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Then she stepped from her car and the scent of stale blood in the air assaulted her nose.

Human blood. Just one source, and too much of it.

No!

Brianna dashed to the door, found it unlocked, and didn’t hesitate to let herself inside. “Joe?” It was stupid to call out for him. If he’d lost so much blood, long enough ago for the scent to have become stale, then she was too late. Her throat constricted as she turned carefully in place, letting her nose guide her. She followed it quickly to the living room, spotting the first signs of spilled blood. And a mess.

Joe’s phone was on the floor, mostly crushed. The glass coffee table was on its side, shattered, and the items formerly on top had been dumped and abandoned on the floor. Most worrisome was the body-sized indent on the far wall, between the living space and the open kitchen. The blood on the floor and speckles on the wall were gathered there. That was where the bulk of the attack had taken place.

An unfamiliar weight sank to the bottom of Brianna’s stomach, but just as the first tears stung her eyes, she registered the sound of something moving upstairs. Another scent of blood wafted to her. It was dulled, filtered, and distinctly not human. Another vampire? Joe’s attacker? There was no other explanation. Perhaps they’d come to clean up their mess.

Brianna spun around and raced up the stairs, following the sounds of movement coming from the back of the large house. The deeper she got the more obvious it became that the trespasser was in the master suite. Her emotions rolled as she tried the door and discovered it was locked. She was upset, angry, and spilling into grief. She was supposed to keep watch on Joe, to protect him from an attack. I should have been here! She hadn’t been there, but she wasn’t going to let a locked door stop her from intercepting his attacker—whether it was Tobias Wilson or someone else.

She ripped the door open, dashing inside before it had finished bouncing off the wall, and barely processed the largely undisturbed state of the room—or the intact window—before she realized the source of the noise was the bathroom. Behind another locked door. She came up short in front of the door. Why would the attacker lock himself in the bathroom? It didn’t matter. She destroyed the entire doorjamb in the process of opening the door, but she hardly cared. She’d pay for the fixes herself if she was wrong and, somehow, Joe was still alive, still able to live in his home.

Everything came to a stop when the body curled up in the shower lifted its head.

The sounds she’d heard hadn’t been movement, at least not much. They’d been the result of the running water. And it appeared the shower had been running for a while.

Pressed into the far corner of the shower, blood-stained clothes soaked, and curled into himself, was the very man Brianna had been searching for. Joseph Pearce.

Vampire.