I couldn’t control my sobs as I cried into his firm chest. His wool sweater pricked my cheek. He smelled good, distinctly male and slightly soapy, as if he’d just gotten out of the shower. So what if he was a complete stranger? I’d never been able to cry and let someone comfort me like this before.

“I know you didn’t,” he said softly.

“Do you?” I demanded, looking up at him. “Because you were sure acting like the vampire police or something.”

He gently took my face in his hands to force my gaze to his. “I know because the same thing happened to me. At the hands of your John Doe.”

His words seemed to magically patch the dam that had broken within me. My chest no longer heaved with sobs, and my tears miraculously dried.

Nathan helped me to my feet. I took advantage of the moment, resting against him as long as I could without seeming weird. I pressed my hand just below his rib cage in the guise of steadying myself and felt the solid ridges of a perfect stomach beneath the wool.

He picked up my chair—a casualty of my sudden rage—and helped me sit. Then he got me a glass of water and began cleaning up the spilled blood.

The silence between us was stifling, but my questions overwhelmed me. I started with the obvious. “How did it happen?”

Nathan stood at the sink, rinsing the blood from the kitchen towel. “He took some of your blood, you took some of his. Then you died. That’s the way it happens.”

“No,” I began. I’d meant to ask how he’d been made a vampire, if John Doe had attacked him without provocation, as he had me. Instead, I focused on his statement. “I didn’t drink his blood. I don’t think he drank mine.”

“Did his blood get in your mouth? In your wounds?” He leaned against the counter. “All it takes is one drop. It’s like a virus, or a cancer. It can lie dormant for decades, waiting for the heart to stop beating. Then it corrupts your cells.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t die. They got me to surgery to stop the bleeding—” But that wasn’t exactly true. “Oh, God. I went into v-tac, in the recovery room. I flatlined.”

“That’s when it happened.” He pointed to the living room. “Let’s go in here. We’ll be more comfortable.”

I sat on the couch while he went to the bookshelves lining the wall. He pulled a volume down and handed it to me. “This should answer some questions.”

The book, bound in burgundy-colored leather, had gilt-edged pages and seemed incredibly aged. The cover was bare, save for small gold lettering stamped in the lower right-hand corner. “The Sanguinarius,” I murmured, running my fingertips across the letters. I recognized the root word, Latin for blood. I opened it, but the usual publishing information wasn’t printed. The title page lent the only clue to the age of the book.