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of the building, and there is nothing in my lease that says I can’t. Your extra payment isn’t due for another week.”
    There was a blur of motion behind her. Darby was pulled into her apartment, and the door was slammed so hard it nearly exploded. Wraith had him around the neck and a full foot off the ground. His eyes glowed from beneath the cover of his hood. “You will change your business practices. The woman is not your plaything to use at a whim.”
    Darby sputtered and gasped for air. The front of his pants became dark with urine.
    “Do you understand?” Wraith demanded. “The death you see before you now will come true if I find out you have not changed your methods.”
    “I…understand,” Darby rasped out as he clutched at Wraith’s wrist and struggled to get free. Wraith dropped him.
    Darby fell to the floor, popped up, and then whipped around. He stared at Bryna for a good long thirty seconds before he mumbled. “No extra payments this month—or ever.” Then he bolted out the door like the devil was after him.
    Bryna followed him out into the hall and watched as he ran to the end of the corridor and then turned the corner. She went back into her apartment and looked up at Wraith. “Um, I’m not sure I want to know what you did to him, but whatever it was, I hope it’s as effective as it appears to be.”
    Wraith stood in the middle of her living room clenching and unclenching his hands at his sides. The golden glow of his eyes bored into her before he turned and strode over to the window. “How long has he been receiving these extra payments?”
    She suppressed the need to roll her eyes. Here was the part where the big scary supernatural dead guy got all holier than thou about sex. She didn’t need this crap. Once, yeah, it had been special. Now it was usually an easy means to a needed end. What was five minutes of drunken sex once a month compared to the lives of twenty-five seniors? “If this is the part where you tell me I’m supposed to save myself until I find that special someone, save it. I might have to puke in the sink again if you do.”
    “Bryna—”
    She put a hand up to stop him. She didn’t want to hear what he had to say in that bone-melting tender voice that was so familiar, and yet she couldn’t pin down why it was so haunting. “Don’t go there.”
    He let out a sigh of aggravation. “Is this how your life is? Filled with things like this?”
    She moved around him to start the final check on her backpack. She’d need to stop for a food supply. It wouldn’t take long since she didn’t need to worry about Wraith. It wasn’t the first time she stopped something horrible from happening to the general populace. She’d call Andy before leaving town. He wouldn’t like her leaving, but he’d just have to deal with it. Other than herself, he was the only other person she knew who could fight vampires and survive. She zipped up her bag. “It doesn’t matter,” she gritted out. “Don’t start feeling sorry for me. I don’t want or need your pity. Let’s just avoid the end of the world, and then you can go back to whatever fucked-up existence you have, and I’ll continue to try to end mine.”

Chapter 3
    Vincent was beginning to realize he’d gotten the better end of the deal the day he died. His only regret was Bryna’s betrayal. However, seeing that every time he opened his mouth she either ended up in tears or angry, it seemed likely he might have deserved his death. It didn’t take away the god-awful pain the betrayal caused each time he thought about it. He’d loved her. Beyond anything, he’d had that lifelong magical kind of love that never should have been his—or, at least he’d thought he did.
    The trunk of her car was filled with all the supplies they would need to survive a supernatural siege in a rickety old shack in the middle of nowhere. She had an arsenal in her backpack along with several changes of clothes and two coolers filled with the