“My name’s Ernie. I’m from Two-Chain’s line. Two-Chain is a friend of Bones’s, so you can’t just kill me.”

“With friends like you, who needs enemies?” Bones said scathingly, gliding over to me once he’d finished healing the injured humans and instilling their new memories with vampire mind control.

“Bloody hung a target around her neck by screeching her name out,” Bones continued. “Just for that, I should rip off your stones and feed them to you.”

For some people, that would just be a figure of speech. Not Bones. He never bluffed. Apparently Ernie had heard of his reputation. He crossed his legs.

“Please don’t.” Now he went from negotiating to pleading. “I didn’t mean her any harm, I swear to Cain.”

“Right.” Coldly. “But you’ll need more than the maker of all vampires to help you if you’re lying. Kitten, I’d like to box him and take him back to the compound, until I can verify that he really is one of Two-Chain’s people.”

Bones was deferring to me, since in work matters, I was in charge. In matters of personal vampire affairs, however, Bones outranked me by more than two centuries.

“Sure. He’ll hate the capsule, though.”

Bones laughed a trifle grimly. He knew from firsthand experience how unpleasant our vampire transportation was.

“If he’s lying, that’ll be the least of his concerns.”

Cooper came up to us. “Commander, the capsule’s prepped and ready.”

“Strap him in. Let’s get this scene contained as quickly as possible.”

My second-in-command, Tate Bradley, walked into the club. His indigo gaze swept over the room, seeking me out.

“Cat, this is the third time you’ve been recognized.”

As if I didn’t know. “We’ll just have to come up with a better disguise. Fast, before the job next week.”

Tate didn’t let my tone dissuade him. “All this risk is going to get you killed. One of these days, someone’s going to recognize you and just pull a fucking gun instead of offering to buy you a drink. This is getting too dangerous, even for your standards.”