I looked down. A dimly-lighted bulb in the cellar shone upon a tiny staircase leading down. There we could see another door, which was closed.

Dudley glanced at me and then proceeded down the steps.

I followed him, grateful he didn’t try to aggravate me by telling me to stay behind again.

Sounds came from behind the door. I put my head to the wood, but couldn’t hear much. I could make out a woman’s voice and a man’s. I couldn’t understand what they were saying, though it was obvious they were yelling.

Dudley cracked the door open and we peered through the gap. The only thing visible was a man’s back. Light shone in the basement, which was more than I expected for a vampire gathering. I could just make out the man’s burgundy velvet dinner jacket. His blond hair was slicked back, covering the neck of his jacket, but the white hands by his sides told the tale—he was a vampire.

I could hear his voice now as he said, “Your story is almost believable, but you’re so weak. It’s hard to believe you killed him on your own. The thing is, if you didn’t kill him, then who did?”

The vampire turned to the side and when I saw his face, I had to slap a hand over my mouth to keep myself from screaming.

“Bloody hell,” Dudley mouthed.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “Isn’t that Schroder?”

“It can’t be.”

Then I heard London’s voice. She sounded exhausted and slightly choked. “It was all a mistake. I loved him.”

“You’re probably delirious from the blood loss,” the vampire continued, “but try to concentrate. I didn’t ask you if you loved him. I asked you who killed him.”

London didn’t answer.

I bit my lip. This was intolerable.

“London, I think you don’t quite understand the situation. There are fifteen of them and one of you. Each of them needs ten liters of blood within eight weeks. I have only started seven of them. It would be best for you to let them drink in shifts, rotating, so you don’t have to give the entire hundred-and-fifty liters in two months. If you don’t answer my question, I’ll start another three tonight. Do you really want me to make it worse?”

London sobbed.

I moved to open the door, but Dudley stopped me. I pushed away his hand and reached for the door.

Dudley grabbed my shoulders and pulled me away from the door before I could move it. I fell backward and as we both fell to the ground, I landed between his legs. With his chest against my back and his breath on my cheek, he whispered desperately, “There are at least sixteen of them already in there, if not more. Fifteen of them are still humans. We can’t shoot them. We have to wait until some of them leave before we can get to her. It’s too dangerous to go in now.”

“But!” I hissed.

“But nothing,” he retorted. “If we go in now, we’re both dead. Let’s just listen.”

My face was like fire as I nodded and Dudley patted me on the shoulder. We stood up and resumed our position in front of the door crack.

The vampire extended his hand and it looked like he was about to snap his fingers, when London screamed, “My next-door neighbor!”

“Shit,” Dudley breathed, but he didn’t move.

“Really?” the vampire said, pausing in mid-motion. “And what was that ‘neighbors’ name?”

“I don’t remember,” she mumbled.

“You don’t remember? Well, there are some things a person should never forget. One of them would be the name of a loved one. Let me tell you some things I remember about Schroder. He was my twin. I lost count of how many people he killed for my sake, including the little bitch that sucked my blood and tried to end my legacy before I even started living.”

“This is much worse than I thought,” Dudley muttered.

Then the vampire stepped out of the way and I could see London. She was strapped to a table with her arms extended—her wrists were tied to poles on either side of her. She had cuts in her wrists and the blood was dripping into a pail on one side and into a human’s mouth on the other.

I couldn’t stand by and watch this. Dudley put his arms around my shoulders from behind and held me tightly to his chest to stop me from doing anything stupid, but he didn’t attempt to stop me from looking.

The vampire went on through set teeth. “Give me a name now, or I’ll add another three.”

London’s head lolled back. “Tate Crosswood,” she admitted weakly.

“Ah, now you’re being reasonable, but here’s the clincher,” he said, moving languidly toward her and rubbing his temple. “Do you have proof?”

“It was eight years ago. What kind of proof are you looking for?”

“Well, for instance, did someone besides you see him do it?”

There was another pause and I grabbed Dudley’s fingers. What this vampire was doing to my sister was too cruel and it seemed like London was going to take Dudley and me to hell with her.

“Once again, did anyone beside you see him do it?”

I couldn’t see the vampire now, because he was standing by her legs, but I heard her gasp as he cut her.

“My sister saw him!” London screamed.

“Good. Your sister saw him. Garth, I believe you mentioned something about a sister. Can you tell me more about her?”

I couldn’t see Garth, but the enthusiasm in his voice made me wince. “She was her roommate in the city. Her name is Sweeper. I’ll give you the address.”

“No thanks, Garth. I already have it.” The vampire came back into view. He was sucking on the knife’s point like it was a lollipop. “Well, I think that finishes our first meeting nicely. Garth, you keep our princess company while I’ll go check on these ‘facts'."

“Don’t hurt my sister!” London yelled.

“Of course, I won’t hurt her.” The vampire chuckled ironically. “Just so long as she tells me what I want to hear, then she definitely won’t get hurt. I wonder if she’s like you or if she has more spirit. I haven’t had a proper mate in a while. Maybe she would do. You know how much fun it is to mate, don’t you, London?”

“Don’t touch my sister!”

“We’ve got to go,” Dudley hissed in my ear.

Halfway up the stairs, I heard Roan’s voice proclaiming to the whole room, “We’ll meet again tomorrow night.”

When we reached the shed, we heard the door open and movement in the stairwell. Dudley chucked me out the window. I landed on my can with a bump. Biting down on a scream, I scrambled to my feet and frantically pulled Dudley after me. We couldn’t risk being discovered. I had already seen what they did to vampires and I didn’t want to know what they did to humans. They seemed utterly ruthless. Dudley toppled to the ground. I closed the window as quietly as I could before ducking down.

“Which way should we go?” I panted.

“Around the back. They’ll probably go to the house.”

We snuck around to the back of the garage when, suddenly, I bumped into the front end of a black BMW. That was why there were no cars out front. The human coven had all parked behind the old garage. There were six cars in total.

“Bad idea,” I hissed, just as I heard the side door to the garage open and voices as the group came out.

“Keep going and we’ll start walking down the alley. Maybe we can hide in one of the neighbor’s rose bushes.”

Keeping our heads down, we got past the cars and onto the paved alleyway.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said, nothing but solid stone fences and closed garage doors in front of us. “They’re all going to have to drive past us as they leave. They’ll see us for sure.”

Dudley took my hand. “Let’s try to run to the end of the block and get around to the front.”

I nodded and we took off.

I could hear their voices and car engines igniting. My heart pounded, my breath came in short gasps, and my feet didn’t move fast enough. 

And I had to leave London. 

I glanced behind me to see if any of them were headed toward us. The first car moved, but luckily it headed in the opposite direction.

We made it to a curve in the alley and Dudley threw us both into a shadow. I saw a cluster of garbage cans and ducked down behind one. Dudley jumped in beside me and I moved over to make room for him. He pulled out a notepad from his inside coat pocket and flipped it open.

“What are you doing?”

“Nothing. Keep quiet.”

When the first car came our way, he jotted down the license plate number, but after it passed the air was quiet.

“Only one car turned our way. The rest must have gone left, but we should wait here to make sure.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. It’s a pity there are no good hiding places between here and Roan’s. If he locks up his back gate after the last car leaves, we’ll have to sneak back to the front if we want to save London tonight.”

“What’s your plan?”

“Well, we have to wait a few minutes. Roan made it sound like he was leaving Garth in the basement alone with her, so if we only have to get rid of him—it should be pretty easy—even if he is a human. One of us should probably get a car before that.”

“I could take a taxi out to my parents’ place and borrow theirs,” I suggested, knowing it wasn’t a good idea before I finished speaking.

“If we’re going to do that, then maybe it would be better if we came back tomorrow night.”

“No. We can’t leave London here like this.”

“Then we’ll have to steal one of Roan’s.”

“Can we do that? What if he calls the police?”

Dudley’s voice was hesitant and when it finally came, it sounded hoarse. “I have actually been thinking of calling them myself. Even though just being a vampire is technically illegal, you probably know the chief of police is a vampire.”

“Pierce Wagner?”

“Yeah. Even though he’s a bloodsucker, that doesn’t mean he would condone this kind of behavior. It’s out of harmony with a true vampire’s nature. It’s torture. There’s a reason why there can’t be more than eleven members to a human coven. A vampire simply doesn’t have enough blood to change all of them without being drained completely dry even if they let her suck their blood. Those humans Roan has gathered don’t know that if he isn’t careful, London won’t live through the ordeal and probably the only one who will actually end up becoming a vampire will be Garth. Although it’s possible Roan may sabotage his transformation as well. The rest will die if they don’t find another vampire to finish their dosage.”

“Should we report them?”

Dudley sucked in his breath. “I don’t know if the police or Pierce Wagner would take our side. I’ve had a few dealings with him, but not enough to predict how he would respond. I don’t know the history behind the most important police officer’s transformation. Maybe the police would sympathize with us, or maybe they’d kill us just for seeing what one of their buddies was doing. I don’t know.”

I didn’t know either, so I clapped my jaw shut and sat quietly.

“The thing is, whenever I’ve been faced with something similar, I’ve just killed the vampire the humans were draining and put an end to it, but I can’t do that this time. What do you want to do, Sweeper? Should we come back tomorrow or should we try to save London tonight? What do you think?”

I sat down, pulling my knees up to my chin, and thought. This whole thing was a disaster. Roan could have already left the mansion and gone to my apartment to find me. Luckily, I wasn’t there. If he went there and found that I wasn’t, the next place he could go was to my parents’ place. They were home. What would he do to them? They didn’t know anything about this. They didn’t even know London was a vampire. How could I prompt them to get them out of there? I couldn’t. They probably wouldn’t believe me. Rather than having him meet my parents and possibly torturing them, it might be better for me to meet him first, but the thought made my stomach turn and my head delirious—like I was in a nightmare.

But on the other hand, if Roan left to go to my place then maybe ripping off one of his vehicles wouldn’t be as hard as I was imagining. The timing would work out better that way because then I could take London directly to our parents while Roan was still at my apartment.

Then something else came to my mind. “Dudley, do you think Roan will be able to hunt you down since you changed your name?”

A muscle near his eye twitched. “It will probably slow him down a little, but I can’t hide forever. Besides, there’s no need to worry about me. You’re the one who’s in immediate danger.”

“Let’s go get London,” I said, getting to my feet. “We’ll try going around the back way and if that fails, we’ll try the front. I don’t want to wait for any more cars. I think they already left the other way.”

Dudley nodded and got up.