But of course she didn’t. Just because Gregory Buxton had vanished from the Hounds’ radar when he was in this town didn’t mean she would, too. And even if she did, so what? The Hounds would still be able to ride on in here and search. They didn’t need supernatural powers to find her – they just needed eyes.

So she kept that edge, the part of herself that remained wary, and she let it bite at her thoughts and burrow into her head. That edge had helped keep her alive after Imelda had died. After Glen. After her parents.

She wondered about them, where they were, what they were doing. How they were doing. She felt a curious mix of satisfaction that she’d fouled up her parents’ plans, that she’d forced them to go on the run with Grant and Kirsty Van der Valk, that Astaroth was almost as pissed with them as he was with her … but also concern. That part puzzled Amber. She didn’t care about them. They had bred her to be killed and eaten, just like they had her brother and sister whom she had never known. She was not concerned for their well-being.

She was definitely, definitely not. She was almost sure of that.

Thoughts of her parents irritated her, but there was only one other person she could think about that would banish them to the back of her mind, and that was Glen. She only thought about him when she was in demon form. Her heart was harder when she was like this, better able to cope with what had happened to him. With who he was now. What he’d turned into.

She’d been aware of him following her. Some nights she’d look in the side mirror and glimpse something moving behind them. Some nights, when the Charger was quiet, she could hear him above her, his clothes fluttering in the wind.

Why he was following her, she didn’t know. She’d been told that most breeds of vampire were pack animals – they stuck close to the one who’d turned them. But the vampire that had killed Glen had vanished, and his undead family back in Cascade Falls were in disarray – certainly the patriarch was no longer around to guide them. Amber had seen to that personally.

That might be it, of course. Glen could be following her to kill her, to exact revenge for Varga’s death. She doubted it, though. Revenge didn’t seem to be Glen’s style, soulless monster or not. No, what was infinitely more likely was that Glen’s preoccupation with Amber – especially in her current form – had stayed with him even after his death. Maybe it was the one thing he was clinging on to. Maybe he had designs on a coffin built for two.