I rolled over in preparation for doing that very thing, but before I could do more, I had a sudden and unexpected bout of dry heaves that did my head no good at all. When I lifted my head and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, I noted that there were two men standing in the doorway, frowning at me. Neither had made any move to help or—at least that I noticed—reacted at all.

I dry-heaved a couple of extra times to give myself a chance to examine the invaders of my walk-in-freezer cell.

The nearest man was tuxedo-model beautiful, with dark, curling hair, liquid-brown eyes, and a thousand-dollar suit that managed to show off the muscles beneath without doing anything so crass as being tight anywhere. There was something predatory in his gaze, and he had that spark that made one man more dominant than another without a word being said.

I’d been raised by werewolves. I knew an Alpha personality when I was in its presence.

The other man was at least fifty pounds heavier and three inches taller, with the face of a boxer or a dockworker. His nose had been broken a few times, and over his left eye was the sort of scar that you got when someone punched you in the eye and the skin around the socket split.

The pretty man radiated power, but this one . . . this one gave me nothing at all.

His eyes were brown, too, but they were ordinary eyes except for the expression in them. Something very cold and hungry looked out at me. He wore worn jeans and a tight-fitting Henley-style shirt.

Visually, I could have been dropped into a scene in some Italian gangster movie. There was no mistaking the Mediterranean origins of either one.

My nose told me the real story. Vampires.

I was on my hands and knees, but standing up wasn’t going to help me fight off a pair of vampires, so I stayed where I was for a moment.

I was wearing my own clothes, but they were torn and stiff with my own dried blood—and that blood smelled like it was at least a day old. An unfamiliar, plain gold cuff around my wrist covered a nagging ache I hadn’t noticed before I moved. I reached up to make sure of what I was already pretty sure of—there was no necklace there. That meant I was missing my wedding ring, Adam’s dog tag, and my lamb—my symbol of faith that helped protect me from vampires.

I was missing something else. Something that mattered a lot more.

“She doesn’t need this in here,” said the vampire with the broken nose. He reached out and did something that released the cuff on my wrist. The skin all the way around my wrist was marked with puffy red dots, as if a mosquito had bitten me in even increments.

I very carefully didn’t move.

“You’ll have to forgive us,” said the beautiful vampire as he crouched down in front of me. The British crispness of his voice was only a little softened by his Italian accent. “We were told you were the most dangerous person in the Tri-Cities and gave you the courtesy of treating you as such.” And he kept nattering on about injuries and a healer and blah blah blah.