She stepped into the dark foyer and carefully closed the door quietly behind her. Then she slipped quickly down the hall towards the kitchen. A faint yellow light emanated from there, and she already knew that Lucas was there. She’d seen him through the back window, chewing on his sister’s neck.

Mila reached into her back pocket and pulled out a gun. It didn’t have silver bullets and it wasn’t a stake to the heart, but she was pretty sure it would do the trick on the modern version of the vampire. No head meant dead.

“The family that eats together shouldn’t eat each other,” she said, as she stepped into the room. Lucas leaned over a mousey-haired woman who lay stretched out on the kitchen table. He looked up in surprise at her voice, blood dripping down his chin. As he did, a thin squirt of blood sprayed the side of his face, as the wound continued to pump out his sister’s life.

“Call for an ambulance,” Mila demanded. She pointed the gun first at him, and then at the phone.

“She’s going to die no matter what,” he complained.

“Maybe,” she said. “But that’s not going to be on my hands. Call.”

He watched her for a minute without moving. Mila notched the hammer of the gun back, and Lucas put up a hand. “Okay, okay,” he grumbled, and picked up the phone to dial 911.

“It’s my sister,” he said. “She’s been hurt.”

When he hung up the phone, he looked at Mila and asked, “How did you find me? How did you know?”

“I looked your family up online after the police found your house empty but full of bloodstains,” she said. “I looked up who you all were related to, and I’ve been driving back and forth for the past two days watching a half dozen houses.”

He looked puzzled. “Are you a cop? Why would you do that?”

“Because I’m like you,” she said. “And I don’t think there should be any more of us.”

“Try it,” he grinned, letter her see the blood coating the whites of his teeth. “You might like it.”

“I like the ones I love to stay alive,” she said.

“They will,” he said. “Everyone I’ve bitten has gotten up and walked away.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. “To go find others to kill. It’s a bloody pyramid scheme, but I’ve got news for you … you’ll all run out of family and friends that you can feed on, and then what?”

“Then I’ll be hungry, I suppose,” he shrugged.

“You will starve and you will die,” she said. “You’ll all eventually die. Dying of hunger when there’s food all around you. That’s what a wurdulac does. It sentences everyone it loves to a slow, painful death. Is that what you want for your family? Really?”

“Fuck you,” he said. “My family is my business.”

“Who turned you?” Mila asked.

He laughed. “You’ll never believe it.”

“Try me.”

“Okay,” he said. “Get this. My brother-in-law was on Danika Dubov’s talk show last week, cuz of he banged his niece. Danika did a big exposé program about incest. She liked him, I guess, and asked him out to dinner. Next he’s waking up in his apartment with blood on his shirt. And not so much later, he’s got a craving for my sister. And not too long after that … she’s got a craving for me.”

“So you already figured out that you can’t suck on just anyone?”

“Yeah,” he said. “That don’t work at all.”

Mila shook her head. “Well, you got that right. But I can’t believe you don’t have a problem with killing your own family.”

He looked at her with complete disgust. “Look, I don’t know who the hell you are, but get the fuck out of my sister’s house. My family is my business. This has nothing to do with you.”

“Not true,” she said. “It has more to do with me than you’ll ever know. But I’m not going to argue with you. Hell, your brother-in-law fucks his niece. What do you people know about family? Here’s the thing. The ambulance will be here soon. Maybe they’ll be able to help your sister. Maybe they’ll even manage to help you. But I’m not sticking around to find out.”

The gunshot rang out with a sharp, immediate snap. Lucas crumbled to the floor, blood beginning to stream from a hole just above his right eye.

“Sorry man, but this has to end. And I’m here to end it.”

Mila slipped out of the apartment, already thinking about how she could trace down every other family member of Lucas Branson.

She wondered if she had enough bullets.

— 30 —

“Our guests are dying,” Lon said.

Danika looked at her producer and smiled. “As long as it’s not on the show, we’re good.”

“You have a heart of …”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’re moving to New York. As of August 1, we’re officially on the biggest network in the world … and Chicago is just a dream.”

“And a bad one, at that,” Lon said.

Danika smiled. “Yeah.”

— 31 —

The colors were indescribable. Danika said that he looked at her as she drank, but her face was never what he saw. He saw purples and greens and blues that swirled like some strange oscillating blender churn. But it was more than that. Every time the colors moved and swirled, the pleasure centers in his brain responded. Orange triggered the taste of pure sugar. Pink felt like the envelope of the softest velvet robe against his skin. Purple was that moment of release when you were deep inside a woman and could no longer control your moans. Black was that moment when the needle released its load beneath the skin.

Pete saw/felt all of those colors and sensations at once as Danika sucked and fucked him in his tiny cell. And the sensations continued for hours after she left him. It was the best high ever.

“Pete,” Danika was saying. He realized she’d been shaking him for a while. “I need to talk to you”

“Uh-huh,” he gulped, trying to look at her through the haze of a psychedelic orgasm that wouldn’t stop. Her hair was wet and matted; perspiration shone on her breasts. She’d used him for a long time tonight.

“I have to leave,” she said.

“Okay,” he whispered. He was good for now.

“Not just for tonight,” she said. “Forever.”

The pain of fear that shot through his heart roused him from the stupor. “What …?”

“I’m going to New York,” she said. “But Hannah will stay here with you. She’ll be good to you.”

“No, I need you …” he begged.

“She’s sucked you before,” Danika nodded. “Was it good for you?”

Pete had to admit, Hannah’s drug was just as powerful. He nodded.

Danika kissed him on the lips. “Give her what she needs,” she said, as she left his bed.

— 32 —

Mila crept along the old bungalow and paused every few steps to listen. Her hearing seemed to have improved with “the change” and she made use of it, angling her head towards the house to hear if there was any movement within. She didn’t need any surprises.

And there were none. She saw what was happening inside the house through the kitchen window. The blood was obvious. Mila didn’t need to see much before she moved. Toward the front door.

She opened it and stepped inside, taking in the dark carpet and shadowed walls as her eyes adjusted. Then she moved fast down the hardwood floor into the living room, where the woman was crouching on top of the man, her fangs extended and active … they plunged in and out of his neck like oil derricks.

Mila didn’t wait too long to issue justice.

She trained her sites on the earlobe of the woman and didn’t say a word. Instead, she simply pulled the trigger.

And like jellied spam, the woman’s brains plastered the paneled room wall in a weeping pink behind the man that she had been trying to eat.

“Sorry,” Mila said, under her breath. “We don’t really need any more wurdulacs.”

She quickly, and quietly slipped her way back out of the house. Under her breath she whispered, “I never wanted to be this.”

In her mind, she saw herself as an angel … and avenger … and felon. She moved with the air of someone already defeated. She kept going, carefully tracking down and picking off the spawn of her sister’s hunger. But with every confrontation, she had to ask herself over and over again … “can I do this anymore?”

And she answered that question every time with the image of Danika emblazoned in her mind.

“Yes,” she thought. “Yes, I have to. Until it’s finished.”

— 33 —

Danika Dubov packed the last T-shirt into her suitcase and then stood back to look around. She felt empty. And a little afraid. It had been hard to “will” the “blood farm” over. But she couldn’t exactly take it with her. Her friends Sarah and Hannah Kerstin would take care of her barn of humans. Hannah loved to “milk” the cows. She had fangs that never wanted to quit. And Sarah had a mothering instinct that kicked in every time they fed. She was the one who kept the food alive.

But for Danika? There would be more opportunities in New York than she could ever have had in Chicago. It might be tricky at first, but she needed to do this.

A knock tapped quietly but firmly on her front door, interrupting Danika’s thoughts. Even as she stood up, the idea of sitting in a New York studio, with real New York cameras pointing at her filled her mind.

She was finally there. She was arriving.

Absently, Danika stood up and walked through the mess of boxes and suitcases to open the door.

Her sister barreled through the opening as soon as she turned the knob.

“Going somewhere?” Mila said, observing the stacks of boxes.

“You say you watch the show, so you know where I’m going,” Danika said. “Is there a problem?”