His strong arms went around her and he lifted her, his large hands supporting her bottom and her back, but she struggled in his cradling arms. “Don’t do this,” she begged. “It will hurt you.”

“I don’t care.”

“I do,” she said.

Making a growling sound of frustration, he set her on her feet. He left her and prowled over to the fallen doctor. Three cavalier words, thrown out with a devil-may-care confidence, and with a certain amount of bitterness, ate in her heart.

Did he really not care? After all, he was willing to be destroyed to take her power. Of course, it would make sense that he didn’t care if she hurt him now. He knew he was going to die. Why was he doing all this for her?

It gave her the strangest feeling, as if her heart was swollen and no longer fit in her chest. But she didn’t want to win her freedom at the cost of his . . . well, his life. She couldn’t live with taking that away from him. Didn’t he understand that?

She stalked toward him, where he was crouched on his haunches at the side of the unconscious doctor.

“Raven—” Her voice died as he roughly rolled the doctor onto his back.

From this view, the doctor’s rotund stomach looked like a hill. Blood smeared the neck, his waistcoat. Grimacing, Ravenhunt pushed the man’s head to the side, then bent toward his neck—

“No!”

It had come out without thought. He looked up at her from beneath the fringe of his coal-black hair. “I need to feed, and this would let me finish him off. He deserves this for what he was going to do to you.”

He said it so matter-of-factly. But Ophelia felt the blood draining out of her head as she imagined his teeth sinking into the man’s neck, as she thought of him drinking blood. She grabbed the shelves as her legs almost melted beneath her.

She managed to hold her body up, but the horror made her dizzy. Ravenhunt needed blood now—he needed to feed, he said. Yet he had gone to feed after almost biting her. That had not even been a full day. How many victims had he taken since becoming a vampire?

At once he was beside her, his hands on her waist, and he supported her.

She pulled away from him. “No, I don’t want this. I don’t want you to—to drink his blood out of revenge.” Warily, she faced him. Agony was etched on his handsome features. “What happens if you don’t feed when you want to?”

He turned away, resting his hand on the shelves. “The craving becomes stronger.”

“What happens after that?”

“I always have to feed eventually,” he said, over his shoulder. “It will happen even against my physical will, if it must. But I understand how you feel. I won’t do it in front of you.”

He went to the door, looked out, then he took a few strides down the hallway. Now she saw there was a corridor formed of stone walls beyond this room, and it led to a heavy oak door. At the end of that corridor was yet another door, which stood partly open. That was where her captors had run.

“I have to get you out of here, but we cannot go that way,” he muttered.

“There are the windows.” She pointed to the low windows that gave a view of the sidewalk and street.

“Good idea.” He gave her an approving smile.

“How do we break them?”

“That is easy.” From the large table, he took a dusty book, flung it, and the glass shattered. It was formed of small panes held with putty and wood, but Ravenhunt threw with such force, the entire thing exploded into pieces.

“Climb up,” he said. “I will help you out the window.” He motioned to the table. It astounded her how it didn’t bother him to be naked. Her shirt was cut into tatters at the waist, but Ophelia had to admit she didn’t care. She just wanted them to escape this horrible place.

She hesitated. “You’ll have to touch me.”

“It’s all right. It won’t hurt for long.” He held out his hands to lift her onto the table.

“Wait. I know we don’t have long and that we must escape. But I have to tell you what I learned. Those men said that a vampire who takes my power will be destroyed. You have to—”

“I know, Ophelia. I’ve known it all along.”

“You know and you—you are willing to die to free me?”

This time he hesitated. He threw a glance back toward the door. “It’s complicated. There is a way out for both of us. Guidon told me how it can be done. But that is for later.”

He grasped her hips and lifted her. With his amazing strength, he easily lifted her up on the table.

Impulsively, she swiveled and bent down. Her hands cupped his jaw, which was soft to her touch, but rough and scratchy, too, because it was shadowed with black stubble.

She had never cradled a man’s face.

She had to stop touching him. But as she tried to move her hands, he grasped them and held them against her face. His eyes widened, his dark brows shot up and disappeared beneath his mussed hair. His full, beautiful lips parted. “Ophelia, there’s no pain. I don’t feel any pain.”

How could it be possible? He cupped the back of her neck with his hand and drew her to him, so their mouths were only an inch apart.

Ophelia surged forward and hastily, clumsily, pressed lips against his. Her heart thundered. They could be caught and killed any moment. But she wanted to know if she could do this without pain. Just one quick, wild kiss.

Heavens, his lips were so warm and velvety soft. When her mouth touched his, there was a sizzle—but a glorious, thrilling, exciting one. The gentle contact of their mouths stole her breath. It made her hot and achy inside.

He drew back. “There was no pain.”

“Does it mean you took my power?” Reality hit her. There was no joy, no happiness now—just horror. If he had taken her power, she’d killed him.

“I don’t know. But it means I can get you out of that window. Come, Felie, let us hurry.”

Felie. A pet name. She’d never had one.

Ravenhunt jumped onto the table beside her, then he wrapped his arm around her hips and lifted her so she could grasp the ledge of the window. She gripped it—a small piece of glass bit into her hand, but she didn’t care about pain. Pulling on the ledge, she tried to scramble up, but he gently pushed her, so she was out the opening in moments. Ophelia scrambled to her feet—the window was just above the level of the cobblestone street. She turned to help him, but he leaped up from the table, soared cleanly out of the window, and landed on his feet beside her.

They were alone in the street, which was good as Ravenhunt was naked.

“We have to run, but you’re—”

“We don’t have to run,” he insisted. “Since you can touch me now, I can transform into a larger bat, and you can ride on me.”

“Ride on you? You mean—in the air?”

He nodded, and then his body jerked and writhed as he went through his transformation. She had seen it in his bedroom, but she’d been too shocked to really understand what had happened to him. His skin stretched in ways that must be impossible. Beneath his pale skin, his muscle and bone reshaped. His back widened, then in the blink of an eye, huge wings formed out of his back. His body had barely changed in size. He still possessed legs, a man’s torso and hips and—and all the other parts. He looked more like a gargoyle than a man and in this form he was covered in sable-smooth black fur.

He turned, so his broad back and his wings faced her. Smoothly, he dipped down on one knee. She climbed on his back, lying along the lean, hard planes. So strange that instead of skin, she was pressed to velvety fur. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and her legs around his waist.

Then his wings flapped, raising up dirt from the street, and sending a soft breeze to ripple over her.

Together, they rose into the air. His wings beat slowly, with a languorous, graceful smoothness, but they lifted swiftly. By the second building they passed, they had reached such a height that they flew past the upper windows of two-story buildings. A heartbeat later, she could look down upon the roofs of Whitechapel High Street. Ahead were open fields beyond the London Hospital, a stretch of gray-tinted blue with moonlight. Shadows clung to the buildings, and Ravenhunt flew within them. She supposed it meant they disappeared from view when they were in the dark.

She held her breath. They climbed higher and higher. She felt as if she could reach out and touch the moon. For one moment, she felt a twinge of fear—they were dizzyingly high—but it disappeared. She had nothing to be afraid of when she was with Ravenhunt.

Ophelia drew in a deep breath. Up here the air felt and smelled different—cooler, crisp, clean. Her arms were securely wrapped around his neck. His powerful muscles flexed and moved beneath her slim arms.

As they’d risen into the sky, she’d heard shouting down below them. Her captors must have discovered she had escaped.

She could not believe she was flying. And if he’d taken her power, why was he not dead? What had he meant that Guidon had told him there was a way out?

Beneath her, she saw the streets of London laid out, following the curves of the Thames. Powerful wingbeats took them closer to the buildings below them.

Her heart dipped and then soared downward, and beat frantically when he climbed again.

Now she knew what it was like to fly. Exhilarating. Amazing. Somehow it seemed even more miraculous to fly close to the buildings below, to just graze over them, to whirl around them. Below them were narrow, elegant buildings with bow windows and painted signs that shone with gilt.

Charing Cross. They were going to Guidon’s.

Ravenhunt slowly descended to the sidewalk outside the bookstore. He landed lightly on his feet, then crouched so she could safely slip off his back. It was dark—no light glowed in Guidon’s shop. She looked back to Ravenhunt and in the seconds she’d peered into the shop, he had transformed back to a man.