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M organ Creek, Wyoming

Rylan Saintcrow stood at his wife’s bedside, one of her icy cold hands clasped in both of his.

Like all the vampires in Wyoming who were less than a hundred years old, Kadie had been stricken by a mysterious plague.

One day, she was strong and healthy, with decades, perhaps centuries, of life ahead of her.

The next, she had collapsed. He had given her as much of his blood as he could spare—ancient blood that had saved lives in the past—but it had had no effect on her.

For the last three months, she had lain there, unresponsive, not dead, not alive, but trapped in some mysterious netherworld like a modern-day Sleeping Beauty.

Whatever the malady was, many of the young vampires in the state had died.

Others had been affected like Kadie. As far as he knew, ancient vampires like himself appeared to be immune to the disease.

He had no idea why only vampires who resided in the state of Wyoming had been stricken.

Would it eventually spread to other states? Other countries? Who the hell knew?

Unable to endure watching Kadie lying there another moment, Saintcrow transported himself from his lair to the nearest city.

Like a tiger on the hunt, he prowled the moonlit streets searching for prey, but it was Kadie who lingered in his thoughts.

Would she be forever trapped in that deathlike sleep?

Would she gradually waste away? Was she aware of her surroundings but unable to respond?

Or was she trapped in a preternatural coma from which she would never awaken?

The thought of existing without her, of never holding her in his arms again, never hearing her voice or seeing her smile, never making love to her again, was unimaginable.

In more than nine hundred years, he had never let anyone get close to him.

Until Kadie. Now, he couldn’t imagine his life without her.

Years ago, her tantalizing scent had roused him from where he rested deep in the earth.

Back then, any human who wandered into Morgan Creek became prey for the coven of vampires who had resided there under his protection as long as they abided by his law.

The humans had been given food and housing and their physical wants and needs had been taken care of.

But then Kadie had stumbled across the bridge and everything had changed.

She had made him realize the cruelty of keeping mortals imprisoned.

To please her, he had freed the humans and sent the vampires away.

For no reason that he could fathom, Kadie had fallen in love with him, and had chosen to be what he was so they could be together forever.

And now she lay in his lair, unmoving, unaware.

Saintcrow raked his fingers through his hair.

He had survived for centuries, visited every country in the world at one time or another, and had never seen anything like this.

Dammit ! Where the hell had this confounded plague or curse or whatever the hell it was come from?

And why now? Was it some freakish virus?

Had capricious Nature suddenly decided to wipe vampires from the face of the earth?

Impossible as it seemed, that was the only explanation that made sense.

And yet, it seemed unlikely, since the curse seemed to be limited to Wyoming.

And when it ran its course, what then? Would Kadie recover? Or be lost to him forever?

He preyed on a young woman, wiped the memory from her mind, and moved on.

He was about to return to Morgan Creek when his long-time friend, Jason Kincaid, appeared beside him.

Jake wore jeans, boots, and a gray tee shirt that depicted a cowgirl on a bucking bronco.

The caption, barely visible beneath a black leather jacket, read Save a Horse, Ride a Cowboy.

Once a cowboy, always a cowboy, Saintcrow mused with a grin.

“How’s Kadie?” Jake asked, falling into step beside Saintcrow.

“Still the same,” Saintcrow replied.

“Rosa keeps asking me when she can come home.”

“Beats the hell out of me.” At Rosa’s request, Kincaid had turned her on their first wedding anniversary.

Jake shook his head. “Damn! I wish now that I’d waited before bringing her across, but who knew something like this would come along?”

Saintcrow nodded. Kincaid and Rosa lived full-time in Morgan Creek.

Rosa’s older sister, Sofia, her husband, Ethan, and their adopted daughter, Jenny, had resided in Morgan Creek until Sofia insisted on moving back to Arizona so Jenny could go to public school and get better acquainted with her grandparents, who also lived there.

But they spent their summers here. It had been Ethan’s idea to renovate the town, and a damned good one, as it turned out.

Micah Ravenwood and his wife, Holly, divided their time between Morgan Creek and Arizona so Micah could spend time with his family.

The Ravenwood clan—Luciano and Lena—and their children, Angela, Delia, Rosa, Sofia, Sergio, Enzo, Mario, Paolo, and Micah—were a tight-knit family.

Luciano and Lena had accepted the fact that three of their children were vampires remarkably well.

The weekend before the curse hit, the Ravenwood clan had met in Arizona for their annual family reunion. Saintcrow wished to hell Kadie had gone with them this time. “Dammit, I wish I knew what the devil was going on.”

“Funny that only Wyoming vampires are affected,” Kincaid remarked.

“Yeah.”

“Do you think some local hunter is behind this?”

Saintcrow shrugged. “It’s crossed my mind a time or two.”

Kincaid scrubbed his hand across his jaw. “I wish there was something we could do.”

“Yeah, me, too. Dammit! I don’t know how much longer Kadie can survive in her current state.”

“Don’t give up. She’s strong. If any of them can survive this thing, she can.”

“I hope to hell you’re right.”

“I’m always right. Hell, she’s got your blood running through her veins. You can’t do better than that,” Kincaid said, slapping Saintcrow on the back. “I’ll be in touch.”

Saintcrow nodded. Kadie had to survive. She had changed his whole world, made life worth living. His jaw clenched as he thought of her now, lying helpless in his basement lair.

His feelings of despair grew as he stalked the dark streets, growing ever stronger until he was overcome with rage and the sudden need to strike out.

He hadn’t taken a life in years but now the urge to kill something rose within him, and with it the desire to hurt someone as he was hurting, to destroy a life, to glut himself on the blood of some innocent victim.

It took only moments to find her, a middle-aged woman stepping out of a hotel. He yanked her into his arms, let her see the hellfire in his eyes as he bared his fangs. She opened her mouth to scream but fear trapped the cry in her throat.

Reveling in his power, drinking her fear as he intended to drink her life’s blood, he lowered his head to her neck.

“Stop it!”

Saintcrow’s head snapped up. Holding fast to the woman, he snarled, “Jake! What the hell are you doing here?”

“Keeping you from making a bad mistake. Kadie would be horrified if she could see you now.”

All the rage drained out of Saintcrow at the mention of her name. Trapping the woman’s gaze with his, he wiped the memory of what had happened from her mind and sent her away. “What are you doing here?” he asked again. “I thought you went back to Arizona.”

“I never made it. I could have sensed your rage if I’d been in Africa. It practically knocked me off my feet.”

“Yeah, well.” Saintcrow shrugged. “Thanks.”

“You gonna be all right now?”

Saintcrow nodded. “You’re worse than a mother hen. Come on, let’s go get a drink.”

They materialized in The Crimson Rose. A few years ago, Saintcrow had arranged for Kincaid to meet Rosa here.

She had wanted to become a vampire and Saintcrow’s idea had been for her to meet Kincaid and for Kincaid to scare the idea out of her mind.

It hadn’t worked. They had fallen in love and married instead.

“There’s got to be a way to end this,” Kincaid muttered, swirling the wine they had ordered in his glass.

“I wish I knew what we were dealing with,” Saintcrow said. “I’ve lived a long time and I’ve never seen anything like this. Hell, no one has. I’ve contacted a few of the other ancient ones. They don’t have any answers, either.”

“Well, it came from somewhere,” Kincaid said. “Just because no one’s ever heard of it doesn’t mean it’s never been seen before.”

Saintcrow frowned. The one person he hadn’t tried to contact was the vampire who had made him.

To his knowledge, she was one of the oldest of their kind.

He hadn’t seen his sire since she turned him centuries ago.

In all that time, she had never tried to contact him, nor he, her.

He didn’t have any idea if it was possible to get in touch with her, didn’t even know her name.

For all he knew, she could have been destroyed centuries ago.

Damn her soul to hell. He had hated her for turning him, hated everyone, himself most of all. Back then, he had been the monster of myth and legend and he had reveled in it. A creature filled with rage, he had left a long trail of death and carnage in his wake.

Clearing the past from his mind, Saintcrow said, “We’re not solving anything sitting here. Go home and make love to your wife.”

Staring into the distance, he wished fervently that he could go home and make love to Kadie just one more time.

Back in Morgan Creek, Saintcrow went down to his lair.

His Kadie lay as he had left her, eyes closed, skin as pale as death.

He undressed, then slid into bed beside her.

Lying there, holding her close, he remembered all the nights they had shared, the way she had always smiled when she saw him, the way she had melted in his arms. How long could she go on like this?

Vampires often went to ground to rest when they tired of living, but in a dim part of their mind, they were still aware of the world around them, able to react at any sign of danger.

Murmuring Kadie’s name, he closed his eyes, eager to surrender to the dark sleep, to forget, for a while, that he might never again see his Kadie’s smile, hear her voice, make love to her until the sun chased the moon from the sky.

But the dark sleep eluded him. Instead, his thoughts went round and round.

The curse or plague had to have originated somewhere.

But where? Had it been cooked up in a lab?

He knew there were scientists all over the world doing experiments on vampires, dissecting them, measuring their hearts and brains, trying to find out what there was about their blood that had the power to turn others, that allowed them to live such long lives, to change shape and dissolve into mist. Vampire blood had been proven to cure disease and slow the aging process.

Sitting up, he stared into the darkness of his lair.

Hunters were another possibility, but he dismissed the thought.

If hunters were behind this, they wouldn’t have wasted it on young vampires but unleashed it on the old ones, like himself, who were far more dangerous and harder to find and destroy.

He thought it unlikely that even the black witch, Izabela, powerful as she was, would have been able to conjure a spell of this magnitude.

But what about a very powerful necromancer?

Rising, Saintcrow pulled on a pair of jeans, a shirt, and boots, and then called Kincaid.

“What the hell do you want?” Jake growled. “Do you know what time it is?”

“We need to go to Colombia.”

“What? Why?”

“Luca had power over the dead.”

“Yeah? So?”

“It would explain why the curse only affects those in Wyoming.”

“You think he was trying to avenge himself on us ?” Kincaid asked, a frown in his voice.

“It’s the only answer that makes any sense.”

“It might, if we hadn’t destroyed him,” Jake said. “He’s been as good as dead for years.”

“Just get here. I’ll explain later.”

It took only minutes to transport themselves to the Nevado del Ruiz volcano located in Colombia. “All right,” Kincaid said, glancing around. “What are we doing here?”

“I know of only one person who would try to conjure a spell that would affect only vampires,” Saintcrow remarked.

Kincaid stared at him. “There’s no way in hell Luca could be behind this. His spirit is trapped in a box. He’s helpless, as good as dead..”

“Is he?” Saintcrow gestured at the foot of the volcano.

The ground had been disturbed, but not by human hands.

An earthquake, a minor eruption, something major had disturbed the earth around the base of the volcano.

A small black box, neatly broken in half, peeked out from beneath a small pile of scorched earth and ash.

The same black box that had once contained the spirit of the infamous necromancer, Luca Sasan.

“Well, hell. Where do you think he’s gone?” Kincaid asked, running his fingertips over the thick gold band he wore on his left wrist. He’d had the talisman made by a black witch years ago to prevent Luca’s magic from detecting his whereabouts.

Saintcrow shook his head. “The more important question is, whose body is he inhabiting now and how the devil do we find it?”

“Damn, damn, damn,” Kincaid muttered. “I thought we were done with this guy. How many times do we have to hunt him down?”

“At least once more.” Saintcrow stared at the black box, then picked up the pieces. He grimaced as a faint trace of dark magic skittered across his skin.

“I think we need to go see Izabela,” Kincaid remarked, sounding none too happy about it.

“One of us does, that’s for sure. Here, take this with you,” Saintcrow said, handing Jake the pieces of the soul-catcher. “After all, she’s your witch. If she has any ideas, let me know and I’ll be there.”

“She’s not my witch,” Kincaid muttered, but Saintcrow was already gone.