Sinclair was as good as his word; he soaped my back, washed my hair for me, and pretty soon we were groaning and biting each other under the pounding water. Sex in the shower didn't always work for people, but I was a tall girl.

And while he pushed, pushed, pushed into me, I watched the blood from my bite trickle down his back and swirl down the drain. Then the universe went away for a few seconds, while my orgasm took over my brain. Thank God Sinclair had a good grip, or I would have gone down like a sawed Sequoia.

We were relaxing in the second or third afterglow - we'd gone from the shower to the bed, and the sheets had completed the job of drying us - and I was grinning like a monkey. Sure, there were still problems, but now we were thinking about solutions. Maybe we were turning a corner on this. Maybe we -

From far below us, the front door boomed open, and I heard the very distinctive sound of Antonia's growl, followed by Tina's shrieked, "Majesties!"

"It never ends," I moaned, reaching for a robe. Sinclair had slipped into a pair of pants and was already out the door. "It never ends!"

I beat him to the foyer, but only because he had too much dignity to vault the banister and bypass the stairs. Ha! Score one for - aggh! I had nearly skidded in the blood.

Antonia was in her werewolf form - I glanced at the bigass clock at the far end of the hall and saw that dawn was still at least ten minutes away.

She had dragged a dead Fiend in with her.

"Um. Good dog?"

Garrett was shivering behind her. He clearly hadn't cared for the night's fun-filled activities, but knew he looked bad enough already in his lover's eyes.

I felt sorry for him. Anybody who says good guys never get scared and do stupid things has watched too many action movies. Yeah, he'd shown the less noble half of the human condition these past few days, but I could never forget what he'd gone through, and how far he'd come.

The man had never asked to become a vampire, or a Fiend, or anything else. He just woke up one day in a world full of pain, and wondered why. Just like the other Fiends.

I couldn't even look to myself as a better example of how to act. Any poise I had, I was sure, was a function of my ignorance of what I truly faced as queen. To put it more bluntly, I was so clueless about the magnitude of my new job, I was too dumb to be scared.

Antonia was sitting on her haunches, seeming to laugh at us with her wide mouth and eight zillion teeth. Her coat was the color of her hair, rich and dark. Interestingly, she had a white splotch on her chest, roughly diamond shaped. The splotch had a dark red smudge on it, and blood still trickled down her panting tongue.

Tina was examining the dead (again) Fiend. "This one appears to be the one Betsy named Sandy."

He was a large man, built like a farmer with thick shoulders and long, powerful legs. Not as tall as Skippy, but still formidable. Shirtless, with ripped jeans. No shoes or socks. His feet were filthy; God knew how long he'd been running around like that.

His throat had been torn out. Among other things.

"She found his scent in the garbage pile out back - the stuff the contractors left after they fixed the house," Garrett said. "We've followed it all night. She caught him alone and - well. You can see."

"Sure can."

Okay, there was another corpse in my foyer, and that was, under any circumstances, bad. But Marc and Jessica were out, and untouched by this. So I was at a total loss as to how to react: Great job? Naughty werewolf? Thanks? Don't run off ever again on a murderous rampage, or I'll kick your ass? Murder bad? Murder good?

I finally settled on concern for my friend. "For crying out loud, Antonia! You could have been killed! Bad, bad werewolf!" I was towering over her, shaking my finger (but not getting it too close to all those teeth). "This is the sort of thing that can get you killed, and then where would Garrett be without you? You were really sweet to try and solve our problem, but I don't want you going off alone like that ever again!"

Bored, Antonia licked blood from her left paw.

"I mean it!"

The werewolf yawned.

"If you have more to add to your lecture," Sinclair said, his lips twitching, "you had better hurry. I estimate the sun will be up in less than five minutes."

"Dammit!" While I could withstand sunlight, the coming of dawn was still a narcoleptic trigger for me. Worse so than for other vampires; apparently, this was part of the price of being queen.

I tried to end my lecture quickly, but Sinclair had been (unintentionally, I'm sure!) mistaken: sunrise was in less than ten seconds.

"There she goes," Tina commented, as the floor rushed up to my face and everything went dark.