He winced as he sat up, his muscles screaming in protest, and he collapsed again. Around him, he could make out a cavernous darkness. Above him, a cone of sunlight streamed down, casting a circle of protection, as Dahlia would have called it. Dahlia. If she’d had anything to do with this he would rip her pretty little head off her fat shoulders, human or not. As soon as he recovered, he was certain his rage would give him strength enough to take on a whole army of vampire witches.

There were voices in the darkness, but he couldn’t see who they belonged to. Though his vision hadn’t cleared, it was far better than it had been when he’d been dead.

Dead. Carrie. The pain of her betrayal came back with surprising ferocity. She’d refused his love, refused his blood. Then she’d plunged a knife through his heart without conscience. He could have almost admired that, if he hadn’t been on the losing end.

Closing his eyes, he lay on the hard, cold floor. Marble, he thought. It was funny how things were coming back to him now, piece by piece. Perhaps that was proof of a soul. Memory of past lives. Dahlia had always insisted her soul had lived several lives as assorted notorious historical figures. No, he wouldn’t start believing in a soul now. It would make the whole situation that much more ridiculous.

Like the unpleasant stretched sensation in his lower abdomen. He hadn’t felt that in months, but the meaning came back to him effortlessly.

“Hello?” he called to the voices in the darkness, though a crude American “Hey!” might have been more appropriate, considering what they’d done to him. “I need to go to the toilet.”

The voices bickered quietly among themselves, growing in intensity until someone shouted and broke the tension. “Well, then you go and get her!”

“Who?” Cyrus cried, but the noise from the darkness swallowed his words. He sincerely hoped the “her” in question wasn’t one of the pair of vampires that had pulled him back. One had possessed a voice that would put a banshee to shame, and the other had been so gruff and masculine he’d thought for a moment she was a man.

A door scraped open, then slammed shut. A bloodcurdling scream of terror set off sparks of nostalgia in Cyrus’s heart, and the door screeched open again. The her in question was apparently terrified. It gave him little satisfaction, as he wasn’t terribly safe and secure himself.

“Get moving, bitch,” a distorted voice commanded from the shadows.

A shape moved out of the darkness, pale and waifish. As she moved closer, colors swam together. The muted yellow of her dress faded into the plain brown of her hair and her paper-white skin. Blood red splashed across her torso, and ugly purple, black and blue scored her throat and ringed her eye.