“Goddamn!” said a burly brunette with short cropped hair. “We missed all the action.”

A blond warrior pushed past him and headed for the stairs. “Fuck the action,” he growled. “If my Martin has a scratch on it, I’m going to find some vampire ass to kick.”

I looked at one of the others. “His Martin?”

The brunette chuckled. “His guitar. Elvis gave it to him. Jackson loves that thing.”

“He knew Elvis? For real?”

“Yep. Even used to jam with him.”

As I was trying to wrap my mind around that tidbit, the warriors started cleaning up and securing the place. Nikolas told me they’d pack up and move to a new location tomorrow because this place was compromised.

Jordan stood in the middle of the living room looking at the vampire bodies. “Shouldn’t we call for a cleanup crew?”

Jackson bounded down the stairs. “We are the cleanup crew. The van’s out back.”

I grimaced at the grisly task ahead of us. “What will you do with all the bodies?”

“We’ll take them out to the desert and burn them.” He looked at the bodies in the living room. “With this many it’s going to take at least two trips.”

Someone brought the van around to the front of the house, and the warriors quickly loaded bodies into it. They got rid of the bodies on the lawn first and then the ones in the living room. Jackson had been right. It was definitely going to take two trips.

After that, some of the warriors pinned a tarp over the living room window to keep out the wind and rain. Not that it would help much. The room was pretty much trashed. And cold. I went over to one of the warriors who lived in the house. “Hey, do you guys have something dry Jordan and I can borrow?” Not that their clothes would fit me, but anything was better than being wet and cold.

“We had a female warrior staying here two months ago, and she left some stuff behind. Upstairs, first door on the right. Bottom drawer in the dresser.”

“Thanks.”

We found two pairs of jeans and several tank tops. They were a good fit for Jordan, but I had to roll up the bottoms of the jeans. I also grabbed a sweater and a pair of the guy’s socks to replace my damp ones. My boots weren’t too bad, so I pulled them on again.

Jordan found a first aid kit and cleaned and bandaged the scratches on my shoulder. They weren’t too deep and the bleeding had already stopped. Of course, no Mohiri first aid kit is complete without gunna paste. This time, I didn’t complain as I took the awful stuff.

Nikolas found us a few minutes later. “The storm is letting up, and the pilot says we can take off in an hour or so. I’m going to call Tristan, and then we’ll head over to the airport.”

“Okay.” I rubbed my chest where a small knot of ice lingered despite my warm clothes. I was so ready to put some distance between me and that vampire.

The vampire had other ideas.

I was in the kitchen grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge when a girl’s scream came from the basement. Seconds later, something small and fast sped up the stairs, coming to a halt when it saw the warriors blocking its way.

The vampire, who had been a teenage girl before she was changed, stared in panic before she darted for the nearest opening. Warriors shouted as they moved to intercept her. She wasn’t as fast as some of them, but her size and agility made up for that. And like most people I’d encountered, she went for what looked like the easiest target in the room. Me.

There was no time to think. I grabbed a dagger that one of the warriors had left on the island, and threw it as the vampire flew through the kitchen doorway. She screamed, clawing at the silver hilt protruding from her abdomen as she staggered toward me.

In that moment, I was struck by how young she looked, and I felt a pang of sadness for the girl whose life had been stolen from her. She could have been any one of the girls from my old school. Her speed before I’d stopped her told me she’d been a vampire for at least a few decades. Did she have a family who missed her and still grieved the loss of their daughter or sister? She was going to die here and they would never know what had become of her.

She ripped out the dagger and leapt at me, her fangs and claws bared.

I twisted to one side and brought my fist up against her throat in a strike that might have crushed her windpipe had she been human. It was enough to surprise her, and that was all I needed. I wrapped one arm around her throat in a choke hold and pulled her back against me with my other hand squarely over her heart. Her body twitched as I gave her just enough of a jolt to incapacitate her.

Every instinct in me screamed for me to end her, but I stopped myself before I could do that. We needed her alive so we could find out how the vampires had found this place. The Mohiri were very good at keeping their safe house locations a secret, but somehow the vampires had found us tonight. If our warriors were going to remain safe, we had to know how we had been compromised.

The vampire sagged against me as one very aggravated Mohiri male pushed past the warriors crowding the wide kitchen doorway. “Damn it, Sara. There are a dozen warriors here. You couldn’t let one of them handle this?”

I scowled at him over her head. “Look at her, Nikolas. She’s even smaller than I am. Do you think I can’t handle one little vampire?”

“Don’t answer that, my man,” Jackson said, shaking his head. “It’s a trap.”

Nikolas glowered at the blond warrior who seemed totally unfazed. He must have been the first person I hadn’t seen shrink from one of Nikolas’s scowls.