
    The Burdraks ran through their own iteration of merger details—mostly just downplayed versions of the figures I’d already come up with—but I couldn’t listen too closely. I could feel Victor’s eyes roving over me with the barely-contained anticipation of a child watching his next meal being cooked. I didn’t like the feeling one bit. If he wanted my blood, he could pick it up from the Donation centers like every other law-abiding Vampyr. I’d come too far to cast my lot with the Donors.
    His hand darted out, swift as a whip crack, and brushed a loose lock of my hair back from my shoulder, exposing my neck. With the faintest touch of his fingertip, he traced the long line of my carotid artery from my jawline down into my collarbone.
    “Please,” I whispered. “Don’t.”
    He chuckled softly. “How sad,” he mused, “that you know so little of the world. That you think I’m what you should fear.”
    My pulse throbbed against his fingertip, his words hanging between us, for a moment before he lifted his hand away.
    “ . . . Of course, Lord Bressov, we are taking a very big risk for one more reason, which you have not yet addressed,” one of the Burdrak lords continued.
    Victor turned his head away from me. The skin along my throat ached where he’d touched it, as if he’d scalded me. Before I could stop myself, I lifted my free hand to stroke the patch of skin, so smooth and warm, but it didn’t spark the same embers in my core as I’d felt when he’d touched it.
    I have no idea what I am , he’d told me that day. The thought sickened me.
    There were whispers—there had always been whispers—that women like . . . like what I suspected he was claiming I was . . . had been responsible for the Vampyrs’ rise in the first place. Something in their blood called for the pain and agony that only a skilled Vampyr could deliver. They sold their souls to become Donors to Vampyrs, and more besides, and like some ancient parable, the shift in power allowed the Vampyrs to take control.
    I knew better, of course. I’d read the smuggled history books: the Vampyrs took control after we humans had managed to nearly kill ourselves off in a vicious nuclear war. Who better to lead us back to civilization than immortal creatures? Wherever they’d been hiding , it wasn’t a few weak-willed agonies who allowed them to take control.
    It was us—humanity— and our own damned stupidity.
    Besides, the Onyx Queen herself was rumored to be an agonie .