My vision was now totally black and Gretchen's voice was fainter, but my mind still worked. With my left hand, I fumbled until I found the lock for the seat belt. Then I dragged my right hand over my arm until it reached the spot. With the last bit of energy I had, I sent a bolt of electricity through it.

The sudden thump of weight onto my shoulders was the most wonderful thing I'd ever felt.

"Save Sandra," I tried to say, but all that came out was an unintelligible gurgle.

Something shoved me roughly, blasting more pain into me. Had Shrapnel come back? I wondered, and then didn't care as a lovely numbness began to creep over me. Not good, a shred of rationale warned. Don't pass out! You won't wake up!

I tried to force my way past the darkness and the addictive bliss of diminishing pain. It felt like swimming in quicksand - the more I struggled, the deeper I sank. Then consciousness returned at the brutal sensation of being dragged. My ribs felt like twigs someone snapped within me, but I managed a few ragged gulps of air. That and the fresh deluge of pain chased away the ominous lethargy. Then a thunderous noise snapped my eyes open, an orange haze momentarily blinding me.

The fire had reached the gas tank at last.

Through the tiny slits that remained of my vision, I saw I was now behind some trees, their trunks taking the brunt of the exploding debris. Sandra was unconscious nearby, and Gretchen . . .

I had to be hallucinating. If I wasn't, then my sister was about twenty feet away, crouched on top of Shrapnel. She had the knife he'd killed Oscar with sticking out of his chest, and though her expression showed she was terrified, both her hands were firmly wrapped around the hilt.

"Don't even think of trying anything," she gasped.

Shrapnel's eyes were fixed on her while the sticklike things growing from his shoulders and h*ps twitched. Soon his arms and legs would be fully regenerated and the damage to his insides healed. I was about to warn Gretchen that he would try something when three forms dropped next to them with the abruptness of crashing meteors. The fourth landed next to me, green eyes ablaze and dark hair whipping wildly as he tore his wrist open before shoving it against my mouth.

Vlad. Someone must've spotted the smoke after all.

As I began to drink from the deep slash, Vlad's guards hauled Shrapnel up, one of them removing the knife before he could spare himself by taking his own life. Then my vision went completely dark. I swallowed again, but the pain wracking my body didn't lessen. Instead, it grew until it felt like razors were being shoved into my skull while the tightness in my chest spread to engulf the rest of my body. I couldn't swallow anymore. I couldn't even summon the strength to take another breath. When coldness swept over me, replacing the pain with its icy caress, I knew he'd arrived too late.

"No!"

Vlad's shout held me down, but only for a moment. Then inner chains I'd never felt before broke and I burst forth like a bullet being fired through a gun. I wasn't broken on the ground anymore. I was soaring, and it was more exhilarating than any of the dreams I'd had where I could fly. My vision was no longer an ugly haze of crimson and darkness. Instead, everything was bathed in brightest light while the comforting scent of rainwater and freesia enveloped me. I'd smelled that before, so long ago I'd forgotten it, but now I knew at once who it belonged to. And then I saw her.

The streaks of silver in her black hair looked radiant. So did the tiny lines on her face when she smiled. All at once, the guilt I'd carried fell away. She didn't say anything. She didn't need to. I felt that she'd never blamed me for her death and that she'd forgiven me all my other wrongs. I rushed toward her, but with that lovely smile, she held out a hand to ward me off.

Not yet, baby, whispered across my mind.

Then something yanked me down with brutal force. Her sweet scent vanished, as did the crystalline sunshine I'd been flying in. I began to fall with terrifying speed, every attempt to catch myself countered with another relentless tug. The ground was fast approaching, yet I could do nothing to fight the invisible grip that pitilessly continued to wrench me downward.

When I landed on that unyielding surface, the impact broke me apart. I waited for the soothing cold caress of death to come, but it didn't.

Instead, all I felt was fire.

Chapter 36

Blood.

My mouth was wet with it while its scent perfumed the air, no longer coppery and sharp, but heady and intoxicating. I swallowed and inhaled simultaneously, trying to fill myself in every way with the blissful liquid that made the pain go away. For a few moments, I was lost in satiation so complete it was like coming and cresting an incredible high at the same time.

Then, like every high I'd relived through my abilities, the crash left me shivering, hurting, and desperate for another hit.

Someone snarled, "More," in a tone I'd expect from a rabid animal if it could talk. The response was a wet, chilly cloth to my face. It took away the blood I'd been licking, and my eyes snapped open in outrage. Once they did, everything was so bright and vivid that for a second, I couldn't focus.

"I said more!"

Two things registered at the same time. That savage voice came from me, and I hadn't breathed in between speaking. Feeling tiny daggers jab me in the lip was almost redundant.

You've really done it this time, my inner voice mocked.

My teeth ground, driving what I knew were fangs deeper into my lower lip. Seemed that dying and being brought back as a vampire still hadn't killed my hated internal voice.

Then the kaleidoscope of colors became distinct shapes and Vlad came into focus. His black pants and indigo shirt reeked of smoke and burnt rubber, but under that, I caught the rich aroma of blood, and everything else vanished.

I leapt on him, seeking those luscious traces with an urgency that had me tearing into his skin and clothes with my new fangs. He murmured something I didn't comprehend in my search for the source of that scent. Part of me was appalled at my savageness, yet the rest only cared for one thing.

Blood. Need it. NOW.

Vlad shoved me away, one hand holding my snapping mouth at bay while the other reached behind him. That inner burning had returned, ravaging me with pain so intense I couldn't think past the need to make it stop. Then ambrosia slid down my throat, dousing my anguish so thoroughly that grateful tears slid down my cheeks. I swallowed as though I was trying to drown, my eyes closing with relief so profound I thought I might pass out.

Then something else edged through my relief. Anger, followed by a tidal wave of the rawest, most unbridled emotion I'd ever felt. Calling it love was likening a spring shower to a hurricane, and when I realized it didn't come from me, but the vampire still holding my jaw in an iron grip, I was shocked.

"I can feel you."

The whisper made his gaze gleam brighter than I'd seen before, yet now, it didn't hurt to hold his stare.

"Because your shopping deception cost you your humanity."

The harshness in his tone would've made me flinch except for the fresh surge across my emotions. More anger, yes, but born from fear of losing me. I hadn't thought Vlad was capable of being afraid, yet it threaded through my subconscious along with another wave of love's seething, unhinged second cousin. I thought his controlling behavior stemmed from arrogance, but it came from a pathological need to protect me. If I wasn't still fixated on thoughts of blood, I'd be amazed at all he'd acquiesced to while that compulsion raged in him.

Then another crippling pain hit me, erasing the rest under a hunger so severe it was like starving to death a thousand times in the space of seconds. I would've collapsed if not for Vlad's grip, and before I could scream from that awful inner burning, a new mouthful of ambrosia took the agony away.

I swallowed as greedily as before, this time returning to my senses before he pried the sodden shreds of plastic out of my hands. Plasma bags, I noted while licking my hands clean with an impulse I couldn't control. How modern of him. If memory served, I'd be a blood-crazed maniac for days until I garnered enough strength not to murder the first living person who crossed my path. The thought was depressing.

Then another realization belatedly struck.

"How am I a vampire instead of a ghoul? I remember dying . . ."

And seeing my mother. That stunned me into momentarily forgetting my question. She hadn't been a dream or an illusion; I knew that as surely as I knew my own name. That meant there was something after death. I'd never believed it because I hadn't seen it from the other deaths I'd relived, but maybe glimpsing what lay beyond had to be personally experienced.

Vlad's grip loosened until he stroked my throat instead of restrained my jaw. "My blood wasn't enough to heal you this time. It did, however, start the transformation process."

"How?"

His teeth flashed in a humorless smile. "In normal transformations, I'd drain you to the point of death before having you drink my blood. You drained yourself to the point of death with your injuries, and you had enough of my blood in you that the additional amount I gave you tipped you over the edge."

Then his hand dropped, rage-infused anguish scraping across my emotions before he went on.

"Of course I didn't know that until after you died, when suddenly, you began tearing at my throat."

I didn't remember that, nor did I have any recollection of being brought here. The last thing I remembered was seeing Shrapnel hauled up by guards and Vlad kneeling beside me.

"Gretchen. She's okay, isn't she?"

"Minor injuries only."

This time the relief I felt wasn't fueled by ingesting a bellyful of blood. "And Sandra?"

"More serious injuries, but she'll recover."

I didn't want to ask, but I had to know. "Shrapnel?"

His mouth tightened. "Where he belongs."

That meant the dungeon, no doubt. Maybe that's where we were, too. This room looked like a fancier version of one of Vlad's prison cells since the walls, ceiling, and floor were solid rock with no apparent exit, but there were two stacked mattresses in the corner covered by several thick blankets. That hadn't been standard in the dungeon accommodations I'd seen, though the absence of lights was -

And I could still see perfectly. I blinked as if expecting that to change, which of course it didn't. No light illuminated the tight quarters, yet I saw every inch down to the red smears streaking the walls that smelled so good I wanted to lick them. When twin pinpricks of pain jabbed me in the lip, I knew my new fangs had sprung out again.

I closed my eyes, feeling overwhelmed. I hadn't wanted this so soon and I didn't know if I could handle it. But ready or not, I was now a vampire. My hand slid down my chest to my heart. Twenty-five years of beating, and yet forevermore it would be as silent as a drum that someone had abandoned.

When I opened my eyes, Vlad was staring at me. He said nothing, yet an odd mixture of empathy and ruthlessness strafed my subconscious. You brought this on yourself, his emotions seemed to relay, but you will not face it alone.

I stared back, noticing a tiny scar by his nose that I hadn't seen before. That wasn't the only thing. His skin no longer seemed pale; it looked faintly luminescent, as though covering a light he carried within. His hair wasn't merely dark brown, but a rich collage of black, umber, and chestnut. The air around him crackled with energy, and when he stroked my throat again, his hand tingled as if he were the one suffused with inner electricity.

"You're different now, too," I said in wonder.

His mouth curled; half mocking, half amused.

"You're a vampire. You see details humans are blind to, sense powers they don't understand, and feel emotions more strongly than they can even imagine."

Then he grasped my hair, using it to pull my head back before lowering his mouth.

"Now feel this," he muttered.

The rough caress of his stubble and sensual suppleness of his lips paled next to emotions blasting across my subconscious. Lust tore through me like a flash fire, almost dropping me to my knees. It burned my nerve endings as thoroughly as the hunger had, but not with pain. Instead, I was overwhelmed with a need to dominate by pleasure until rapturous screams rang in my ears, and to do it right now.

My mouth opened, tongue tangling with his while I grasped his shirt. It fell apart in my hands as easily as wet paper, and then his heat made me gasp when he yanked me to him. He'd always been warm, but now he felt like flame encased in flesh. He ripped off my dress, bra, and panties just as ruthlessly as I'd destroyed his shirt before flinging me onto the nearby mattress.

I moaned when his body covered mine, shocked at how different this also was. Every brush of his skin heightened sensations that had me arching against him with primal demand. Each caress seemed to penetrate into hidden parts of me that were starved for his touch. Everything before faded to a colorless memory like the psychic glimpses I caught of the past. It was as though this was the first time we were making love, and when he pushed my thighs apart and his mouth descended between them, a flare of ecstasy made me scream.

I don't know how long I writhed against him, pleasure rending me asunder with every searing flick of his tongue. When he rose up and tore the front of his pants open, I was still shuddering from orgasm, but seeing that thick length of flesh swelled need in me all over again. I slid down, pulling him on top of me. Then my head fell back from the force of his kiss as his mouth claimed mine.

His taste was sharper, saltier, and so explicitly carnal it made me ache where I was wet. His body was an inferno, and anticipation cut my emotions in a visceral swath when he reached down between us. I broke our kiss and bit his shoulder without thinking, shocked at how natural it felt. Pleasure rippled through me as I sank my fangs deeper. Whether it was mine or his, I didn't know, and when he yanked my h*ps up to meet his thrust, I didn't care.