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to her right. Her stalker had entered the alley and was quickly moving towards her. Should she say something? Scream? Her heart stuck in her throat.
    The man seized her arm and she span, pulling against his grasp. He held on and jerked her to him, letting a string of Spanish expletives fly in a burst of foul breath. Carrie struggled, and he upbraided her. Though she didn’t understand Spanish, the threat in his words transcended the language barrier. Finally, she managed to scream. The thug hit her hard across the face, and silver stars blossomed before her eyes. She reeled, supported only by the man’s rough grip.
    Suddenly, her attacker whirled, shouting a confused-sounding exclamation of “ Que demonios !” as he released her. Carrie fell, scraping her palms on the ground, as the heavy sound of vicious blows and half-uttered curses filled the air. She looked up to see her attacker bent double and receiving a nose-crunching kick to the face. Her saviour was a blur of pale skin and dark hair that gleamed faintly copper in the sunlight.
    “Brendan!” Carrie’s heart leapt as she recognised him.
    Brendan turned to face her over his victim’s crumpled body. His mouth hung open, as though he were breathing hard, and his long teeth gleamed in the sunlight. He squinted, reducing his eyes to narrow slits that hid the red of his irises. He dropped suddenly to stoop over the body of Carrie’s attacker, who was gasping for air. In less time than it took her to blink, he’d jerked back the man’s hood and sunk his fangs into his neck.
    Carrie pressed herself against the alley wall and watched in horror as the colour drained from the man’s face, turning him as pale as Brendan. “No!” she cried, darting forward, trembling. “Brendan, stop!” She seized one of Brendan’s shoulders and pulled with all her might, doubting she was capable of stopping him, but sure, nevertheless, she couldn’t just watch him kill someone.
    She was shaking by the time Brendan rose, finally giving in to her pleading and pulling. With crimson blood streaming from the corners of his pale mouth and her attacker lying unconscious at his feet, she no longer found it difficult to admit he was a vampire. Her heart beat faster in trepidation as he stepped towards her, and an alien sense of deep, primal fear gripped her.
    He staggered past her, seemingly oblivious to her presence. His eyes were completely closed. He stumbled blindly down the alleyway, eventually collapsing in the dirt and gasping as he drew his body up and wrapped his arms around his knees. A trickle of blood ran out of his mouth and was smeared across his face as he jerked.
    “Brendan!” Carrie exclaimed, gathering all her courage and approaching him. “Brendan, what’s wrong?”
    He didn’t answer. Instead, he lay balled on the ground, shivering. That was strange, as she herself was hot beneath her jacket. Did he have a fever? Could vampires even get fevers? She shook his shoulder. “Brendan!” He was unresponsive.
    Carrie cast a nervous glance at the man lying in the alley. She had to get herself and Brendan away from her attacker before he woke or anyone else came along. She eyed a door that hung slightly ajar in the side of the building. Then, she seized one of Brendan’s thick arms and began the arduous process of dragging him towards it. It took her nearly ten minutes to lug his body over the threshold. When it was done, she collapsed by his side. He wasn’t shivering as badly now they had entered the dark, dank interior of the old warehouse.
    “Brendan?”
    He shook. She lay down beside him, wrapped her arms around his waist, pressed her cheek against his back and cried. What else could she do? She certainly couldn’t take a vampire to a hospital.

Chapter Three
     
     
     
    Brendan woke with a groan roughly fifteen minutes after Carrie had laboured to drag him into the shelter of the abandoned warehouse.
    “Brendan?” Carrie leapt to kneel over him.