She started to cry out, then held her tongue as images—sharp, kaleidoscopic shards—cut through her brain so painfully she winced. She remembered being on the trail of a vampire.

Wait! What? A vampire? No, that wasn’t right, or was it? Her skin pimpled at the thought.

Think, Kristi, pull yourself together.

She remembered a bright red drink, a dazzling concoction that someone called a blood red martini…and…and…there had been others with her. Her memories were coming back now, faster and faster. She’d been duped by two girls, Grace and Marnie…no three, that damned waitress, Bethany—she’d been in on it and then there was the surreal image…Dr. Grotto approaching her on the stage, bending over her in the mist, showing an unseen audience what he could do to her before he plunged his teeth into her neck.

She recoiled at that memory.

She tried to croak out a sound but her throat still wasn’t working. It was all so surreal. Maybe just a bad trip? Whatever Bethany had slipped into her drink had given her hallucinations…of course that was it.

Then why are you lying naked on a stone floor?

Her eyelids, at half mast, flew open and she tried to see, to gain some vision in the near-total darkness…. Where the hell was she? Why had she been part of that horrible ritual?

Why are you still alive?

Panicked, she tried to stand, but she wasn’t strong enough.

She couldn’t get her stupid limbs to do what she wanted.

Grotto’s image came to her again.

He’d called her by name, told the unseen audience of one person? Five? A hundred? Told them that she was ready to make the ultimate sacrifice.

And then he’d apologized to her. Whispered that he was sorry. For what? Sticking his goddamned teeth into her? Abducting her? Holy God, what the hell had she gotten herself into?

So dizzy she thought she might throw up, Kristi forced herself onto her hands and knees. If she couldn’t walk, she could damned well crawl. Head pounding, holding one eye closed against the incredible pain, she started to move. Maybe this was only a dream. A really bad dream. She stopped for a moment, wobbling on her knees, and reached up with her tied hands to touch her neck.

She bit back a scream when her fingertips came into contact with the wound: two holes in her neck, not bandaged, just crusted over with her own blood.

Her stomach revolted and she had to swallow back the bile that burned up her throat.

It hadn’t been a bad trip or a nightmare. Dr. Grotto had actually bit into her neck and sucked her blood. She touched the tracks of the blood that had dripped down her shoulder and over her breast. Sick, sick!