But there was no denying it. The stealthy way his eyes sought her out during the day. The way his sinful body hardened against her innocent form as he lay awake, watching her, at night. This wasn’t only lust. He was achingly familiar with lust, and it was easy to distinguish from what he felt now.

He swallowed, and glared at Angie. “What about the door? How will we keep them out now?”

She laughed, a rough sound around the cigarette she held in her lips. “Didn’t keep ’em out before, did it? But it’ll be fixed tonight.”

“See that it is.” His voice shook as he spoke. Looking down, he saw his hands shook, as well. He willed his body to still. The vampire bitch would assume he feared her, when what he really feared stood clinging to him, her sobs finally dying away.

Angie was halfway up the stairs when she stopped. “Your father’s messenger will be here tomorrow night.”

Mouse’s fingers, sharp in desperation, dug into Cyrus’s shoulders as her body tensed in fear.

The vampire didn’t pay any heed to her reaction. “I’ll have him pick up a spare in town, if you don’t want to do her when you’ve turned.”

“Thank you.” It was an odd thing to say, but he was truly grateful he wouldn’t be tempted to kill Mouse.

At least, not tomorrow.

He led her to the bed, a sick feeling in his gut. Once they turned him, would he be able to see her as something more than food? When he’d been human before, he hadn’t held the regard for life the way he did now. Would he be a different vampire, or would the sadist lurking in his worthless soul prove itself stronger than this suspicious humanity?

She stood by, quietly crying as he shook the ashes from the sheets and remade the bed. He looked up from tucking a corner of the blanket in, to see she stood with a dustpan and a broom at the foot of the stairs.

“Let me,” he said more gruffly than he’d intended as he took the broom from her hand. He thought it would calm his nerves to focus on the task of cleaning up the monsters’ remains, but he only grew more agitated.

They’d been so much stronger than him. If Angie hadn’t shown up, he would have had to watch helplessly as Mouse died. The memory of her screams was salt in the wounds to his pride, and he threw aside the broom with a curse.

Mouse jumped, startled out of her lingering terror.