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He winks at me, and I get a glimpse of how handsome he must have been in his youth. “Too long to tell, miss. You going to get the rest of them fuckers now?”

“I sure am. I’ll send your love, shall I?”

“You do that, darlin’. You do that.”

He tips an imaginary hat and heads back into the bar.

It doesn’t take us long to track the others back to their lair. The Coscas have remained hidden and successful for so long because they are disciplined. The same applies to many supernaturals who live in the shadows of the human world, including the Vecchissime. But these jerks? They couldn’t spell “discipline,” never mind live with it. Even without the address, we could have found them by the trail of blood, the few extra bodies along the way, and the sheer stink of them.

We roll up silently at the farmhouse, but we needn’t have bothered with such caution. Heavy metal music is blasting so loud that birds are flying from the treetops, and they wouldn’t have heard us coming if we’d landed the damn helicopter in the living room.

We stalk through the night, taking in the stables, the chicken coop. The pig pen. All of which are still full of animals, some of whom bleat and cry as we approach. They probably haven’t been fed or watered, adding to the million-and-one ways that vamps can be absolute douchebags.

“This place wasn’t abandoned,” Luca murmurs as we make our way to the main house. “It’s not run-down. Those animals belonged to someone. This whole place did.”

I nod. I’d come to the same conclusion. The owners will be dead already, murdered by the nest for their own convenience, and maybe points on their stupid game. Howie just claimed it was already abandoned to make me less likely to stake him. Huh. That didn’t work out so well for him. Still, there could be survivors. They could have kept some alive, used them as blood bags or entertainment. I live in hope despite life constantly insisting otherwise.

In the end, it’s not even a challenge. The door is open. The music is ear-blastingly loud. The vampires are sprawled in one room, like some fucked-up frat-house party, vodka bottles and bongs scattered all over the place. Vamps have to work really hard at getting drunk or high, but credit where it’s due—these guys have put the effort in. They stare up in almost comical shock when a group of black-clad warriors invades their base, one of them so surprised he actually falls off the couch.

Luca has a disgusted expression on his face, and Stefano shoots the sound system to death. “Thank you!” Donna says earnestly. “Not to sound like my mother, but this modern music has no melody.”

It doesn’t take long to get them all rounded up. A few fight back, but most are too bloated on their feast to put up a lot of resistance—you know that feeling, like after your Christmas lunch or whatever, when you feel like you need a wheelbarrow to move? I guess eating a small town is the vamp equivalent. They’re sluggish, and it’s the work of minutes to subdue them. Stefano’s brought zip ties that are laced with silver, which is fun; not only can’t they break them, but each time they struggle and their skin tears, they’re in agony. I vow to pick up some for my own kit, though I usually prefer the direct approach—killing them immediately.

Donna does a quick check of the house, comes up from the basement looking grim. “Five. Looks like the farmer and his family. All dead.”

Matteo grunts in contempt and kicks one of our captives in the face. “I’m going to sort out the animals,” he announces.

“Fine,” snaps Luca. “Just make sure you don’t try and adopt any of them, all right? There’s no fucking room in the chopper for a pig.”

We question the vamps and confiscate their phones after all of them tell us the same thing: they met on an app, they were playing a game, they did nothing wrong. They genuinely seem to believe this, and I’m reminded of why people like me and Donna exist. I might be in love with Luca da Firenze, in all his moody macho glory, but he is the exception not the rule.

Once we’ve gained as much information as we can from them, we gather outside. The first signs of dawn are lightening the sky, and I know that at least some of us need to avoid being in the open when that happens.

“What do we do with them, boss?” Stefano asks Luca.

Luca grimaces. “We could take them back with us. I think that woman with the zits might know a bit more.”

She was one of two female vamps in the nest and had obviously been transformed when she was a teenager. Stuck forever with a forehead full of acne. Now he mentions it, he might be right. She seemed a bit more together than the others, possibly showed a little remorse as she came down from her blood high. Who knows, maybe some of the others will too. Maybe there’s a way to, I don’t know, rehabilitate them?

Matteo walks back over from the stables, face like thunder, muttering under his breath. “Found another kid. He’d been hiding in the hay loft looks like. Dead. Couple of the horses too. Not even drained, just all torn up. Like it was done for fun.”

I suck in a big breath, feel the cool air in my lungs. I try to calm myself, to control the fury that is building inside me. I am failing, my whole body starting to tremble with rage. Luca takes hold of my shoulders, looks deep into my eyes.

“You okay, bella?” he asks, scanning my face. I can barely feel his hands on me, I’m so overwhelmed, so swept away by the moment.

These bastards killed hundreds of people tonight. They tortured them, destroyed them, wrecked a whole community. They murdered babies. They slaughtered this whole family. They let the horses die too. The beautiful, innocent horses. An image of that little boy—the one in the dinosaur PJs, clutching his teddy bear, splattered in blood—lodges itself in my mind, getting bigger and bigger and clearer and clearer until it’s all that I can see.

I shake Luca off, push past him. He tries to stop me, but I am not in the mood, and I glare at him. He holds up his hands, placating me like I’m a wild animal. Maybe he’s right. Donna reaches out too, but I shove her aside, striding towards that fucked-up house full of fucked-up creatures. A place that might once have been home to happiness and laughter and all that is good in the world, all taken away on their sick, twisted whim. For a game. Rehabilitation? What the fuck was I thinking? No. Enough is enough.

My anger courses through me, taking on a life of its own, filling me with strength like I’ve never known before. I could take on the whole damn world right now, and I would win. I open my mind to it all, let that wrath take me over, let that ferocity take control. My veins are fizzing and my ears are popping and from the corner of my eyes, I see my hair floating on the nonexistent breeze

I hold my hands up, ball my fists, and then throw all that energy and power at the building. With an ear-splitting boom, the whole place explodes into a fireball. Wood and roof tiles fly into the air, heat rages towards me, and I’m engulfed in a million painful sparks. I fall to the ground or almost do. Luca is there. Of course, Luca is there. He scoops me into his arms and gallops away with me, swooping me to safety. I cling to his chest, and for some reason, I can’t stop laughing, even though my eyebrows are singed and my ears are ringing.

“Merda!” he exclaims, obviously pretty mad with me. “What the fuck were you thinking? You could have died!”

“I wasn’t thinking,” I snap back as he puts me on my feet. “I was just feeling.”

The fire blazes away behind us, and the animals in their pens bleat in distress. Shit. I hope they’ll be okay. I cannot regret taking out those vamps, but the animals? I’d never forgive myself. Matteo is letting them all out, and I nod my thanks to him. Donatella strolls over, cool as ever, and stands with us as we watch the house burn down. I’m already feeling better, recovering way quicker than I should.