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Declan Reilly was trying desperately to get drunk.

He’d been brooding in front of the fire, drinking slowly and steadily from the bottle of good Irish whiskey, while he stared into the dancing flames. He wasn’t getting drunk quickly enough.

Tori was gone.

Dead.

Tori McAdams, the sexy P.I. he had been trying to get close to for months. Everything about her drove him insane, from her tightly curled, long chestnut- brown hair to her big blue eyes. From her high rounded breasts and slim waist to her full hips and curvy ass, to the way she smelled like peaches and sex. But most of all, that stubborn, feisty spirit, and that soft heart she tried so hard to hide.

She was gone.

His eyes seemed to burn as his head fell back and he tried to block the images from his mind. Her neat, spartan little office had been destroyed, splattered with blood, human and not. He knew the scent. It had been faint and decaying, but he knew the scent. The blood of a vampire was hard to mistake, once you knew it.

There had been a good deal of it.

But even more of Tori’s. Oh, God. Tori.

His hands clenched and the glass tumbler in his hand shattered. He closed his fist over the shards of glass buried in his hand, welcoming the pain.

He had failed her.

She had called, finally. She had called him, had needed him.

And he hadn’t been here.

A weak, scrambling sound tickled his ears.

He almost ignored it, too caught up in his own grief.

But he got up, blood trickling down his fingers to fall on the floor as he walked to the front door and opened it.

She almost fell at his feet.

Declan stumbled and caught the lean brunette who tumbled into his arms, out of the pouring rain, dead white and half unconscious.

It was Tori, who had been missing for a good week, and presumed dead after police discovered her office in a bloody mess, literally, blood and gore staining the walls, furniture smashed, filing cabinets overturned.

He hadn’t been in town last weekend. And he had cursed himself. If he had been around, he would have found her, maybe before it was too late. He would have been with her when it happened, and he could have stopped it. And he had suffered through night after sleepless night, suffered through a rage more terrible than any he had ever known.

Tori, who had a left a terse, “Call me,” on his machine the night she was last seen by anybody. Followed by another, more urgent message. This is Tori. As soon as you get this, call me. Declan, I need you.

He had started lusting for flesh and blood, to find that bastard who had done this, and rip his guts out.

But by the time he had gotten back to town and been informed of what had happened, it was too late. The trail nearly cold, and all the clues he could have used were demolished under the heels of his fellow officers.

But she was here now.

It was Tori, who had rebuffed him in every way imaginable. And now she was on his doorstep, lying listless in his arms. Listless, pale and still. Humans had more movement than that, made more sounds.

Sharp hearing detected something.

Or rather, a lack of something.

Declan hissed, his eyes narrowing as he carried her to the couch and jerked her shirt open. Laying his head on her chest between her breasts, he listened.

Lub-dub.

Thirty seconds passed before he heard it again.

Lub-dub.

He leaned over, pushed her wet ringlets away from her neck.

Lub-dub.

He took a deep breath, forced himself to open his eyes and saw it.

The ragged wound, gaping and huge when fresh, now closing, remnants of bruising. She had fought.

Had she been drained?

Or changed?

Draining was generally slow business. One vamp alone wasn’t likely to have drained her to the point of killing her in one feeding. A new vamp could drain a person, fairly easily, because they were so starved, so hungry when the change first came. So a newly turned vamp? That would make finding him a little easier.

Or maybe two or three different vamps, or one, feeding two or three different times, yeah, that would do it. The messy bite at her neck could have very well been made at separate times, separate feedings. Maybe two bites, not one.

But if she had been bled so much as to put her in this condition, she wouldn’t have been able to stumble to his door.

Changing usually took place over a period of time as well, the blood exchange taking place when the victim was near death, running so low on blood it gave a whole new twist on the term anemia.

His nostrils flared and he scented it along her skin now. The subtle musk of vampire. Nausea and rage roiled in his gut. Throwing his head back, he drew air into his lungs and forced it out through his nose until the blinding rage cleared a bit.

Then he lowered his head, and crouched back over her.

The clothes she wore were filthy. They were covered in blood and dirt and grime, but, with the exception of missing buttons on her shirt, relatively intact. Under her nails were tiny bits of flesh and blood—none of it her own. He blew a breath out between his teeth and tentatively reached for the zipper of her jeans. The heavy black cloth parted, revealing her ivory smooth skin, and lower, a small thatch of dark curls.

No blood there. No signs of bruising.

Then she probably hadn’t been raped prior to being bitten, which happened, unfortunately, all too often. Most of the feral vamps he had known would have fed during the rape, or before.

Not after. It takes the fun out of it when your food lay there listless and broken. Ferals liked their sex painful and rough and bloody. Of course, he had killed a good many of the ferals he had known, so he had an extensive knowledge of them.

Not that all of the vamps were evil. A good number of them were decent people, like Tori had been. But the changing warped them, all too often, robbing them of what they needed to live happily. Some of them continued to live, unhappily. A few went on to live with some semblance of happiness.

Others ended their lives.

Others, while unhappy, were filled with a sense of purpose.

Suddenly her eyes flew open and her hands latched onto his shirt while she stared up at him wildly. Her fingers curled, clutched at his shirt for a brief second before she fell limply back on the couch.

She was weak, very weak.

“Declan?” she whispered. “He…bit me. He bit—”

Her eyes rolled back and her head started to jerk, her body convulsing. Blood trickled from the corner of her mouth as her fangs started to emerge. Her heart rate started to kick up, erratic and broken sounding. Her skin seemed to burn.

She was dying, starving to death.

Changed, then.

She had been turned a good week, if Declan had figured right, and her fangs were just now coming? If her fangs were just now emerging, she hadn’t fed. No wonder she was starving.

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