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kept his head when everyone around him lost theirs. If this was the same Malek, what the hell had happened to him?
    And when could she steal a trip into his bedroom?
    With a gleam in her narrowed eyes, her bloodred lips slowly crept into a smile as she gave one last look toward the exit. She would definitely have to keep an eye out for that one. A member of AKM and a rough rider? Luck had just smiled down on her.
     

CHAPTER 3
    Bishop set his Sobranie in the ashtray on the bathroom counter and leaned closer to the mirror. The scent of the brown, gold-tipped cigarette wafted up in a thin line of gray, wispy smoke.
    "How much were you able to salvage?" The voice of his boss, Premier Royce, the leader of the drecks, rose from his cell phone on the counter.
    "Enough," Bishop said as he poked at the new, sensitive fangs peeking out from the roof of his mouth. He had finally been able to take an inventory of everything brought from his Arizona lab. There was a lot left to recover, and they had suffered a major setback, but they had what was important.
    "But not all." Royce sounded perturbed.
    Bishop swung his gaze down at his phone with an air of irritation. "Given the circumstances, I think we've recovered efficiently from our little…break-in, Royce. We salvaged most of the data, had fail-safes in place to destroy incriminating evidence…" so that his precious royal highness , the premier, couldn't be implicated in the nefarious goings-on he sanctioned in private, "and managed to evacuate a few of our best test subjects so our experiments can continue with minimal disruption." Bishop's mind flickered to the female locked away and chained to the bed in an isolated cabin in a wooded area a few miles from his new underground lab in northern Indiana. He was eager to get this business trip in Chicago over with so he could get back to her.
    "You should have been more careful," Royce said. "You should have had better safeguards in place, Bishop. I pay you—"
    Bishop slammed his fist on the counter. "You pay me nothing I can't obtain elsewhere!" Who was Royce to question him? He was merely a figurehead. The ruler of their race who hadn't the spine to unzip his fly and flop his cock on the table for all to see what his true intentions were. He hid behind masks and spent his time negotiating falsehoods with the vampire king, pretending to adhere to the peace truce between their races while going behind the vampires' backs and making others—like Bishop—do his dirty work. How dare that sniveling politician criticize him?
    "I don't like your tone, Bishop."
    "And I don't like your interference, Royce."
    "You will address me with the respect I deserve."
    "Or what?"
    Not even a month ago, Bishop wouldn't have spoken so candidly against the premier, but he was different now. Maddox's blood, his venom—his genetic… donation —had seen to that. Bishop was no longer merely a dreck. He was something more. Something stronger and more powerful. The new fangs in his mouth—both the uppers and the lowers, just like Maddox's—proved his personal experiments were working.
    He still looked like a dreck, with his blue-tinted skin and blue-black hair hanging down the front of his body, but the new dental work, as well as his more muscular and taller body, indicated he was changing. Before long, he wouldn't need Premier Royce, his funding, or his pesky interruptions.
    Too bad he had lost Maddox in the raid on his Arizona lab a week ago. Bishop still had Maddox's blood samples, as well as samples of his venom, which was enough to conduct more experiments, but there was so much he couldn't do without his prized, Slavic vampire. He had only just obtained him, and now he had been stolen away. By his son, no less. That hairless vampire named Trace. A prize in his own right, to be sure. That bastard had been powerful enough to destroy his lab with no more than a wave of his hand.
    Bishop actually drooled at the thought of having both Maddox and Trace in