Drawing a ragged breath, I forced myself back to the task at hand. I had calls to make. The news of Vicki’s death might not have made it to the press yet, but it would soon. I didn’t want Kevin, Bruno, or—oh, God—Alex to find out that way. They deserved a call. So, even though I knew he should be out hunting, I dialed the number for Kevin and Amy’s apartment and was shocked when he answered on the first ring.

“Kevin?”

His voice was livid. Words spilled out of him in a flood of emotion that left me stunned. “Where the hell have you been, Celia?! We’ve been worried sick! Don’t you ever answer your fucking phone?”

After everything, it was just too much. To have Kevin scream at me with such intensity … I came this close to hanging up on him. I don’t like being shouted at. But I owed him, big-time. Besides, there was a full moon. He was probably having aggression issues. My being pissy wouldn’t help. But how the hell was I supposed to answer? I mean, so much had happened in the past few hours.

“Don’t you? I’ve been trying to call. I keep getting your voice mail. And frankly, I’ve had bigger things on my mind. Could you lower the volume, please? It’s stressing me out even worse.”

I heard him draw in a long, slow breath. “I’m sorry. I was worried. The last time, I called your office. Dawna said you left hours ago, something about going to Birchwoods. Did Vicki help you find out anything?”

I paused, not quite sure how to proceed. Then I just said it. “Vicki’s dead, Kevin. She died last night, at nearly the same time as I was attacked.” My throat tightened and I fought down a wave of tears.

There was stunned silence and then the sharp bang of the receiver hitting the table. I pulled the phone away from my ear in a rush. I miss my old hearing. He scrambled to pick up the phone again and I could hear him breathing for a few moments while he gathered his thoughts. “Oh, shit. Celie. Hon, I’m so sorry. Are you okay?”

Hell no, I wasn’t okay. What kind of stupid question was that? And did he just call me hon? “I’ve been at Birchwoods meeting with Dr. Scott about it. They don’t know the cause yet, but apparently it was sudden. I hope ‘sudden’ means ‘painless.’ But I need to talk to you about something else. While I was there …” I struggled to find the right words to describe what had happened but came up blank. Words just seemed totally inadequate for the situation. Besides, how was I supposed to tell a man who turns into a monster for three days of the month how terrified I’d been at my own bloodlust without insulting him? “The sun went down.”

He figured out what I meant without any more prompting and started to swear. When he had himself under control he asked, his voice taut with strain, “Did you kill anyone?”

Wow. Okay then. Talk about thinking in terms of worst-case scenarios. But I’d probably ask the same thing of him, so who was I to judge? “No. I managed to control myself enough that I didn’t even hurt anyone.”

His sigh of relief echoed down the phone line. “Thank God for that. You have no idea how worried we’ve been. Everything we’ve been able to find says an abomination acts very much the same way as a newly turned werewolf or vampire. Their first feeding is almost always fatal to the victim.” He sighed. “I swear I didn’t know. Jones didn’t tell me. If he had, I wouldn’t have just let you run loose like that. God, you could’ve—”

“Well, I didn’t,” I snarled. He wouldn’t have let me run loose? I didn’t like the tone this conversation was taking. Yeah, he probably could’ve knocked me cold before I realized what was happening back in the lab. Having gone through it now, I probably wouldn’t have even let me out of the restraints, or let me leave without a guard. But hearing it put that bluntly made me angry.

“Celia—” There was a warning in his voice, as if he’d sensed my irritation. Maybe he had. Subtle is not, after all, my best thing.

“Look, Vicki’s death hasn’t been made public yet, but it probably will be soon. Can you call Dawna, Emma, your dad, and the others?”

He sighed. “It’d be better if Dawna heard it from you. But I’ll tell Emma and Dad.”

I barely heard him and couldn’t seem to stop talking. “I’d do it myself”—I took a shaky breath—“but I need to tell Alex. I really don’t want to, but I don’t know who else would—”

There was a stunned silence. “Oh fuck. Alex.”

“Yeah.”

“I’ll make the calls.” I could hear his hair brush across the speaker as he undoubtedly shook his head. “But Celia, you need to get somewhere … less public. And sooner rather than later.”

“Thanks. I know. And I will. I promise.” I’d do it, too. It was too late to hunt my sire tonight, and I was in no condition to do it. And while I have a lot of faith in myself, I’m really not reckless or stupid. So tonight I’d go to the estate and lock myself in tight, with lots of weapons to protect me. Tomorrow … well, I’d deal with tomorrow when it got here. “Look, there are things we need to discuss that we shouldn’t talk about over the phone. If you’re not going out to the desert, can you meet me at my place in two hours?”

“Two hours? I think this needs to be dealt with a lot quicker than that.”

I had the distinct feeling we were talking about different things. I wasn’t sure what his “this” was, but I was betting it wasn’t the same as my “this.” “Look, I have to stop by the pharmacy to pick up the stuff the doctor ordered. Besides, you need to get some dinner. You haven’t eaten, have you?” I changed the subject as gracefully as I could, putting the ball squarely in his court. Yes, I was going to go to the pharmacy. But that would only take a few minutes. I wanted the extra time to be alone.

But first I needed to call Alex.

Just thinking about it made my eyes fill and my throat tighten. God, how was I going to tell her? She loves … loved Vicki so damned much. This was going to just kill her. But it would be worse, much worse, if she found out on the news, or from some jerk of a reporter. No. I had to do this. Had to.

Alex wasn’t at work. I was glad about that. Nobody wants to get that kind of news at the office. She didn’t answer at home at first, let the call go to her old-fashioned answering machine. Only after I’d started talking, giving my name and asking her to call me, did she pick up.

She sounded like hell. It was obvious she’d been crying. Her voice was raw and had that odd thick quality that comes when your nose is stuffed from crying.

“You’re calling to tell me, aren’t you?”

“You already know.” It wasn’t a question.

“She came to me in the car on my way home from work. I barely managed to pull over without getting in a wreck.”

I wasn’t surprised, after all, wasn’t that exactly what Vicki had done with me? And while she loved me like a friend, Alex was her lover, the woman she might eventually have married, now that the law allowed it.

“I’m so sorry, Al. I know you loved each other very much.”

“Yeah.” The word was choked and rough, barely audible.

“Are you going to be okay?” I could barely say the words and tears were streaming down my face, dripping off my nose.

“No.”

“Me either.”

I hung up and the tears overcame me—as though a dam had burst. Deep, wracking sobs of grief and loss shook my body. I’d just start to get a grip on myself when another memory would hit, setting off another wave of grief. I cried until there were no more tears, my head ached, and my throat was raw.

For a long time after that I just sat there, numb and too exhausted to move. Eventually, I pulled myself together and started the engine with a roar. With a squeal of tires that was viscerally satisfying I took off into the night.

I could’ve turned right onto the expressway, taking the artificially bright, straight four-lane highway directly through town. Traffic would be light at this time of night. But I chose to turn left, back onto Ocean View. I didn’t know how much time I’d wasted crying, and I didn’t care. If I was late, Kevin would just have to wait. Too much had happened in the past twenty-four hours. I needed a few more minutes of peace and solitude to get a grip.

So I put the top down and sped along the winding road. The sky was perfectly clear, the moon riding high in the sky, bathing the ocean in silver light that fractured in ripples as the waves broke onto the shore. The salt-laden wind blew my hair back. I tuned the radio to the classical station, turning the volume up loud enough that I could hear it over the wind. All too soon I was back on the outskirts of civilization, where street lamps cast swaths of artificial daylight that only made the shadows seem that much darker and more menacing. Because make no mistake, the predators were out there. Say what they will about “taking back the night,” most humans prefer to stay home, behind their thresholds. Those who do venture out do so mostly to attend big events where the police and the warrior priests are out in force to provide protection.

I switched off the radio as it started playing yet another commercial advertising job openings for “true believers” to work the graveyard shift. Sad to say, even with absolute proof of monsters and demons, true believers were still hard to come by. Hard enough that the convenience stores really couldn’t afford to pay them what they were worth—any more than the stores could afford more lawsuits over slaughtered cashiers.

On that particularly cheery note I pulled into the driveway of my twenty-four-hour pharmacy. I felt the tingle of power as I passed the magical boundaries, but it wasn’t painful. Not even close to the barriers they’d erected at the library or clinic. Then again, this was a chain store. They only put in enough money to do the minimum necessary to salve their consciences and mitigate any damages should there be a lawsuit.

A bell sounded as I pulled under the awning. A teenage boy with crooked teeth and a bright silver cross on a black leather choker around his neck slid back the window to greet me. “Welcome to PharMart. How can I help you?”