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hard muscle. His gray eyes held all sorts of secrets and knowledge. He was just over six feet tall and extremely handsome, and completely oblivious to the women who tried to capture his attention. His focus was entirely on her and it made her feel worse. “I screwed up so badly, sir; I didn’t resist.”
    He pulled back and grasped her shoulders. Looking at her with a stern expression, he growled, “You did not screw up, Mal.”
    He clamped his mouth shut and looked around the busy hospital. With an arm around her shoulders, he started to help her off the bed but the doctor grabbed his arm, “Sir, I’m afraid I can’t allow you to remove her from the premises; she has lost a lot of blood and is still being observed.”
    “The hell with that,” Gus grumbled, shoving the doctor’s protesting arm away and helping Mal to her feet. “We’re signing her out on her own recognizance.”
    Turning to face her, he lowered his voice, “Do you have a purse?”
    She shook her head no. “I don’t know what happened to it. I think I might have dropped it at some point. And my car is still at the mall.”
    “We’ll worry about the car later,” he said, helping her off the bed.
    Malorie held onto her father’s arm as her knees tried to buckle beneath her. She was still so weak and her muscles ached but she was determined to ignore the pain; she’d take some ibuprofen when she got home. Leaning into her father, using his strength, she let him take the lead.
    “Sir!” The doctor protested in vain as Gus pushed past him, ignoring the threats the doctor was issuing. They couldn’t keep her there against her will, it didn’t matter if she needed help to walk and she still felt a little woozy. Very woozy. She knew she would be a hell of a lot safer in her own home, where she knew wards were in place to keep the vamps out. Where she knew those around her weren’t marked by and controlled by vamps.
    Glancing around at the other bite victims, she realized that they were all watching her, awe filling their pale faces. Hushed voices whispered about her as hands slowly, reverently, reached out and touched her; her arm, her face, her hair. Fingers trailed over her skin and a shudder made its way through her body. She moved closer to her father and felt his arm tighten around her shoulders. Why were all of the bite victims acting so strange?
    Tilting her head back, she saw the grim line of his mouth as he purposefully stared straight ahead, ignoring the hands, the people lining the hallways. “Father?”
    “Hush, Mal,” he said through barely parted lips. “Let’s just get you home.”
    Behind them she heard orders being given to hold them until security arrived. She could hear the shuffling of carts and the squeak of boots moving towards them. Without turning around, her father quickened the pace. He took more and more of her weight as she struggled to keep up. Under normal circumstances they were fairly evenly matched.
    Her body protested having to move at all but she knew she had to keep moving, knew they had to get out of there before something really bad happened. A soft whimper escaped as her head pounded with each step they took. “I’m so tired, father.”
    “You can rest when we get in the truck,” Gus offered gruffly, tightening his grip around her waist. There was barely any time to look back and see how close security was; she was just grateful that there were so many bodies between them and their pursuers, especially since with the exit just ahead.
    Risking a peak over her shoulder, she saw that the vamp-wannabes were now preventing the authorities from reaching them. There was something quite disconcerting about that. Was someone controlling them? But that didn’t make any sense; if someone was controlling them, wouldn’t they try to keep her there? And she vaguely remembered that no one had been marked. Maybe the kids were acting of their own volition.
    No, she was pretty sure that wasn’t even possible. Was