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alarmed, knowing that Dain’s men were all around her.
    “Oh, like him?” Max pointed out a body she refused to look too closely at, lying under a tree they were passing by.
    She stiffened and stopped.  “You didn’t kill him, did you?”
    Max moved a little away from her, looking down at her, but didn’t let go.  “What do you think?”  He already knew what she thought him capable of, and in most cases, she was right.  And he wasn’t going to do anything to disabuse her of those notions, for the time being.
    He knew he’d horrified her, and that had been a bit of the point.  He knew where she was headed, he could smell it himself.  It smelled just like her – like lavender and roses and sunshine and earth.  There was no way he could miss it.
    It was a good thing, because she had been so distracted by what he’d shown her that her thoughts were a confused jumble.  Max expertly guided the two of them to her family’s lair, as if he’d been there as many times as she had.  He’d heard that places like this existed, but he’d never seen one, not that he’d ever doubted their existence for a moment.  There were many more things going on around this planet than he would ever be privy to.  Of that he was extremely certain.
    But he’d believed the folklore that pitted them against each other; that said that vampires were death on faeries, and he could see why.  All of that dark blackness couldn’t be good for such a gossamer creature of light and green as herself.
    It only made him want her that much more.  In a matter of three days, he was at least as caught in her web as his old enemy had been.  Perhaps having finally settled the score between them, he’d bitten a bit more off than he could chew.
    Which would be somewhat ironic, considering his bent, he had to admit.
    The rest of the trip to the family enclave was conducted in silence.  Max could sense that she didn’t want to talk; he could feel how tense and scared she was, and deliberately did nothing to comfort her.  Along the way, they saw several other bodies, and each time she shuddered and started. 
    When they were finally there, even he didn’t see the entrance to the place, it was that well hidden, and his night vision was better than hers, but he didn’t know what to look for.  Fawna had no choice but to let him in.
    She’d spent the entire trip there trying to figure out a way to get to her cell phone, but it was at the bottom of her huge bag, and he was holding the arm that the bag was on, so she had no hope at all of secretly searching for it.
    Once she’d pulled aside the big oak door that was masked in ivy tendrils, he pulled it shut behind them and leaned back against it.  “How connected to the outside world is this place?  And I’m warning you now, don’t lie to me.  I’ll know, and the consequences will be unpleasant.”
    Of course, the first thing in her mind was to lie to him and say that it was very connected, but the truth was that it wasn’t.  Dain came here to get away from that kind of thing.  Even the video game equipment wasn’t connected to the Internet.  Overall, the goal of this place was to keep it as natural as possible, and that included keeping it separate from the rest of the world.  Dain had thought that she would be surrounded by his people, and thus safe from the very person that was lazily perusing her in the relative darkness.
    “Your brother is a smart boy, but he’s altogether too young for me, and, frankly, for his position.”  Max advanced on Fawna, who took a step back for each of his steps forward, flipping lights on as she went, for what reason she wasn’t quite sure.  He didn’t seem angry that she was trying to evade him in the least.  He just kept coming.  And talking.  And it was his words that she was becoming more afraid of than his advance.
    “You’re due a spanking, you know.”
    She almost stopped in her tracks at that.  Why would he think that?  And what