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He slid to the edge of his seat. “I’m trying to save your life.”

She got up and leaned across the desk. “You’re trying to use me, you lying, cheating, manipulative son of a bitch. You’re trying to con me into helping you lure the most important person in my life to his death. Again. How dare you?”

“He is the one who’s manipulating you, Cassidy.” Jackson pounded a finger into her notepad for emphasis. “I know you can’t see that right now, but—”

“What I see is you telling me that killing the man I love is doing me a freaking favor.”

“Nice. Okay. Believe what you want.” He burst from the chair and marched to the door. Halfway there, he turned back, and it was like she had never seen him before. All pretense dropped away and a man far older and more cunning than her twenty-four-year-old ex-fiancé stood before her. “You’re a game to him, Cassidy, nothing more. Eventually he’ll remember that you’re mortal and he’s not and what that really means. You’re prey to him. If you’re lucky—if he has even an ounce of compassion in that black heart of his—he’ll move on. More likely he’ll kill you. Or worse, he’ll turn you, in which case you’ll become our target, and there will be no mercy. That’s your future, Cassidy Chandler. That and nothing else.”

Her jaw dropped as tremors of nameless shock rattled her body. Had he really just threatened her life?

Apparently realizing he had crossed a line, Jackson’s tone shifted yet again. “I’m sorry, babe. I really do only want to help—”

“Get. Out.” The words emerged in a raspy whisper.

He raised a placating hand. “Fine. Okay.” He turned toward the door, turned back. “I’m here for you. Any time, anywhere. Please believe at least that, Cass. Remember it in your heart, for when you figure out I’m right. If it’s not too late.”

She could only stare at him, adrift in an emotional storm.

With a brief nod, Jackson strode out her office door and through the cubicle farm, looking neither left nor right. Heads popped up and swiveled to follow him and glance at her. God only knew what anyone might have heard. Nothing fit to print, certainly.

Not that Cassidy cared. She wasn’t there anymore. She was back in her bedroom a few short hours ago and saw Dominique walking out another door. Dominique, who hid from the light of day, who was not human.

And whom she no longer felt in her heart.

5

It Begins

“You don’t think I’d make a good vampire?”

It was the first thing Dominique heard over the rumbling surf after cautiously excavating himself from the dune. His movements were slow and fluid to make no noise, to not give himself away while he was still halfway under the spell of the setting sun. For all he knew, Jackson Striker could have stood over this very spot, a sword in hand, ready to separate his head from his body.

“That is not for you,” a gruff voice that was not Jackson’s countered.

“So, you don’t see me getting turned in my future?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Sand still pouring out of his shirt and pants, Dominique merged with the shadows, maintaining his stealth as he neared the cottage adjoining his and Cassidy’s home. A small Hobie sailboat lay against the dune, secured to a cabbage palm. Hoisting the single sail as though it were tissue paper was Serge who, being far older and stronger, woke earlier than Dominique.

The woman perched on one pontoon patiently waited for an answer as she hunched deeper into her sweatshirt against the cool gusts blowing off the sea. Her long, golden hair hung in a thick braid over one shoulder.

Just the sight of her raised Dominique’s ire. Samantha Reynolds was half-sister to Jackson Striker, heir to a centuries-old vampire-hunting legacy. Though she adored her brother, when she discovered his true mission, she had moved out of the Striker family mansion and rented this cottage adjoining Cassidy’s. She claimed to want to get away from the secretive Striker clan her mother had married into, distance herself from the cold-blooded murder practiced by her brother and step-uncle. That the cold-blooded murder had been committed against other cold-blooded murderers—one of which had killed another brother of hers—did not seem to factor into her reasoning.

By all appearances, she was one of the purest, most guileless souls Dominique had ever encountered. Still, he wouldn’t have tolerated this potential spy anywhere near him if not for Serge. Serge fed from her and knew her mind, and Samantha was the sun around which the old pirate’s dark moon cheerfully orbited. Too smitten by her undiluted personality, Serge didn’t compel her, not even a little. If anything, she had bewitched him.

Occasionally, like now, this made for awkward turns of conversation.

“Serge, why not?” she prodded when the sail was secured and the old blood-drinker still didn’t speak.

He folded his stocky legs and sat on the trampoline beside her. “You don’t want to be like us, golden one. You would not survive.”

“Maybe I should be the judge of that.”

“No one who desires this lives long after having their wish granted.” Serge spoke with the grave sincerity he usually reserved for his shapeless prophecies, but there was nothing vague about these words and no uncertainty about his demeanor. He leaned toward the human woman and made grand, authoritative gestures as he elaborated. “What they expect never matches reality. Only those chosen by a wise old one, often against their will, learn to survive the night for any length of time.” He shrugged. “Usually.”