“Is it legal to deliberately turn off a security system for a property you don’t own?” I countered. “How about helping to erase three months of someone’s life? Or covering up the fact that a high school boy was shot on Halloween night?” I heard a yowling sound, but I was too furious to stop. “I wonder, what would they charge you with, Sheriff, if they knew you helped a vampire hunter brainwash an entire town?”

Somewhere in the house glass shattered, and Yamah glanced briefly over his shoulder before he said, “Your brother said you would never remember anything about that night.”

“My brother?” I smiled. “Was wrong.”

Yamah yelped as a river of small, furry bodies poured into the room. “What in God’s name … ”

My whole body lit up from inside as I released more and more of the power inside me, drawing more of my cats to me. I could feel them leaping through the hole they’d smashed through one of the windows, first the wild things that lived on Julian’s land, and then the pets who had escaped from their owners’ houses. Bobcats came from the woods, their spotted fur bristling as they rubbed shoulders with the alley cats from town. They flooded into the library, some coming to surround me but most forming a deadly circle around the sheriff. Their eyes, like glittering jewels, fixed on Yamah’s pale face, but not one made a single sound.

Their power reflected back to me, strengthening me, and for the first time I understood why my Van Helsing ability might be the deadliest of all. I didn’t dream the future or make others forget the past; I was a hunter, as wild and lethal as my small warriors. They knew this, and for me, they would do anything.

“Don’t move, James,” I heard Jesse say, just before I felt his hand touch my hot face. “Catlyn, look at me.”

I didn’t want to, not now that I’d finally let go. I loved Jesse, and we belonged to each other, and no one was going to take him away from me. The weight and pain of all the months I had pretended and kept silent fell away from me, freeing me from the fear that had trapped me. I wasn’t afraid of the sheriff anymore. My cats covered every inch of the floor, and they were ready.

All it would take was one thought from me, and they would silence James Yamah forever.

Jesse gently turned me toward him, but I saw no anger in his beautiful gray eyes. Instead there was something like sorrow and understanding, as if he knew exactly what I wanted to do, and how good it would feel if I did. “We chose life over death, Catlyn. We must always do that, or we will become monsters.”

Of course he knows about the terrible urge inside me, I thought. He’s been fighting it every day since he was changed.

Slowly the heat inside me receded, taking with it the irrational hatred I felt for the sheriff. I looked down at the cats my emotions had summoned, and as their heads turned toward me I reached out to them. Leave us now.

As silently and quickly as they came, the cats dispersed. In a few seconds we were alone again with Yamah, who had gone very pale, and walked over to sit down heavily in one of the chairs.

I knew I should apologize for scaring him, but he’d done the same to me too many times now. In my eyes, we were even.

“What am I going to tell your parents?” Yamah finally asked Jesse.

“Nothing. Julian is dead, and this is over.” My dark boy gestured toward the closet. “Take all the records out of here tonight and burn them.”

“It’s not as simple as that, and you know it.” The sheriff dragged a hand through his hair. “My family has served yours for generations, and I am as loyal as the rest of them. But I’m sworn to your father, Jesse, not you. It was your father who worked out this truce with Youngblood after Halloween night; I have to tell him that you broke it by refusing to honor your part of the agreement by staying away from Miss Youngblood.”

A loud, startling sound came from the handheld radio mic clipped to the epaulet of the sheriff’s uniform, and he unclipped it to answer it. “Yamah.”

“Sheriff, dispatch just received a call,” a man said over the radio’s speaker. “Another girl’s been abducted. She was visiting her grandmother at the nursing home over on Center when a man came into the room. The nurses said she just walked out with him.”

Yamah’s knuckles bulged as he pressed the response button. “Who was taken?”

“Ross Hamilton’s girl, Becca.”

As the sheriff issued terse instructions to begin a search of the area for the girl, I turned to Jesse. “Why didn’t she try to run away from the man?”

“I’m not sure,” he said. “Perhaps the kidnapper threatened to harm her grandmother if she didn’t go with him.”

“Put out a description of Becca,” Yamah was telling his deputy. “She’s five-nine, about a hundred twenty pounds, long dark hair, fair skin, dark blue eyes.” As he said that, his eyes shifted to me. “Call in everyone off-duty, and ask the fire department if they can spare some men to help with the search. I’ll be at the station shortly.”

“Do you have a description of the man who took her?” Jesse asked.

“That we do.” The sheriff’s expression turned to disgust. “The nurse who saw him says he’s young, dark and handsome. Becca’s grandmother swears he’s a wrinkled, bald old man.” He stood. “You’ll both have to come back to the station with me. I’ll call your father from there, Jesse, and see what he wants me to do about the two of you.”

“If you do that, Catlyn and I will not be coming to the station,” Jesse said. “We will leave Lost Lake tonight, and our families will never see us again.”

“You think you can just leave town?” Yamah uttered a bitter sound. “Think about who her brothers are—they will come after you. So will your parents, for that matter. If that happens, someone is going to die.”

“You’re sworn to protect the Ravens, Sheriff,” I said. “That includes Jesse, doesn’t it?”

He didn’t say anything, but his expression wavered.

“James, please,” Jesse said. “Nothing is more important to me than being with Catlyn. When the time is right, we will tell our families about us. I promise you this.”

Yamah rubbed his eyes in a tired gesture. “You don’t give me much choice. I’ll keep quiet about this, but I want something in exchange.”

“What is it?” Jesse asked.

“I think there’s a fully turned vampire in Lost Lake,” the sheriff said. “He’s the one who is responsible for taking the kids.”

Jesse went still. “A vampire took the missing girls?”

Yamah nodded. “It’s why none of the descriptions of him match, and why the girls go with him without a fight. He’s able to cloud and confuse human minds.” He turned to me. “You’re the vampire hunter, Miss Youngblood. So in return for my silence, I want you to find him. Find him, and kill him.”

While the sheriff began removing all of Julian Hargraves’s secret files from the library, Jesse and I left the mansion. Yamah’s belief that a vampire was abducting the girls was almost as outrageous as his demand that I hunt him down and kill him. I hadn’t agreed or disagreed; I’d been too shocked to speak. Jesse had hustled me out of there before I’d really had a chance to think about it.

By the time we reached Jesse’s car, my head cleared and I finally reacted. “He’s crazy. I can’t hunt a vampire. I certainly can’t kill one.”

“You don’t have to,” he said as he helped me into the car. “I will take care of it.”

“What happened to choosing life over death?” I asked as he got in on the other side and started the engine.

“Vampires are not alive.”

I had to think about that for a minute. “Okay, but if that’s true—”

“I am the same,” he finished for me.

That I would never accept. “I don’t think so, Jesse.”

“I died a human death, Catlyn.” His mouth thinned. “Vampire blood reanimated me, but my body no longer functions as yours does. I do not age or scar. I cannot be harmed by disease or injury. The vampire blood that changed me allows me a semblance of life, and as long as I consume blood it will continue to do so, but I am not alive. It is why we are called the undead. A vampire is death undone.”

“I don’t believe that. You’re not a vampire.” A thought occurred to me. “If you were dead, you wouldn’t have a heartbeat.”

“Like the rest of me, my heart is animated and sustained by vampire blood.” He folded his hand around mine. “It is a mimicry of life, part of the vampire’s lure. My heart beats so that you are fooled into believing I am alive.”

“How can vampire blood do that?” I demanded.

“I wish I knew. I only know what destroys it.” He nodded toward the sky. “Exposure to the daylight causes the vampire’s blood to break down, which is why sun is so lethal to us. Without the vampire blood to sustain us, our bodies rapidly age and wither. It happens so rapidly that we literally catch on fire.”

“Don’t remind me of that.” I saw that we were halfway to the apartment complex where Kari lived with her mother. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I can’t kill anyone, dead or undead, and you’re not going to, either,” I added before he said anything to the contrary. “But maybe I can find the missing girls. Wouldn’t that be good enough for the sheriff?”

“If James is correct, and a vampire is responsible for taking these girls,” he said carefully, “you may not wish to find them.”

“You think he’s killed them.”

“He would have to feed on them, and eventually they would die of blood loss.” He hesitated, and then said, “What I meant to say is that he cannot be alone. Vampires are clannish creatures, Catlyn. They are drawn to each other. When there are no others they can find, they are compelled to make more of their kind.”