Helania, blooded daughter of Eyrn, made sure the hood of her black cape stayed up as she weeded through the crowd of live-action role players. The LARPers were overwhelmingly human, although not exclusively so. There were at least three other vampires, in addition to herself, among the two or three hundred people who were dressed in Dracula, stewing in drugs of various sorts, and looking for sex from all manner of strangers under the guise of playing characters in the game Pyre’s Revyval.

The scent of fresh blood was so faint, she was not convinced her nose was actually picking up on it.

But she had to be sure.

As she moved through the throngs of people, hands reached out and brushed her arms . . . her shoulders . . . and she hated it. Over the last few months, however, she had gotten used to the physical intrusions. The humans who were playing at being other than themselves had no boundaries to protect of their own, and from behind their masks, they assumed she was under the roof of this abandoned, drafty old shirt factory for the same reason they were.

Not the case at all.

Through the purple lasers and gyrating bodies, she focused on the sturdy exit that was her goal. And as she closed in on the steel door, dread fisted her gut. The blood smell was growing ever thicker in the air—it was not enough for any human nose to pick up on, but to her vampire senses, it was like a scream piercing through ambient noise.

Something that was undeniable. Urgent. Terrifying.

Pulling open the heavy metal panel, she winced as the rusty hinges whined in protest. The stairwell to the lower level was badly lit, its air cold and damp, tinged with mold. She ignored all that. The coppery bloom of blood, as it rode a nasty updraft from the lower level, was all that mattered.

Slipping through the doorway, she whispered down the filthy concrete stairs. The temperature dropped perceptibly as she descended, and there was a second door at the bottom. This steel panel had had a far harder life than the upper one, its rectangular body kicked in such that it hung cockeyed from its hinges and did not sit properly in its jambs.

She opened the battered weight slowly, her hot hand on the cold lever, creating a shock that went through her nervous system like a chemical fire.

Peering around, her heart skipped a beat. The corridor beyond was broad as a street, arched at the low ceiling, stained like the inside of an old sewer pipe. Sixties-era fluorescent lights flickered from fixtures set overhead, their spastic illumination animating the series of doorways that extended into what felt like perpetuity.

The blood scent was obvious now.

Under her cape, under her hood, Helania shook so badly her teeth chattered, and even as her breath came out in puffs of white, she didn’t feel the cold.

Within the folds that covered her, she felt for the gun she had holstered at her waist. She had learned to shoot it about eight months ago, and she couldn’t say she was at ease with having the weapon on her. She wasn’t even sure she had the guts to use it, but she was trying not to be foolish. Unprotected. A victim.

Like her sister had been.

Stepping out into the corridor, she stuck to one side without brushing against the paint-flaked, mold-smudged walls. As quiet as she tried to be, her soft footfalls seemed to echo like thunder, and the fear pounding through her veins on hooves of steel was something she wondered if the others upstairs could hear over the music.

Helania’s body stopped before her brain gave the command.

The doorway was just like the others, made of wood panels nailed close together on horizontal supports, the arched top echoing that of the barreled ceiling like a stab at being stylish.

She looked around. She was alone, but there was no way of knowing how long that would last. Or whether it was even true, given the number of closed doors.

Reaching forward, her hand curled around the icy latch. She expected a lock to be engaged. When things gave way under easy pressure, her breath caught. Pushing with her shoulder, she met resistance and put more strength into it, something on the floor getting moved out of the way. But then she had to stop. Through the dense darkness that was revealed, fresh blood hit her nose like a heavy curtain, brushing into her face.

All at once, she was sucked back to eight months ago, a female she didn’t know at her apartment door in tears, the four words the stranger spoke to her not registering.

Your sister is dead.

Helania pushed harder. The interior of the storage area was pitch black, and the strobing light from the corridor behind didn’t penetrate far.

She got out her phone. Her hand trembled so badly that triggering the flashlight took a couple of tries—

The moan that came out of her mouth was that of an animal, the horror before her too great for her mind to comprehend, her senses overrun such that her vision went checkerboard and the world spun around her, out of control.

* * *

The Black Dagger Brotherhood had resources that put even Boone’s aristocratic background in the shade. Everything those warriors did and all that they had, from their facilities to their weapons, their toys to their serious gear, was top rate and state-of-the-art.

Take this mobile surgical unit, for instance. It was very impressive how the RV had been retrofitted with an OR and kitted out with all kinds of diagnostic equipment, including a portable X-ray and an ultrasound machine.

Too bad its considerable capabilities, as well as the time and talents of its master, were going to be wasted on him.

As Boone pulled his heavy body into the back treatment bay, he shook his head. “Dr. Manello, this is not necessary.”

The man in the scrubs and the white coat smiled, revealing pearly whites that had the telltale short canines of a human. He was a handsome guy, his dark hair and mahogany-brown eyes the kind of thing you’d see on an eighties medical drama. Mated to Payne, the surgeon was highly respected, and not just because he was capable of stitching up all manner of rips and tears, inside and out: In addition to all those technical skills, you had to be impressed by anything of masculine derivation who could be that close to Vishous’s sister and still retain the structural integrity of his hey-nanny-nannies.

The human closed the rear door and crossed his arms over his chest. “How about you let me decide what’s going on with that wound?”

“I’m just saying that I feel fine and—”

“Hey, can I show you something?” Dr. Manello leaned forward and tapped his white coat by the lapel. “What’s this?”

Boone focused on the cursive letters that were done in black. “Your name.”

“No, this part.”

“‘M.D.’”

“Do you have any letters with periods after your name like that? No? Well, then let’s allow the Medical Doctor to make this call. If you’re as a-okay as you say you are, you’ll be out of here in a New York minute.”

Dr. Manello’s wide smile was as open and nonjudgmental as ever. Then again, you had to imagine he’d heard it all because he didn’t just treat the trainees. He was part of the Brotherhood’s private medical team, so he had to face off at the likes of a leaking or broken Zsadist, for godsakes.

And wasn’t that enough to make your blood run cold even in theory.

“It’s only a puncture wound,” Boone groused as he stepped over to the exam table.

Hopping up, he was surprised to find that his shoulder started talking to him as he tried to get his jacket off. Pain, a well-known houseguest, had him wincing. Which sucked on a lot of levels.

“Let me help you.”

Dr. Manello was gentle and took his time with the leather-outerwear-ectomy, but Boone would rather have had the man rip the jacket off. Left without something to command his attention in a particular direction . . . the things he had sought to avoid all night came rushing into his mind, a crowd bursting through the barrier they had been up against, chaos spinning up within the confines of his skull.

“That hurt?”

Boone glanced at the doctor. “What?”

“Your breath just got tight.”

Not because of the wound. “I’m okay.”

With the jacket off, Boone looked down at himself. Blood had seeped into the thin weave of his black Under Armour shirt, the ruddy brown stain located at the hollow of his shoulder.

Moisture wicking, indeed.

Boone removed his chest holster of daggers with the doctor’s help, and then the nylon shirt was cut off. Okay . . . see? Not so bad. Just a little hole, the penetration about an inch and a half in length and thin as a pencil line. And due to him being properly fed, his body was already healing, the skin closing itself, reknitting, sealing the wound up.

“I told you,” Boone said.

When Dr. Manello didn’t reply, he looked at the human. The man was leaning back against the supply shelves and staring at Boone’s naked torso.

“What?” Boone asked. “It’s fine.”

“I agree, the wound isn’t that bad.”

“So with all due respect, what’s the problem?”

“Where’s your bulletproof vest, son?”

Boone’s mouth opened to answer that one—but he stopped the words before they came out. What he had been about to say was that his vest, the Kevlar one that, as a trainee, he was required to wear out in the field, was right over there with his leather jacket. His arm, on the side of him that wasn’t injured, was even raising so he could point, in a helpful way, over to where both it and that jacket of his were lying next to the small sink.

Except there was nothing over there that would stop a bullet.

In fact, he had forgotten part of his gear when he had gotten dressed at his house. And when he had attended roster call at the checkpoint, he’d had his jacket on, so neither he nor anyone else caught his mistake.

From out of nowhere, he heard the Brother Phury’s voice: Distraction during preparation is deadly.

“Listen,” Dr. Manello said, “I don’t want to be a buzzkill, or a snitch. But I can’t not report this.”

Boone was tempted to try and argue that it was “only once” and he would “never make this mistake again.” But giving airtime to that defensive edge he was suddenly sporting was just going to make him look like an unprofessional jackass.