The acknowledgment weighed like lead in his chest. He closed his eyes and prayed it would be quick, that she would not suffer more than she already had.

The pitch of her screams changed to startled disbelief, and the rough hands holding him released their grip. He opened his eyes to see Mouse cowering as the vampire above her burst into flame. He burned quickly, a skeleton of ash hanging suspended for a moment, his ribs disintegrating around the blue, flaming ball of his heart. Then the blazing organ extinguished and the beast fell as a cloud of black dust to the bed. The stake that had pierced his heart dropped with a thud onto the sheets beside Mouse.

The two others scrambled for the stairs. Stakes pierced them in quick succession and they met similar fates.

At the top of the staircase, Angie ground out her cigarette. “Sorry about your door.”

Cyrus wanted to rush her with a piece of the broken molding and drive it into her heart. But Mouse was silent, pale and shaking, covered in the remains of a dead vampire. His instincts demanded he go to her more than they urged him to kill Angie.

He helped Mouse stand, and carefully brushed the ashes from her hair, pushing the strands back to examine her neck. There was no fresh puncture. Nevertheless, he asked, “Did he hurt you?”

Mouse shook her head, though if it was a denial or merely the consequence of the tremors racking her body, he wasn’t sure.

Angie came down the stairs slowly, surveying the scene in the apartment with cold eyes. Mouse’s screams started again when she saw the vampire’s face.

Cyrus put himself between Angie and Mouse. “You’re terrifying her! For God’s sake, take that thing off!”

With a shrug, the vampire shook her head and transformed her features. “They hurt her?”

He turned and pulled Mouse into his arms. Her hysterical tears stung the bare skin of his chest where she buried her face against him.

“We had an agreement,” he snarled at Angie. For a moment he heard something of the old Cyrus in his voice. It gave him strength to face her. “What the hell was that?”

“That wasn’t my doing. Those morons came down here on their own.” She lit another cigarette. “Besides, I took care of it, didn’t I?”

She had. But it didn’t make him any less angry. They could have killed Mouse. It would have been akin to killing him. What reason did he have to live if she were dead?

No.

Cold, numbing fear shot through his heart.