“Me, too.” Bentz was covered in blood, Charles Preston’s—Vlad’s—blood, but otherwise unhurt. Jay’s wound was slight and he assured the EMT that he would be fine until they reached the hospital. He asked Mai to check on Bruno in the truck, then hurried to keep up with the stretcher.

Outside the storm howled and keened, lightning striking wildly. Bentz watched as Jay climbed into the ambulance with Kristi, then walked to the front of Wagner House, where he’d parked the Crown Vic. Rain poured from the heavens, the wind screamed down the streets.

“I’ll drive,” Montoya said as Bentz paused to take one final look at Wagner House.

In that instant, lightning forked in the sky. As if thrown by angry gods, a bolt struck a huge live oak in the front yard.

“Watch out!” Montoya yelled.

Bentz dived as the wood cracked and smouldered. The tree split in two and as Bentz and Montoya scrambled out of the way, a huge branch crashed to the ground.

Bentz dived as the limb struck, heavy wood cracking against his back, a broken limb piercing his clothes and flesh. Pain sizzled up his spine and for a second he couldn’t breathe.

Then there was nothing but blackness.

Kristi opened a bleary eye.

Jay was staring at her.

“Welcome back,” he said, managing a smile.

Her lips were dry and cracked, her tongue thick. “You look like hell,” she croaked out, and realized she was in a hospital bed, IVs strapped to her wrists.

“You look beautiful.”

She started to laugh, coughed, and managed to ask, “What happened?”

“You don’t remember?”

“Not everything, not what happened earlier, but last night…” She looked at him and he shook his head.

“Three nights ago. You’ve been out awhile.”

“Tell me. Everything,” she insisted, and felt his hands touch her fingers.

He did. He explained that Althea Monroe, who had died of her wounds at the scene, had been in league with Dr. Preston, killing girls for their blood in an effort to keep Althea young and beautiful.

“Elizabeth of Bathory,” Kristi said.

“Exactly.” Jay told her that Dr. Preston was a fraud. He’d been DOA at the hospital, but his fingerprints had identified him as Scott Turnblad, a man with outstanding warrants in California, where the real Dr. Preston had resided before his death.

Dr. Grotto had been a part of their plan. He’d been involved up to his pointed eyeteeth, though he, still alive, insisted that what he’d done was for the greater good, that Preston had convinced him that he would help the troubled girls disappear and start new lives. In exchange, Grotto got to stage his weird production and play out his own sick vampire fantasies. His audience—the girls he played to—were just as bad as he was and under his spell, finding “new blood” and not caring that the unwilling participants disappeared.