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  The leech bypassed the easier target of the pretty blond nurse bending over his bed and grabbed for Michael, dragging him down by the v-neck of his pale green rumpled scrubs.

  To give him credit, the doctor resisted. I saw the muscles in his broad back strain and bunch under the suddenly tight fabric and one of the seams actually started to rip as he tried to pull away. But the strongest human still isn’t a tenth as powerful as the weakest vamp.

  It was no contest.

  By the time I’d fumbled my silver stiletto from inside my left boot, the leech had already sunk fangs into the meaty part of Michael’s neck—right where the shoulder and throat meet.

  Like I said—he was dead right in front of me, or as good as, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do.

  But I tried anyway.

  I ran forward and planted my knife in the vamp’s right eye. I pushed hard, feeling the same resistance you get when you slice semi-soft cheese, until I heard the dull scraping of the stiletto’s point meeting the inside of the skull.

  That wouldn’t kill an older vamp, not even a leech—but it would sure as hell slow him down.

  The leech let go of Michael Moran and started thrashing again—this time I knew his convulsions were real. I dug a vial of holy water out of my other boot, flipped open the cap, and poured it down the bloody-fanged throat that was open wide in a silent scream.

  The leech began smoking and jittering like a broken toy and a few drops of the liquid landed on the doctor’s wounded neck. They skated across his skin and started to hiss and sizzle like water on a hot skillet. I knew what that meant—he wasn’t going to die of the bite.

  He was going to turn.

  I knew I ought to kill him then and there. It would save me the trouble of hunting him down later and taking him out after he already had several kills of his own under his belt. But the only good knife I had with me was still planted hilt deep in the leech’s brain and besides, my arm still tingled where he had touched me.

  It was stupid and sentimental and foolish—all the things Uncle Harry had trained me never to be—but I still couldn’t bring myself to kill him. Not right there, anyway.

  So instead of twisting his head until his neck broke like I should have, I grabbed his muscular arm. Ignoring the commotion all around me, I started dragging him towards the sliding glass doors of the ER exit.

  “What are you doing? Where are we going?” Doctor Moran sounded dazed but he followed me docilely enough.

  “Out,” I said. “Away.”

  The security guards were just beginning to look around and realize that what they probably thought was a murder had been committed when the glass doors opened with a whoosh.

  Knowing it was a stupid decision didn’t stop me.

  I dragged Michael Moran, the nicely rumpled doctor out of his comfortable world and into the night, changing both our lives forever.

  Chapter Two

  I folded his big frame into my black Charger with some difficulty. It’s an older car but it has a lot of muscle under the hood which I sometimes need. I didn’t bother with a seatbelt. If he was changing into a vamp, and I knew he was, a trip through the windshield wouldn’t hurt him a bit if we got in a wreck. I fastened my own seatbelt securely and fumbled with the keys.

  Damn lydocaine—when was it going to wear off?

  Streetlights flashed past in orderly procession as I wondered what the hell I was doing and why I was doing it. Michael Moran was nothing but a liability to me. There was no way I ought to let the brief moment of connection we’d shared get in my way when it came to disposing of him. And yet instead of pulling into a convenient side ally and finishing him off, I kept on driving. Was I actually considering taking him home with me?

  How stupid was that?

  It wasn’t just a sappy sentimental wish for true love that let me spare his life—what little was left of it. That’s what I told myself, anyway. But there was something funny going on here and I wanted to get to the bottom of it.

  What had the leech been doing in the ER in the first place? And why had he grabbed for Michael over the pretty blond nurse that had been leaning right over him, in the line of fire, so to speak? None of it felt like an accident.

  Something wasn’t right.

  He was already starting to fade as we pulled into my garage. I live in a modest two-story ranch with plenty of room between me and my neighbors and I don’t get too friendly with the people in the neighborhood. It pisses them off when I don’t say hi and they never invite me to their block parties and backyard barbeques anymore but it’s for their own good. Anybody around me is a potential target for vamps.

  It’s better to just keep to myself.

  I closed the garage door and practically had to drag Michael out of the car and into the house. He was going into what vamps call ‘the deep sleep’ and I call ‘a golden opportunity.’

  When a person is first bitten, if they don’t die outright, their body undergoes a metamorphosis from human to vamp. The heart shuts down and the blood stops pumping through their veins as the virus takes hold.

  They no longer need to breathe unless they really want to—many autonomic functions become voluntary—which was how the leech in the ER had managed to stop his heartbeat and drop his blood pressure. They develop superhuman strength and a fierce thirst for blood since the virus feeds on the hemoglobin carried by red blood cells and their own body isn’t producing it anymore.

  The full change from human to vamp takes about two hours and in that time, the fledgling vamp is completely vulnerable. Like a moth inside its cocoon, you can crush it with no muss, fuss, or trouble. Of course, once the moth emerges from it shell, you may have a hard time catching it.

  Likewise a new vamp fully awake to the night is a fearsome sight, even for an experienced slayer like me. Later you might be able to talk to them—if you wanted to, which I don’t. But at their awakening to darkness, they have only one thing on their minds—blood and plenty of it. Eating machines, just like the great white shark which has no natural predator.

  Except vampires do have a predator—me.

  So why was I helping one into my house—letting him cross the unseen barrier that exists in all private residences? A vampire can’t cross your threshold unless you invite him inside—don’t ask me why. My boss and mentor, a man I knew only as ‘The Monsignor,’ claimed it was because vampires have no souls, so they can’t enter the residence of those who do, without their express permission.

  Personally, I thought it probably had something to do with the virus—maybe it caused a mild form of OCD that made them unable to come in unless you asked.

  But for whatever reason, you have to be damn careful letting a vamp come into your house. That’s because with vampires, you have what I call ‘the domino effect.’ Which simply means that if you invite one vamp into your house, you invite every vamp he personally has ever infected with the virus. Kind of like that old saw they tell you in high school, about how if you sleep with a guy you’re automatically sleeping with everyone else he’s ever slept with.

  Only in this case it’s a lot more likely to get you killed.

  Of course, the domino effect can work for you too. If you kill a vamp, you automatically ash every one of his direct descendants. That explains why I only go after the Elders—assassinate them, and the entire family dies because they’re the top domino—the first link in the chain. The captains and lieutenants and leeches under them aren’t worth my time.

  Unfortunately, Elders are closely guarded and hard to get to and once you do get to them, they’re pretty damn hard to kill. Which is just another reason to kill as many vamps off as you can while they’re still in the deep sleep and most vulnerable.

  Which was exactly what I wasn’t doing.

  I climbed the steps to my spare bedroom, pulling Michael with me. He had his arm thrown over my shoulder and he was almost dead to the world by now—in more ways than one. He could barely put one foot in front of the other.

&
nbsp; Being this close to him I noticed that he smelled really good—like some kind of musk. Maybe his cologne or maybe just the natural scent of his skin. His arm around my shoulders was appealingly muscular and his body felt firm and masculine under my hands.

  I pushed the thoughts to the back of my mind—I didn’t want to be getting warm fuzzies for somebody I was probably going to have to kill in the next two hours.

  I’m a strong girl—I have to be for what I do—but lugging a six foot four, two hundred and twenty pound man up a steep flight of stairs made even me tired. So sue me—I’m only human. It’s more than I can say for a lot of people I know.

  By the time I got Michael into the bathroom and seated on the closed lid of the toilet, I was panting for breath. He slumped against the wall, his pretty green eyes rolled up to show the whites as I considered the foolish futility of what I was about to do.

  I reached under the sink and grabbed a gallon of holy water in a plain plastic milk jug. I had half a dozen of them I kept under there the way other people kept cleaning products. The Monsignor, my boss, made sure I had a never-ending supply and let me tell you, I needed it. I usually used it to disinfect my own wounds or as ammunition for various weapons.

  Why did it work when the cause of vampirism is a virus? I didn’t have an answer for that one—maybe because of the way the water was ionized—I don’t know.

  I preferred to concentrate on the scientific aspects of the disease and leave the mystical crap to my boss.

  I uncapped the gallon of holy water and grabbed Michael by the jaw, positioning him so that the fresh bite wound was visible through the torn scrubs. I was about to do something I was ninety-nine percent sure wouldn’t work and all because the man had shown me a little kindness and asked me out for pie.

  Stupid, I know, but somehow I couldn’t help it.

  “Wha…?” Michael opened his eyes as I ripped open the tattered green scrubs to get better access to the wound.

  “I’m going to try and disinfect your bite,” I told him, knowing he was probably so out of it he couldn’t understand what was going on. “It probably won’t do a damn bit of good—you’re already turning into a vampire and nothing can stop it. But you’re a nice guy, Michael. So I’m going to try.”

  His head made a drunken motion as he tried to look at the wound between his neck and shoulder. I grabbed him by the jaw and pushed his face out of the way. He didn’t resist me, but his eyes grew wide and for a moment I thought I saw clarity return to their gold-flecked green depths.

  “Hold still,” I told him, tilting the jug full of holy water. “You’re not just going to feel a little pinch— this is going to sting like hell.”

  I poured a big splash of the water over the gaping wound and it began to hiss and foam at once. I used the purified and blessed liquid to disinfect my own wounds all the time so I was used to the reaction—when it hits the unclean flesh that has been infected by the virus it acts as a kind of holy hydrogen peroxide.

  Michael tensed and I saw his jaw clench and his eyes narrow, but he didn’t make a sound even though he had to feel like his entire body was on fire. At least, that’s how I felt when I disinfected a bite. The leech had gotten him good—the punctures in his torn flesh were really deep and I knew if he hadn’t been turning he would already have bled to death from arterial damage.

  As soon as the wound stopped fizzing I poured some more and then more until the whole gallon was gone. Michael flinched under the watery onslaught but didn’t say a thing. I couldn’t tell if it was helping or not. The wound wasn’t closing and the fizzing never really stopped completely. I was reaching for another gallon jug under the sink when he put out a hand to stop me.

  “Look, I can tell you’re trying to help me but that really hurts like hell. And it doesn’t seem to be doing any good.” His deep voice was a croak but his eyes were clear and full of pain.

  “You’re probably right.” I put the gallon back under the sink and crossed my arms over my chest. “I just thought it was worth a try.”

  “I can feel…something inside me. Burning up. Changing.”

  His eyes pled with me for an explanation.

  “You’re turning into a vampire,” I told him, keeping my voice neutral. “Soon you’re going to go into a coma like state. When you wake up you’ll be a blood-drinking machine.”

  I didn’t add that I would probably have to kill him. No point adding insult to injury.

  His eyes flicked to the neat row of black stitches he’d put into my arm. “You got bitten. Why aren't you…?”

  “Dead or turning into a vampire too? I have genetic immunity,” I said. “I have to—I hunt vamps for a living. Come on, let’s get you to the bed.”

  He didn’t make any protest as I hauled him to his feet and helped him stagger into the guest room. His shirt was soaked from my failed efforts with the holy water, so once I got him sitting on the edge of the bed, I stripped it off him. I couldn’t help noticing his muscular chest, smooth except for a patch of silky, blondish hair right in the middle between the flat copper disks of his nipples.

  I tried to remind myself that all the power in his big body was going to be multiplied a hundred-fold in a few hours when the virus had time to finish its work. And all of it was going to be focused on one thing—blood. But all my eyes wanted to see was the smooth tan expanse of his back and the powerful set of his shoulders.

  Stupid.

  He shivered helplessly, his still-damp skin breaking into chill bumps.

  “Here.” I threw a towel at him and he tried to catch it but his reflexes were shot. The towel fell at his feet on the pale blue carpet and he looked at it helplessly.

  Damn. I really shouldn’t be doing this. I was getting too involved.

  I stooped and picked up the towel, drying him briskly until he stopped shivering.

  “Thanks.” He looked up at me and I could tell it wouldn’t be long. His eyelids were fluttering again like a little kid’s fighting sleep. He had surprisingly long eyelashes for a man.

  I made myself stop noticing.

  “Thank me later,” I said, and pushed his unwounded shoulder gently so that he felt back onto the bed in a boneless heap.

  Then I went to get my stakes.

  Chapter Three

  It’s best to use weapons with a high silver content when dealing with vamps. I know all the legends say that silver is only for werewolves but that simply isn’t true. Silver is a pure metal because if its molecular structure so it resists and repels evil.

  Gold would be even better but it’s a hell of a lot more expensive and besides, it’s too soft to work with very well. So my set of long, slender stakes had a high silver content.

  I tried to keep track of the stakes since they weren’t cheap to replace, even though I wasn’t the one footing the bill. My boss, The Monsignor, always takes care of what he calls, ‘incidental expenses,’ but I don’t believe in being wasteful.

  That was a lesson Uncle Harry taught me early on. To quote him—

  “If you leave your last stake in a vamp, you’ll be sure to meet another in a minute and then you’re up blood creek without a silver paddle.”

  Uncle Harry was a great guy and I still missed the hell out of him.

  The stakes were long and thin and very sharp and pointed at one end. The other end was flat—the better to pound them in. Or in a pinch if you were strong enough you could just use the heel of your palm on the flat end to shove between the ribs and into the heart.

  I don’t recommend that method unless you’re very strong or the vamp is very cooperative—and a vamp that cooperates in its own staking is not something you’re likely to find.

  I took my short handled durable mallet with a five pound slug for a head out of the customized leather bag that held the stakes and brought it into the spare bedroom as well.

  I was glad to see my grip on the mallet was firm—the lydocaine was finally wearing off.

  Michael Moran was laid out on the bed like a v
isual feast. His long eyelashes fluttered on his flushed cheeks which were adorably scruffy with stubble. His muscular chest was still rising and falling but very slowly. I estimated that he was taking a breath every two minutes or so and soon even that would stop.

  He was going to be a vampire all right—a really hot one but still a vamp.

  Of course, there’s no law that says all vamps have to be skuzzy. In fact, a lot of them are gorgeous in a pale, anorexic, heroine-chic model kind of way.

  But the best looking guy in the world isn’t worth your immortal soul and every drop of blood in your body—or so I was taught to believe.

  I took the stake in one hand and the mallet in the other and crawled onto the bed. He was completely out now—there would never be a better opportunity.

  I straddled his narrow muscular hips and leaned over him, setting the sharp point of the stake in the space between his sixth and seventh ribs directly to the left of the sternum. Just as I had been taught.

  I raised the mallet over the flat end of the stake, ready to pound it into his heart like a God-awful big nail.

  And then his eyes fluttered open.

  I got ready for a fight but he only looked at me. His eyes weren’t glowing yet like a full vampire’s will in the dark, but as they flicked up to me and down at the stake, he seemed to understand what was going on.

  “Please.” His voice was little more than a sigh. I was amazed that he was able to say anything at all. That he was even conscious. I’d never heard of a vamp that could come out of the deep sleep in response to outside stimulus. His eyes seemed to be pleading with me, begging for another chance.

  My mallet hovered over his heart. If he was awake, he was dangerous, I argued with myself. The best thing to do was to pound the stake in now—it was either that or do it later when he’d be putting up a hell of a lot more of a fight. And I didn’t need two vamp bites in one night either.

  But still, I couldn’t quite do it.

  I hovered over him, frozen in position, my emotions warring with my better judgment.