Chapter 4 - Death

“Drake?” Jenna asked as she opened the door. Her surprise was evident because she didn’t think she would ever see him again. Part of her, however, was glad she’d been wrong about that. “What...uh...what are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer her right away. He looked at her, his eyes filled with a weird hunger. His gaze was deep, and it made Jenna a little uncomfortable. But then his eyes suddenly cleared, and he looked normal again. He rubbed the back of his neck, managing to look sheepish and embarrassed.

“I’ve had some time to think.” He watched for her reaction. There was a touch of relief in her eyes and Drake relaxed a little. “Can I come in? I just want to talk.”

“Of course. Come in.” She moved aside as Drake slid past her. She motioned to a hallway past the large foyer. “Down there. First door on the left. We can talk there.”

Drake nodded his head and flashed a small smile at her. He walked down the hall with Jenna following behind him. He opened the door to the room she directed him to and stepped inside. It was a small study with comfortable chairs, a lot of mahogany colored wood, and several art pieces showcasing the medieval period.

“Have a seat,” Jenna said. She shut the door behind her, glancing at her father’s bedroom before she did. He was still recovering from what the goddess, Bendis, had done to him. She was worried about him, but she was happy he was doing better at least.

She turned around and took a seat across from Drake. She looked at his eyes and noticed for the first time that there were flecks of silver color in their brown depths.

“What did you want to talk about?” she asked.

Drake didn’t answer right away. His eyes took on a hard glint, as if he were remembering something unpleasant. After a few seconds, he came back to himself and looked her in the eyes.

“I thought about what you and your father said. About the offer he made.” He paused suddenly and looked away. Whatever he had to say was apparently really hard for him to get out.

Jenna thought about prodding him, about trying to make it easier for him, but instinct told her it would only make things worse. She forced herself to be quiet and just listen, which was a difficult feat for her. She was, above all else, very opinionated and outspoken. In some instances, it wasn’t a very useful character trait to have. So, she sat there and patiently waited for him to continue, although she hoped he came back to tell her he changed his mind.

“I think maybe I was wrong. Humanity does need protection. I want to join the knights.” He finished in a rush as if saying the words faster would make them easier to spit out.

Jenna worked hard to reign in her joy. She didn’t want to give Drake any reason, however small, to change his mind. It was the reason why she didn’t want to ask her next question, but her curiosity got hold of her and wouldn’t let go. She hesitated at first; still afraid he would change his mind, but then blurted it out.

“What changed your mind?” she asked. She wasn’t willing to admit it, but she was hoping that she was part of the reason.

He glanced up, the bright silver flecks in his eyes catching the light and making them shine brighter. Jenna looked at them as if mesmerized, but Drake didn’t seem to notice. He let out a breath and started recounting everything that happened to him since he stormed out of the Bishop apartment a couple nights ago. He told her about seeing Gerard and then going to the cemetery. Then he told her about the wendigos attacking and kidnapping him. He didn’t go into details, but he told her they tortured him. He left out the real details of how he escaped, Bendis, and everything that happened with her. He would never want to hurt Jenna, but he also knew that he wouldn’t have a choice if she found out what he became. She would try to kill him. It was her nature.

“I spent the entire night in a grungy den as monsters tortured me. I knew I was going to die. I knew it and the only thing I could think about was the millions of other people that have or would die the same way. I couldn’t accept that. I decided that if fate gave me the opportunity, then I would come back here and join. Fate stepped in and so here I am,” Drake explained.

He could tell she accepted everything he’d just said without pause. He’d never been an able liar and people seemed to see right through him no matter how hard he tried, Lucy especially. He knew Jenna would too. So, he told her the absolute truth and just omitted certain details. He fully intended to protect humanity from the monsters hiding in the darkness, including himself, but first he would rid the world of the kind that took Lucy from him.

The werewolves.

“Are you okay?” He heard Jenna ask.

Drake’s eyes seemed to clear, and he looked at her.

“Yes. Sorry. Flashbacks are never fun,” he explained. Again, not lying. Talking about what the wendigos did to him drudged up memories…which was like being tortured all over again.

“If they did all that to you, then how are you here right now? How are you walking around? You should have so many wounds you’d either be dead or barely conscious.” She came over to him and knelt down so she could look at him.

There was genuine care and worry on her face, not suspicion. For whatever reason, Drake realized this woman felt something for him. What she presented to the outside world and what was really there were so different, Drake marveled at it. To everyone else, she was a bubbly party girl that cared about nothing but getting her face and name in the papers. She was a socialite and proud of it. To him and a handful of others, she was a hard, deadly warrior that was willing to put herself in harm’s way to protect others. A glimmer of himself, his old self, relished the thought of being close to her. It thrilled him that such a beautiful woman even saw him in the first place.

Drake rose and walked over to a bookshelf. He pretended to examine the titles, just so he could keep his face hidden from her. His next words would be nothing but pure lies, and he wasn’t convinced he could fool her. He needed to, otherwise everything else would collapse and his goals would be compromised.

“The wendigos...they…,” he hesitated, and let his mind envision what he was about to tell her. His body shuddered at the fake memories, helping to sell the lie. “They fed me their blood after every...feeding, for lack of a better term. It healed my wounds. All of them. But I don’t think I’ll ever get the taste out of my mouth. I don’t know how many times they did this. I lost count.” Bendis supplied the lie of course, but it was according to her, grounded in reality. Wendigo blood did cure wounds and injuries almost instantly.

He heard Jenna gasp in shock when he said that.

“I guess it was only a day or two, but to me, it felt like years.” His voice gained a hard, angry edge as he remembered them pulling strips of his flesh off and stuffing them down their throats. “I kept trying to fight back, but they were stronger than me. I couldn’t do anything. It made what happened in the war seem like amateur hour. They know how to break humans.”

“They didn’t break you. They made you stronger,” Jenna reassured him.

Drake knew differently. He could still remember how he screamed.

“Thanks for that. I like to think so too,” he went on, his back still turned to hers. “The last time they fed off me, and then healed me, I managed to get loose. I waited for them all to go into this food-induced coma and found an old bone. It was half of a broken femur, I think. Anyway, it was also really sharp. I was able to use it to kill them. I jammed the damn thing into each one’s eye as far as it would go. Then I ran like hell. I took some new clothes out of a store, got cleaned up and then came here. I figured after all that shit I just went through, maybe someone was trying to tell me something.”

He laughed at that last bit as his eyes travelled to the ceiling.

“Why’d the wendigos target you?” Jenna asked. “How’d they know to find you?”

“They came after me because of the one we killed,” he explained.

“They tracked me and then they took me. I think they caught my scent from the alley where it died.”

Jenna walked over to Drake and put a hand on his shoulder. She could feel nothing but smooth, hard muscle underneath his shirt. She let it linger there longer than she’d intended to, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“I’m glad you’re okay, and I’m sorry that you had to go through that. I should’ve known that a nest was close. I should’ve protected you.” Jenna hated herself for leaving Drake so vulnerable. “When my dad recovers, I’ll let him know that you changed your mind. I’m sure we can speed up the induction process. For now, you can stay here. There’s plenty of room.”

“I don’t want to put you guys out,” Drake quickly told her. “I can find a shelter or something to sleep at for tonight and be back in the morning.”

“You won’t. Not after what you went through,” Jenna said, her voice unrelenting.

She grabbed his hand and together they went back into the hall. They kept walking and took a left at its end, stepping into a larger room. On the opposite side was another hallway. They went down it and came to a door. Jenna opened it and they went inside to the same bedroom he’d been in before. He sat at the foot of the enormous bed and just watched Jenna as she stood at the door.

“Bathroom’s through there, as you know. Extra blankets are in the closet. If you need anything, let me know. You’re not alone anymore, Drake,” Jenna said.

“Thanks, for everything,” he replied. He lay down and wished that things were different. That he could go back to believing monsters didn’t exist. “Can you stay with me for a little bit? I have some questions.”

Jenna smiled at him radiantly, and sat down in a big, padded chair next to the bed.

“Ask away,” she replied, enthusiastically. “It’s good to have questions. That’s only natural.”

“The two people you left me with in the alley, they’re werewolves, right?” he asked.

“They are. Kendra is the alpha, or leader. The other one is Conor Dewar.” Drake didn’t miss the slight note of hate to her voice when she mentioned Conor’s name. For whatever reason, she didn’t like the guy and Drake felt his feelings for her intensify a bit. “We’ve always had an uneasy alliance with the werewolves. They’re the most human of the monsters out there. Or at least, a lot of them are. The ones driven by blood hunger are no better than wild animals.”

“Blood hunger?” Drake asked, his voice hitching a little as flashes of Lucy falling to Conor ran through his mind.

“They are, despite being mostly human, still very much animalistic. It’s part of their dual nature. When the blood hunger takes over, the human part is basically wiped away by the need to hunt and kill. It turns into a kind of high for them, like a drug. They call it the blood hunger. Anyways, the ones that let that part take over are dangerous killers. They’re monsters,” Jenna told him.

“And Conor? Did he ever let that part take over? I noticed that you didn’t care for him that much so I figured that might be the reason.” He looked at Jenna, the silver in his eyes expanding little by little. Jenna was looking down at her hands, not paying attention to what was happening with his eyes.

“He did, but that was a long time ago. The knights tried to track him down, but when we got close, he took refuge with the Bane Pack. Merle Bane, Kendra’s father, took him back and due to the treaty, he was out of our reach. Merle protected him. When he turned up again, he was with Kendra and there was nothing I could do.” Her fists clenched, the knuckles turning white. “So far, he hasn’t stepped out of line.”

She looked up at him suddenly, noticing for the first time that his eyes were almost completely silver. She sucked in a breath of confusion before she jumped up and snatched a silver sword hanging on the wall disguised as a decoration.

Drake almost wasn’t sure what was happening at first. What he did know, however, was that something had given him away. He blurred off the bed and had a hand wrapped around Jenna’s throat half a second later. He squeezed hard enough for her to start choking, but not hard enough to actually kill her. Then he yanked her to him so fast the sword dropped from her hand and clattered to the ground. Her fingers scrambled uselessly against his iron grip.

Drake’s eyes flashed with bright, silver light. The light enveloped Jenna and stunned her. Her pupils dilated hugely. Her mouth went slack and unmoving. Her mind was, for that short period, gone.

Drake enthralled her.

“I want to know everything there is to know about Conor Dewar,” Drake said. The vampiric part of him took control. It knew how to enslave her mind and so he went with it. “I want to know his habits. I want to know his likes and dislikes…” He paused, making sure she understood the next part. “Most of all, I want to know how to hurt him.”

She nodded her head, the movement oddly mechanical, like she was a robot faking human motions. Drake let go of her neck and sat her down on the couch. By that time, she was already spouting a fountain of knowledge on the subject of Conor Dewar.

And Drake listened to every word.

Conor had been born on October 11, 1824 in the Scottish Highlands. Merle Bane and the pack had taken up residence there for over fifty years, giving the new generation of werewolf pups relative seclusion where they could grow and mature without humans trying to wipe them out. Over the course of the next 178 years, the Bane Pack rambled across the countryside fighting to protect humanity. Eventually, they found their way to the America’s where they settled in the Ohio Valley and helped establish Lycaon City. For whatever reason, Conor grew to resent and hate his pack for protecting people. For reasons he won’t admit to anyone, he started hating humans. No one knew for sure why, or what happened to him to make him feel that way, but Jenna told Drake it probably had something to do with the insecurities and humiliations of being half-human. Things didn’t escalate until the mid-1970’s however, right after a drunken fight with a couple of humans caused his wolf to flare up and murder all of them. Conor finally gave in to the blood hunger and spent the next thirty or so years as a monster, killing indiscriminately. And then, just as easily as he’d turned, Conor came back to himself. It happened a little over three years ago. He fought long and hard to rid himself of the blood hunger, but he’d done it. Kendra was convinced he wasn’t a monster anymore. Jenna never really believed it.

Once a monster, always a monster.

“That’s everything I know,” she finished, her voice stilted. Monotonous. “What else do you need?”

Drake sat there, thinking back on everything he knew. Conor had only recently sworn off killing, which meant that he was in full blown monster mode four years ago when Lucy was killed.

Bendis’ story, at least, checked out.

“You know nothing of what I am. To you I’m just human. You’ll forget our conversation tonight and continue with my induction into the Order. Everything will be fine,” Drake whispered to Jenna, her pupils still round and huge. He leaned in and whispered another set of instructions to her; ones that he thought might prove helpful at some point.

“Do you understand everything? Do you know what you need to do?” he asked her, sitting back.

Jenna nodded her head. She blinked her eyes, confused for a moment. She put a hand up to her head, as if it were dizzy.

“Sorry about that. What was I saying?” Jenna asked him.

Drake smiled. He went over to her and gently pulled her up from the chair.

“You were telling me how tired you were. Said you were gonna get some sleep,” he reminded her.

“Okay, well yell for me if you need something,” she said, smiling back at him. She walked out the door and left Drake alone.

He kept his ear tuned to the departing Jenna. He listened and the sounds around him came through super clearly. He didn’t detect any trace of a human heart beating. He shut the door and sat on the edge of the bed. Thoughts of Lucy flew through his mind. He wished she were still with him. He wished he could hold her one more time.

He closed his eyes and saw her face. It flitted across his mind’s eye, haunting and as ethereal as smoke.

Then his anger erupted like an exploding volcano as Lucy’s death once again played out in his head with hellish detail. It was a worse torture than anything the wendigos had done to him.

I will rip your throat out, Conor, he promised himself. Then he stretched out on the bed and stared at the ceiling, schemes and plots flying through his thoughts as his plans for revenge solidified into something more concrete.

Deanna looked at Bendis. The goddess sat calmly on the couch picking at a bowl of grapes. There was a smug smile on her face as she popped one into her mouth. Next to her feet was the body of the girl Drake had killed. Her flesh was pale, and her fingertips had turned blue.

“Drake will be an excellent candidate to help me attain my goals.” The goddess was clearly pleased with herself.

Deanna strolled across the room and grabbed a bottle of bourbon off a counter. She didn’t bother with a cup. Instead, she spun the cap off and gulped it down. She stared at the dead girl for a long time, shuddering slightly as she remembered the way Drake drained every ounce of blood from her. It wasn’t something she would easily forget although she wished she would. She might be a cold-blooded killer but what Drake was…it was…was unnatural.

Deanna suddenly jerked in fear when the dead girl abruptly started moving. First her arms, then her legs, and finally her head. A second later, she was pushing herself to her feet. Her entire eyes were blood red and long, sharp fangs protruded from her mouth. Deanna was expecting the girl to return to life, but it still surprised her when it happened.

Gwen looked around in sharp jerks. Her lips were peeled back from her teeth. She hissed, the primal sound filling the hotel suite and setting Deanna’s nerves on edge.

“Wonderful, wonderful. She is a thing of beauty, is she not?” Bendis asked, cheerily. She reached down and lifted Gwen’s face up with her right hand, forcing the vamp girl to look at the goddess.

“Who is your maker?” she asked.

The girl looked confused for a minute. Her eyes went out of focus. Then they started to clear, and resolve replaced her confusion.

“D-drake Har-harper,” she rasped with a dry, hoarse voice.

“Who do you serve?” Bendis asked again.

Without hesitation, the girl answered.

“Drake Harper.”

“Well done,” Bendis told her with a cold, pleased smile. Then she got up. She walked over to Deanna with an air of confidence and poise. “Are you hungry, my beautiful child?”

“Hungry,” Gwen echoed.

“And where do you plan on getting blood for the little parasite,” Deanna asked, taking another swig from her bottle. More than half the bourbon was gone.

“You needn’t worry about that, Deanna. In fact, you needn’t worry about anything very soon,” Bendis said.

Gwen was looking between the two anxiously.

Deanna looked at Bendis and didn’t like what she saw lurking in the ancient goddess’ eyes. She lifted the bottle to her mouth and took a nervous swig. Just as she was putting it back on the bar, a huge surge of pain ripped through her left hand. The bourbon dropped to the ground and burst, spilling liquor all over the thick carpet and soaking it. The pain intensified even more. She gasped loudly as she dropped to her knees, holding her palm out in front of her. The alpha mark glistened bright red in the light. It flared brightly once and then started smoking. White grey tendrils drifted toward the ceiling and Deanna’s hand started to wither and decay. The flesh darkened and turned black as droplets of blood oozed to the surface.

“What’s happening to me?” Deanna screamed. The blood coming out of her hand fell to the carpet and mixed with the bourbon she’d already spilled.

The second Gwen smelled the blood, she went insane with hunger. Her head snapped to Deanna, the red in her eyes deepening. She hissed again and sped forward.

Bendis held up a hand and the vamp girl stopped in her tracks. She turned back to Deanna with a hideously cruel look on her face.

“I have two pieces of good news for you. The first of which is that your pain will end soon. You see, the pack that I carefully procured for you has been ripped away. I’m sure you felt it when it happened. I did. I confess, I don’t know how they were taken from you since you are still alive but that is no longer your worry,” Bendis said, her voice emotionless. She softly stroked the woman’s blonde hair, almost like she was petting her. Then her face went cold. She abruptly plunged her other hand inside Deanna’s chest. “The second bit of news is that the only reason I saved you from Alrich was to provide a sacrifice for my delicious vampires.” She yanked out the woman’s heart and dropped it on the floor as Deanna fell forward in front of her. “In case you still don’t understand, let me put it to you another way. You’re fired.”

Bendis stood up and watched as the blood covering her hand slowly seeped into her skin and disappeared. Her eyes fluttered as its power entwined and mingled with her own.

“I’m sorry. I guess that last part was only good news for me.” She laughed cruelly. She looked at Gwen and gestured to Deanna’s still bleeding corpse. “Feed and then tend to your master.”

Gwen didn’t need any encouragement. She attacked Deanna, her fangs sinking into the flesh of her neck. She slurped the blood down greedily until nothing was left. Then she got slowly to her feet, wiping the blood off her face with her shirt.

The red to her eyes faded and she sped out the door.

Bendis watched her leave, a surge of excitement filling her as everything started coming together.

Kendra looked at the clock on the wall in exasperation. It was Wednesday and her mind was definitely not on work. All she could think about was what happened a week ago. The backlash of so many people dying was devastating. It caused mass panic and talk of terrorists and deadly gases, poisons, biological weapons, and other, increasingly outrageous threats was all over the news. The whole building had been shut down and men in hazmat suits and men that were clearly government agents went through it with a fine-tooth comb. The resulting conclusion was inconclusive, but the news reported there were no airborne threats or any other discernible causes for all the deaths.

Eventually, they deemed the site safe and allowed people to return to work.

When Kendra walked up that morning, there were dozens and dozens of flowers, white crosses, stuffed animals, pictures of the dead, and more as people honored their loved ones. But to Kendra, all it did was remind her of her failure. Their lives had been in her hands and she let them down. It was her fault they were all dead.

The whole day had been torture as she tried to concentrate on work to get her mind off the gnawing guilt. Bishop Media, however, had lost four people in Bendis’ insane attack. Co-workers were sad and grieving everywhere she looked so she spent most of the day locked in her office. The only time she came out was for a meeting with her firm’s longest and most lucrative client but the notable absence of Elijah there was like a thorn in her heart. He was finally getting better, but he was still recovering. The last time she spoke to Jenna, she said Elijah would be back to his old self in a day or two. But she couldn’t say the same for all the innocent humans that Bendis simply erased, without compassion or mercy but with cruel, malicious vindictiveness.

The door to her office opened. She looked up, her face a wreck because of the complex emotions running through her.

“Hi, Kendra,” Tyler Dawson said. He looked at her with the same sadness she saw in everyone else’s eyes. Ever since their confrontation last year, Tyler had shaped up into a much better version of himself. On at least two different occasions, he thanked her for showing him what kind of an ass he really was. “We all wanted to know if you were okay. You’ve barely been out of your office.”

“I’m fine,” she replied halfheartedly. But she could tell he wasn’t buying it. Thankfully he didn’t press her.

“Ok. Well I’m here if you need to talk,” he said and then left, leaving her to her silence.

She got up and went to the window behind her desk. Her eyes gazed over the sprawling city, but she didn’t take anything in. The only thing her mind let her see was the moment Bendis killed dozens of humans for no other reason than to hurt her. The worst part was that there’d been nothing she could do to stop it. All she just stood there, utterly powerless.

She cried softly to herself, feeling miserable and defeated.

How can she take on a goddess? How could she hope to win against someone that could kill so effortlessly?

She didn’t know, but she sure as hell was going to find out.

Her tears dried up and guilt was replaced with resolve and anger. She went to her computer and got back to work, hoping to drown herself in doing her job until it was time to leave. She focused on putting together a brand identity for an emerging company, moved onto a brochure, then a T-shirt design, and finally a handful of web ads. A couple hours later, she saved her work on her latest project, packed up her things, and headed home.

Outside, she waited for a taxi. She forced herself to look at the memorials in front of her building. She wanted it to serve as a reminder of the consequences of her failure. They died because of her but she wouldn’t let their deaths go unpunished.

A car honked at her and she turned around. A taxi sat there, and the driver was looking very impatient. Kendra glanced one last time at the memorials and then got in. Sometime later, it pulled up alongside her apartment building and stopped. Kendra got out some cash and handed it to the driver. Then she grabbed her purse, opened the door, and stepped onto the sidewalk.

“Rough day?” Felix asked as she walked up. He tried for a light, joking tone but it was halfhearted. “Me too.”

“Any news on where she’s at?” Kendra asked, feeling the heat of the sun baking on the back of her neck.

“No luck. She’s a goddess, Kendra. She has power beyond anything I’ve ever come across before. She’s using it now to block my spells. I can’t find her, and the other mages are coming up with squat too.”

Kendra could see the frustration in Felix’s eyes. She could tell he wanted some payback for what happened too.

“Don’t worry. We’ll find her. If we can’t, then I’m sure she’ll find me. This whole thing, all of it, is because she wants revenge against my family. Merle’s dead. Merrick is who knows where trying to fight the urge to kill anything that breathes. I’m the lone target and to top things off, she’s failed to kill me or turn me into a monster at least three times now, so she’s extra pissed.”

She thought about everything that happened last fall. She still saw Merle in her nightmares, trying to cling to life only to have it ripped away from him by a cruel knife his own daughter wielded. That might not have been what really happened, but her mind didn’t want her to get off easy apparently. It wanted to keep torturing her with visions of her father’s death.

And that was just the most traumatic event. There was still the fact that her brother had tried to kill her. A sadistic bitch had turned traitor while a fire mage had tried to force himself into her mind so he could control her. Her best friend and her best friend’s father were knights on a mission to kill monsters and her doorman could control the wind and sling spells like a damn Dungeons & Dragons game turned real. Her boyfriend was a werewolf. A goddess was trying to destroy her. And on top of all that, she had to watch as dozens of innocent people were murdered right in front of her.

Overwhelming didn’t begin to cover what her life had become. She was determined to keep fighting but it was hard because she wasn’t sure how to do that. Her mind was furiously working to provide a solution, but it kept coming up empty.

“Just be careful. She already got to you once. She can, and will, do it again,” Felix cautioned.

Kendra nodded her head and slipped inside. She headed to the elevators and spent the ride up to her floor in solitude. The only thing she had for company were her thoughts and those weren’t exactly fun to be alone with.

The elevator stopped and the doors opened. She walked down to her door. Her eyes slid past the wall right across from it. The hole was long gone but not the memory of her tossing Marco into it. Soon after he recovered, he’d packed his apartment up and moved back to Italy. Or so she heard.

She opened her door and was immediately assaulted by an assortment of different, enticing scents. She smelled seasonings, herb-roasted chicken, and a heavy, rich cheese sauce. She even caught the mouthwatering scent of fresh strawberries and whipped cream. She smelled the slight, smoky aroma of candles before she saw them lit up on the table. Plates and silverware for two were arranged neatly in front of them.

Conor was in the kitchenette tending to a pot of boiling pasta. Next to it was a frying pan with sizzling chicken and a pot bubbling with the cheese sauce. On the bar attached to the kitchen were two plates with strawberry shortcakes on them.

Her depression suddenly lifted, and she cried softly as pure happiness filled her. Her life had gotten so crazy and Conor was always there to help her through it. He was solid and unwavering. He knew how to lift her up even when she was feeling her worst. Like today. She felt so lucky that he was hers and she was his.

He turned around when he heard her there, a small smile on his face that quickly changed to a look of concern when he saw her crying. He put down his cooking utensils and went to her, folding her up in his big arms and hugging her close.

“Hey, it’s okay,” he said, his voice soothing.

Kendra pulled away from him and kissed him passionately, her hand intertwining with the hair at the nape of his neck. Her other hand rested on his chest and she could feel his heart beating rapidly.

He gripped her around the waist, his hands sliding up under her shirt. He felt her smooth skin and his fingers dug deeper into her back.

Kendra kissed along his jaw and up to his ear.

“I love you,” she whispered to him.

He looked her in the eyes, leaning his forehead on hers.

“I love you, too,” he told her, his eyes serious and full of raw emotion. “Always and forever, babe.”

Then he grabbed her butt and lifted her into the air. He carried her to the stove and turned everything on low. Then he walked with her to the bedroom and gently laid her on the bed.

“I would love nothing better than to lay here and go to sleep on you,” Kendra said an hour later, her head on Connor’s chest. “But I can still smell the food and I am starving.”

Conor laughed, kissed her, and got out of bed. He went to the kitchen and started heating up the food he’d left sitting out. The strawberry shortcakes were ruined so he tossed them in the trash, but luckily, he had enough stuff leftover to make two more.

He grabbed the pasta, the chicken, and the sauce and made them both a plate. Then he put them on a tray and brought them into Kendra’s room.

He bowed dramatically.

“Your dinner is served, Madame,” he told her, smiling while he did.

“Thank you, garcon,” Kendra replied. She threw the covers aside and Conor slid next to her in the bed and handed her the plate of food.

They both ate in silence for a few moments. Kendra didn’t feel awkward though. She felt comfortable and enjoyed the quiet moment with him.

“I know I tell you this a lot but what happened wasn’t your fault,” Conor said as he put a fork-full of pasta and chicken into his mouth.

He watched her reaction as he chewed and saw the drawn, pensive look come over her face. He knew Kendra well. He knew she was blaming herself for what happened to all those people, even though she wasn’t at fault. He could see how the guilt weighed on her. And he could see her trying to figure out what she could’ve done differently to save their lives.

“I can’t stop thinking about it, even though I know I did everything I could. I can’t stop seeing their faces. They died without even knowing what was going on. They didn’t stand a chance. And that makes me so mad. It’s cruel. And vicious. And all I can wonder is what will she do next? What’s her encore to that performance?” Kendra asked, frustrated and sad again.

She swirled her fork through her food and took a bite, but she didn’t feel hungry anymore. She just felt empty and hollow.

“It’s hard. I understand that. You think you failed. You think you could’ve done something to change things. It was horrible what happened, but the sad truth is we did everything we could, and it just wasn’t enough. You didn’t fail them. Failing them would’ve been to not try at all. To not fight. That’s all we can do,” Conor explained. He grabbed hold of her hand and squeezed it gently. “We didn’t know who was pulling the strings lately. First Jonah, then Merrick, and finally Deanna. Bendis was able to surprise us. She used that ruthlessly to her advantage, but that’s gone. We know she’s out there and we aren’t going to stop until she’s dead or as close to it as we can get her.”

He gently turned her head until she was looking him in the eyes.

“Do you believe that?” he asked.

Kendra didn’t feel so convinced. Not at first anyway. The conviction Conor spoke with however, was infectious and she couldn’t help but share in it. She clenched her jaw and nodded her head, her eyes deadly serious.

“How do we kill a goddess?” Kendra asked. “How do we even hurt her?”

“I think the question we need to figure out is why can’t she directly hurt you? If we can figure that out maybe, we can find a way to kill her. Shouldn’t be that hard.” He smiled broadly and winked at her.

Kendra couldn’t help but laugh at his goofiness, even though she was still wracked by guilt, sadness, stress, and about a hundred other things. She grabbed his face and kissed him.

“Thank you for that. I really needed it,” she said as she pulled away.

“I know you did,” he replied. He hugged her closer to him, his eyes staring at the ceiling. His goal this evening was to calm Kendra down and get her to relax. It was to help her deal with the fact that she had an ancient goddess as an enemy. He was glad that he accomplished that goal but deep down he wasn’t relaxed or calm.

Deep down, he was scared.

They were just starting to fall asleep when Kendra’s phone rang. She grabbed it off her nightstand and looked at the caller ID.

“It’s your dad,” she mouthed to Conor as she answered it.

“Hello?”

“You need to get here,” Ian said, his voice full of urgency.

“Now.”

He hung up without saying another word, leaving a nervous, frightful feeling in the pit of Kendra’s stomach.

“What is it?” Conor asked.

“I don’t know,” she answered, getting out of bed and hurriedly throwing some clothes on. “But it sounds important.”

Conor got out of bed too and dressed while Kendra ran into the bathroom and brushed her hair.

Ten minutes later, they were down in the parking garage underneath the apartment building, getting into Conor’s Jeep.

They drove on Third Street and turned right on West Drex Den Road. A few miles later, Conor took the ramp for Route 369, which would lead them out of the city to the rural countryside and eventually the mansion.

They drove in silence the whole way there. There was an air of anxiousness and both of them were wondering what horrible thing was happening now. The anticipation rose to new levels as they drove up to the gate. Conor put in the access code and drove the car through the still opening gates, speeding down the long drive until they reached the front of the mansion.

When the Jeep came to a stop, Kendra threw open the door and rushed out. She ran to the mansion’s front doors and pushed them open, expecting to see a scene out of a horror movie. She prepared herself for all the blood and gore smeared over the walls. Or her wolves lying in pools of their own blood, wounded and dying. What she didn’t expect was to open the door and find a group of people kneeling on the floor in the foyer with their hands behind their heads.

Ian, Grady Colmbs, Anya Kors, Morgan Ries, Parker Newsome, Arthur Pendleton, and Deirdre were guarding them all in their wolf forms. The rest of the pack stood as humans, watching silently. Deirdre was snarling at the group with her fangs out and her eyes flashing with hot, golden light.

Kendra’s focus shifted away from her pack to the group huddled on the ground. She recognized them instantly.

“What’s going on?” she asked, not even trying to contain her anger. She was looking at Ian.

A big grey wolf suddenly broke away from the group and headed down a hallway. A few seconds later, Ian came out dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans.

Kendra looked at him, expecting an answer.

“They showed up here about an hour ago,” he said.

Conor came through the door at that moment and stopped in his tracks. His eyes widened in shock when he saw the group of people and his wolf features sprang onto his face and body.

Kendra held out an arm and stopped him from attacking.

“Wait!” she yelled.

Conor came to a standstill with his body still poised and ready to attack. He wanted nothing more than to rip into the people still kneeling on the ground, but Kendra’s order stopped him cold.

“They’re here to try and kill us again,” Conor warned.

He looked at the group with pure murder in his eyes. And for good reason. The group huddled on the floor were members of the same pack that attacked Kendra, Conor, Deirdre, Jenna and Felix at the cafeteria. The same pack that Deanna controlled.

“All of you! Just wait,” Kendra yelled, more forcefully. She didn’t want more people getting hurt, especially her own. She wanted to get to the bottom of why they were at the mansion. Their blood hunger had been wiped clean from their minds.

She made sure of that. They were clearly not showing any aggressive tendencies towards her pack. They were being completely submissive.

Something else was going on.

Kendra picked out one of the rival pack members and addressed him. He was stocky, well-built, with dark skin and a strip of black-colored hair going down the middle of his head. The rest was shaved down to the skull. Two tattoos covered the skin on either side of his Mohawk. They were both the exact same thing, a raven with its beak slightly open and a dark, beady eye glaring out at the world. His dark eyes stared at Kendra unblinkingly, but she found no malice there.

“What’s your name?” Kendra asked, stepping forward slightly. She leaned down a bit so they could be at eye level.

“Pope,” the man responded.

“Why did you come here, Pope?” Kendra asked. “You knew what could happen to you and the rest of your pack if you did. You attacked us. Tried to kill us.”

“We understood the risk,” Pope responded, his eyes never wavering from Kendra’s. “We didn’t have a choice.”

The other members of Pope’s pack all nodded their heads vigorously.

“Why is that?” Kendra asked him, curious.

“Because of our alpha,” he told her.

Kendra stood up and took a couple steps back from him.

“Deanna Shade sent you here?” she asked, uncomprehendingly.

Why would Deanna send her pack in here to get slaughtered?

“No,” Pope told her. “Not Deanna. She’s not our alpha anymore.”

“Then who is?” Conor blurted out.

Pope didn’t say anything at first. He looked apprehensive, as if the truth would be the same thing as signing his own death warrant.

“Out with it,” Ian urged. “Quit wasting our time.”

“She is,” Pope blurted, his dark eyes jerking toward Kendra with intense, uncomfortable steadiness.

Drake melted into the shadows of a building, his head pounding and his heart racing. He felt like every nerve and cell in his body had been lit on fire and then electrocuted. His eyes felt like they were popping out of his head. Everything was a haze of noise.

He looked around blearily, but the only thing he saw were bustling people just getting off work, or going to a party, or heading out to do some shopping, or one of a million other...normal...things. He could hear the pounding of all their blood like an ocean in his ears and it made his need to feed burn through him. It was so bad he couldn’t think about anything but sinking his fangs into someone’s throat. He tried to block out that need. He tried fighting it, but it was useless. The pain in his body intensified until he could barely walk.

A young couple walked past the spot where Drake was hiding, and on pure instinct he called out to them. They turned around and before they knew what was going on, Drake enthralled both of them. They stood stock still, their eyes wide and staring openly.

“You will not scream or yell,” he whispered to them. “Follow me.”

They nodded their heads stiffly and walked after Drake as he disappeared down an alley. He could feel the two of them behind him. He could feel their blood rushing through their bodies. The boyfriend’s blood rate was slightly higher while the girlfriend’s was healthy and steady.

Drake got to a door that lead into an abandoned store and snapped the doorknob off. It swung open and Drake stumbled inside. The pain inside him heightened, nearly driving him to his knees. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t fight the imperative to feed. Even now, with his victims in tow, he tried to stop what was about to happen. But he couldn’t. The simple fact was, he was a monster now. He was a monster like the one that took Lucy from him. He might not want that, but it was the truth and it was too late to go back. Lately, he felt like his life was nothing but an unending series of “too lates.”

But not anymore.

He was done with all the crap the world kept slinging at him. He wasn’t going to sit by and let shit keep crushing him into the ground. Shit like finding out Conor Dewar killed his wife or the ugly truth of what it really meant to be a vampire. Lucy was gone and he made a deal with the devil to avenge her death. That’s what he focused on now and it was time to make good on that deal.

He turned on the girl first, really seeing her for the first time. She stood there as if waiting for him. Her black hair hung down and was draped over her right shoulder. She had a black leather jacket on over a hot pink shirt and a patterned skirt. There was a faint glint of metal at her naval and a lightning bolt tattoo just above her hip. Her brown eyes stared at nothing and her full, bow-like lips hung slightly open.

Drake’s eyes blazed silver. His fangs popped out and he pounced on her. He felt his fangs plunge into her as he drove her to the floor and her blood rushed into his mouth. He gulped it down and felt a lightning-like rush fill his entire body. It burned away the pain of his hunger so quickly he almost forgot it had been there to begin with.

When the girl was dead, and the last drops of her blood were sliding past his throat, he got up and turned on the man. The lower part of Drake’s face was covered in blood while his eyes still glowed silver and his fangs gleamed. Yet the man didn’t react. He just stood there as Drake stalked toward him like a jungle cat.

The man stared back through thick-framed glasses. His brown hair hung to his shoulders and he had a full beard. Like with the girl, the man didn’t bother trying to run away even though he just watched Drake murder his girlfriend. He stood by passively, waiting for his turn.

Drake jerked the man’s head to one side and clamped onto his neck, plunging his fangs deep into his carotid. He drank deeply, fully quenching the powerful need to feed now.

When he was done, Drake let his victim go and watched as the man simply collapsed to the ground. As he died, Drake could feel most of his humanity die with him. He stumbled back, feeling the effects of the blood in his system. He backed away from the two corpses until he hit a wall. He slid down it, silently weeping to himself.

He wondered what Lucy would think of him. He wondered if she would be scared.

But then he realized he would never know.

He would never know how the woman he loved would feel now. He would never know what she would’ve thought about his decision. Not anymore.

Lucy was dead.

The blood-fueled haze lasted for nearly forty minutes. Drake came to slowly, the fog around his mind suddenly lifting and leaving it clear. The burning pain of needing to feed was gone and he felt more like himself. It was a relief to be free of that pain, but he didn’t like what the cost was to survive.

He wasn’t a killer.

He wasn’t a monster.

He looked at the pair of bodies on the floor and an overwhelming need to escape filled him. He shot up and ran as fast as he could, wanting to get away. It didn’t matter where he went as long as he could just get away.

He wanted to be gone from that place so badly he wasn’t paying attention and his foot snagged the girl’s limp leg, sending him sprawling across the grimy floor. He slid a good five or six feet before he came to a stop. He laid there for a moment, trying to find the willpower to get back up.

A pair of feet stomped down in front of his face, one with a shoe on and the other with only a sock.

He backed away and looked up. Shock hit him as he recognized the person standing in front of him. The last time he’d seen her; he’d drained the blood out of her and left her for dead in a hotel room. Now, here she was, looking down on him. Her eyes held no anger or malice for what he’d done to her. They just peered questioningly at him, as if asking what he wanted her to do next.

She reached out a hand to him.

He stared at it hesitatingly before he grabbed it. She lifted him to his feet with ease and when he was standing, she bowed slightly to him.

“What would you have me do, sire,” she asked, her eyes burning with a desire to please him.

Drake had no idea what the hell was going on. There were literally no words that came to mind and part of him was still in shock at seeing the girl he’d killed up and walking around. Then things started falling into place and he realized that she’d been turned into a vampire too. By him. And because of that, she was bound to him. Bendis’ comments about building an army for himself finally made sense. She must’ve known what would happen to his victims when he was finished with them.

She knew they would turn.

Drake whipped his head around when the sudden sound of shuffling, stumbling footsteps filled the empty room. His two most recent victims were getting up now. Their eyes were a solid, blood-red and fangs protruded over their lower lips. Both wore identical looks of raw, agonizing pain. Their eyes were gritted shut and their jaws clenched down painfully. The girl was holding her stomach as if she were desperately hungry while the man was almost on his knees as wave after wave of pain hit him.

They stared at Drake, wanting his help.

He rushed over to the pair, yelling at the girl behind him to come with him. She followed obediently and together they managed to get the two newly created vampires over to the wall where they could sit up.

“It hurts,” the girl said. She looked at Drake with those blood red eyes and a shiver of revulsion slid down his spine. “Everything hurts. What’s happening to me?”

“They need to feed,” the girl said from behind him. She laid a gentle hand on Drake’s shoulder. “If they don’t feed soon, they’ll die.”

“Why do you know all this? Why didn’t Bendis tell me what she meant?” Drake whirled around and yelled.

“I was a page, remember? I know a lot of stuff about monsters. Admittedly, though, there haven’t been vampires for a couple centuries now. But trust me; they’ll die if you don’t get them some blood. The pain will only get worse,” she replied calmly.

Drake got up and paced around the room for a few seconds, trying to decide what to do. He wasn’t about to lure more innocent people into the old store just so they could get killed and come back as vamps too. He needed a different plan. One where nobody ended up dead.

“You have to hurry,” the girl implored. “They don’t have much time.”

Drake looked at the girl and the guy huddled on the ground. Sinister-looking red blotches were appearing on their skin and their veins were starting to turn a deep, almost-black, red.

“Okay, okay,” he yelled, a thought finally popping into his head. He looked at the girl. “Stay with them...”

He stopped so the girl could give her name.

“Gwendolyn. Most people just call me Gwen though.”

“All right, Gwen, stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Before she could even say anything, Drake blurred past her, out the door, and onto the streets. He was so fast he could move in public without anyone really noticing him. The most they saw was a faint blur or felt a gust of wind as he sped past. People stared around in confusion for a few seconds, but they had no idea a literal vampire just flew past them, so they would brush off the weirdness and go about their business.

Eight minutes later, he was standing outside the hospital.

He walked through the ER’s doors and into the lobby. Sick and injured people filled it, waiting for their turn to be seen by a doctor. Drake wasn’t prepared. The smell of blood was everywhere. He could hear beating hearts and rapid pulses. He could tell which targets were weak enough to catch without difficulty. He could even smell about three different types of what he could only assume was cancer.

He clenched his fists, fighting for control over his new impulses. It was hard and he almost slipped about four times before he was able to rein them in and focus on his real mission. He took a minute to just breathe and steady himself. When he felt ready, he continued. To the left of the lobby was a reception area with three nurses. He walked to it with all the confidence he could manage.

The nurses watched him come over, eyeing him coolly. Drake looked at each in turn and picked out the one he could take advantage of the easiest. She returned his gaze and smiled somewhat shyly. She played with the ends of her strawberry blonde hair.

“Hello,” he said, speaking only to the blonde girl.

“Hi there,” she responded. “What can I do for you?”

This caused a chorus of snickers and laughs to erupt from the two other nurses there.

“Shh,” the blonde hissed at them before turning back to Drake with a 100-watt smile. “Did you need help finding something, or someone?”

Another chorus of laughs, but this time the blonde ignored them. Drake turned to the two other women, his eyes locking onto theirs.

“Something just came up and you both need to attend to it. Go. Now.”

He watched their eyes go blank for a minute before they sharpened again. When they did, they both got up and started walking away.

“How did y-”

“Take me to the blood bank,” he ordered.

The girl’s eyes glazed over a bit.

“Of course, this way,” she replied brightly after her eyes went back to normal.

She grabbed Drake’s hand and guided him down to a door that opened onto a stairwell. They walked three flights up them and then went into a hallway that looked like every other hallway in the hospital. It was off white with tiled floors and doors everywhere you look. Some with buttons you had to press to be buzzed in by the nurses on the opposite side.

“My name’s Wendy, by the way. My friends call me Wen though. I guess you can call me that. What’s yours?” she asked, conversationally. “And why do you want me to take you to the blood bank?”

Drake let out a frustrated sigh as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. He grabbed hold of Wendy’s arm and turned her to face him. He locked eyes with her.

“Quit asking questions. Quit talking unless absolutely necessary,” he told her.

She nodded blankly in return as she resumed the march toward the hospital’s blood supply. It took a couple more minutes, but they finally came to a single, light brown door. Wendy turned on her heels and smiled happily.

“Here we are,” she said “But I can’t get you inside if that’s what you were thinking. I don’t have access.”

Drake smacked his forehead with the palm of his hand.

Of course you don’t, he thought to himself. I don’t have time for this.

He grabbed the door’s handle and ripped it off. After checking to make sure no one but a blank-eyed Wendy was watching, he jerked the door open and went inside. A few seconds later, he came back out with two blood bags. He looked around the ceiling and spotted glass eyes watching him. He captured Wendy’s attention one last time.

“Where’s security?”

“Ground floor in A wing. You take a left at the second hallway and it’s the fourth or fifth door on the right.” Wendy blinked slowly.

“Ok. Now forget what you saw and forget that I was ever here.”

Wendy nodded her head with jerky, stiff motions.

Drake flew down the hall, zipped down the stairs, and burst out onto the ground floor area. He could feel time slipping through his fingers and he hoped he wasn’t too late.

Before he left the hospital, he found security and had them erase the tapes that clearly showed him stealing the blood bags out of the hospital’s supply. When he was sure nothing could be traced back to him, he left the hospital and went back to the abandoned store at the edge of the city. He ran as fast as he could and burst through the rusted door in less time than it took to get to the hospital. He zoomed over to the group of three in the blink of an eye. He held out the blood to the new vampires and recoiled when he saw how bad they’d gotten.

The blotches and dark red veins were everywhere. Their blood-red eyes were tinged with black-red color on the edges and he could see blood running down the corners of their mouths, nostrils, and ears. He knew they didn’t have much longer.

His fangs popped out and he punctured both plastic bags and forced them at the two helpless, dying vampires. Their reaction to the life-saving blood was feral. They attacked them like beasts, gulping the blood down without pausing.

Drake took a step back and watched as the blotches and dark veins disappeared. The blood-red color to their eyes slowly faded as well. After they were done, they both got groggily to their feet. They wavered drunkenly for a couple minutes before they steadied themselves. It took some time before they were able to stand without looking like they would fall over.

Then they wiped the blood from their faces and stared at Drake, as if waiting for instructions. He took a deep, steadying breath. He spent a few seconds just collecting his thoughts and planning out his next moves.

He looked at the three people around him. They didn’t speak. They just stared, which, he thought to himself, was really creepy.

“What are your names?” he asked, finally.

“I’m Marcus Adams,” the guy said, holding out his hand. “Uhh...thanks for not letting me die.”

“Tori Li,” the girl with the lightning bolt tattoo responded. She still had her arms wrapped around her stomach and she looked like she was going to be sick. “What did you do to me?”

“You’re a vampire now,” Gwendolyn replied. “We’re all vampires. And we are all bonded to our sire.” She mock bowed to Drake. “We have to do what he says. Kind of goes with the territory.”

She smiled, but there was a bitter tone to it. She looked at the other two vampires and introduced herself to them.

“The name’s Gwen Pendleton, page for the Order of the Defaeco Knights. Or at least I used to be.” The bitterness in her voice went up a couple notches.

“Don’t put that on me,” Drake snarled at her. He could see her flinch as if he’d hit her instead of yelled at her. She immediately backed down and bowed her head. “I wasn’t the one that found you. Bendis brought you to me. You got issues, take them up with her.”

Gwen didn’t say anything else for a long time. Then she looked at Drake.

“Who is she?” she asked, her tone a great deal more subdued.

“I don’t know. She found me, healed me, and then turned me into...into this!” He gestured at his fangs. “I had no idea what she was planning.”

“What about us?” Tori said.

Drake looked at her and was glad to see she didn’t look sick anymore. In fact, she looked a lot better.

“Why’d you turn us then?”

“Who cares?” Marcus replied, smiling. He was popping his fangs in and out and really enjoying his new status as an undead monster. “I’m a freaking vampire.”

He bashed his fist into a cement pillar and took a huge chunk out of it.

“Awesome!” he yelled. “Vamp strength.”

Then he zipped around the little room, almost running into all of them before he stopped.

“Cool. Vamp speed!”

“Stop,” Drake commanded. “Keep it up and I’ll make sure you die for real. This isn’t a fucking game.”

“Uhh...right,” Marcus replied. “Sire? Or is it master? Which one do you like better?”

Tori let out a disgusted sigh. She turned to Marcus.

“Quit geeking out,” she whispered harshly. “You’re embarrassing us.”

“Right. Sorry,” Marcus replied. He looked to Drake. “What’s next?”

Drake looked at each of them and ideas came and went as the first beginnings of a plan started forming. He pushed aside his guilt and reservations about what he needed to do to see his mission through. He told himself what he was about to do was justified. That it was what was owed to him. Still, he knew he would have to push his humanity away if he was going to take out the wolves. And nothing was going to stop him from killing them all.

“Now, we fight,” he responded coldly. He looked at them all.

A strategy cemented itself in his mind and was beautiful in its simplicity. “This is what we’re going to do.”

Kendra stared hard at the wolves in front of her. They didn’t look particularly vicious or menacing at the moment. There were only five of them now. The rest had been killed in the attack at the cafeteria. They didn’t hold that against her, though. She could feel their lack of resentment. In fact, what she did get from them felt more like gratitude mixed with awe. They were amazed by her.

“What do you want us to do with them?” Ian asked. “They won’t be staying here I can tell you that much.” He looked pissed that they were even allowed to stay in the mansion for as long as they had been. He made it pretty clear that he wasn’t letting them remain a second longer than necessary.

Kendra turned her eyes on him, and they flashed with bright, golden light.

“My word is law here, not yours.” Her voice cracked like a whip and Ian instantly backed down, averting his gaze. No one else looked at Kendra.

She turned back to Pope.

“You are my pack. I know you’re not lying so I can’t just abandon you, even though that’s what you all deserve.” Her voice was strong and confident. The werewolves just nodded their heads.

“We know that. We know it will take time for you to trust us. We’re prepared to give you that. We are your pack now. You are our alpha. And,” he paused, embarrassed to say what he wanted to say next. “And we were true monsters. Some of the worst. But you took that away.”

The other werewolves with him all nodded their heads enthusiastically. One of them, a pretty girl with olive colored skin and dark hair, was even crying.

“You saved us,” she whispered.

Kendra felt their overwhelming emotions sweep through her mind for a brief second. It was distracting, but it gave her a real sense of them and served to lend credibility to what Pope was saying.

“I’m going to take the others and we’re going to decide what to do with you all,” she told them.

She nodded to the rest of her pack and left the foyer, heading for the big downstairs study that had her family photos on the walls. She opened the door, and everyone filed inside. She went to stand by a large bookcase, her hands on her hips. She didn’t say a word. She just looked at everyone and after a long couple of minutes, she finally broke the silence.

“Let’s have it then,” she told them. Her eyes turned to Ian, whose mouth was open as if he were getting ready to speak. “I know your feelings on the matter. Let’s move onto someone else.”

“We can’t trust them,” Conor immediately said.

“They are not Bane,” Deirdre added.

“They’ll kill us the first chance they get. I know this pack. We’ve fought them before,” Morgan Ries exclaimed. Her curly blonde hair bounced when she spoke. Her green eyes sparked with anger.

“They have to go,” Rose Kiern added. Her arms were folded over her broad chest, and she stared at Kendra with unwavering intensity. Her husband, Arthur, just nodded his head while their boys, Trevor and Leo stood off to the side. Trevor was eleven, so he was trying to follow the conversation, but Leo was only six and had quickly grown bored. He was picking at a hole in his shirt while the “grownups” finished their conversation. “I won’t have them around my children.”

“With everything that’s happened, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to thicken up our ranks,” Anya Kors stated. She brushed a strand of her jet black hair out of her face. “The knights attacked us only a couple of months ago, and while we’re cool with them now and all, what’s to say that won’t change again? What if they come trying to start another war with us?”

“She’s got a point,” Alice Colmbs said.

“Are you all mad?” Deirdre asked, shocked that her friends, her family, would even suggest allowing those mongrels into the Bane pack. She didn’t try to disguise her disgust when she looked at Anya and Alice. “These animals have already tried to kill us on more than one occasion. What if they try to hurt my boy? I’ve already lost too much. I won’t have them near me or my son.”

There was an eruption of sudden noise as arguments broke out. Kendra tried to listen to everyone, but it was a losing battle.

“Enough!” she yelled. The noise quickly died down and each member of her pack was watching her avidly. “They knew the danger when they showed up here, but they came anyway. On top of that, they’ve submitted themselves to us and offered no violence. I can feel that they’re telling the truth. Whether you guys want to believe it or not, they are part of this pack. Whatever I did to change them back at the cafeteria also tore them away from Deanna’s control. I am not abandoning my own.”

Deirdre looked about to speak, but Kendra cut her off.

“I won’t abandon them, but I’m not stupid either,” she said, her voice harsh as she looked at Deirdre specifically. “They aren’t going to stay in the mansion. Not right now and maybe not ever. I don’t trust them enough yet. They’re going to stay in my father’s old apartment above the tattoo shop. They’ll work there to earn their keep. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

No one spoke up although Kendra could tell there were still a few which would sooner tear the new members to pieces than let them into the Bane Pack. They knew better than to go against their alpha though and if they had reservations, they kept quiet about them.

“Conor and I will drive them over to it after we’re done here,” Kendra added.

She looked to one of the younger members of the group, Shawn Riker. He was barely nineteen with dark brown skin and black hair he kept nearly shaved. He stood with his big arms crossed over his chest, looking at everything. He was a new member too, although the Rikers were one of the oldest Bane bloodlines. His parents had been killed when he was a baby. Kendra had been told all three of them had perished together. Shawn, however, somehow survived and went through several foster homes before a nice, loving family adopted him. Kendra found him one night, bleeding from a gunshot wound after a mugger tried to kill him. She could smell the wolf in him instantly, even though it hadn’t been awakened yet. She gave him her blood and turned him in order to save his life.

“Where are you with the research on Bendis, Shawn? Did you find any weaknesses?”

“Nothing solid yet. She’s a moon goddess. Sunlight might slow her down.” He shrugged nonchalantly. “I’ll see what else I can find out but there’s not much.”

“I don’t think sunlight affects her. She attacked us in broad daylight but keep on it and let me know if you find anything useful,” she told him.

Shawn nodded his head.

“All right. Conor, Anya, Grady and I are going to drive the new wolves to the apartment.” She moved toward the door and the others followed her.

“Watch your back,” Ian said.

“They won’t hurt me or anyone here,” Kendra replied, slightly annoyed. “Don’t worry.”

They all left the room and went back into the mansion’s foyer where the other wolves were still kneeling calmly on the floor. Kendra came to a stop in front of Pope.

“Get up,” she said, her voice sharp.

Pope and the others got to their feet. The girl who’d been crying sobbed a little more. The others just stood there with grim, stony faces. None of them expected much and their faces reflected that. They were completely prepared to accept whatever hand fate dealt them.

“I will accept you into this pack,” Kendra told them.

There was a notable look of relief on the five people’s faces. In response, Kendra just turned her gaze around the foyer to indicate the rest of the Bane Pack.

“They, on the other hand, aren’t as willing. So, you can’t stay here at the mansion with them. Grab your stuff and let’s go.”

“Where are you taking us?” the crying girl asked, her tears still wet on her cheeks. There was a hint of fear bubbling beneath her eyes.

“To your new home,” Kendra said calmly. “For now, at least.”

She gestured at the group of five to come with her. They picked up their bags and followed Kendra, Conor, Anya, and Grady as they walked out the doors and headed toward the six-car garage.

“So... uh...did Kendra really rip your blood hunger away?” Grady asked. He directed the question to a stocky, Asian man “She did,” he replied. There was a note of respect lingering in his voice.

“Yeah? What was that like?” he asked, unconcerned with annoying the man.

“Stop, Grady. Quit pestering the guy.” Anya whispered harshly.

The Asian man looked at Anya, his eyes piercing. He smiled slightly.

“It is fine.” He looked at Grady. “It felt like fingers digging into my mind. Then they closed and...” He made a fist and yanked. “A piece was just gone.”

Grady’s eyes widened and even Anya seemed awed.

“Guys let’s forget about that for now,” Kendra told them. She looked over at the two, uncomfortable with Grady’s line of questioning. She didn’t fully understand how she did what she did to them and truthfully, the whole thing freaked her out.

“You okay?” Conor whispered to her.

Kendra nodded her head, but she seemed distant.

“I’m fine,” she told him. She smiled reassuringly. “I just have a lot on my mind.”

Conor grabbed her hand in his own and together they walked into the garage. They took three of the new wolves in a tan Lincoln Navigator while Anya and Grady took the other two in a Mazda RX8.

The garage doors opened and Conor reversed onto the main driveway. He drove down the long road and to a minute or two later, came up to the front gate.

Grady and the others followed behind him.

Deirdre watched through her bedroom window as Kendra and the others took off. Her anger was still burning beneath the surface. She knew right then that she would never trust the new wolves. She didn’t care what Kendra said. They were dangerous and unpredictable. The only reason she backed down was because it was Kendra and she didn’t have a choice. To undermine their alpha, was to undermine the entire pack. She wasn’t about to do that.

She turned away from the window and walked over to the crib next to her bed. Patrick was inside, sleeping peacefully. She watched him for a while and couldn’t help but wonder what kind of life he would lead. Would he have his father’s strength? Would he take after her?

She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself, and sat on her bed. A second later, her cell phone rang. She reached out to grab it but didn’t recognize the number that popped up.

“Hello,” she said as she answered it, holding her cell up to her ear.

“Is this Deirdre Shade-Dugan?” a female voice asked.

“Yes. Who is this?” she answered.

“My name is Abby Shull. I work at the coroner’s office for Ashbrooke County. I am very sorry to inform you but your sister, Deanna, was found murdered in a hotel room last night. We’ll need you to come in and identify the body. When will be a good time?” the woman asked, trying to be pleasant and reassuring but to Deirdre she just sounded clinical and dispassionate.

Deirdre didn’t respond. Her mind was frozen with shock.

Deanna is...is...dead?

For months now, all she could think about was finding her. It consumed almost every minute of her life. She’d wanted answers. She wanted to know why Deanna would betray her pack. Betray her sister. She wanted her to feel pain. She wanted her to suffer for her hand in Patrick’s death.

But she was dead now.

The hand gripping the phone tightened until her knuckles turned white.

“Hello?” Abby asked. “Hello? Are you still there?”

“I’m here,” Deirdre responded, her voice tight. “What happened to her?”

“If you could please come down and identify the body, we can go over the details of her death then,” Abby told her, still sounding so damned clinical.

“I’ll be there in thirty minutes,” she replied. Then she hung up the phone.

She left Patrick sleeping and went through the mansion until she tracked down Shawn. He was in his room with his eyes glued to a TV, playing a video game.

“Shawn,” Deirdre said.

“What’s up?” Shawn asked, his eyes still locked on the screen. He murdered a bad guy with about three dozen virtual bullets and paused the game. He turned to look at Deirdre. When he saw the look on her face, he quickly shut the game down and got up, looking at her with concern in his eyes.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll tell you about it later but for now I have to go. Can you keep an eye on Patrick for me?” she asked.

“Sure, sure,” he told her. “I love hanging out with little man. Just let me know what’s going down as soon as you can and if there’s anything else, I can do to help.”

She kissed him on the cheek.

“Thanks. I knew I could count on you,” she said. “I shouldn’t be gone long.”

She walked out of the room and headed for the garage where her car was parked. She got in and drove, her thoughts whirling around her head. She knew, given Deanna’s company, who her murderer was. The goddess she’d met a week ago didn’t seem like the type to forgive failure. What she didn’t understand was why would Bendis kill her sister now? She’d failed so many times before and been allowed to live. What happened between her last failed attempt to bring Kendra down and now? What plan was the bitch putting in motion?

Nothing good, Deirdre thought to herself.

Drake kept his eyes down. He was sitting on a bench. A few feet away, keeping their distance were Gwen, Marcus, and Tori. Sitting next to him was Jenna.

“Where is the mansion again?” he asked, his voice calm and soothing. He looked around but they were alone. The park was dark, and the sky was full of bright stars. Jenna’s eyes were unfocused and blank, but she answered right away.

“About twenty minutes outside the city. Take route 33 until you get to Old Layne Rd. You turn right onto that. Then you take the fourth left and follow that road to the mansion’s front gates.” Jenna stopped talking, like her mouth had been shut off.

“You said Kendra and Conor don’t live there though?” he pressed.

Jenna nodded her head.

“For the most part. Kendra and I are roommates but Conor has been staying there a lot lately.”

“What’s the easiest way to get her to the mansion?” he asked, his excitement building at the thought of starting a full-scale assault on the wolves. He just needed a little more info before he could take the first step.

“That’s easy,” Jenna replied. “Attack her pack.”

Ian was lying on the couch, trying to get some sleep when the buzzer for the front gates went off. He opened his eyes, grumbled, and got up to check it out. The last person to leave the mansion had been Deirdre about ten minutes ago, and by the look he’d seen on her face, he knew she wouldn’t be back that quick. He went over to the security pad on the wall next to the front doors. A black and white video image showed him two people huddled close together. He couldn’t make out their faces very well, but there was one thing he did see.

They were both hurt and bleeding. He saw wounds in several places, and they looked like scared, panicked animals. There was a man and a woman. The woman was crying, and her head kept jerking around, trying to see everywhere and everything at once. The man was yelling at the security pad next to the front gates.

Ian flicked on the intercom.

“Help us! Please, help us!” he was shouting. “Something’s out here. I-it attacked us. We’re hurt bad.

“Please open the gate,” the girl cried.

Ian’s whole body was alert and poised. He pressed a button and the gate trundled open.

“Hurry up and come through. I’ll meet you along the road. Just keep running and don’t look back!” Ian commanded.

As soon as the two hurt people were through, he pressed the button again and the gate closed. He raced out the door and hopped into Conor’s Jeep, which was still parked in front of the mansion. He pulled the keys out of the visor, started the car, and raced down the road until he caught a glimpse of two figures trying to run despite the fact that both were hurt. Ian slammed on the breaks, spun the wheel, and came to a stop facing back toward the mansion. He threw open the door and the man and the woman climbed into the Jeep.

Without hesitation, Ian floored it and the car took off. He got to the mansion in seconds and hurried the two inside.

“Bev!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Bring the first aid kit!”

He helped the pair to the couch he’d just been sleeping on and gently set them down. They did so gingerly, their faces wincing with pain.

“What happened?” Ian asked.

The girl just cried but the man did his best to answer.

“We broke down about two miles back,” he managed to get out. He was breathing heavily. There were several patches of dark red blood staining his shirt and pants. Streaks of red covered most of his face. “We were trying to fix it but then...this..thing came out of the woods and attacked us.”

“Were you able to see what it was?” Ian asked.

Both the man and woman shook their heads no.

Ian inhaled deeply to see if he could get a scent of the creature they were talking about. Mostly he smelled blood, but he caught something else too. Something that sparked a long-gone memory. The smell was disgustingly sweet, and he wrinkled his nose. He tried to force the memory of where he smelled that scent before to resurface but it wouldn’t come up. The only thing he knew was that it made him very uneasy.

“No. It was fast and dark,” the girl wailed. “It had a lot of fur and these claws. It’s eyes…”

She broke down crying, unable to go on.

“It looked almost like a p-person,” the man gasped out. “But it ran on its hands and feet.”

“How did you get away?” he asked.

“I found a big rock and hit it over the head when it was distracted. It w-went down and we started running. We didn’t stop till we got here,” the man said. He looked like he was calming down somewhat, but his eyes were still darting everywhere, and he would jump at the smallest sound.

“Stay here and we’ll get you both patched up,” Ian told them. He looked to the stairs and saw Bev hurrying down the them with a large tackle box full of medical supplies.

He got up and walked over to her.

“What happened?” she asked. She glanced at the pair sitting on the couch.

“Some kind of attack. They’re not sure what it was. Could’ve been an animal but I want to take a group out to make sure it’s not something more dangerous. Do what you can for them and watch them until I get back.”

“I’ll make sure they’re taken care of. Just watch yourself out there.” She gave Ian a small hug and then walked past him, heading to the couch.

“You too,” he replied.

She turned around to look at him, confused by his statement.

“Something just doesn’t seem right is all. Be on your guard,” he whispered to her.

Bev looked at the two injured folks on the couch and then back at Ian. She didn’t look convinced, but she nodded her head just the same.

Ian let out a breath and turned around. He walked upstairs, his body on high alert even though there didn’t seem to be any threat whatsoever. He just kept going back to the disturbing scent all over the couple’s clothes.

Where’ve I smelled that scent before? he asked himself, frustrated. He shook his head and gave up trying.

He got to the top stair and turned left, heading for a large game room a couple doors down. He opened it and walked inside. He heard pool balls slamming into each other, two different video games, a TV playing a 1970s rerun, and a couple other things. He looked around and spotted the two he’d come in for.

“Bruce. Zoe.”

Bruce was the one watching the 1970’s rerun. He turned his head to look at Ian.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Whatcha need?” Zoe asked from the pool table.

“Let’s go,” Ian told them. “We got a situation.”

Bruce and Zoe got up and walked over to Ian, falling into step with him as he walked back to the door. His hand paused on the doorknob. He could feel their inquisitive stares boring holes into the back of his head. He turned around to look at them.

“What kind of situation?” Bruce questioned.

“The hunting kind,” Ian answered.

Together they walked out of the game room, down the stairs, and finally ended up in the open air outside the mansion.

Ian stopped at the fountain in front of the main doors. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. A second later, his wolf form exploded out of his skin, shredding his clothes. His giant paws landed on the asphalt silently and his huge, massive head swung around to peer at the other two with him. They had shifted also, Bruce into a giant, lean wolf with brown and white fur, and Zoe into a slightly smaller, black and grey furred one.

Together, the three of them ran full out toward the gates.

“What are your names?” Bev asked, talking to the man and woman still barely holding it together on the couch. They were drifting in and out of sleep now.

The man looked up, his eyes groggy. He tried to answer her, but he didn’t have the strength. His eyes fluttered and he drifted into sleep.

Bev moved closer and inspected them. She opened up the first aid kit and started taking out bandages, antiseptic to clean the wounds, and a suture kit. She tended to the woman first because she looked worse than the man. Bev moved her shirt up and caught a glimpse of a tattoo on the skin just above her hips.

It was a tattoo of a lightning bolt.

Ian loped through the woods with Bruce and Zoe trailing behind him. The world opened up in a bright array of amber hues, but his eyes weren’t leading him. His nose was. He caught the scent of the two injured strangers immediately and set to work tracing it back to its origin. It was ridiculously easy. The scent trail blundered through the woods clumsily and lent some credibility to the story he’d been told. He even caught wet patches of blood on various plants and along the ground.

Everything, so far, was checking out.

So why was he still uneasy?

He knew the answer. It was the scent he’d caught drifting off the man and woman. His mind wouldn’t let go of it. The familiarity was bugging him, and a nagging part of his mind was insisting that whatever the scent belonged to was extremely dangerous. He just couldn’t remember and for him to forget meant he had not encountered the scent again for an extremely long time.

Two miles later, they came to a road.

Ian came to a stop, making sure to stay hidden within the trees. Bruce pulled up to his right while Zoe padded quietly to his left.

Ian breathed deeply but he only confirmed what he already knew. This was the spot where the two had been attacked. This was where the scent ended. The only problem was that there was no car. There were no signs of a struggle. There was absolutely nothing there.

Apprehension crawled through him as he started to realize what was going on. He shifted to his human form and the other two did the same.

“What’s the deal? No one got attacked here,” Bruce said, confused.

“Ian? What’s going on?” Zoe asked him.

He suddenly remembered what gave off the disgusting scent wrapped around the two “victims” in the mansion.

“Vampires,” he said.

Fear and anger warred inside him. Fear for his pack and anger that he’d let himself get duped so badly. He let them into the mansion. He brought them inside and now everyone was in danger.

He turned to Bruce and Zoe.

“We need to get back. Now!”

He didn’t waste any time. He shifted and started running back toward the mansion, going as fast as he could. He didn’t wait for Bruce and Zoe to shift. He left them behind.

He prayed he would get there in time.

Bev had the girl’s shirt pushed up. It stopped just beneath her bra. She stared at the lightning bolt tattoo for a second longer and then pulled out an antiseptic wipe. She ripped the package open with her teeth, got the wipe out, and then gently started wiping at the smears of blood over the woman’s stomach. The blood wiped away easily and left the skin clear. Confused, Bev wiped away some more blood. And more. She wiped it all away and couldn’t find a scratch, bite, or mark on the girl.

“Wha…” she tried to ask right before the girl’s eyes popped open.

Both of them were blood red.

The girl smiled cockily as white fangs popped out, dimpling the skin on her bottom lip. At the same time, the man’s eyes opened.

Bev’s blood turned ice cold. She tried to get up and run.

The two vampires, however, were faster. They bore her to the ground, and she felt their fangs puncture her neck. The pain was indescribable. Fire spread through her as the vampires sucked and slurped up her blood.

“H-help,” she gasped. It came out only as a croaked whisper.

She tried to shift but her wolf was out of reach. She didn’t have the strength. Her heart sped up quickly as her body tried to regenerate the wounds, but they wouldn’t heal. The venom in the vampire bites stopped them from closing. She struggled to cling to life, but she knew it was a losing battle. A few seconds later, her heart slowed down until it stopped completely.

The vampires got up, their faces smeared with Bev’s blood. The woman went up to the man and licked some of it off him.

Her eyes fluttered with pleasure.

“Wolf’s blood,” she purred happily. “What a rush.”

The man sniffed deeply.

“I smell more of them.” He glanced toward the foyer and the stairs, a deep red coloring the edges of his eyes. “Let’s eat.”

Together, they left Bev behind and headed toward the stairs. They could hear people talking, laughing, or doing other things. None of them had any idea what was about to happen.

“Does it scare you how easily we became killers?” Tori asked, curious.

“Not a bit,” Marcus replied, still feeling the rush the wolf-woman’s blood gave him. It felt like nothing he’d ever experienced before. It felt like raw waves of pleasure and energy flowing through his veins. The only thing he could think about was getting more. And more. And more. Before the night was done, he was going to gorge himself on as much werewolf blood as he could.

They got to the second story and stopped, listening. Their heightened hearing brought them the sounds of the mansion. They turned as one down the right hallway and Marcus was the first to take off. All semblance of control was lost as his bloodlust took control over him.

Tori tried to say something, but it was already too late. She watched Marcus rush down the hall and explode through a door. She heard sounds of surprise and then agonized screams of pain. She smelled more wolfs’ blood on the air and when it hit her, her control evaporated too. She ran down the hall and into the room Marcus went in, her fangs bared like a jaguar.

She saw two bodies on the floor bleeding from puncture wounds to their necks. Tori’s eyes filled in completely with red when she saw all the blood. She let out a terrifying hissing sound and zipped toward them.

She got to one of them, an older man (maybe in his forties). His eyes were shut tightly against the pain he was in. Her head snapped down like a striking cobra and she sank her fangs into his neck. The blood hit her tongue and it felt like a jolt of electricity. She gulped it down greedily, sucking it all up as a desperate need to have more took control over her.

The werewolves were caught off guard, but they were far from out of the fight. The ones that Marcus and Tori couldn’t get to banded together and shifted. They changed from frail, weak humans to horrifyingly massive wolves in the blink of an eye. They all came forward, charging the two vampires without fear.

Marcus was ready, already poised to fight.

Tori got to her feet too.

The wolves crashed into the vampires, ripping and snapping at them with claws and fangs. They were strong and fast too. Marcus took a hit to his head from a wolf’s giant paw. His head jerked to the side, but his skin was unmarked, and he stayed on his feet. He turned to look at the wolf that hit him and lashed out with a brutal punch. He connected with its jaw and the wolf was sent flying. It crashed into the far wall and then through it.

Another wolf lunged at him, but Marcus jumped into the air with his fist cocked back. When he brought it smashing into the top of the werewolf’s skull, crushing it. The wolf went down in a boneless heap.

The ones going after Tori weren’t faring any better. A wolf died at her feet as Tori plunged her hand inside its chest and ripped its heart out. A second later, a different wolf tried latching its huge jaws onto her arm and shaking. Tori didn’t move an inch. Just as the wolf realized its mistake and tried to back off, Tori whipped forward and grabbed its muzzle in both hands. She pried the creature’s jaws apart with unnatural strength until, with one final pull; she ripped its head nearly in two. It went down with a loud thud and didn’t get up again. Blood spread out in a pool from its maimed head and Tori lost control again. She fell on her hands and knees, licking up as much of it as she could.

The last of the living wolves realized the danger they were in and quickly tried to flee. They ran at the window in the back of the room and plowed through the glass.

Marcus immediately bolted after them. He flew out the window and fell to the ground with a thud. He got back up and ran after the wolves.

Tori was about to follow but a noise stopped her. She stood still, her head cocked to one side. Then she smiled, the image ghastly with her blood smeared face.

It was the sound of a little baby crying.

Tori walked into a bedroom. It looked and felt empty, but she knew better. The baby’s cries were being muffled but she could still hear them.

“Come out, come out little baby,” she said as she dragged her nails across the wall. “You too, whoever else in here. There’s no sense hiding from me. I already know where you’re at.”

She went to the king size bed and with one hand, she flung it. It crashed against the wall in a loud explosion of sound. Lying on the floor was Shawn. He was curled up into a ball with Patrick pressed up as close to him as he could get. He looked up at Tori. He was afraid but he didn’t give in to his fear. Instead, he stood up, his jaw clenched tightly.

“Stay away from him,” he said, his voice hard.

“First I’m gonna drain you. Then the baby for a snack, perhaps. I haven’t decided yet. I’m trying to watch my figure,” she said, laughing.

Shawn watched the woman as she walked through the room.

“Go ahead and put the baby up,” Tori told him. “It’s more fun when you fight back.”

Shawn took the opportunity and backed up slowly. He carefully placed Patrick in his crib. The baby was still wailing his head off and his cheeks were red. Snot was running out of his nose.

“I’m gonna take care of you,” Shawn whispered to him. “Don’t be scared, little man.”

“Let’s move this along. Things to do, wolves to kill and all that.” Tori smiled mockingly.

Shawn turned around and faced the vampire. He narrowed his eyes at her and gritted his teeth. His heart pounded rapidly but he wasn’t going to back down. He stared the vampire down, took a steadying, and then let his wolf burst out of him with a blast of power. He landed on the floor, his paws scratching against the hardwood. He growled deep in his chest and launched himself into the air, claws extended.

Tori didn’t even flinch. She waited until her timing was right and then slammed a backhanded blow into the wolf. It connected with the side of his enormous head.

Shawn yelped in pain as he bounced and rolled across the floor. His head smacked against it several times and his shoulder popped out of its socket. Then his momentum was abruptly stopped by the wall, hard enough to crack a rib and knock the breath out of him. He got shakily to his feet, his head ringing. He knew he was going to lose. The vampire was too damn strong. But that didn’t matter to him. The only thing that did was protecting Patrick.

He charged ahead and attacked again, but she dodged everything no matter how hard he tried to hit her. On his last attempt, she caught him in a choking headlock and squeezed. His airway was immediately shut off and he kicked and scraped at the ground. Then he felt her bite him. Her fangs punctured his skin at the nape of his neck. He struggled harder but the vamp venom quickly spread through his system, making him weaker. She bit him at least ten more times and then dumped him on the ground. His wolf form dissolved off him until he was human again. The pain was worse than anything he’d ever felt before. He struggled to breathe. He struggled just to hang on.

“I’ll be back for you in a bit. I wouldn’t want you to miss this.” She walked over to the crib and went to pick up the baby.

Shawn watched, his mind filled with several different flavors of agony. All he wanted to do was pass out. He knew the pain couldn’t follow him there. Instead, he ground his teeth and got up. That one simple act was almost too much. His head swam sickeningly. Black spots exploded across his vision. He sank to his hands and knees but when he saw the vampire getting closer to Patrick, he gave one last massive effort. He managed to get to his feet and with a roar of primal rage, he charged ahead.

Tori turned away from the baby. She had a mock look of disappointment on her face.

“You’re a stubborn one aren’t ya doggie. Someone should’ve enrolled you in obedience classes.” She bared her fangs.

He might be dead soon, but there was no way Shawn was letting the girl harm or kill Patrick. He kept up the roar as he got to her. She tried to swat him away again, but Shawn ducked under the blow. He grabbed her around the waist and picked her completely up off the ground before she could stop him. He kept running, his eyes focused on the big plate glass window only a few paces in front of him. He ignored the crushing blows she delivered to his neck and shoulder. He fought past the pain of the bites and his many other injuries. He yelled louder and then he threw her with everything he had left.

Tori went flying. She hit the window and crashed through it. Glass exploded everywhere and Shawn heard the vampire’s angry screams as she fell.

He wavered on his feet, his head dizzy and his body filled with nothing but pain. He knew he was going to pass out but before he did, he flipped the broken window the bird. Then his head swam intensely, and he promptly slumped to the ground.

Blackness enveloped him and he finally escaped the pain.

“Deirdre Shade-Dugan?” a woman in blue scrubs asked, looking at Deirdre who was sitting in an uncomfortably hard chair. She was the only person there and she found it funny that the woman still had to ask if it was her. She nodded her head. “Right this way, please.”

Deirdre slung her purse over her shoulder and got up. The woman in the scrubs turned around and started walking back the way she’d come.

“How long will this take?” Deirdre asked, thinking of Patrick. She didn’t like leaving him alone for long. Whenever she did, her imagination would start cooking up all kinds of horrible scenarios. It happened so much, she was lucky she was still sane. She knew he was perfectly fine, but her mind was a sadistic bitch that wouldn’t let up.

Ever.

“You’ll come in and ID the body, if you can,” the woman replied casually. “There will be some paperwork after that, but then you’re free to go. Does that work?”

“That’s fine,” Deirdre told her, glancing at her phone. It was ten till nine already.

They walked a little further and came to a door with a card scanner. Dr. Shull pulled her badge off and swiped it through the reader. The red light turned green and the lock turned. She opened the door and Deirdre followed her through. Another five minutes and they came to the morgue. As they walked inside, Deirdre’s eyes were immediately drawn to the body draped with a white sheet over it. She took a deep, steadying breath and prepared herself.

Dr. Shull stopped at the table.

“Go ahead,” Deirdre told her.

She watched the woman pull the sheet back from the body. Deirdre didn’t know what she thought she would feel. Part of her was hoping for closure of some sort. She’d been hunting Deirdre for the last six months, wanting revenge for what happened to her husband. Now she was in a cold morgue staring at a dead body.

“What happened to her?” Deirdre asked as she looked at the face of her dead sister.

“Her heart was ripped out of her chest,” Dr. Shull answered.

Deirdre didn’t say anything for a long time. She just kept looking at the body. She saw the hole in Deanna’s chest but there was something else she noticed too.

“What’s wrong with her hand?” she asked. It was blackened and the fingers were curled up and claw-like.

“It’s curious isn’t it?” Abby asked, becoming more animated for the first time. “I can’t be sure until the tests come back, but the blackened skin suggests desiccation. Like the flesh went through the stages of decomposition in the span of minutes instead of months. The most interesting thing is that it doesn’t appear to have spread to the rest of the body. I’ve never seen anything like it before. Or the chest wound for that matter. Look at the edges.”

Deirdre leaned forward and immediately saw what the Dr. Schull was talking about. The edges of the chest wound were ugly and ragged. She saw chips of splintered bone. And she saw a void where her sister’s heart should’ve been.

Fitting, Deirdre thought coldly.

“The heart wasn’t surgically removed. If I didn’t know any better, I would say something with an insane amount of strength punched through her chest with brute force and ripped her heart out. But that’s ridiculous. Nothing’s that strong.”

Deirdre knew different though. She knew exactly who was strong enough to rip her sister’s heart out.

A goddess.

“It’s her,” Deirdre said. “It’s my sister. Just cover her back up.”

Dr. Shull slid the sheet over Deanna’s face as Deirdre closed her eyes, tears sliding past her cheeks. Because of this, she didn’t see the puncture marks on Deanna’s neck.

She’s gone. She’s really gone, Patrick. I wanted to be the one to kill her but maybe this was what she deserved. Murdered and betrayed just like you. I hope she died in pain, she thought. I hope she died in complete agony and misery, my love.

“So um, if you could come with me, you can sign the paperwork and we’ll release the body to the funeral home you have arrangements with.”

“Burn her,” Deirdre replied. She looked at the body of her dead sister a second longer, wanting to spit on it but forcing herself not to, then turned and walked away. She left Dr. Schull behind with a dumbfounded look on her face.

Her mind was working furiously. Deanna was dead; no doubt due to her constant failures, but what she couldn’t wrap her mind around was why now. Deanna had failed multiple times, but the goddess still kept her around.

So, what changed?

The only answers she could come up with was that either Bendis just couldn’t take her sister anymore (which was completely plausible) or she found a new, more dangerous, lackey (which was more likely).

She took out her phone and tried calling the mansion but there was no answer. She hung up and immediately dialed again but there was still no answer.

Without thinking about it, Deirdre hurried her steps. Her heart was starting to beat faster and she could feel her blood run cold.

Anxiety was hitting her hard and all she could think about was her son possibly being in danger. She could almost feel something dark heading her pack’s way and Deanna’s death only reaffirmed that feeling.

She hoped the psycho goddess just got fed up with her sister, but she didn’t think that very likely. She was convinced the goddess found someone or something a lot more dangerous to do her bidding.

Once again, she called the mansion but there was still no answer. She hung up and started running.

Ian and the others with him raced through the woods. They pounded through undergrowth and around trees. He redoubled his efforts, pushing himself to the brink of exhaustion as he tried to get back to the mansion as fast as he could. There was an overwhelming sense that he was already too late. He hoped he was wrong about that.

Vampires, he thought, truly scared for the first time in centuries. They’d been eradicated!

He had been alive when the first vampire scourge threatened werewolves but was only fifteen at the time. It was so long ago that the only details he could muster were images of nightmarish creatures as they ripped through the camp his family had been hiding in. They were vague and shadowy in his memory, but there was one detail that always came through loud and clear.

Their eyes.

Their eyes were always a solid, terrifying, blood red.

He forced thoughts of their nightmarish eyes out of his mind and a few minutes later, the three of them burst through the trees. In front of them was the wall surrounding the mansion. They didn’t even slow down. They jumped over it and sailed through the air, landed on the other side, and continued on.

In the distance was the mansion. They were fast but not fast enough. Fifteen yards to the front doors, they heard screams.

Screams of pain, agony, and fear.

Ian pushed himself harder, his breath panting loudly. The sound of breaking glass drew him over to the left. The three of them ran up to the mansion just as a couple of wolves shot out of a second story window. A second later, a dark shape followed after them.

Ian watched the figure land on the ground, the impact not even affecting him. He rose slowly and turned his blood red eyes on Ian, Bruce, and Zoe.

“More wolves?” the vamp asked. “More wolves means more fun.”

Then he blurred forward, racing right at Ian with insane speed. Ian tracked his progress and without hesitation, shifted to his human form. The only thing he left to defend himself with was his two-inch long claws sprouting out of the tips of his fingers.

The man jumped into the air, bearing his fangs. Just as he was about to crash into Ian, his clawed hand shot forward and wrapped around the vampire’s throat. The vamp’s impressive speed was stopped dead by Ian’s incredible strength.

With a roar of rage and effort, Ian lifted him off the ground. He dug his claws in, his hand squeezing tighter until they finally broke past the vamp’s nearly invulnerable skin. Then, all in the same motion, he slammed him down with everything he had. The sound of the impact was a loud thunder crack that split the air and gave everyone pause.

Then Ian picked him up and did it again.

And then again.

Marcus groaned from the ground, his throat bleeding from where Ian’s claws dug in. Then, to add insult to injury, the wolf swung his foot back and kicked the vampire as hard as he could. Marcus flew six feet into the air. Then he crashed into the ground and went tumbling across the grass. Twenty feet after that, he wrapped himself around the trunk of an oak tree. He slumped to the ground and didn’t get back up.

Just as Marcus crashed into the tree, a different window exploded outward and a girl vampire fell out. She turned in midair and landed in a crouch on the ground. She looked back up at the window and screamed in rage. Then her red eyes looked for her partner and quickly found him, injured and unmoving by the oak. Her head whipped around this way and that, saw the blood on Ian’s clawed hands. She hissed and bared her fangs “You’re so gonna pay for that, asshole!” she screamed, racing at Ian in blind fury.

Ian shifted back into his wolf form now. He pawed at the ground with his giant claws and braced himself for the vampire’s attack. He knew they were strong, practically invulnerable to harm, and extremely fast. He didn’t know much else because there hadn’t been a single one for the last four centuries. He could feel his heart speeding up the closer the vamp got to him. It was an uncomfortable sensation. It made him feel weak, like all his energy was being leached out of him.

Tori was only ten feet away and closing in fast.

Ian opened his jaws and bared his fangs. His eyes flashed with yellow fire as he tapped into the well of power his wolf gave him. Whatever happened, he wasn’t going down without taking the vamp down with him. He promised himself that much.

He braced himself, his back paws planted firmly in the ground. Just as Tori was about to collide into him, Ian caught a scent. He smiled inwardly and dropped to the ground, his reflexes so fast it took less than a second to register who was behind him and react accordingly. He saw the comical look of surprise on the vampire’s face just as a reddish furred wolf rammed into her with the speed of a charging car.

Tori went flying back, rolling and tumbling across the ground for a bit before she reached out with a hand and plunged her fingers into the ground. Rock and dirt flew into the air as her momentum slowed and then stopped altogether. Her eyes snapped up. She hissed and her fangs flashed white in the moonlight.

The red-furred wolf glanced back at Ian. She looked intensely at him with her amber-colored eyes. She seemed to nod her giant head. He nodded back and walked up to her side.

It was Deirdre, back from wherever she’d taken off to.

Bruce and Zoe, battered but starting to heal, joined their ranks. The other wolves that the vampires chased out of the second story window also came up to them. Two of them stood next to Ian and he recognized them immediately. One was Arthur Kiern and the other was Morgan Ries. The rest stayed back, most of them injured and limping pitifully.

Together, they all stood between the vampire still standing and the mansion. She looked at them, calculating the odds in her head. Apparently, she didn’t like them. She walked over to the fallen vamp and quickly picked him up. Then she turned back to the wolves.

“This is just the beginning,” she yelled. “You think you got yourselves a victory here? You think you won?” She laughed cruelly before she went on. “The worse hasn’t even hit yet.”

With that, she turned and ran away, so fast she was just a blur.

Kendra and the others pulled up to the curb in front of Bendis Tattoo. The shop was closed and had been ever since Merle died. She could see a layer of dirt and grime starting to collect on the once carefully cleaned front windows. She hated coming there. She hated seeing it without Merle’s cheerful face there to brighten it up. It was once a haven for a shy, awkward girl that found it hard to live in a world that had been nothing but cruel to her. Now, it felt more like a tomb.

She watched Conor turn the car off and take the keys out. He glanced at Kendra, his eyes seeming to ask her if she was sure about this...again. She nodded her head at him and got out of the car.

“Let’s go,” she said to Pope and the other new wolves.

The doors to the car Grady was driving opened and he, Anya, and the rest of the party spilled out onto the sidewalk.

There was a lot of nervousness in the air. Kendra could feel it from her people, but she could feel and smell it coming from the other wolves more. They didn’t seem to know what to do with themselves.

She turned and went to the shop’s front door. She pulled out a key from her pocket and unlocked it then pushed it open and went inside. The air smelled stale and old but despite that, she could still catch the faint whiff of the incense Merle habitually burned. It felt so familiar to her and it brought up a lot of old, happy memories. She could almost hear Merle’s giant, hearty laughter. She could feel the warm embrace of one of his bear hugs. She could see the gentle love and pride in his eyes whenever they talked.

Her eyes burned with tears and she reached up and brushed them away. Now was not the time to get sentimental. She didn’t want to appear to be anything but a strong, able leader in front of the new, ex-crazed, murderous wolves. She knew how dumb it was to appear weak to other werewolves.

“You’ll work here. You’ll keep the money you generate and use that for living expenses. My father owned the building free and clear, so the only thing you’ll have to pay on that is the property taxes. They’re not that high in this neighborhood,” she said, being careful to keep her voice strong and confident. “You’ll take care of all the bills and utility expenses too. Like I said, you will be part of my pack, but you will be apart from it too. We can’t trust any of you completely. I hope someone here has tattoo experience. If not, then learn.”

She looked at them, her eyes flashing amber for a split second.

“We might never be able to trust you. Does anyone have a problem with that?”

No one said a word.

“Live your lives and on occasion, stand by the rest of your pack and fight. That’s all I ask. If any of you decide to hunt humans and kill again, I will personally track you down and rip your head from your bodies myself.”

She looked at each of them in turn and they all nodded back. There was a minute or two of awkward, tension-filled silence and then Pope stepped up. He took Kendra’s hand and bowed down on one knee. She heard Conor grind his teeth angrily next to her, but she didn’t take her hand back and she looked down on Pope, waiting patiently.

“The blood hunger drove out our humanity. It turned all of us into monsters. You could have killed us, but you showed mercy instead. And not only that, but you healed us too. There is nothing I can say or do to express how thankful I am for that. I will follow and remain loyal to you until I am dead. If it takes me a thousand years, I will earn your respect and your trust.” He took her hand and touched his forehead with it. The other four wolves all got down on their knees too, bowed their heads, and put a closed fist over their hearts.

“Alpha!” they yelled in unison.

Kendra was taken a little aback by the whole situation. Her cheeks turned red with embarrassment, but she brushed that aside. She still wanted to put distance between herself and the new wolves, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but feel proud that she helped them. She still wasn’t completely sure what she’d done, but whatever it was had stripped them completely of their blood hunger. If she could do that to them, to wolves that had shed all of their humanity, then she could do it to others. She could help bring back any wolf. The possibilities were staggering.

“I appreciate your loyalty. Just don’t prove me wrong. Don’t go back to being monst...”

Her voice suddenly cut out as a sharp, overwhelming pain hit her. It started on her neck but quickly spread to the rest of her body. Her muscles seized up and she collapsed to the floor. Her eyes shot open wide, but they stared at nothing. The minute the pain started, her mind was ripped from her body and thrown into someone else’s. It only took her a few seconds before she knew who it was.

Bev! she yelled to no one.

In front of her were two figures. Their entire eyes were blood-red, and they were baring sharp, wicked fangs. She was holding her hand to the side of her neck and could feel blood spilling out. It hurt. It hurt so badly. It felt like liquid fire was spreading through every inch of her. She fell to the ground and the creatures (vampires! Kendra thought to herself), quickly pounced on her. She tried to fight them off, but she didn’t have the strength. She tried to shift, but she didn’t have the strength for that either. Her heart sped up as her body tried to heal itself, but the venom in the vampire bites wouldn’t let them close. Her blood just kept pumping out. Then the space between the beats of her heart kept getting longer and longer until it finally gave out. Then there was only darkness.

Kendra came back to herself with a gasp. Her body felt stiff and rigid.

“Bev,” she cried, tears streaming down her face. “Bev, no!”

She tried to get up, but she was hit again. Her mind was ripped away once more but this time, it wasn’t into Bev. She was already dead. This time, her mind flowed inside of Leo Kiern. A kid. A kid! He was only nine. She came back to herself after he died only to get ripped away again three more times as her mind flowed into three more dying wolves.

Megyn Colmbs. Grady’s sister.

Kevin Hardwick.

Oscar Underwood.

All of were dead. Her wolves. Her family.

When it was over, she got back to her feet. She was shaky, but Conor was there to help her. He held her close to him, showing nothing but concern and worry for her.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Dead,” she said. “They’re all dead.”

“Who’s dead?” Grady asked.

Kendra stared at him, her face red and blotchy.

“We don’t have time for details,” she said quickly. Her heart was racing uncomfortably. “We need to get back to the mansion now.”

“Why?” Anya asked.

“We’re under attack,” Kendra told them and then ran for the doors.

Everyone else followed after her, including the new wolves, and they piled back into the cars. As soon as Kendra got in the Navigator, she was bombarded with questions. They all wanted to know who was attacking them, but she ignored them.

“Quiet,” she said.

The questions immediately stopped, and the car was silent. She pulled out her cell and dialed Jenna’s number, who picked up on the second ring.

“Hey, girl,” Jenna said.

“We’re being attacked,” Kendra replied, almost before Jenna could get the word girl out. “I need you to get a group of knights and mages to the mansion, now.”

“We’ll meet you there,” Jenna responded and then hung up without waiting to see if Kendra had anything else to say.

Kendra could still feel the deaths of her wolves. The pain, a faint ghost now, still ached. The worst part was the fear and terror they all felt right before they died. She didn’t think she would ever be able to forget that fear. She didn’t think even time would be able to erase it completely.

“Tell me what’s going on,” Conor told her. “What’s happened?”

“Vampires. Or at least that’s what they looked like. They’re in the mansion and they started killing whoever they came across.”

She saw Conor stiffen and caught a slight scent of fear coming off him. The wolves in the back had similar feelings.

“What? What’s the matter? You have fought vampires before, right?” she asked.

“Not me, personally. They were all wiped out before I was born,” Conor told her. “The humans destroyed them, with a little help from the werewolves. They were vicious killers and whoever they bit, turned. In a little over five years, they were everywhere. And they had a huge fondness for the taste of werewolf blood.”

“So why is everyone afraid of them? If they were wiped out before, why can’t it be done again?” she asked.

“We had a lot of help. Vampires are strong, fast, and nearly invulnerable, and their bite is lethal to a werewolf. For everyone that we managed to kill, according to my dad, ten wolves would die. Eventually, the humans beat them by sheer numbers. They found out their weaknesses and used that knowledge against them. But that was a long time ago. If they spread again, like they did before, there might not be any stopping them.”

Kendra didn’t like the sound of that, but she wasn’t about to let the attack go unanswered. People she had come to know, and love were dead. She was going to make sure they paid for that. She might not know exactly how, but she was damn sure going to figure it out.

“What’s the matter?” Elijah asked his daughter when she hung up the phone. “Is Kendra okay?”

“She’s fine for now but we have a huge problem. The mansion is under attack.” Jenna turned around.

Her father was sitting up in his bed with a comforter covering his lower body. Next to him was a tray of half-eaten food. He was finally acting more like himself after what Bendis did to him, but his appetite was still weak. Jenna forced the food on him, but her father barely touched it.

Elijah threw the comforter off and got out of bed. He went over to Jenna and laid a hand on her shoulder. His fingers dug in a little as a spike of pain went through his head.

“By who? Or what?” he asked after taking a second for the pain in his head to quit.

“She didn’t say. She just wanted me to round up the knights and mages and get over there,” Jenna told him. “And from the sound of her voice, she didn’t have the time to go over the details. If we hurry, we can get mobilized and get out there.”

Elijah nodded his head.

“Do it,” he told her.

Jenna left the room and headed down the hall to her dad’s man cave, although (and he corrected her often), he preferred the term den. She walked inside and went to a big desk set in the corner. She went behind it and popped open a hidden catch. A drawer slid out with a glowing button on it. She mashed it down and a pair of emergency lights near the ceiling started flashing blue.

Jenna walked out of the room and met her dad at the front door to his apartment. He was dressed in black and wore a Kevlar vest packed with several high-powered firearms and his trademark broadsword strapped across his back. They walked out into the narrow hallway together. There were no other apartments on the top floor, so Elijah had the entire space to himself.

“You should stay here. You’re not 100% yet,” Jenna told him as they walked to the elevator. It was private and the only ones that had access to it was her and her dad.

Elijah didn’t say a word as he pressed the elevator button, but he turned and gave Jenna a look that said she was crazy to even say that.

“All right, all right. I’m sorry I even said it. I just don’t want you to get hurt,” she said.

The elevator door opened, and they went inside. The flashing blue lights blinked on and off, throwing a blue glow over everything. Jenna knew that every floor of the apartment building would have them too. The advantage to owning the building himself was that it allowed Elijah to rent out each apartment to a Defaeco Knight or a mage. Some still lived elsewhere, but a big bulk of their order lived there and made the task of mobilizing them a hell of a lot easier. It was the main reason that Elijah had the alert system installed and allowed for a safe, defensible place to fight off any large-scale attacks. Most of the monsters, however, didn’t have the nerve to openly attack a human apartment building in the middle of a pretty big city but it had been known to happen from time to time.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine,” Elijah told her. “When we get down to the War Room, we’ll have the mages teleport us to the mansion. Once we get there, we’ll stay in formation. Knights in front with the mages behind us. We’ll move in and clear out the area. The medics will provide support to any of Kendra’s pack that are wounded as we move forward.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Jenna told him.

Five minutes later, the elevator stopped, and the door slid open again. They walked into a wide hallway with plain whitewalls and linoleum flooring. Several Knights and mages were bustling through the hallway and as the two of them started down it, the elevator next to Elijah’s private one opened. More people poured out and there was a sense of urgency hanging in the air.

Everyone hurried down the hall and made their way to a large room with weapons hanging off the walls, maps, banks of computers, and a wide-open area in the middle with the Defaeco order’s crest set into the black flooring.

Elijah saw Abraham talking with Carter Jenvorich, an upper level knight. Gloria Stevens, a young fire mage in her mid-twenties was beside him, her eyes darting back and forth between the two as they talked. The discussion got more heated as Elijah and Jenna came up to them.

“It’s completely asinine to go into a hostile environment with no intel. We have no idea what’s attacking the wolves’ mansion. We don’t know the enemy’s capabilities or their weaknesses. We’ll end up losing.

“If the situation were reversed, they would be here, helping us,” Abraham responded hotly. He didn’t raise his voice, but there was anger in his tone. “You know that.”

“Do I?” Carter yelled.

“Whether you know the werewolves’ intentions or not, you were given orders,” Elijah responded coldly.

Carter and Abraham turned and saw him standing there. Carter hastily bowed while Abraham gave Eli a respectful nod. Carter didn’t seem to know what to do with himself as his order’s leader stared at him unrelentingly. His face was impassive, stony, and unreadable.

After a few tense, awkward moments of silence, Elijah finally spoke. He jerked his head to one side where a congregation of other knights were getting weapons.

“Get on with it, then,” he finally said, dismissing the man.

Carter banged a gauntleted fist against his chest and quickly hurried away to inspect some weapons himself. He ended up loading a small arsenal onto his body and gear.

“He’s not the only one pissed,” Jenna told her father. “A lot of them hate the partnership with the werewolves.”

“What would you recommend me do then? Murder them all?” Elijah raised an eyebrow inquisitively at his daughter.

“Nonsense,” Abraham muttered. “The others will see reason soon enough. The treaty with the werewolves is an invaluable tool. What better way to fight monsters than with monsters, eh?”

“Yeah, well, try telling all of them that,” Jenna responded, glancing at the other knights and mages. “I agree that the werewolves are a great resource, but that doesn’t make them any less dangerous. We should still watch our own backs.”

Elijah leaned down and whispered in his daughter’s ear. He wasn’t able to control the anger in his voice and he ended up practically hissing at her.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked. “Kendra is one of them.”

“Yes, she is,” Jenna whispered back, staring with no fear into her father’s eyes. “But look what happened to Conor. To her brother, Merrick. To the hundreds or thousands of other werewolves out there. There is a part of them that can, if given the chance, become a cold, savage killer. I’m just saying, it’s best if we don’t forget that fact.”

“We all understand that, but I don’t need you undermining the treaty at any given chance. It must remain strong if we are to protect Kendra,” Elijah told her.

Jenna didn’t think about that and the last thing she wanted was to put Kendra in harm’s way. She’d spent most of her life trying to keep her safe. It made her angry that Merle turned her and then on top of that, forced her to be the Bane Pack’s next alpha. Kendra was meant to live an ordinary, monster-free life and now she was in the heart of the war as a werewolf and an alpha. The only thing she could do now was fight beside her and hope that the both of them still came through the other side with their sanity intact.

“Fine. I’ll keep my feelings all bottled up,” Jenna responded. “But you know I’m not the only one that feels this way. Sooner or later, you are going to have to do something about it. Trusting werewolves will take a lot of time.”

“I am well aware of that, Jenna,” Elijah told her, still whispering. “Just trust that I know what I’m doing and let’s leave it at that.”

Jenna slowly nodded her head and Elijah bent down and kissed her forehead. He gave her one last look to make sure they were good and then headed to the center of the room to address the rest of the knights.

“Sup, princess,” a voice hailed.

Jenna smiled and turned around. Willie Stiles reached out and enfolded her in a hug. When they broke apart, he was all smiles.

“It’s been too long,” he said. “How’s things? The werewolf treaty thing still going good?”

“As good as it can be, I guess,” she responded, smiling brightly. She punched him on the shoulder. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Chupacabra hunt in Mexico,” he said, winking.

“Get it?” she asked him.

“Did I get it? You really have to ask?” he joked. “Damn thing didn’t even see me or Mina coming. I pinned it down with a couple of arrows and then Mina drowned the sucker. One less goat-eating monster runnin’ around.”

“Where is Mina?” Jenna asked, looking around. She couldn’t find the small Asian woman anywhere.

“Her mom is back in the hospital. Viral infection, I think. It’s been hard on her,” he explained. “So, we got something attacking our new monster buddies, huh? Any details on what it is?”

“Kendra called me and told me about the attack, but she didn’t have time to give me any details. I have no idea what we’re up against,” she told him.

“Well, that sounds like all kinds of no fun.” He smiled broadly as he whipped out a pump-action shotgun that had been strapped to his back. “Who am I kidding? I live for this kind of stuff.”

“All right everyone!” Elijah suddenly shouted. The room went dead quiet, including Jenna and Willie. “The Bane Pack is under some kind of attack. Time is of the essence now so the mages will teleport us there. We’re leaving in less than five minutes so make sure you’re prepared for anything.”

The door to the War Room suddenly opened and Jenna glanced that way. So did her father and when they saw who was there, Elijah looked confused. He started walking that way, Jenna hurrying after him. They got to the door at about the same time.

“Mr. Harper?” Elijah asked, holding out his hand. Drake shook it. “If I can, how did you get past our security protocols?”

“That would be me,” Jenna said, looking at her dad. “He came to the apartment a few days ago and told me he’d reconsidered. You were still healing so I didn’t get the chance to tell you.”

“How did you know to come here tonight?” Eli asked.

Drake pulled out a cell phone.

“Jenna gave this to me. She said she’d call when the knights were ready to induct me or something.” He looked around and noticed all the weapons every knight in the room was carrying. “By the looks of it though, I would say this wasn’t so much an induction ceremony as a throw-my ass-directly-in-the-fire ceremony. What’s going on?”

“There’s been an attack at a mansion about twenty minutes outside the city. They’re allies of ours,” Elijah told him. “We don’t know anything more than that and while I appreciate the fact that you reconsidered, I’m not sure you’re ready to face down a true monster. Not yet. You can stay at my apartment. Go there for now and I’ll let you know when you can start training.”

Elijah turned and started walking away.

“Mr. Bishop!” Drake called.

Elijah turned around.

“How many people do you know that were tortured by wendigos for days and survived?” Drake told him. “How many people do you know that came face to face with a living nightmare and are still able to function?”

Drake stood there with his hands held at his sides. His face was deadly serious.

“None,” Elijah answered, walking back to stand directly in front of Drake. “In fact, I would say it was impossible. How did you manage it?”

“I can either waste time telling you the story, or you can let me come with you,” Drake told him. “It’s up to you, but I would think you could use all the help you can get.”

Elijah stared at Drake for several seconds, thinking deeply. He had to admit Drake made some excellent points, but there was still something that didn’t feel right about letting him come. He wanted to say no, but he knew from Jenna’s report that Drake could handle himself exceptionally well.

“Fine. Suit up and pick out some weapons. Go for a variety since we don’t know what we’re dealing with yet,” Elijah instructed.

Drake nodded his head and couldn’t hide a smile as he raced over to the wall full of weapons. He took a pistol filled with silver bullets, extra clips, a katana, and a small silver dagger. When he was done, he saw that everyone was congregating in the middle of the large room. He went over there, looking at everyone. The knights were a rough and battle tested bunch. Before he turned back to Elijah, he caught a glance from someone near the back of the room.

The someone was Gwen.

She gave him a barely perceptible nod that he pointedly ignored.

“Ready?” Elijah yelled, standing in the middle of everyone on the crest of the Defaeco order. He stared at each in turn. There was a rumbling chorus of shouts from the assembled knights and mages.

“We fight!” Elijah raised one fist into the air.

Dozens of other fists flew into the air as well and as Elijah looked around him, he wondered how many would fall against whatever was attacking the Bane Pack’s home. It was a thought he often had right before they went into a battle like this. He wished he didn’t, but it never seemed to leave him alone.

“Let’s go,” Elijah barked once more as he shoved the thoughts of his men dying to the back of his mind.

He suddenly felt Abraham’s hand grip his shoulder and then the earth was swallowing the both of them whole. There was an intense feeling of being pulled and pushed at the same time. Green light was the only thing he could see and there was a heavy coldness seeping through his body. He wasn’t a huge fan of being teleported, but he had to admit it was extremely convenient in times where speed was necessary. He couldn’t see the rest of his order, but he knew they were all being teleported by their respective mages as well.

Abraham’s hand tightened on his shoulder, signaling that their ride was almost over. He gripped the hilt of his broadsword still strapped to his back and prepared himself to face whatever was about to come.

The green light suddenly disappeared as well as the cold and the sensation of being pushed and pulled. He wavered a little as solid ground was suddenly underneath his feet again and blinked at the world around him. He was still gripping the hilt of his sword. He yanked it clear of its scabbard and held it with one hand in front of him as he scanned the immediate area. He saw other mages with their knights winking into existence in blazes of light the color of whatever element they controlled.

Drake appeared and a second later, Jenna did too with Felix by her side. They all looked alert and ready for anything. Elijah’s gaze went past his daughter and saw a few artfully placed trees and boulders. He saw the big circular drive with the fountain at its heart behind him and to his right was the mansion itself, lit up with decorative lighting. His body was tensed and ready for a fight, but there didn’t appear to be an immediate threat.

“Form ranks,” he whisper-shouted. Even though he was being quiet, the knights had no trouble understanding him.

They immediately compacted into three tight, square formations. Their weapons were held up and all of them were ready to shoot at the first thing they saw moving. The mages, for their part, stayed several paces behind the knights while five highly trained medics were behind them. Together, the Defaeco Knights crept forward, their eyes darting toward any sound with their minds on high alert.

Elijah was in the first formation with the press of armored people closing around him. His heart started picking up as the anticipation for a fight got stronger. He narrowed his eyes, looking ahead, trying to find the creature or creatures that attacked Kendra, but the mansion’s grounds were empty. Elijah, however, pressed on and rounded the corner of the building about six minutes later.

The werewolves were there, worn and torn but still alive.

“Medics see what you can do for them,” Elijah said.

There were several wolves lying on the ground bleeding from wounds that weren’t healing as quickly as they should have.

“The rest of you set up a perimeter. Nothing gets through.”

The medics surged forward and tended to the injured wolves while the rest of the knights broke off into smaller groups to make sure there wasn’t something still lurking out in the darkness where the lights couldn’t reach. The only ones that stayed close to the wolves were Elijah, Abraham, Jenna, Felix and a handful of others.

“Why aren’t they healing?” Jenna asked, speaking to Ian. “And what attacked you? How many of them were there?”

“Two. Just two,” the werewolf replied, wearily. He looked exhausted.

“That’s it?” Felix asked. “Not to be rude, but can’t a pack of werewolves handle two monsters?”

“Ordinarily, yes,” Ian told him. “But in this case, the monsters in question were vampires.”

“That’s not possible,” Elijah replied quickly. “The knights eradicated every trace of vampirism centuries ago. There aren’t any left.”

“Tell that to the two that just killed six of my family without breaking a sweat.” Ian looked back at the mansion. He could still see the corpses of his fallen brethren in his mind, lingering there and torturing him. He could still hear the cries of anguish and grief from the people that lost loved ones. Morgan Ries lost her mother, Bev. Arthur and Rose Kiern lost their nine-year-old son, Leo. Kevin Hardwick was dead. Sherry Duncan and Oscar Underwood too. “We didn’t stand a chance.”

“Somebody, help!”

Everyone turned toward the shrill sound and found Deirdre running, holding someone in her arms. She was crying hysterically and nearly collapsed several times.

“He...he’s hurt,” Deirdre said. She laid the body gently on the ground.

It was Shawn Riker.

“What happened to him?” Felix asked.

“I f-found him in my room. He collapsed next to Patrick’s crib,” Deirdre tried to explain. Her voice was hitching uncontrollably.

Elijah motioned for a medic to come over. A small, plump woman with red framed glasses hurried to them.

“Can you do anything for him, Darla?” Elijah asked.

Darla bent down and pulled out a pair of scissors. She cut away Shawn’s shirt so she could inspect his wounds. They all saw a score of puncture marks all over his back and neck. The skin around the wounds looked puffy and inflamed while the very edges were darkening alarmingly.

“There appears to be some kind of venom. It’s preventing his regenerative qualities from closing them. Judging by the necrotic tissue, it’s also attacking his cells too. I’m not sure if I can do anything. The damage is too extensive.” She looked up at Deirdre with an apologetic look.

“No. Don’t say that. Do something! Anything! He saved my son’s life!” Deirdre was yelling now, and Ian had to step in to try and calm her down.

“Maybe I can help,” Felix said. “I might be able to draw the poison out.”

“Please. Please do it. Don’t let him die,” Deirdre told him.

Felix nodded to her and sat down on the ground next to Shawn’s inert body.

At the same time, headlights suddenly appeared up the road.

Kendra felt a measure of relief as they drove through the mansion’s gates. She hadn’t felt anymore of her pack being slaughtered and it seemed the attack was over. She wanted to believe that. She wanted it to be over, but a nagging part of her thought the attack was just the prelude to something bigger. It felt like the first attack was just a means to an end. A small part of a bigger plan.

She just didn’t know what the bigger plan was.

Kendra threw the door to the car open and jumped out before it even came to a complete stop. The smell of blood was heavy in the air and it was mixed with a scent she’d never smelled before. It was super-sweet and mixed with a metallic aroma that reminded her of…

Blood, she thought to herself. That must be the vampires’ scent.

She hurried over toward the side of the house, following her nose. She had no trouble tracking the various scents of her pack to where they were clustered together. She found them huddled around a body lying face down on the ground. She couldn’t see who it was, but that didn’t matter to her. She knew it was Shawn and that he wasn’t moving. She got to them, shoving Bruce to one side so she could get a look.

“What happened?” she asked. She was trying, unsuccessfully, to keep her voice calm. Despite how hard she fought to keep it steady, it warbled with emotion. “What the hell happened here?”

“Vampires,” Ian returned. She looked up at him and saw his face was rigid, fury lurking in his eyes.

It was clear that Ian wanted revenge but there was something like shame murking up his emotions too.

“They tricked me. They acted like something attacked them, so I let invited them in to get them some help. This,” he paused and gestured to all the destruction. “This is all my fault.”

“Don’t put the blame on yourself, Ian. Put it where it belongs. On the vampires. They did this, not you and when we find them, we’ll make them wish they never crossed us. Ok? Right now, we need to help Shawn. We need to fix Shawn.”

She turned to Felix who was sitting cross-legged on the ground. He had his eyes closed and his hands hovering about three inches above the boy’s back. Kendra saw all the puncture wounds and an empathetic shiver ran up her spine.

“Can I do anything to help?” Kendra asked.

“No. Not here anyway. I need to concentrate,” Felix responded, his eyes still closed. “Talk to Elijah. He might have some info for you or something.”

“Stay with them, Ian.”

The grizzled old wolf nodded his head, his eyes fixed on Shawn and Felix. Kendra looked once more at Shawn, said a silent prayer for him to get better, and then got up. She brushed grass off her jeans and looked around for Elijah. She spotted him seconds later. He was a couple yards away with Jenna, both of them watching the darkness beyond the mansion’s lights. They both stood in nearly identical poses.

“So, what do the two of you know about vampires,” Kendra said as she walked up to them, her voice more of an angry growl than anything else. “How do I find them?”

“They’re legends, mostly. Their breed was slaughtered centuries ago. There hasn’t been a single one in all that time so how are they here now?” Elijah asked. He turned his head back so he could look at Kendra.

“Could one have been missed?” Jenna asked. Her focus stayed on the darkness, her eyes narrowed. She talked without looking at her father. “One could create more, and they could’ve been hiding all these years. Maybe they just picked now to come out in the open.”

“Doubtful. The records we have show they were systematically obliterated. Not one survived,” Elijah replied.

“Records could be wrong,” Jenna returned.

Elijah had to suppress his growing frustration.

“That’s true,” Kendra interrupted. “Records could be wrong, but I don’t think they are. This feels more personal. It reeks of Bendis’ work. Think about it. If a vampire did come out of the woodwork after all these years, why attack my pack? It’s more plausible that sadistic, bitch goddess made them and sent them here after what happened at the cafeteria last week. If I had to put money on it, I’d put it on that. I mean, from our own history, she’s the one that created werewolves in the first place. Who’s to say she couldn’t create vampires too?”

“I guess nothing. She’s done almost everything else to try and destroy you and your pack. Why not this?” Jenna responded.

Kendra just nodded, her eyes focused on the knights patrolling around. They were good people trying to do the right thing and she still felt guilty for the ones that had been killed in the mansion attack last year. It was one of the reasons she had Elijah change the treaty to include the three factions coming together. She had hoped that if they all fought together, a bond would form that might help erase the years of tension between them. For the most part, she thought it was working but there were still a few stubborn knights and mages unwilling to accept the change and one or two equally stubborn wolves that shared that sentiment. She was hoping that with enough time, they would all be at peace with each other.

“I’ve got movement east of the drive. I’m leading a team to investigate now,” a voice said as it came through a walkie-talkie strapped to Elijah’s hip.

The voice was familiar to Kendra, but she couldn’t immediately place it.

Elijah grabbed the walkie-talkie and put it to his mouth. There was a tiny squeal as he pressed the talk button on the side.

“Watch yourselves out there. The targets are hostile and extremely deadly, Mr. Harper,” he said.

“Roger, that,” Drake returned.

“Was that the guy from the alley?” Kendra asked. “Drake, right?”

“Yeah. I thought his skills might be useful to the knights,” Jenna said.

“We’ll see how he does tonight. He’s still new to this world. He could crack. It wouldn’t be the first time it happened, and Drake is more vulnerable to that kind of psychological trauma than most,” Elijah warned.

“Why?” Kendra asked, curious.

“He’s a war vet. His platoon got blown up in Afghanistan. He was the only survivor. I went through some of his medical files. His doctors diagnosed him with PTSD,” Elijah explained. “And on top of that, his wife was killed by a rabid dog or animal of some kind while he was overseas.”

“A rabid dog?” Kendra asked. Her stomach got a very queasy feeling. “Are you serious? How sure are you that it was a dog and not say, a werewolf lost in their blood hunger?”

She looked to where Drake was supposed to be but he was too far away to see. She scanned everything around her, really taking things in. Her mind worked furiously. Two vampires attacked her home and killed her wolves. The first thing she’d done was call in her allies for protection. Then she came home. Now the knights were here. The mages were here. The wolves were here.

All in one convenient location, she thought to herself.

“Oh no,” she gasped. “I really hope I’m wrong about what I’m thinking.”

“Why?” Jenna asked, confused.

Even Elijah was looking at her with a troubled expression on his face.

“What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that the best way for someone who can’t directly attack a person is to get someone else to do it for them. I mean, that’s what Bendis has been doing this whole time. First it was Jonah and Merrick. Then it was the goblins. Finally, Deanna and her blood crazy pack. Each one failed. So now she’s angry. She’s pissed. And, she’s desperate. So, she makes a couple of vampires. But she doesn’t want just any normal vampire, she wants one with a good reason to do what she wants them to do. She wants someone with motivation to hurt us. What better person could she hope for than one that’s lost his wife in a werewolf attack?” Kendra explained, already running toward where Drake said he was going before she even finished her sentence. “It makes perfect sense.”

“Kendra,” Jenna yelled. She was running after her friend now. “Don’t do this! He’s not a vampire! Don’t you think we would know?”

Kendra could only hope Jenna was right, but she didn’t think so. She was pretty sure the first attack was just a lure to draw everyone into one spot.

Screaming erupted from directly ahead of her.

Right where Drake was supposed to be.

Drake felt his body turn cold and then liquefy as the mage with him used his magic to teleport them. The world was lost in a confusion of white-blue light and he felt like he was being sucked down a drain. The sensation was completely painless though. It was weird but at the same time exhilarating. He wasn’t sure how much time he spent traveling through the mage’s magical portal or whatever it was. It felt like it could’ve been seconds, or minutes, or even hours. Then his body started to solidify again as the real world blinked into existence around him. He looked down at himself and found a thin sheet of water soaking him.

He looked around and saw other mages materialize with their respective knights. Everyone had their weapons raised and several mages had glowing orbs of energy hovering over their palms. Drake mimicked them and put his own weapon up, even though he knew there was no immediate threat at the moment. Not if Marcus and Tori had done their jobs right.

He looked around to get his bearings. They were on an expansive green lawn. The sky was dark and twinkled with stars. Decorative lights lit up some of the area, but beyond them was pure darkness. He didn’t see anyone at first but as they all started moving, they came around the corner of a mansion and saw several people lying on the grass. Some of them were moaning and most of them were wounded. He took a cautious sniff and smelled the slightly metallic odor of blood. The reaction he had to it was immediate. He felt intense hunger. His body screamed at him with a need to rush over there and gulp as much blood down as he could. His could feel that hunger writhing underneath his skin and his eyes lit up with a strong, silver glow. He took several calming breaths, turning his face away from anyone that might notice, and got control over himself.

He saw some of the knights heading toward an area of the grounds where the lights weren’t touching and joined them. He didn’t want to lose control of himself. If he did that, then he would lose out on his ultimate goal. He would lose out on his chance to get revenge for what happened to Lucy. He wasn’t about to let that happen.

“Drake, right?” a voice hailed.

Drake turned around and saw the mage that had teleported him walking his way. He was a tall man that looked to be in his mid-thirties. His black hair was being tossed around by a strong breeze.

“I heard Jenna say your name before we came here. I’m Luthor Reed.” He held out his hand to Drake. “Water mage extraordinaire. I thought I would introduce myself and we could get some of the pleasantries out of the way.”

“Good to meet you,” Drake replied, shaking the man’s hand. He had a strong grip and for a second, Drake didn’t think the mage was going to let go.

“Come on, let’s check the place out. I hear monsters are lurking around,” Luthor said, cheerfully enough.

Drake, however, couldn’t help but notice the man’s weird body language. He looked awkward, rigid, and slightly nervous.

He walked next to Drake, but Drake noticed right away that the mage walked about a foot behind him the whole time. And his fingers were twitching incessantly which was probably a nervous habit he had whenever he was scared of something.

Drake let out a sigh of frustration.

“How’d you know?” he asked, looking around before he faced Luthor. There was a team of knights a few yards away, but their focus was ahead of them, not behind, and so they didn’t notice Drake and Luthor.

“Know?” Luthor asked, feigning ignorance.

Drake raised an eyebrow and leveled the gun at the mage.

“Don’t be stupid, Drake. You fire that thing and you’ll have every knight, mage, and werewolf here in seconds. They’ll rip you to pieces before you can get a word out.”

“How’d you know?” he asked again, keeping the barrel of his gun trained on the mage.

“I felt it the minute I touched you. I didn’t know what it was at first, but I knew that it was strong. And dark. Dark magic always leaves a stink,” Luthor explained. He kept his body tense and ready for a fight, his fingers still twitching. “It didn’t take long after that to realize what the dark magic was and what you were, vampire.”

Drake cursed inside his head. He was an idiot to think a mage wouldn’t be able to figure out what he was.

“What are you doing here? Why’d you attack the werewolves?” the mage asked. “You know what? Doesn’t matter. All that matters is making sure you don’t hurt anyone else.”

Drake watched the mage’s body glow with that white blue light again. His features started to shimmer like he was underwater, and his body began turning to water. He was teleporting again, trying to get away from Drake. Trying to rat him out.

Without thinking, Drake surged forward so fast the mage had no idea what was happening. Luthor couldn’t do anything when Drake caught hold of him.

Blood gushed into his mouth in a torrent. He swallowed it down with frenzied greediness and went back for more and more until nothing was left. Luthor struggled against him. He could feel the mage’s fingers scrabbling against his chest as he tried to push Drake off of him, but he didn’t have the strength. In a few moments, the blood quit pouring out and Luthor died. His body went completely limp.

Drake wiped an arm across his mouth. He looked down at the corpse, wondering what he was going to do with the body. He didn’t have a lot of time either because at that moment he saw two cars racing down the driveway off to his left. He tracked them as they sped toward the mansion and came to a stop next to the fountain. A woman, he could barely see her, threw the door open and ran out before her car even stopped.

A rush of excitement hit him.

That must be Kendra and Conor, he thought to himself. Has to be.

He made sure no one was watching him. The knights that had been a couple yards off were even farther away now and no one else was even close. He was practically alone. So he grabbed hold of Luthor’s body and dragged it toward a large tree a few feet away. He set the body next to the trunk and kneeled there so he could watch the rest of the people as they filed out of the cars and started running toward the injured werewolves.

He waited for a little bit longer, still watching, making sure to time the next phase of his attack just right. Everything had to perfect. It had to be precise.

Almost time, he thought, still watching and waiting. He wanted to make sure they were caught off guard. He wanted them to feel real fear and terror.

It’s what they all deserve, he told himself. He tried to make himself believe it too but there was an irritating piece of him that was disgusted with what he’d become. What he allowed himself to become. You’re a monster. You’re no better than them. Look at yourself.

LOOK!

He felt himself flinch from his inner voice as it shouted to be heard but he shut his eyes and forced it away. Lucy was taken from him and he wasn’t going to stop until he killed them all.

He took a deep, soothing breath and opened his eyes. He saw Elijah and Jenna coming around the house. Shortly after that, Kendra came into view. He watched the three as they talked to each other, trying to make sense of the brutal attacks.

And I’m not even done yet, he thought. How bout we get the real party started?

He pulled out the cell phone Jenna had given him several days ago and texted a simple message.

Kill them all, it read.

When that was done, he grabbed the walkie-talkie hanging from his belt and pressed the button on the side.

“I have movement east of the driveway. I’m going in to investigate,” Drake said, glancing down at Luthor’s body.

He wondered idly what happened to a mage that had been bitten by a vampire. He wondered if they came back too. He wanted to know but he didn’t have time to wait around and see. He took a last look at the dead mage and then turned his attention over to the knights. The ones that were supposed to protect people from monsters.

They should’ve protected Lucy, he thought to himself. And they shouldn’t have allied themselves with the monsters that killed her!

He didn’t allow rational thought to invade his mind after that. He was too far gone now as his old pain, loss, and fury filled him like he was an empty cup. All thoughts were erased except for one.

Lucy.

He thought about his wife. He remembered how she always stuck her tongue out at him whenever she joked around with him. He remembered the way her eyes would get brighter when she was happy and dark when she was sad about something. He remembered the way her soft hands would caress the sides of his face.

And then he would see her death. He would see Conor ripping into her.

His eyes flashed with cold, silver light and then he was speeding forward. The landscape around him was nothing but a hazy blur as he raced toward the rear lines of the knights in front of him. He reached them in a couple of seconds, his movements eerily silent.

The rearmost knight didn’t even know he was there, and Drake used that to his advantage. He wrapped his arms around her, one hand around the woman’s chest and the other around her mouth. He felt the knight tense up, preparing to fight, but there was no way she could match Drake’s strength.

Drake yanked her head to the side, leaving her neck wide open. His head snapped forward and he bit down. The hunger inside overtook him and he lost himself to the blood flowing out of his victim’s throat. When he was done with that one, he got up and picked out his next victim. He ran forward and for the first time in years he felt truly alive, despite the fact that he was technically dead. The irony there made him smile.

Just as he was getting close to the cluster of knights, Marcus and Tori jumped over the wall surrounding the mansion. They’d been close but far enough away to keep the wolves off their scent. When they got the text from Drake, they came running. There were several shouts and screams as the vampires were spotted by the knights. Gunfire erupted but the two vampires were sickeningly fast. They quickly tore into the ranks of knights there, ripping into their necks, throwing them into trees, or slamming them directly into the ground. When Drake got there, Marcus and Tori already took out half the knights.

He waded into the fight to help take care of the rest.

The last seven managed to band together. They stood in a close ring with their backs to each other and shot round after round at the vampires. Drake felt bullets hit him but he shrugged them off like they were nothing more than irritating insects. He could feel each wound heal itself as quickly as it appeared.

The next few seconds were a blur as he lost his mind to the craze of blood and battle. He crashed into the knights and flung them around like ragdolls. He tore their necks open. He snapped arms and legs. He broke their necks.

In short, he slaughtered them.

When he finally came back to himself the ground was littered with corpses. Blood was smeared across his face and his clothes were spattered with the stuff. He looked to Marcus and Tori.

“Let’s go,” he ordered.

Together, the three started walking toward the mansion.

Kendra ran as fast as she could. She heard the screams and shouts again but this time there was gunfire too. She pushed herself harder. The only thing she could think of was trying to stop all this before more people died.

She heard Jenna still behind her, still trying to convince her that Drake wasn’t a vampire. She only hoped her friend was right but based on everything she knew, that was unlikely.

“Kendra just stop!” Jenna yelled again. This time the command came with a shot fired from her pistol.

Kendra was so surprised to hear it that she didn’t realize what it was. Not until the bullet hit her in the shoulder and sent her tumbling across the ground.

“Kendra!”

She heard Conor yell her name. It was full of fear and worry. Her shoulder hurt like a bitch and she could smell the faint odor of burnt flesh. It was a silver bullet.

Silver!

Kendra couldn’t get over the fact that Jenna had just shot her. Her best friend had shot her. What the hell?

She rolled onto her side. She tried to get up, but the wound hurt too badly. Her arm couldn’t hold her weight and every time she tried to push herself up, the pain would slam into her and she would fall again.

A pair of feet stopped just in front of her face. She looked up and saw Jenna standing over her. She had her gun leveled at her head.

“I told you he wasn’t a vampire,” Jenna said. Her eyes looked far away and distant. “He told me that you would think he was and to stop you if you tried to hurt him. He was right. I didn’t want to hurt you, but he told me to stop you. He said I had to do whatever it took.”

Kendra was scared. Jenna wasn’t in control anymore. Drake had done something to her.

“Jenna just listen to me,” Kendra gasped out. “Don’t do this.”

Jenna’s eyes, however, stayed blank.

“He said I had to,” Jenna repeated. Her finger started pulling the trigger. Right before the shot was fired, however, Conor hurtled into her.

Jenna was lifted completely off the ground for a few moments as Conor’s momentum carried them into the air. Then he slammed her into the dirt and grass. She let out a grunt of pain. She gasped for breath and then struggled like someone possessed. She hit, kicked, and even bit Conor, trying to break free, but he wasn’t about to let her up. He tried to talk some sense into her, but she was beyond reason. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore and he slammed his head into hers.

After that she was still.

Kendra managed to crawl over to Jenna. She peeled one eyelid back. It was rolled up into her head and only showed the whites of her eyes.

“Are you okay?” Conor asked her. He went around to Kendra’s back and looked at the wound there. She heard him sniff slightly.

“Silver,” he said. “It has to come out now before it does permanent damage.”

Before Kendra could reply, Conor thrust his fingers inside, hunting for the bullet.

Kendra yelled out in pain. Claws sprang out of her fingertips and began ripping at the ground. Her body was shaking, and the pain was making her teeth chatter. She gritted them as her eyes flashed with amber light.

“Hurts,” she gasped.

“What happened?” Elijah asked. He was followed by Abraham, and a horde of other knights, mages, and wolves.

Elijah saw Jenna lying on the ground, unmoving, and rushed to her. He saw the bruise forming on her forehead. In blind fury he whipped out his gun and had it trained on Conor’s heart.

“What did you do to her?” he asked. His brow was furrowed so deeply that his eyes all but disappeared.

“Your daughter shot Kendra. I had to stop her. She’s still alive but you need to put the damn gun away! Otherwise Kendra is dead.” Conor was angry too and shouting at Elijah, his fingers still buried in Kendra’s shoulder. “I have to get the bullet out or it will poison her.”

Elijah checked Jenna just to be sure and when he found a pulse, he gave Conor a bare perceptible nod.

“B-better hurry,” Kendra whispered. Her teeth were still chattering as she saw three people calmly walking toward their group. She could smell the sickly-sweet aroma of vampires. She didn’t recognize two of them but the third was obviously Drake Harper. “They’re coming.”

Everyone glanced at the vampires.

“Shit,” Conor yelled, his fingers digging faster.

Kendra let out a scream of pain.

“Got it!” Conor yelled in excitement as he yanked the bullet out. “Ow. Dammit that hurts.”

He threw it away from himself and rubbed his hand on his jeans, smearing Kendra’s blood on them. He looked at his index finger and thumb and could see blisters forming on the pads of his fingertips.

Kendra felt an enormous relief hit her as the pain went away and the gunshot wound started to heal. She flexed her shoulder. The muscles there still felt stiff and tight, but she knew she would be better in a few minutes.

“We need to fall back,” Ian said as he came to stand next to Kendra. Conor was helping her up from the ground.

“These things are really strong,” Zoe added.

Kendra felt the rushing power inside her rising up like a tsunami wave. She turned to look at her wolves. Ian, Conor, Grady, Bruce, Zoe, Arthur, Rose, Parker, Alice, Morgan, and her new wolves. The only ones missing were Deirdre, Shawn, Pat Jr., and Trevor.

Her eyes flashed yellow again.

“I’m stronger,” she told them.

She turned and ran at the vampires head on, her face melding and merging with those of a wolf until she resembled the hybrid state that Conor turned into.

“Stop her! They’ll kill her!” Elijah ranted from his spot next to Jenna.

Conor wasn’t sure what plan Kendra had or if she even had one to begin with, but he knew Elijah was right. Two of them had single-handedly slaughtered six wolves. There was no way she could take them on by herself.

“Let’s help her then,” Conor yelled.

A chorus of enthusiastic shouts greeted him from all the wolves, knights, and mages present. Together they surged forward like a flood, hellbent on taking the vampires down.

Conor was the first of the group to come close to the vampires. He closed with the girl vamp first and was instantly shocked at how strong she was. He had to fight hard to even keep her fangs from biting into him. She kept snapping at him like a rabid animal, laughing the whole time. He struggled with her for a few seconds longer and then the knights started grabbing her and trying to throw her to the ground. He could hear mages chanting and felt the elements around him starting to stir as they tapped into their power. But nothing was even coming close to hurting her.

“You’re a cute one,” the girl said. Her eyes started turning red around the edges. It looked almost like the color was trying to swallow the rest of her eyes. “But I hear you’re taken. Pity though.”

Then she suddenly twisted her body, throwing Conor’s balance and causing him to stumble forward. The girl used the momentum to grab onto one of his wrists and then swing him around. When she built up her speed, she let him go.

“We could’ve had a lot fun.”

She yelled the last bit as he was sent rolling and tumbling across the ground. He could feel his skin being cut and scraped. Bones broke. His head bashed into one of the artfully placed rocks and when he finally came to a stop, everything hurt.

He took a minute to get his breath back. Already, his body was regenerating. Bones were realigning and mending themselves. Abrasions were healing over. The cuts stopped bleeding and sealed themselves shut. In just a few seconds, he felt pretty much whole. He slowly got up from the ground and looked back at the fight.

He wished he hadn’t.

The knights, mages, and the wolves were fighting to stop the vampires, but it was clear that despite all that manpower, it was still far from enough.

The girl vamp was fending them off.

By herself.

The other two were locked in a desperate struggle with Kendra. Her attacks were blindingly fast, and she was holding her own against the two of them. It was hard but she was managing it. And she was doing it in her hybrid state.

She’s not even using her full strength, Conor thought to himself, even more amazed.

He almost allowed a measure of hope to slip in as he watched his girl fight but that ended when Drake ducked under her sweeping arm and landed a horrendous uppercut. Conor felt his heart skip a beat as he saw Kendra fly through the air and then land with a thud.

“Kendra!” Conor screamed as he started running toward her.

Nope, the fight was definitely not going well.

For anyone.

Kendra felt the blow to her chin like an explosion. The force of it sent her flying through the air and distantly she heard Conor scream her name. It felt like forever before she hit the ground and when she did, it was with enough force to knock the breath out of her. She fought for a second to pull more air into her lungs as her jaw throbbed and pulsed with pain. She gulped in air and then she got up, rubbing her face.

“This is what you deserve. This is what you all deserve,” Drake yelled. His face was full of intense emotion mixed with a whole lot of crazy. “Knights, mages, and wolves. You are all going to die tonight.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it,” Kendra told him and then smirked. “Round two, asshole.”

Then she let the wolf out again. Her body exploded outward in a wave of fur and flesh. Her huge front paws landed on the ground and she let out a roar. Her polar-bear-sized wolf form glared at the vampires like she was begging for a fight. Drake and the other two with him showed a moment’s hesitation.

“Uh...we sure about this, Master,” he said, looking to Drake.

“Quit calling me that,” Drake told him, irritated. “Just get her.”

The vampire didn’t look convinced, but he obeyed any way. He ran at her from the left while Drake took the right. They came at her from both sides and almost too fast for her to track.

Almost.

She reared up on her hind legs and lashed out with her enormous paws. One struck Drake a glancing blow to his shoulder and sent him tumbling away. The male vampire managed to dodge the other at the last second but was unprepared when Kendra followed it up by jumping on him. He was already off balance and her sudden weight caused him to lose his footing. She bore him to the ground.

He screamed as he felt her jaws clamp onto his head. Her fangs plunged into his cheek and neck. He tried to push her off him in a last ditch effort to save himself but she was relentless. Kendra bit down even harder and then shook her head back and forth like a dog with a chew toy. She felt his flesh rip and tear. She heard the bones in his neck break like dry sticks. But she kept at it and didn’t stop until the flesh tore completely and the vamp’s head popped off. When it did, it turned instantly to gritty ash, along with the rest of his body. It filled her mouth with a foul and disgusting taste.

“Marcus!” Kendra heard the girl vamp yell out.

She looked at her and saw the grief and anger in her eyes. Ordinarily she would’ve pitied the girl for losing someone she obviously cared about but not today. Today the vampires attacked her home. They killed her wolves. They were killing her allies. There was a ring of dead knights and mages surrounding the girl even now. Other knights and mages were keeping their distance, taking pot shots at her with magic or bullets while five of Kendra’s wolves paced around in a wide circle.

“You’re strong. I’ll give you that. And you may have taken out Marcus but that still leaves you outnumbered.” Drake glanced at Tori, who was in the process of a complete emotional breakdown. She slammed her way through the remaining knights, mages, and wolves as she raced toward Kendra. “You don’t stand a chance.”

Kendra shifted back to her human form. She stood there naked and unafraid.

“Round three then,” she said as she reached for every shred of power she had left. It crashed through her, sending familiar tingles slithering into her muscles and nerves. Her face jutted out and changed into a muzzle full of sharp teeth. Her knees bent backward, and her feet exploded into wolf paws tipped with deadly claws. Her arms bulged and humped as the muscles there grew ten times bigger. Claws sprang out of her fingers too and fur sprouted along her entire body.

“You’re dead! You’re dead! You’re DEAD!” the girl screamed.

“Get away from her!” Drake yelled but it was already too late.

Kendra tracked the vamp girl with all her senses and waited.

“Dead!” The girl screamed again.

As soon as the vamp girl was in reach, Kendra snagged her head in one massive, clawed hand and jerked her off the ground. Then she wrapped her other hand around her waist and pulled with all her strength. The girl screamed in pain, but it didn’t last long. It was cut abruptly short as her body was ripped in half. Kendra threw the remnants to the ground where they puffed into a cloud of ashes. Then she stared hard at Drake.

“What were you saying about being outnumbered?” she asked. Her voice was a rough growl.

Drake just stared at her, shocked at the sheer power she had.

“Looks like it’s just you and me,” Kendra said. She started walking toward Drake. “Let’s end this.”

“All right. I’ll end this right now,” Drake replied. The shock wore off and he stood with more confidence. He smiled cockily at her, his eyes shining with bright silver light. “You’re not the only one with power, Kendra. Let’s see how strong you really are.”

Kendra had no idea what he was doing. She watched him and waited for an attack, but it never came. He just stood there. Impatience got the better of her. She rushed forward and went on the offensive. She slashed at Drake in a flurry of attacks that were nearly impossible to dodge. But he did it anyway. He moved with liquid speed as he dodged and evaded Kendra’s huge, swiping claws. At one point, he literally felt the breeze rush past his face as he narrowly avoided having his skin sliced open. Kendra kept at it, hoping to wear Drake down, but he seemed as strong as ever and not in the least bit exhausted. Her, on the other hand, kept tapping into more and more power. She knew it might be a mistake in the long run, but her plan was to bring him down as fast as she could like she did with the other vamps. If she could stop him now, then she could end this. But he was too damn fast! Every time she tried to hit him; he would glide past her efforts with ease. She couldn’t even touch him.

After another failed attempt to land a blow, he stopped toying with her. She left her side unprotected and he punched her in the rib cage. The pain was intense and immediate. The bones there broke and she went down. She could hear her wolves yelling and rushing to her aid. She heard Elijah let out a huge battle cry that was immediately joined by the other knights and mages present.

“You can’t win,” Drake said as he reached down and grabbed hold of her thickly muscled neck. He lifted her into the air and slammed a powerful fist into her stomach.

She let out a grunt of pain and struggled to get free.

“I’m the stronger monster,” Drake told her with confidence. He lifted her up and punched her again. “I’m more dedicated to killing your kind. I’m more motivated.”

He lifted her into the air one last time and punched her in the face. Kendra fell to the ground. She shook her head, the pain so great she couldn’t think straight. Her limbs felt like jelly. But she wasn’t giving up.

She growled deeply then got to her hands and knees and looked at Drake. He jumped into the air with one fist cocked back, ready to land a devastating blow to her head. There were several shouts of concern and outrage from behind her, but she tuned them out. She focused only on Drake. Hope suddenly filled her.

Can’t dodge me when you’re in the air, she thought.

Drake unleashed his hellishly strong punch, but Kendra was on her feet in a microsecond. She caught hold of Drake’s fist first and squeezed as hard as she could. She heard the satisfying yell of pain come out of his throat and that brought more strength flooding through her. She swung him into the ground and then jumped on top of him, ripping and slashing at him with fangs and claws. His skin split open in several places and sluggish, dark red blood seeped out. He tried to fight her off, but she had the leverage and he couldn’t push her bulky weight off his body. He lashed out at her with punches and kicks. Kendra felt the blows hit her, but she brushed them off. It was hard because they hurt like hell, but there was no way she was going to let him go.

“I’m gonna kill you,” Drake spat.

“No. No you’re not,” Kendra said, her voice roughened by her alpha state. “You shouldn’t have done this to yourself, Drake. We could’ve helped you.”

Kendra felt an immense wave of anger roll through Drake. It made his whole body shake and his eyes flash silver. She saw his fangs grow half an inch longer.

“Help me?! You did this to me!” he screeched. With a massive amount of strength and will power, he heaved Kendra off himself.

She tried to cling to him, but she lost her hold. She hit the ground but was up in a flash. Despite her incredible speed, she still wasn’t fast enough. As soon as he was able to launch Kendra away, Drake was up and running at her. He wrapped his hand around her throat. Kendra tried to break his grip, but Drake started running, taking her with him. The landscape blurred past them for a half second before Drake slammed Kendra’s bulk into the side of the mansion. Her head whipped back and cracked into the brick wall, making dots fly across her vision. She struggled to get his hand off her throat, but she couldn’t pry his fingers off.

“What I am now is your fault. All of this is your fault,” Drake screamed as he bashed her into the wall again. His fingers closed even more tightly around her throat.

Kendra could feel her power slipping as pain overwhelmed her. She fought against it and clung to that power for as long as possible. She could see people rushing toward them in the background, trying to help. At the forefront was Conor. But they seemed so far away. They would never get to her in time. Kendra closed her eyes. If she was going to die, she wasn’t going to let Drake see the fear in them.

“You are a monster,” he told her. “All of you!”

“So are you,” Kendra gasped out, her eyes still closed. The last of her power faded away and she felt her body return to normal. She was human again.

Drake pulled her forward, their faces close together and almost touching.

“You made me this way,” he whispered to her right before he slammed her once again into the wall. Spots of blood appeared there as several cuts opened up on the back of her head. She was getting fuzzy. She could feel the world slipping away from her.

“And after I’m done with you, I’m going to wipe your whole race off the face of the earth. I won’t stop until every wolf is dead. You might be the first to go, Kendra, but you won’t be the last,” Drake taunted. He bared his fangs and went in for the kill.

Kendra’s eyes snapped open when she heard those words. Her eyes were glowing and so was the tattoo ringing her neck.

But they weren’t golden yellow.

They were pure white.

Drake paused, hesitating at this new development.

Kendra reached up with one hand and placed her thumb on Drake’s forehead. The minute she did, Drake collapsed to the ground. The hand around her throat was gone. The pain in her body suddenly vanished as she forced the part of her mind that controls pain to shut down for the next few minutes. She followed Drake to the ground, her thumb still on his forehead.

“I wish it didn’t have to be this way,” Kendra told him as she pushed and exerted more of her will on him. It was strange but comforting. It felt like seeing an old friend after a long time. Whatever she’d unlocked back at the cafeteria was surging forward and bringing the wolf right along with it. She focused for a second and her body started transforming again. A second later, she was wrapped in the solid embrace of her alpha state again.

Drake tried to get up, but Kendra pushed harder. Her mind invaded his and she experienced his emotions. His memories.

His...everything.

And it hurt her.

Drake had been through more pain, grief, anguish, and a ton of other bad stuff than almost anyone she’d ever come across. She would even say it was worse than what her life had been like before her father had turned her.

“Oh my God,” Kendra said, her voice nearly breathless. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Lucy.”

She saw everything. She knew everything. She saw the man’s childhood. She saw him grow up. She saw his life in the military. She saw the IED that blew up his friends yet spared him. She saw his life on the streets as his world collapsed after the death of his wife. She saw the fight with the wendigo and then what they did to him later. She saw Bendis. She saw him rescue Drake and then she saw what she’d shown him. She saw the truth.

She saw what Conor had done to Drake’s wife.

The pain of seeing that, of witnessing that, distracted her and Drake managed to get away. He stared at Kendra like she was a demon.

“H-how’d you do that?” he stammered.

Kendra didn’t answer him and that seemed to provoke his anger even more. He rushed at her, but Kendra swatted him away easily. Then she bore down on his mind with hers again. Despite seeing the truth and feeling that sadness and despair in Drake, she still had to protect her own.

Drake yelled out as his head filled with a sudden, pulsing pain. He clamped his hands on the sides of his head, trying to block it out, but he couldn’t. It filled all of him and reached everywhere. He couldn’t think or focus. It felt like it was coming from inside him. He looked at Kendra, her eyes still glowing with white light. He saw her move forward and the pressure on his head doubled. She took another step and her tattoo and eyes flashed brighter.

The pressure tripled.

He knew if he didn’t put a stop to it, he was dead. Images of his head simply exploding filled his mind.

“N-now,” he managed to say.

Kendra heard Drake speak but it didn’t make any sense to her. She kept the pressure on him though, trying to incapacitate him. She thought she could end this. She thought she had it under control. But she wasn’t prepared for an attack from a fourth, unknown vampire.

Massively strong arms wrapped around her, breaking her concentration. The white light coming from her eyes and tattoo suddenly winked out. The minute it was gone, the hold she had over Drake vanished too. He got to his feet and stared at Kendra with hard, rage-filled eyes.

“Kill her,” Drake said.

Fangs punctured her thick fur and skin and fire abruptly pulsed through her.

“Kendra!” she heard Conor yell.

The world suddenly went blurry and she fell to the ground as the venom worked to kill her from the inside out. She could feel it crawling through her blood. The vampire that attacked her let her go and stepped away. Kendra looked up at her killer. Her heart broke when she got a good, but slightly blurred, look at the other vamp.

“G-Gwen?” she asked.

Gwen was crying too but her mouth was covered in blood. It spattered her clothes and even her hair. It was enough for Kendra to know that she wasn’t the only one Gwen killed that night and that hurt even worse.

“I’m sorry. I had to. I didn’t have a choice.” She was sobbing harshly.

“Kendra, no!” Conor was yelling hysterically. They were only a few feet away.

“Finish her, and then bring him to me,” Drake commanded, his voice still sounding weak. He nodded in Conor’s direction.

Gwen took a couple of steps toward Kendra, but something hurtled out of nowhere and slammed into her. She rolled several feet away and got slowly to her feet. Her arm hung uselessly as whatever hit her knocked it out of its socket.

Gwen hissed, her eyes blood red.

The thing that hit her was a blonde-furred wolf. There was a patch of darker fur on its back, but there was no mistaking who it was.

Merrick.

Her brother growled at Gwen but didn’t pursue her. Instead, he backed up and stood protectively over his sister. Drake tried to get close, but Merrick wasn’t stupid. The minute the vamp took a step, Merrick matched him, keeping himself between the vampire and Kendra. Drake eventually ended up next to Gwen and they both stared in frustration when they realized they were going to be denied their prize.

Conor, Elijah, and the rest of the knights, mages, and wolves made it to Kendra, and they all stood in front of her.

“You won’t get through us, Drake. You have to know that,” Elijah told him.

Conor was next to him, his face a twisted mask of both human and wolf.

“I will kill all of you if that’s what it takes. Not even Kendra could stop me,” Drake responded, full of confidence. “What makes you think you can?”

More tears spilled down Gwen’s eyes as she saw what she’d done to her friend.

“I’m gonna kill this son of a bitch,” Merrick said. He came through the crowd of people with a shirt wrapped around his lower body. “You’re a dead man.”

“Try and stop me,” Drake spat right before he rushed forward.

A step or two later, he did stop. He stared up in puzzlement.

The night was suddenly lit up with a bright light. They all looked at it and watched it spread over the mansion in a glittering dome. It flowed across the sky like liquid and was easily one of the most beautiful things anyone gathered there had ever seen. It kept coming down and got closer and closer to the ground, seeming to pick up speed too. It was clear to everyone there that it was a barrier and it was going to block the vampires off.

Drake saw it too.

“NO!” he screamed, when he realized what was going on.

He saw Kendra getting shakily to her feet. Someone had given her a shirt to wear and she was being supported by Conor and Merrick.

“Go back to Bendis, Drake. Tell her you failed,” Kendra whispered harshly. “Even if I die, the Bane Pack will find her. And we will find a way to kill her. Let her know that.”

Drake didn’t listen to her. Her words were lost to the pounding anger running through him. The vision of Lucy being slaughtered filled his mind.

No, he thought.

He suddenly blurred forward and before anyone could stop him, he grabbed hold of Conor. Drake yanked him back with all the speed he could bring and just barely made it past the glowing barrier as it fell to the ground. He held onto the struggling Conor as a surge of ruthless joy filled him.

“Conor!” Kendra screamed, her mind lost in a cascade of emotions. She hobbled to the barrier and pounded on it, Ian yelling and screaming right next to her, but it was no good. Neither one could get past it. “Conor!”

Conor fought hard to get away but the two vampires held him.

“Watch, Kendra,” Drake said as she kept pounding on the barrier. “Because you, the knights, the mages, and whoever the hell else will help you are going to suffer the same fate.

Kendra’s strength was giving out on her. She slumped to the ground and stared at Conor. He looked back at her.

“I’m sorry,” he told her. “I love you.”

“This is for Lucy, you sick son of a bitch!” Drake whispered in his ear. There was an enormous sense of satisfaction rolling through him. Conor had always been his main goal. Kendra was just the cost to get what he wanted.

He smiled cruelly.

Conor, for his part, kept struggling but he didn’t have the strength to overpower the vampire. Tears rolled down his face as he saw Kendra fighting with everything, she had to get to him. But she couldn’t and he saw how much it was killing her that she couldn’t save him.

“I truly am sorry about your wife. I remember her. And I remember what I did. I deserve what you’re about to do, I won’t kid myself about that. But I will tell you this much, Kendra will hunt you down and she will kill you,” Conor said. There was no malice or anger to his voice. It was just a fact.

“She can try,” Drake replied.

Then he yanked Conor’s head to the side and without hesitation, he ripped into his throat.

Conor gasped, his eyes getting huge. His fingers scrabbled against Drake’s arm. Blood flowed down the side of his neck and after a few minutes, his skin turned pale and sickly. Then his legs lost what strength they had, and he fell to his knees.

Drake followed him down, still drinking his blood. His eyes were nothing but bright, silvery orbs as the life of his wife’s killer drained away.

Conor’s death seem to go on forever but in reality, it was only a matter of minutes. When Drake was finished, he got to his feet. He was holding onto the back of Conor’s shirt. He held the body up with ease, despite the fact that it was limp and lifeless. There was no question he was dead. With a look of contempt, Drake let go and Conor fell in a heap to the ground.

Kendra was hysterical. She was crying and saying Conor’s name over and over again. And the worst part was, like with her other wolves, she felt him die. She felt it like she experienced it herself. She felt the guilt he felt because he had to leave her. She felt his fear. She felt the pain. All of it.

“Conor,” she wailed.

“This is just the beginning,” Drake said, his face smeared with blood. “The rest of you are next.”

The glittering dome of white light still kept the vampires out, but Kendra wished she had the strength to rip it apart.

Because she was going to kill Drake. And then she was going to hunt down Bendis and rip the goddess’s head off.

The vamp venom, however, finally took its toll on her. She felt a wave of pain and nausea right before her vision tunneled and went black.

She fell to the ground, her heart ripped apart and shattered.