they’d left her for dead.
She’d been sensationalizing the latest in a string of serial murders in state courtesy of the Butcher.
The Butcher had eluded police over twenty-nine murders, and he was still on the loose. While true crime wasn’t usually something picked up by a tabloid, the Butcher was the exception because he was rumored to be a Hollywood celebrity gone bad. At least that’s what he’d told the world when he’d left a bloody message on the wall of his first victim’s apartment. Every tabloid was now hot on the trail to discovery his identity first. Viv had been covering his handiwork from the beginning, from his first kill down in West Hollywood, to an elderly couple in Portland, to the recent handful of bodies found in an abandoned cabin outside of Tacoma.
She’d been scoping out the actual crime scene when she’d been discovered by local law enforcement, specifically a hard-ass sheriff by the name of Matt Keller. Keller had been about to grill her with questions—who did she work for, how did she hear about the murders, why was she there—when he’d been called back to the police station. He’d threatened to throw her ass in jail for trespassing and then he’d escorted her off the property. His parting words? “Stay the hell away from here.”
She should have listened to him.
Instead, she’d gone back. She’d been snapping pictures when she’d been attacked by the two vampires who’d been hot on her trail for over three years. They’d staked her out on the front porch of the cabin and left her to fry.
But Molly’s aim had been off. The knife had punctured her at an angle, a scant half-inch to the right. Rather than hitting her heart, they’d stabbed the inner right lobe of her lung. While not life-threatening, she’d still been hurt badly. She’d bled all over the porch, her blood mingling with that of the Butcher’s other victims. She would have burned to a crisp at the first sign of dawn if she hadn’t managed to drag herself through the front door. Inside, she’d hidden in one of the closets.
It was there, as she’d cowered beneath a mound of stale clothes, her St. Benedict medal clutched tightly in her hand, that she’d felt vulnerable for the first time in her life. Hurt. Nervous. Scared.
Cruz and Molly wanted their humanity back and they would stop at nothing in their quest to destroy the vampire who’d taken it from them.
She could still see their faces, the first time she’d met them all those years ago. Eighty-seven to be exact. She’d been in some hole-in-the-wall border town looking for her next meal when she’d happened upon a white slavery ring holed up in a house on the outskirts of town.
Molly had been chained in the cellar and Cruz had been one of her abductors. He’d fallen in love with her and tried to help her escape, and so he’d ended up chained next to her.
After a violent encounter with the one guard on duty (the rest of the slave traders had been upstairs passed out from a case of tequila), Viv had freed a cellar full of prisoners made up of primarily women and children.
Most of the prisoners had taken off up the rickety steps, desperate to get away before their abductors sobered up.
Except for Cruz and Molly.
They’d seen the truth about Viv, and they’d wanted a different means of escape.
The voices echoed in her head, so strong and clear, as if it had been just yesterday that she’d descended into that hell-hole prison.
“YOU CAN’TJUST leave us.” Cruz held Molly’s hand in one of his and a buck knife he’d taken off the guard in his other.
The man’s body slumped in a nearby corner. He was out cold. For now.
“They’ll track us down,” Cruz went on. “They will.” He nodded frantically. His eyes glittered with the horrific memories of being beaten and locked up and humiliated. He’d watched the woman he loved being raped. Over and over. And he’d been powerless to stop it.
He still was.
The truth burned inside of him, feeding the desperation and fear coiling his body tight.
“You have to help us,” he added, his gaze as pleading as his words.
“Leave now,” Viv told him. She couldn’t do what he asked. She wouldn’t doom anyone else to the darkness. Never again.
“You’ll have a good head start,” Viv continued. “Take Molly and go. I’ll stall them for you.”
“Kill them?”
But she couldn’t do that either. While she’d made her fair share of vampires, she’d never actually caused anyone’s death. No, she’d saved them from it.
Or so she’d always thought.
“I can’t do that.” She shook her head. “But I’ll slow them down. That’s all I can do.”
“It won’t be enough,” came Molly’s small, hollow voice. She shook her head, her eyes wide and vacant, as if the men had stolen her spirit right along with her innocence. “They’ll find us.”
“They won’t,” Viv reassured them. “But you have to go.” She motioned toward the rickety steps leading to the dark, cold night. “Now.”
“You don’t know them.” Cruz shook his head, a strange look in his eyes. He let go of Molly’s hand and lifted the knife. “They’ll catch us and make us pay. And I won’t be able to stop them. I can’t. Not like this.”
The blade flashed and before Viv could blink, he sliced through his left wrist clear to the bone. Blood gushed, spurting out onto the floor at an alarming rate.
“Please,” he mouthed, and then he sank to his knees as his life slipped away.
VIV BLINKED AGAINST the sudden burning in her eyes at the vivid memory. She hadn’t been able to stand by and watch him die. Not after the suffering he’d already endured. And so she’d turned him.
And he’d turned Molly.
And then the two newly made vampires had doled out revenge.
But what they’d first seen as their salvation, they’d come to realize was more a curse.
One they now meant to break.
They’d finally figured out that if they killed her, they could free themselves from the chains of darkness that bound them, silence the hunger that ruled their existence and become human again.
It had been eight days since Viviana had crawled into that closet and faced her mortality. She had no doubt that Cruz and Molly knew that they’d failed by now.
They would come for her again. To do the job right this time. And she would let them.
Because along with fear, she’d felt something else, as well, while she’d been holed up in that closet. As her body had healed, her mind had relived the past. She’d spent three days hiding, healing and thinking about her life, about all those people she’d tried to save from death.
She’d finally admitted the truth to herself—despite her intentions, she hadn’t really saved anyone. No, she’d doomed them to a fate worse than death.
The darkness.
The hunger.
No more.
She figured she only had a few days before Molly and Cruz caught up with her again. When they did, she had no intention of fighting them. Rather, she would face her mistakes this time, and set things right. She would give them back their humanity.
But before she submitted to her own death, she wanted to feel truly alive one more time.
One last time.
She retrieved the medallion she’d left hanging from the rearview mirror, slid the gold chain over her head and tucked the warm metal deep in her cleavage. Gunning the engine, she put the car in gear and headed back to the motel.