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returning her attention to staring at the wall. He folded
his arms over his chest as he studied her profile. Her youthful
looks belied the air of wisdom and age emanating from her. Her hair
was so deep a brown it shone almost black in the flickering
candlelight. The tendrils of it hung in tumbled curls to just
beneath her breasts.
    Movement in the doorway finally pulled his
eyes away from her. Mandy yawned as she walked into the room, but
she broke into a bright smile when she spotted the woman sitting up
on the bed. “You’re awake!” she greeted cheerfully. She walked
around the bed to stand by the girl’s side and went to grab hold of
her wrist. The woman jerked away from her; she recoiled on the bed.
Ian stepped forward to stop her if she decided to lash out at
Mandy. Holding her hands up in a conciliatory gesture, Mandy moved
back a little. “My name is Mandy. I’m not going to hurt you.”
    “I don’t want any of your kind touching me!”
the woman countered.
    Mandy’s eyes flitted briefly toward him.
Taking a deep breath, she kept her hands in the air as she focused
on her hostile patient once more. “I’m human,” Mandy said
soothingly. “and I won’t harm you.”
    The woman’s gaze raked Mandy’s body; she
glanced at Ian and Stefan before looking toward Mandy again. “How
do I know that?” she demanded.
    Mandy frowned thoughtfully and then shook
her head. “Because I can’t run a mile in three seconds flat, I
don’t have fangs, I’m going to med school, and the idea of drinking
blood is about as appetizing to me as eating dirt. Actually, I
think I’d rather eat dirt with worms.”
    The woman continued to stare distrustfully
at her. She lowered her hand to her side, but kept it fisted. “Are
they forcing you to do this?” she demanded.
    Mandy’s forehead creased; she glanced at him
and Stefan again. “No one is forcing me to do anything,” she
replied.
    “They would make you say that,” Paige
muttered. Her eyes roamed over the pretty young woman before her.
She didn’t see any bite marks on her or any other signs of abuse,
but the woman may have been coerced into helping by the vampire’s
powers of persuasion.
    “I’m here of my own freewill. I volunteered
to help.”
    Ian watched her intently as the woman
glowered at him and Stefan before turning back to Mandy. “Do you
know what they are?”
    “Yes,” Mandy answered. “They’re my
friends.”
    Paige’s mouth fell; her gaze flitted over
them as she tried to figure out what was going on here. Mandy
attempted to take hold of her wrist again but she jerked it away.
“They’re monsters,” she whispered fervently. How could this woman
not see that? She was going to be a doctor, yet she was helping
these things . Well, she supposed technically Mandy had
helped her, but what awaited her once she was healthy again?
“They’re killers.”
    “I’ve never killed a person,” Ian grated
from between his teeth. He had killed a few vampires, but he had a
feeling the murder of vampires wouldn’t matter to this woman and
might actually be something she’d appreciate.
    Paige snorted, “Liar.”
    Stepping away from the bedside, he grabbed
hold of the curtain next to the bed and jerked it open. Early
afternoon sunlight spilled into the room and over him. “Since you
think you know so much about our kind, then you should know I
wouldn’t be able to stand in the sunlight if I was a
murderer of humans.”
    Her eyes narrowed; her gaze ran over the
sunlight filtering over him. “That’s not possible, no vampire can
stand the sun. I saw you, in the alley, I saw your true face.”
    “I am a vampire, I am not a murderer.
You’d do better to learn the difference.”
    Ian jerked the curtain closed again. This
girl was going to be a lot tougher to get to trust him than he’d
realized. His gaze traveled to the scars on her neck. Her hand
fluttered toward the same spot. Her fingers froze for a minute
before moving over the two scars there, the