"You think it really was an attack?"

"Frankly, I don�t know what to think."

Gabriel tossed the journal onto the pile, then put his hands behind his head, tipping back to look at the rough stone ceiling. The tombs were fitted with overhead lights, and in the soft orange-yellow glow of the bulb, his skin looked eerily pale.

"Any last words?" he asked.

For a moment, Dorian wished he could ease his youngest brother�s ache with a pleasant end to the otherwise gruesome tale of their father�s demise.

But the man�s last words were much too terrifying to share.

Stark in their utter simplicity, as cold and cutting as the scalpel he�d wielded against his own flesh, night after night as he desperately chased his cure.

Your brothers� you must find� genetic�

Then, he went up in smoke.

There were answers to the riddles, Dorian suspected, encoded in those journals. But so far, Dorian hadn�t made head nor tail of them. All he knew was that his father, the most powerful immortal vampire in an age, had suffered and died of a human illness, and that illness�that weakness�allegedly ran through the blood of the four remaining Redthorne royals. Even a whisper of that knowledge would be a deadly weapon in enemy hands, and down here in the crypts of Ravenswood was an entire tomb filled with such secrets.

Just because Dorian hadn�t deciphered them yet didn�t mean they were undecipherable.

"Nothing, right?" Gabriel asked, head still tipped back, arms spread wide as if he were looking to the heavens for answers from their dead father.

Wrong direction, brother.

Testing the iron gate around his heart, Dorian said, "If you�re looking for deathbed confessions and an unburdening of regrets about what a terrible father he was, I�m sorry to disappoint you. He said nothing, Gabriel. He died empty, but for the secrets he carried with him to hell."

A bitter laugh escaped Gabriel�s mouth. "You�d think I�d be used to it by now, but it never gets easier, does it?"

"Hearing of Father�s abject failings?"

"No." Gabriel lowered his arms and turned to face him, his eyes as cold and black as the crypts themselves, a darkness that echoed for eternity. "Being disappointed by you."

There was a snake in Rudy�s living room. A snake with dull gray eyes and spiky, over-gelled hair who leered at Charley with a mix of lust and pure hatred.

Mental note: order a new Beyonc� later.

"Charley, Charley, Charley," the snake said, running his tongue along his top teeth in a move he probably thought was sexy. "You�re looking fine as fuck."

"Travis." It was all she could give him�his name. It�d been more than a year since their last night together, but the sight of her ex still made her skin crawl. It probably always would.

"So glad you could finally join us." Uncle Rudy stepped out from the kitchen and handed Charley a gin and tonic, gesturing for her to take the seat next to Travis on the couch, probably as punishment for being late. "Care to tell me about your evening?"

Charley sipped her drink�cheap gin for the guests, of course�buying herself a minute to think. Rudy was definitely angling for something. He hadn�t asked about the JHS, and none of the other crew members were here to talk shop. Only Travis, a freelancer they�d met the year after her father�s death. The others didn�t think much of him�in fact, Bones had never quite forgiven Charley for getting involved with such a lowlife�but Rudy still used him sometimes for fake passports and customs forms.

So what the fuck was he doing there now?

"Charlotte?" Rudy pressed. "I asked you a question." JrNovels.com