Cinn turned and ran. She didn’t scream. Screaming would take breath and only attract humans who’d be useless. She didn’t bother with the elevator. It would take too long. Instead, she lunged for the stairs. Cinn was halfway down when she realized where she was instinctively heading. Dacian’s room.

But she needn’t have bothered, because he met her before she reached the bottom of the steps. He wore no shirt and his feet were bare. His hair made a dark tangled frame for his face.

He was vampire. His eyes were solid black and his lips were drawn back to expose deadly fangs.

As soon as he saw her, Dacian stopped. She was okay. He fought to calm the explosive violence pushing at him. “What happened? Your fear woke me. I thought…” He didn’t know what he’d thought. In fact, there hadn’t been any thinking going on at all. Only his driving need to protect the woman he loved. Well, hell, now was a great time to throw the L word at him.

Her face was pale in the glow of the emergency light. “Someone grabbed Sparkle and disappeared.”

She didn’t get any further because Ganymede materialized on the step beside her. This wasn’t the lazy, laid-back, big-appetite cat of a short time ago. His amber eyes glowed and something so powerful crouched in them that Dacian expected the staircase walls to explode outward.

Ganymede only said one word. “Sparkle.”

“We were walking down the hall. A big man appeared. Not human. He grabbed her and disappeared.” Cinn put her hand on the wall for support as reaction set in.

Dacian reached up and dragged her down to the step he was on. He pulled her hard against his side. Ganymede remained on the step above them.

“What did he look like? Did he say anything?” Ganymede pinned his ears flat against his head.

“He looked all messed up, like someone had torn him apart and then put him back together without bothering to make all the edges match.” She threw up her hands. “I know, rotten description.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “Sparkle looked as though she was in shock. She didn’t say anything until the man grabbed her. Then she just said one word—‘rabid.’ Mean anything to you?” She stared at Ganymede.

All the emergency lights in the stairwell shattered. But they weren’t in complete darkness. Ganymede’s amber eyes glowed, the promise of death in their depths. This was the badass Dacian had always suspected hid behind the easygoing fat-cat persona.