Seizing my chance, I closed my hand over the nearby dagger and drove the knife into his heart. Liam’s shocked eyes met mine as he froze.

“I thought if the Alexander didn’t kill me, nothing would…”

I was just about to deliver that final, fatal twist when the last piece clicked. A ship named the Alexander. He was from London, and he’d been dead about two hundred and twenty years. He had Aborigine artwork, given to him from a friend in Australia…

“Which one are you?” I asked, holding the knife still. If he moved, it would shred his heart. If he stayed motionless, it wouldn’t kill him. Yet.

“What?”

“In 1788, four convicts sailed to South Wales penal colonies on a ship named the Alexander. One escaped soon after arriving. A year later, that runaway convict returned and killed everyone but his three friends. One of them was turned into a vampire by choice, two by force. I know who you’re not, so tell me who you are.”

If it were possible, he looked even more astonished than he had when I stabbed him in the heart. “Only a few people in the world know that story.”

I gave the blade a menacing flick that edged it fractions deeper. He got the point, all right.

“Ian. I am Ian.”

Motherfucker! On top of me was the man who’d turned the love of my life into a vampire almost two hundred and twenty years ago. Talk about irony.

Liam, or Ian, was a murderer by his own admission. Granted, his employees may or may not have stolen from him; the world never lacked for fools. Vampires played by a different set of rules when it came to their possessions. They were territorial to a fantastic degree. If Thomas and Jerome knew what he was and stole from him, they’d have known the consequences. But that wasn’t what stayed my hand. Eventually it boiled down to one simple truth-I might have left Bones, but I couldn’t kill the person responsible for bringing him into my life.