“I love you,” she said again and lightning split her smile.

Alec landed on his ass. His eyes hurt, his teeth hurt. The Deity in front of the collapsed restaurant was light and darkness and rain and thunder and death and sex incarnate. He wanted her, wanted to be nowhere near her. He started to get on his hands and knees -

And he thought, “Hell, no. I’ve gone five centuries without a fucking god and I’m not starting now.” There’d been those, then and now, who’d mistaken Alec’s self-interest for cowardice, his cruelty for weakness. Vlad Tepes and his boyars were sadists – and in the end, soulless fiends – but as men and fiends they’d unflinchingly faced down overwhelming odds.

“I deny you, cunt!” he shrieked into the storm, and performed a trick, the one where he became dustmotes on a moonbeam. Slipped down a cracked stormdrain and called the rats to gather around him to wait.

He wasn’t finished. He smelled battle coming and he was going to be on the fucking winning team this time.