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reach the ground as he dangled there, held up by Caine’s pure brute strength.
    “I could crush you like a cockroach.” Caine’s voice was hard and cold. Eve had to suppress a violent shiver, as the room’s temperature seemed to drop rapidly.

    Mahina moved around to Caine’s side, an amused look on her face. “Hey, Valorian, put the little bloodsucker down before he pisses in his pants and ruins your crime scene and your three-hundred-dollar shoes.”
    Eve watched as the feral look on Caine’s face faded. She could see him start to relax, letting his shoulders droop. Slowly, he set the weasel down, and then took a step back, his breathing labored but slowing. The room seemed to warm at the same rate as his breathing slowed.
    “Take him in,” Caine demanded.
    Mahina raised her eyebrow, but said nothing. She took hold of the little vampire’s arm and dragged him toward the door. “Okay, Chuck, we’re taking a ride.”
    “But I didn’t do anything!” Chuck sputtered.
    Once they were through the door, Caine turned and looked down at Eve. His face seemed to soften as he eyed her. “Are you okay?”
    Sighing, Eve closed her eyes. She let her body relax on the carpet. Relief surged over her.
    For a moment there, she thought she was going to die. Slowly opening her eyes, she swallowed down the residual panic. Then she paused, spying something foreign under the bed.
    Craning her neck, she squinted and tried to make out the shape lying on the carpet a few feet away.
    Caine reached down and grabbed her arm. “Here let me help you.”
    Eve pulled away from his grip and rolled onto her stomach. “Get me some tweezers and a plastic bag will you?”
    “Excuse me?”
    She glanced at Caine and raised an eyebrow. “An evidence bag, please.”
    He took her case, opened it, grabbed a pair of long tweezers and a bag and handed it to her. Taking them, Eve shuffled on her belly toward the bed and reached as far as she could underneath. Carefully, she plucked the white object from the shag carpet, shuffled backward and rolled over into a sit, bringing the object up into view.
    It was about two inches long, blanched and sharpened into a point. She’d seen one before on several occasions, but never like this. Usually, they were attached to the rest of the skeleton.
    “It’s a phalange,” Caine announced.

    Smiling, Eve bagged the bone and sealed the sack shut. “Good thing I was attacked and ended up on the floor. We might have missed that.”
    Caine offered her his hand. This time she took it and allowed him to pull her to her feet.
    Still holding her hand in his, he remarked, “Interesting tactics, but good work.”
    She gave him a little smile, but pulled her hand from his. Heat had suddenly enveloped her, and she didn’t want to even consider where it was coming from. She took a step back, and reached for her kit to stash the evidence she’d retrieved.
    Caine cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t have left you alone. I wasn’t thinking.”
    “It’s all right. I wouldn’t have seen the bone if I hadn’t been on the floor.”
    “It should never have happened, Eve. I have to remember that you are not…Other.
    Leaving you alone is dangerous, negligent even, and I won’t do it again.”
    She waved his apology away. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’m fine. I can take care of myself, you know. I have training.”
    “Not for Necropolis, you don’t.”
    With that, she noticed his eyes flashed like blue flames, reminding her that she was indeed an outsider in a foreign place with unfamiliar people. People that could kill her in a blink of an eye. Even Caine possessed that power.
    Her stomach clenched again, and she had to fight the rising panic of being here, in this place of strangeness, with a vampire. Once a creature of myth, but certainly now as real as she was. Maybe she wasn’t completely prepared, but she refused to be scared away.
    She refused to back down from this challenge. She was here until the end,