Alejandro scanned the horizon and saw nothing but the narrow road leading to Danpang City, surrounded by sand dunes in all directions. The Blood Spot had become a favored hot spot because of its secluded location.

The wind picked up, blowing sand across the road and sending an old can to rattle and scrape across the pavement. The lavender-tinged moon hung at half-mast in the sky and stars glimmered everywhere, sewn like diamond chips into black velvet cloth.

It almost looked like Earth’s night sky, almost.

The Chosen had outed themselves the same year the first commercial space jaunts had become de rigueur in 2075. It had been something ancient, dark, and powerful meeting something new, shiny, and exciting. For certain, it had been a notable year in Earth history. The Chosen had known they were outnumbered by humans, known that when they exposed themselves there would be fear and bigotry. And there was.

Wasn’t there always?

At the time, Earth had become overpopulated and unpleasant to live on. The Chosen had nursed dreams of finding another world to call home. It was a big universe out there and several habitable planets had already been discovered. Perhaps there’d be a place for them somewhere in the black?

But the Chosen had never managed to find a world to call their own. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered by human law, their requests had always been denied or they’d been stymied by politics and lobbying groups. They’d been forced to join in the rising tide of human immigrants leaving Earth to find a better world. A better world than one that had barely been saved from global warming and was stuffed to the gills with swelling humanity, locusts who devoured every resource in their path without thought for the future.

Then had come the big find of the Nabovsky Galaxy, and a solar system supporting not one, but four habitable planets in close proximity, some large, some smaller.

Angel One was perfect—lush, green, and verdant, like Earth before humans had messed it up. Though the sky was not blue, but a pale green yellow. That planet had become the “capital” of the Angel System and to this day was the most civilized.

Luckily there were strict environmental laws on Angel One that prohibited sprawl from the urban areas and protected the wild places. The urban areas, especially New Chicago, where he and Daria lived, were built high into the sky because of the anti-sprawl laws, though with ample areas of vegetation to enjoy within the confines of the city.

Another planet, Galileo, was small and covered mostly with water, though there were two sizable landmasses that had been colonized. With seas rich in edible fish and sea life, it was a place inhabited by fisher people and their families who worked for the two big food processing plants that served the quad planets, as they were called.

Darpong, where they were now, didn’t have much water at all. It was a desert planet, hot during the day and cold at night. It was a medium-sized world and very friendly to humans, though the lack of water made it an unpopular choice. It was a vacation and party spot, mostly. Lawless and wild, it attracted the same. Nabovsky Galaxy’s very popular gravsport competition was held here every year, an extreme sport spectacle with a high casualty rate.

With the amount of sun on Darpong, it was ironic that Sante had chosen it for his commune since vamps couldn’t walk in sunlight, although if the stories were true, the dome protected the solar-sensitive occupants from the punishing rays.

Songset, named for the man who’d discovered her, was tidal locked. Without season, tide, or rotation, it simply existed. One side of the huge planet was caught in perpetual high summer, with temperatures reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit nearly every day. The other side was caught in perpetual winter, temperatures dipping into the minus 50 region.

Most of the immigrants who’d elected to colonize Songset lived on the band circling the planet, where the climate was most hospitable, though some lived on the “day” and “night” sides under large man-made domes. Songset was a mining world, ravaged for its rich mineral deposits.

There had been noises about allowing the Chosen their own rock, perhaps the dark side of Songset, but, as usual, that had never come to fruition.

Alejandro watched Daria walk to her dune bike, which was a far more pleasing sight than their arid surroundings. Her newly blond hair was cut close to her head. It was so short you might think she was a man from behind, until you dropped your gaze and saw that long, slender neck, the delicate shoulders, and a nicely shaped ass. There was no mistaking her body for anything but 100 percent female.

Her face, as well as her hair, looked different. The surgeons had done a good job. Sante wouldn’t recognize her. Her eyes were the same, although they held a hardness that hadn’t been there when she’d been a newly graduated patroller.

Was it Christopher Sante who had stripped Daria of her youth so fast and hard? Or had it been one of the many other events that could befall a wet-behind-the-ears patroller in the barely settled Angel System?

Even after all these years, she intrigued him. When he’d discovered Daria was the agent selected for this assignment, he’d convinced the Council that he was the man to play her counterpart. He was still working out the why of that in his mind.

When they’d both been patrollers, he’d tried his best to protect her. Maybe a part of him felt like that job wasn’t finished yet, although he knew what Daria would do if she ever found out he thought she needed protection. He’d be divested of his balls in about two seconds flat.

When they’d both worked at patrol headquarters, he had been desperate to get her into bed, but she’d only wanted Christopher Sante and had rejected all Alejandro’s advances.

In the end, seduction hadn’t been necessary. His efforts at consolation after Sante had done his number on her had turned into much more. He and Daria had their night together seven years ago and Alejandro had always thought that’d be the end of it. Until now.

Daria mounted her dune bike and started it. The shiny silver and black vehicle roared to life and then settled down to a kittenish purr. She reached for the helmet hooked behind her seat and pulled it on.

She shot him a look of impatience through the shaded visor. “Let’s go. I want to get this thing over with.” Almost imperceptibly, she shivered.

Alejandro knew it was probably because she was contemplating the Choosing that was to come. He could smell the little spike of fear in her even from a distance.

She shouldn’t be doing this. She didn’t want it and she wasn’t ready for it.

He walked over and took his place on his own dune bike, the wide, silver machine that could speed over the heated sand of Darpong like a jet-powered cloud.

Before starting his bike, Alejandro studied her. Small lines of displeasure creased the skin between her midnight blue eyes. She’d set her shoulders, and every muscle in her body looked stiff. “How long has it been, Daria?”

She rolled her eyes. “How long for what?”

“Since you’ve been laid. You’re a little bit on the cranky side.”

“Shut up, Alejandro. Let’s get going.”

“A good three years, I’d say.”

“Why do men always think every little thing revolves around them? My mood doesn’t have anything to do with men or my sex life.”

He put his helmet on, laid his thumb flat onto the starter, and revved his bike to life. “Sure, Daria,” he shot back once his bike’s engine had quieted. “Whatever you say.”

“Alejandro—”

He kicked the throttle in and took off fast. His bike sped off over the stretch of desert. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Daria coming up right beside him.

They sped over the sand at a rate that made speech impossible. It snatched their words straight from their lungs and scattered them to the wind. That was probably a good thing, considering the looks of death Daria shot him.

His bike hovered about three feet off the ground and clung to the contours of the sand dunes. Alejandro angled the bike toward his temporary abode deep in the desert. It wasn’t very far from their final destination, the lair of the Shining Way.

Alejandro turned his head to watch her. Her hands were curled tight on the handles of her bike, her pulser tucked securely in the holster around her waist. He let his gaze travel down her shapely legs, clad in snug-fitting cream-colored pants. His body tightened at the sight of her, and he shook his head at the realization.

She still affected him.

Even after all these years. Of all the women he’d ever known, she was the one who had touched him the most. She’d always been tough, and he’d admired that in her, but she hadn’t always been this hard. He remembered how huge and luminous her eyes had been after Sante’s treachery had been discovered.

That night, so many years ago, Alejandro had wanted to take all that hurt away and bring back the fiery idealism that Sante had snatched away. Alejandro had pulled her aside to talk to her after all the mierda had gone down. He’d done it as a fellow patroller and without any ulterior motive. When she’d pushed him back in his chair and started kissing him he’d tried to stop himself, but his control had been shredded by her aggression and their shared attraction.

The morning had brought swift change for both of them. Disgraced and reprimanded for inadvertently aiding Sante in his masquerade as a patroller, Daria had been put on leave without pay, pending a further investigation. She’d left Angel One for a while in order to get her head together.

Alejandro had discovered soon after that he was one of the marked ones, a human with the genetic predisposition to vampirism, meant to be Chosen.

After that he’d had a short nightmarish period enslaved to his blood mother, Lucinda Valentini. When he’d been strong enough to break from her, he’d gone to work for the GBC. He’d had the perfect background to become a peacekeeper, one who took care of the vampires who violated Chosen law. It was a difficult job, and had brought out the darker side of his personality.

Finally, they reached his temporary dwelling, consisting of two tents, one large and one small, each of them camouflaged to look like a mound of sand when viewed from the air. The material of the tents concealed body heat to fool detectors.

Alejandro pulled his bike into the smaller tent to hide it from view and Daria followed. They grabbed their gear off the back of their bikes and headed into the larger tent.

“Hmmm . . . camping,” murmured Daria with a raised eyebrow as she entered. She tossed her pack into a corner and removed her holster as she let her gaze flick over their surroundings.

He glanced around. The inside of the tent consisted of an inflatable bed in one corner and a smokeless kitchenette in the other, something he didn’t have much use for beyond the small refrigerator that kept his supply of synthetic blood cold.

Multicolored pillows were scattered over the floor in one area, in front of a solar-powered commview. In the back was an enclosed area with an old-fashioned water shower, a sink, and a mirror. The heavy canvas floor covered the sand, and the sides of the tent rustled with the wind.

Yes, their surroundings were pretty meager, but you had to marvel at the tech that made the structure possible. All the appliances were freestanding and self-contained, powered by wind or the sun. The sinks in the kitchen and the bathroom were hooked up to a small water tank at the back of the tent.

“Home sweet home for now,” he answered.

He popped out his PComp unit and Daria did the same. They wouldn’t need them for a while since they couldn’t take the communication devices into the Shining Way.

They put the units, about the size of his thumbnail, into a drawer in the kitchen. PComps fit into the bio-relay ports they both had at the base of their skulls. They downloaded information from the ABI or the GBC, or where they had uplinks, straight into their minds. The name for the device was a play on the name for the ancient device called a personal computer.

She turned to face him, one hand on her slim hip. “Do you even have a home? I remember you being quite the drifter. And now that you’re working for the Governing Body of the Chosen . . .” She trailed off.

“I keep an apartment in New Chicago and a place on the dark side of Songset.” It was true that his work didn’t leave him a lot of time to spend at any one residence. They were places to stay, not homes.

“Songset? Near the dig?”

The colonists had wondered if they’d find alien life beyond Earth. They’d only found flora and fauna, no evolved beings. But not long after, there’d been an archaeological find on the night side of Songset, one that proved they weren’t alone out here in the dark.

“My place is about one hundred clicks from there.”

She nodded and kept looking around her.

He knew Daria had been born on Earth and had spent her childhood dreaming of the day she could become a Galactic Patroller, just like her father had been before he’d died. That’s why she’d moved out to the Angel System. What she wanted Alejandro to do right now could destroy the career she cared about more than anything else.

He threw down his pack. “Why do you want to do this? It’s obvious you don’t have anything but contempt for the Chosen. Why do you want to become one?”

“I want into the Shining Way, Alejandro.” Her eyes flashed angrily. “I want to take Sante down. I want—”

“To make him pay for what he did?”

“He deceived me and used me. He saw a brand-new patroller and he conned her. He made me love him, the bastard.” Her voice shook with anger. “Then he used my connections to gain information and kill one of my friends. He ruined my reputation. He almost ruined my career. What? Have you forgotten all this? Yeah, I want to make him pay.”

“He deceived all of us.”

“Me worst of all.” She looked away from him, and he saw her lower lip tremble. That glimpse of vulnerability was a telling sign. “He killed Julia,” she said in a softer voice. “He killed her and he never saw a day of punishment.”

He tried to make his voice comforting. “I know.”

Sante was an old vampire skilled at hiding what he was. He’d become a patroller with the sole ambition of obtaining information regarding a witness who had been scheduled to testify against his blood mother, Maria Gillante, in a case of trafficking in blood slaves.

Specifically, Sante had used Daria to get the information, and he’d had a good time doing it. He’d wooed her and seduced her. He’d entered into a serious relationship with her under false pretenses. That had made what came next even more of a betrayal.

On the night Sante had finally obtained his information and located the house where the witness was being held, he’d killed Daria’s best friend, Julia Harding. Julia had been one of three patrollers assigned to guard the witness that night.

Alejandro frowned. “You said he almost ruined your career, but I thought you were cleared of wrongdoing in that deal.”

“I was, eventually. That still didn’t stop everyone from blaming me for what happened. That still didn’t stop them from thinking I was naïve and incompetent. It’s taken me years to rebuild my reputation to an acceptable level.”

Her eyes hardened. “He got away with it. He got away with murdering three patrollers and a witness. Do you remember their names, Alejandro? I do. Vincent Almeda, Trudy Horowitz, Stephen Miller . . .” Her voice shook with emotion. “And Julia Harding.”

Alejandro sighed. “I know, Daria. I remember the trial.”

They’d had no evidence to link Sante directly to the murder. He’d done a little time for impersonating a human, which was all the prosecutors could prove. It had been a slap in the face to both himself and Daria.

She turned away from him and crossed her arms over her chest. “And it was my fault,” she finished in a whisper. “If it hadn’t been for me, he never would’ve shown up at the house. Julia would still be alive.”

Alejandro resisted the urge to comfort her. “It’s not your—”

She whirled on him. “He’s not getting away with this one,” she said in a steely voice. “This time, we’re getting him. I’m going to make sure we do.”

Alejandro pushed a hand through his hair. “You know you’re throwing your life away for this . . . for him? He was supposedly my partner. He betrayed me, too. I also want revenge, but I still wouldn’t give up my life for the bastard.”

Her eyes shuttered. “I’m not you.”

“You’re not marked, Daria. You have no genetic predisposition for this. That makes me Choosing you a risky proposition. You could end up succubare, forever feeding off sex, instead of life force. Worse, the Choosing could kill you.”

“You ought to know I’m stronger than that. I’ll push through the succubare and become a fully Chosen vampire.”

Only a very small percentage of humans could push through. The odds were against her. “Okay. Let’s say you do. What then? You hate the Chosen.”

She turned and stalked away from him, to the bunch of throw pillows and back. “This may be my only chance. I might not get another. Sante fucked up bad this time. He’s got the whole Interstellar Alliance pissed at him right now. They think he kidnapped Ari Templeton and they’ll let us do anything to get her back.”

Richard Templeton, Ari’s father, was the head of The New Covenant Church, the largest religious organization in the quad planets. Templeton had been fighting to gain enough support to force the government to exterminate the Chosen. As radical as Templeton’s views were, he was a powerful social and religious figure.

Templeton claimed his daughter had been abducted by Christopher Sante and taken to the Shining Way, the well-guarded fortress that was called a community of Chosen, but many thought was simply some kind of cult. The ABI thought perhaps Sante had done it in retaliation against Templeton and his hate-motivated movement targeting the Chosen.

Alejandro and Daria had been tasked with going undercover and investigating Templeton’s claims. If they found they were true, their orders were to bring Ari home and Sante in, if possible. Kill him if it wasn’t.

“The cost is too high,” he answered.

She whirled. “Look, I want Sante. I’ll do anything . . . anything to get him.”

“That’s good you’ll do anything, because you know the other thing you’re going to have to do in order to fool the Shining Way into accepting you as one of their own.”

She turned toward him. Her big, midnight blue eyes shone with apprehension. “Yeah, I know.”

Alejandro walked toward her. To her credit, she didn’t back away. “You’re going to have to be with me, Daria.” He reached out and cupped her cheek against his palm. “Every inch of you from the top of your head to your pretty little toes will be mine once we reach the Shining Way.”

The Shining Way was very restrictive about who they let in. Sante was allowing Alejandro in based on their past relationship. Sante had no idea that Alejandro was now a GBC employee. That information was secret. Alejandro had told Sante that “Valerie” was his mate and that he wouldn’t come without her.

She clenched her jaw and swallowed hard, like she’d gulped down a bug, before speaking. He tried not to let his ego take a hit, but it was hard. “I can fake it.” Her voice shook just a little. Only a Chosen would be able to hear that slight quaver.

He brushed his thumb over her lower lip. “You know as well as I do that we won’t be able to fake it. We’re going to have to make it real, all of it, for this operation. They have to be able to scent you on me and vice versa.”

“Nice try, Alejandro. We don’t necessarily have to have sex to accomplish that.” Contrary to her words, desire flickered through her eyes. It rippled through his body and made his cock hard.

God help him, he still wanted her.

He wanted her stripped, wanted those long, strong legs wrapped around his waist while he eased in and out of her hot little slit. “That would be difficult.”

Her eyes shuttered again and she knocked his hand away. “Yeah, I know, but not impossible.” She pushed past him.

Alejandro raised a brow. “I guess you have a ways to go before you accept all this.”

“Don’t get your hopes up. I’ll never accept it. I’m just going to do it.” Daria turned and pushed a hand through her hair, making it stick up in little tufts. “Look, I had to fight hard to convince the bureau to assign me to this case. They thought I had too many issues concerning Sante to be objective.”

“You do.”

Daria ignored him. “It was my willingness to become a Chosen that swayed them in the end. I was the only one who would. So let’s just do it, all right? If we don’t do it now, I might lose my nerve. I can’t think about it too much.”

“You know I’m going to have to bite you, Daria. You’re going to have to bite me, too.” He took a step toward her and she backed away. He stilled. “Do you trust me?”

“No.”

He shook his head. “You’re not ready for this.”

“Hell no, I’m not ready, and I don’t trust you. Get it through your head that I will never be ready and I will never trust you. Just do it anyway.”

Alejandro sighed. “I’m going to drink your blood, first. Let it combine in my veins before I give it back to you, blended with mine. That mix is going to cause drastic changes in you. You don’t have a mark to smooth the way for you like I did. You were never meant to become a vampire and don’t have the biological makeup for it. So, those transformations are going to be violent and occur in a very short amount of time. One of those changes will be a hormone surge—”

“I read about all this in the handbook, Alejandro,” she interrupted.

“The handbook?” He snorted. “Come on, Daria, reading from the handbook and doing it in real life are two different things.”

She shot him a very unfriendly look. “My point is, I know what to expect.”

“So you know that from the time I Choose you until the time your body slides into unconsciousness you’re going to want to fuck anyone within ten miles?”

Daria looked around the tent as though she could see beyond the walls to the hundred-mile radius of sand. She looked back at him, drawing the obvious conclusion.

“Yep,” he said with a smile.

She shook her head. “I’ll resist it.”

He laughed.